I could tell Patty’s neck was getting tired, but he didn’t want to look straight ahead at my groin. “Five years. I come from Hartford, Connecticut.”
“Where were you living last May?” I asked, the emphasis on the month.
“May? I think… I guess I was staying with Robbie Messier.”
“And spending time with Shawna Davis?”
Genuinely startled, he tried to stand up. By simply refusing to retreat, I forced him back into the chair. “That bitch.”
My first thought was that drugs formed the link between them, as they probably did between Patty and most of his “friends.” J.P. had told me the lab had found traces of occasional marijuana use in Shawna’s hair. But the word “occasional” was what caught in my craw. In the split second open to me, I decided to hedge my bet with a deliberately loaded implication. “Did she tell you she was eighteen?”
He ran his fingers through his hair, his head dropping briefly. “Oh, Jesus.”
Ron and I exchanged glances, suddenly unsure of which button we’d pushed-statutory rape, drug pushing, or murder. Whichever it was, I had to make a critical choice. Given his mood, he was liable to confess to something, and I had to ensure it would hold up in court. My two choices were either to make it clear he was free to go-and therefore not in legal custody-and then take advantage of his sudden relief to coax out an indiscretion, or to build on the pressure he was already feeling, inform him of his rights, and let him think we could do more right now than simply give him a tap on the wrist for smoking a joint.
I opted for the latter. “I better advise you, Mr. Redding, that you may be facing criminal charges, and that you have the right to remain silent, and to retain the services of a lawyer if you wish, free of charge if you don’t have the money. Do you understand that?”
Now the other hand joined the first in holding his head. “Man.”
“Do you understand what I just said?” I pressed him, increasingly satisfied with my choice.
“It wasn’t my fault-”
“Mr. Redding.” I bent over and put my face into his again. “Do you understand what I said?”
“Yes.” His voice was almost a croak.
I straightened, backed off, and sat in a chair across from him. “Good. Then do you want to tell us about Shawna Davis, or do you want to wait till you get a lawyer?”
He dropped his hands and slumped back into his chair, looking at me through a scraggle of hair hanging across his eyes. “I don’t have a goddamn lawyer.”
“We can get you a public defender.”
He stared at the ceiling a moment. Regardless of the outcome, I didn’t mind stringing this out. If he did opt for the lawyer, we’d take him down to the SA’s office, nail him for the roach, get a warrant to search this apartment, and maybe hit him with a felony if we found a big-enough stash. On the other hand, there was nothing quite like the spur of the moment to open a guilty conscience, so if he had something truly incriminating to say, I wasn’t about to stop him.
What he finally did say sent a faint chill down my back. “What the hell, it’s all over anyhow.”
“What is?” I asked, suddenly anticipating the resolution to Shawna’s death.
“The deal. It’s history, and if she wants to get me for rape, what the hell. She’s no fucking virgin, if that’s what she told you.”
My hopes crumpled within me. This wasn’t to be a murder confession.
Ron sensed my disappointment and took the lead. “Let’s start from the top. When and how did you two meet?”
Redding let out a big sigh. “Like I said, I was crashing at Messier’s place, playing gigs wherever I could. Shawna dropped in out of the blue. A friend of mine named Hugh Savage had given her my address. They went to high school together or something. Anyway, one day she showed up and just kind of moved in.”
“What’s that mean?” I asked.
“You know. She had nowhere to go, no money, didn’t know anybody else in town. I kind of took her in. I mean, she wasn’t much to look at, but she was willing and able, and I had nothing else going… She did tell me she was eighteen.”
“What’s the deal you mentioned?”
“After a couple of weeks, she was getting to be a drag. Never left the place because she said her mom might’ve sent the cops after her. She just hung around, wanting attention. I mean, that’s okay for a while, but… Well, you know.”
Neither of us bothered commenting.
“So anyway, this guy I hear about’s got this good shit to sell-prime stuff at a low price ’cause he’s headin’ for the joint and needs some fast cash. But I don’t have the money, see? I have some friends that might chip in, so I go around, put the deal together, collect a thousand bucks, and that’s when that little bitch decides to split-with the money. I couldn’t believe it. Fucking cow. She wasn’t even a good fuck. Boy, I caught shit for that one. If Messier hadn’t backed me up… They thought I’d ripped ’em off. Can you believe it?”
I looked at him for a moment, wondering how Kunkle would have conducted this interview-and wishing he was. “Describe Shawna’s hairdo,” I asked, having left Shawna’s photo at the office.
His mouth fell open. “Huh? What the hell… It was punklike. You know, purple and orange, shaved on one side. I hate that shit.”
“How ’bout her teeth-anything unusual there?”
He stared at me, totally baffled. “She had a gold tooth.”
“Was there any kind of design or inscription on it?”
“What’re you guys asking this shit for? No-it was just a goddamn tooth, all right?”
“You’re sure?”
“Yeah.”
“When did she disappear?”
His eyes narrowed. “What the hell did she do, anyway?”
“Answer the question,” Ron said flatly.
Redding scowled. “Middle of May, I think. It was starting to warm up a little.”
“During the time you were together,” I resumed, “did she make friends with anyone?”
“I told you. She was paranoid about her mother. She stayed inside all the time.”
“What about Messier? What was his relationship to her?”
“They didn’t like each other. He told me-just before she split with the money-that she had to go. After she ripped us off, he threw me out anyway. Such a prick. He was talking about how I should start paying rent, so I would’ve been outta’ there anyhow.”
“You didn’t look for her after she ripped you off?”
“Where was I going to look? I called that bastard Hugh-asked if he’d seen her. I thought maybe he’d set the thing up. I knew things were tight with a baby and everything. I even drove down there a couple of times, staked the place out. Never saw nothin’.”
“So you dropped it?”
He shrugged. “Hey, you know? It wasn’t my money, and once everybody knew Shawna’d done it, things cooled off. I found new digs, life went on.”
“How many people chipped in on the money she stole?”
“Four.”
“What’re their names?”
He looked at both of us with a crafty smile. “Oh… I don’t think so. You got me on possession-small change. When we get to the judge, there’s no way I’m talking about any dope deal gone bad-I got nothin’ to win by rattin’ on my friends. I gotta live in this town.”
I leaned forward, forcing him to bump the back of his head against the wall to avoid touching noses with me. “Listen, you cockroach. You want to know why we’re so interested in Shawna? It’s because she’s dead-you’ll read about it in the paper tomorrow. Those bones we found on Hillcrest were hers.”
His eyes grew wide. “You’re shittin’ me.”
“We figure she was killed right about when you last saw her-”
“I didn’t-” he interrupted.
I grabbed his arm tightly to shut him up. “But you sure as hell had a grudge against her, Patty, and you’re the one we got. You catch my drift?”
I could smell the sweat breaking out on him. “You guys are nuts. I didn’t kill her. I didn’t even know where the fuck she went. This is crazy.”
I squeezed his arm harder. “Patty, Patty, listen to me. Maybe you didn’t care about the money, but I bet the people it belonged to cared a lot. Am I right?”