“No!”
“Did he have some kind of beef with you? Maybe you pissed him off. Maybe he caught you stealing.”
“No!” Stack protested—too fervently. Like a guilty man. “I’m not like that. I’m a nice person. I’d do anything for anybody. I’d give you the shirt off my back,” he said, tugging at the collar of his dirty, puke-stained, olive-colored sweater. The color made him look like maybe he had a liver disease—or maybe he did have a liver disease. Fucking junkie.
“I’m always getting blamed for shit I didn’t do!” he whined.
“But isn’t it true you were mooching off BB for a long time?” Taylor asked in that calm, even voice that was somehow more unnerving than a shout. “You were sleeping on his couch, eating his food, taking advantage of his kindness.”
“It’s not like I didn’t help him,” Stack said indignantly. “I watched his dogs when he was out of town.”
“You watched his dogs while you were sleeping on his couch and smoking his dope and eating his food and helping yourself to the meth.”
“He owed me something for all I did.”
“You felt entitled,” Taylor said, nodding.
“I did all kinds of stuff for him,” Stack claimed.
“Like selling his dope and sticking the money in your pocket? How did he feel about that?”
“I never did that! He would have killed me!”
“So you did it only while he was out of town and you were looking after his dogs?” Taylor said. “Because you were entitled to that much.”
Stack shifted in his seat, agitated. “No! I told you. BB would’ve killed me.”
“So maybe you beat him to it.”
“I’m really hot,” Stack said, tugging again at the collar of his sweater.
“It’s probably just nerves,” Taylor said. “I mean, here you sit with a homicide detective telling you you might be a suspect in the death of your friend. Maybe I’m trying to visualize you sticking that knife into BB’s neck, shoving that blade down his throat, listening to him gurgle as he drowned in his own blood. Hell of a way to go, sucking that blood down in big gulps.”
Stack twisted and turned in his seat. He looked like he might puke again. Taylor rose from his chair, smoothing his tie down with one hand.
“I’d be nervous if I was in your place, too, Ronnie,” he said. “You’ve got a couple of drug busts on your sheet already. BB was a drug dealer. Most people won’t have to try too hard to stretch that story to fit. You know what I’m saying? I’ll guarantee a jury isn’t going to be interested in all your ‘poor, poor Ronnie’ sob stories.”
“Fuck you!” Stack spat the words at him.
Taylor ignored the insult. He hadn’t changed the tone or volume of his voice since the beginning of the interview. Pretty damned impressive, Kovac thought, though wild horses couldn’t have kicked that confession out of him.
“Tell you what, Ronnie,” Taylor said. “I’m going to step out for a moment to confer with Detective Kovac. I’ll tell you right now, he wants to hold you on this. He’s not as patient as I am. While I’m out, you try to refresh your memory for me. Otherwise, Kovac’s going to come down on you like Thor’s hammer. Trust me, you don’t want that to happen.”
“Who’s Thor?” Stack asked stupidly. “Oh. Like in the movie?”
Taylor just looked at him, and then left the room.
“Well played, young man,” Tippen said, impressed.
“I like his style,” Elwood agreed.
Kovac growled a little in his throat, as if to say he wasn’t convinced just yet.
As soon as Taylor was out the door of the interview room, Stack got up and started to pace, holding his stomach, bending over a little.
“Oh man. Oh man,” he muttered.
“I don’t know,” Taylor said, joining the small crowd in the cubicle. “We’ve been at this for two hours already and he hasn’t given us anything useful.”
“Except that he now sounds more like a suspect than a witness,” Elwood said. “Well done.”
Taylor shrugged it off. He had shoulders like the fucking Rock. No possible way he bought his shirts off the rack.
“Ronnie Stack didn’t stick a knife in a drug dealer—not face-to-face,” he said. “He doesn’t have the balls for murder.”
“No, but I’d say there’s a good chance he knows who did,” Kovac said. “We’ll go back in together. If he knows anything, he’ll tell us now.”
“Can we take a couple of minutes?” Taylor asked as Sam got up from his chair. “The smell in that room is making me nauseous. I think the dude ate a head of cabbage for lunch. Anyhow, I don’t know how much more we can squeeze out of him before he uses the L word.”
“That all depends on what you mean by that,” Elwood said, pointing at the computer screen. “I think he’s about to squeeze out something right now.”
Kovac turned his attention back to the screen. “What the fuck is he doing?”
Ronnie Stack was hopping from foot to foot as he undid his pants, chanting, “Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit!”
“Oh no!”
“No fucking way!”