by Neal Baer
“I have to!” she said, and realized she said it too loud because Welch swung his head in her direction.
He was standing in the glow of a streetlamp, and Claire could see that the man was indeed Jonah Welch. He froze, perhaps trying to figure out whether she was a cop, whether she recognized him, whether the Chevy was too beat-up to be an unmarked cop car. Maybe all of the above. Then he bolted.
“He’s running!” Claire yelled, starting the engine, gunning the car into a U-turn.
“Where’s he going?” Nick asked, wishing he could see well enough to drive.
“Around the corner,” Claire said, spinning the wheel to the left. The car was going so fast that the tires on the right side almost left the ground.
“It’s a piece of crap!” Nick yelled. “Do that again and you’ll roll it!”
Fortunately, Welch wasn’t in good shape. Out of breath, he slowed down on the park side of Ocean Avenue, and Claire zoomed past him.
“I’m gonna cut him off!” she said, slowing down just enough, then making a sharp right between two parked cars onto the sidewalk. The car screeched to a stop and Nick could see a shadow he knew to be Welch running toward them. He jumped out, and Welch tried to run around Nick. But even with his limited vision Nick could see well enough to dive on him and bring him to the ground.
“Get off me!” Welch screamed.
“Jonah Welch, you’re under arrest,” Nick said, subduing the man and cuffing him.
“What the hell for?”
“Lying about your address as a registered sex offender,” Nick said, dragging Welch to his feet, then bending him over the hood of the car to search him as Wilkes’s unmarked Dodge raced up.
“Nick,” Claire said, gesturing to the inspector getting out of his car.
“I see him,” Nick said, not caring, feeling like a cop again. Wilkes could fire him right there and he wouldn’t give a shit. At least he’d go out on top.
“What are you two doing here?” Wilkes asked.
“We got him,” Nick said, pushing Welch toward his boss as if giving him a prize.
Wilkes, resisting the urge to take out his gun and shoot Nick and Claire, allowed a smile to cross his face. The sight of Nick Lawler, Night-Blind Detective, turning over a perp in cuffs, was so ridiculous that for once, he was speechless.
“What’s the matter, Boss?” asked Nick. Wilkes’s smile scared him.
“Nothing,” Wilkes replied. “Nice collar, Nicky.”
CHAPTER 12
Jonah Welch squirmed, trying to make himself comfortable in the government-issued metal chair. But there was no comfort to be found in the claustrophobic, beige gray cinderblock interview room where, as far as he was concerned, he’d already been held for too long. He rattled the cuffs attaching him to the metal table and pounded his free fist on it. The sound reverberated through speakers into the adjoining room where Claire and Nick watched his frustration on a monitor.
“He’s getting jumpy,” observed Claire.
“That’s just how we want him,” said Nick, turning down the volume. “Usually we’ll put some perp in there, leave ’em for a while, and when we’re ready to talk to them, they’re snoring.”
“You sure you’re ready for this?” Claire asked.
“Yeah,” he said. It was after four in the morning, nearly twenty-four hours since he slept. On top of that, arresting Welch was the first physical police work he’d done in a year. He couldn’t remember feeling more pumped. “I’m fine.”
She grinned. “That’s the adrenaline talking.”
“Let’s hope it lasts,” said Nick, tapping the folder in his left hand and heading toward the door into the room where Welch sat.
“Good luck,” said Claire.
“I’ll need it,” he replied, opening the door and disappearing inside.
Claire turned her head toward the monitor and dialed up the volume in time to see Nick close the door to the interview room.
Welch looked up. “About time,” he growled. “Now are you gonna tell me what I’m doing here?”
Nick pulled out the metal chair across from Welch and sat down, placing the folder on the table. “I already did. You lied about your address on the sex offender registry.”
“Bullshit. You don’t send cops with machine guns for that.”
“We do when the perp’s record says they were collared with one.”
“That was thirty-five years ago. I haven’t touched a gun since. And if I wrote down the wrong address by accident, so what?”
“It wasn’t an accident, Jonah,” Nick said. “Guy does that, it tells me he’s hiding. Phony address buys you time to split if the cops get too close.”
A bitter smile crossed Welch’s face. “You wanna know the truth? Okay. I did it because it’s none of anyone’s goddamned business where I live.”
“You’re right. Screw the people in Albany who make the laws. You drive a ninety-eight Ford Crown Vic. Where is it?”
“That’s none of your goddamned business either.”
“Jonah, if you’re as innocent as you say you are—”
Welch straightened up in his seat with his version of righteous indignation. “This is the United States of America. I have a right to my privacy.”
“You gave up that right when the jury found you guilty of raping that girl.”
“And I paid my debt. I didn’t cause no trouble in prison. Never missed a meeting with my parole officer after I got out, haven’t been without a job in ten years. I’m being a good boy, and you know why? Because I made a stupid mistake when I was twenty-four and paid for it with two decades of my life. I swore after the first ten years inside that if I made it out of Greenhaven with my life and a virgin asshole, I’d be a saint for whatever time I have left. I don’t ever wanna go back.”
Nick sat back in his chair and took a breath, as if emotionally stirred by Welch’s speech. Then he burst into applause, stomped his feet. “Whoo-hoo! Bravo!” he yelled.
This, of course, shocked Welch and sucked away whatever mojo he had left. “Stop it! Shut the hell up!” he pleaded.
“No, really,” Nick said, still clapping. “Were you in the prison drama club?”
Welch looked like he was about to cry. “Why do you have to torture me?”
It was the perfect opening. Nick removed photos from the folder and slapped them onto the table.
Bam. Bam. Bam.
“You know all about torture, don’t you, Jonah,” he said as fact.
Welch looked at the pictures—three skeletons laid out on metal slabs in the ME’s office—and backed away as if they repulsed him. “What the hell are those?”
“Not only do you know what they are, you know who they are,” Nick said. “And we’re not leaving this room until you tell me.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Welch said, shaking uncontrollably.
“That’s right, Jonah, you got plenty to be scared of,” Nick pressed. “You kill someone, it’s gonna catch up with you sooner or later.”
“I swear, I never killed anyone in my miserable life,” Welch stammered.
“Let me refresh your sick memory,” Nick said, tapping his finger hard on the first two photos. “You murdered these two back in seventy-seven, boiled their bones to get the meat off them, and then buried them two blocks away from each other.”
“Did you say I boiled ... Are you crazy?” Welch cried.
“That girl you raped in eighty-two was lucky you got interrupted in the act,” Nick continued, “or she would’ve been number three. And I’m sure you tried to suppress the urge when they let you out of prison ten years ago.” He tapped the photo of Rosa’s bones. “But when you saw her, you knew she was the one.”
“You’re insane!” Welch screamed. “I wouldn’t even know how to do what you say I did!”
Nick bolted from his chair—mostly for effect—causing Welch to move back so fast the chain bolting him to the table went taut. “Don’t hurt me,” he whimpered.
“That would be too easy,” said Nick as he reached for a television monitor hanging from the wall on a movable arm and pulled it toward the table. “Instead I’m gonna show you how you blew it.”
He picked up a remote off another table beside the wall and switched on the monitor. Up came a frozen piece of video. “Look familiar?” Nick asked.
“What is this?” demanded Welch.
“Keep watching,” said Nick, pressing the Play button. It was the surveillance video from the Hispanic deli in the Bronx. As soon as it started Welch saw himself come through the front door. He jumped up from his chair.
“I guess you remember now,” said Nick.
“What does that have to do with anything?” Welch screamed.
Nick pointed to the screen as Rosa served him. “That girl’s your latest victim, you sick bastard,” he said.
“Because I walked into a deli?”
Nick laughed. “Pal, you wish that’s all we had on you.” He feigned excitement. “You haven’t seen the best part yet.”
Welch looked ready to spontaneously combust as, on screen, Rosa handed him his cup of coffee and the receipt. Nick paused the video. “See that cup?”
“So what?”
“We found it in the bag with her bones. Your DNA is on it.” Welch was almost apoplectic. “That’s impossible!” he yelled, tears in his eyes. “I drank the coffee and threw the cup out!”
“Sure you did,” Nick said as he moved back to the table and pulled another photo from the folder. “In the same burlap bag you shoved Rosa Sanchez’s bones into.”
He hit Play again, and this time the video was a wide, overhead shot of the street where Rosa’s bones were found. “But it wasn’t enough to dump what was left of her in some random place,” he said, pointing to a figure on screen, his back to the camera, walking to the trash can on the corner. “You made sure her ex-husband the garbage man would be the one to find her!”
“What?” Welch bellowed. “I don’t know any garbage men, or that girl!” He pointed to the screen. “I don’t even know where it is!”
“It’s two blocks from Yankee Stadium,” said Nick. “We know you were in the hood that night because we have a charge on your credit card for tickets. Same as the day you went into that deli on Jerome Avenue and bought coffee from Rosa Sanchez.”
The enormity of it hit Welch. He was speechless. Nick used the opportunity to drive his case home. “You saw Rosa. You stalked her. You kidnapped her outside Manhattan State University Hospital. You drove her all over the city in your ninety-eight Crown Vic, and finally out to Staten Island, where you boiled her bones in the woods.”
“You’re not even making sense! Why would anyone do that?”
Nick got in his face. “It wasn’t anyone, Jonah; it was you. And you did it for the same reason you did it to those other poor girls thirty-five years ago—so in case they were ever found, nobody would ever know they were raped.”
And then something happened Nick never would have expected. Jonah Welch burst out laughing, almost maniacally.
“You think there’s something funny about this?” Nick asked.
“First of all, I can’t even get it up anymore—ask my doctor—so I couldn’t have raped this Rosa, or whatever her name is. And second of all, my car is parked three blocks away from my place in a vacant lot my friend owns, behind a wooden fence. I just saw it the other day and I haven’t driven it in weeks.”
“Bullshit!” Nick yelled. The car was his trump card and he was about to play it for all it was worth. He yanked another photo from the folder and shoved it in Welch’s face. “Camera picked up your license plate going through the toll booths on the Staten Island side of the Verrazano, asshole!” he said. “On the day Rosa disappeared. So you can try talking yourself out of it all you want, but we show this stuff to a jury and they’re gonna wonder how a smart guy like you could be so damn stupid. They’re gonna put you away, Jonah, and this time it’s for keeps.”
Welch stared at the photo as if he was looking at the headstone on his own grave. Nick knew it was a bluff. All he had were tidbits of circumstantial evidence held together by the weakest thread. But he’d gotten murder suspects to spill their guts in the past with a lot less. Jonah needed just one more push.
“I’m gonna send our Crime Scene Unit out to get your car,” Nick said in a quiet, confident tone, looking straight into Welch’s eyes. “They’re gonna flatbed it into their garage and go over every inch of it. They’re gonna know whether the car was moved, and they’re gonna find dirt on those tires or in the wheel wells that matches the exact spot in Staten Island where we found those bones. And that’s when your ass is gonna be cooked, Jonah, like you cooked Rosa Sanchez. It’s time to man up and stop the bullshit. I know you killed her, and so do you. You have to decide right now, right here, last chance. Are you gonna sit there and continue to play with yourself, or are you gonna tell me what really happened?”
Welch looked as if he didn’t even know what hit him.
“I . . . I don’t know,” he stammered. “I don’t know anything about any of this.” Then, he seemed to gain some strength. “And I’m not saying another word.”
“Fine,” said Nick, gathering up the photos and shoving them back in the folder. He wanted to get out of the room before Welch asked for a lawyer. “I’m gonna leave you here alone for a while to think about it. You need to consider what’s best for you, Jonah, now that you know what we have.” He headed for the door. “I’ll come back in a bit and we’ll talk again. Hopefully you’ll realize there’s no way out of this. You can make this easy for everyone or not. It’s your choice.”
Before Welch could open his mouth, Nick was out the door.
Nick walked into the viewing room to find Claire with Savarese and Wilkes, who was pocketing his cell phone. “Just put out a call to the Seven-one,” said the inspector, “telling them to check every vacant lot with a wood fence until they find that car.”
“We should wait until they do before I go another round with him,” replied Nick, glancing at Welch on the monitor. The suspect rested his elbows on the table and let his head sink into his hands.
“You got him going, Nicky,” Savarese commented.
“The guy’s either a schmuck or in denial,” said Wilkes, “and I’m picking schmuck.”
Nick glanced at Claire, who was transfixed on the monitor. Not only hadn’t she uttered a word since his entrance, she wasn’t even acknowledging his presence. And she had that look on her face, the one Nick knew well, the one that never led to anything good.
“I gotta get you to talk too?” he said to her.
“Something’s out of whack,” she replied evenly, her eyes glued to the screen.
“Another country heard from,” said Wilkes, thick with sarcasm. “Don’t hold back on us, Doc.”
“He doesn’t fit the profile of any serial killer I’ve ever heard of,” she said.
“They come in all shapes, sizes, and personalities,” Wilkes fired back, peering at the screen to see if he could pick up whatever Claire had latched onto. “This guy’s all over the map emotionally because he didn’t think we’d ever nail him.”
“I don’t think so, Inspector,” Claire said, turning to him and making eye contact for emphasis. “A killer meticulous enough to butcher someone so precisely, to boil their bones, isn’t just doing it to destroy the evidence, to cover his tracks. He’s doing it to destroy the victim herself, to erase her from the planet. Like she never existed. Someone who believes he can do that thinks he’s smarter than anybody. Than all of us put together. He’d keep up the facade, maybe even help us along if we couldn’t figure something out, just to prove how smart he is. He’d be proud of his work.”
She peered back at the monitor where Welch still sat, head in his hands.
“But Mr. Welch here? He’s about to fall apart.”
“He’s pissed off. He’s not the evil genius he thought he was,” Wilkes argued.
“No, Inspector. H
e’s lost. All he wants to know is how he got pulled into this. Why you’re trying to pin these murders on him. He’s looking for a way out of something he didn’t do and that’s why he can’t find one. The person who murdered these three women wouldn’t deny what he did. He’d shake your hand and slap you on the back to congratulate you for figuring it out.”
Wilkes cursed himself for bringing Claire into the case. He looked at Nick for support. Nick shrugged.
“You said it yourself, Boss,” he said. “It’s a lot of nothing that looks like something when you put it all together. But even the DNA’s only a partial match.”
“We’ve put murderers away with less than what we have here,” Wilkes said.
“I understand that, Inspector,” said Claire. “But none of us wants to put away the wrong person. I’m pretty sure Mr. Welch didn’t murder Rosa Sanchez.”
Wilkes glanced at Nick, hoping what he was about to do wouldn’t backfire on him. “Doc, I can’t believe I’m saying this,” he said. “But if you wanna take a shot at him, he’s all yours. On the condition that you can be objective, since the late Ms. Sanchez was your patient.”
“I want Rosa’s killer more than you do, Inspector,” Claire said. “Telling you Mr. Welch didn’t dismember her is about the most objective thing I’ve ever had to do.”
Welch’s face remained buried in his hands as Claire opened the door.
“What’d you give me, five minutes?” he asked without raising his head.
When Claire walked toward the table, the sound of her heels brought Welch’s gaze up. “So you are a cop,” he said. In her jeans and loose-fitting top, she could easily have been mistaken for one.
“Actually, Mr. Welch, I’m a psychiatrist,” Claire corrected.
“You work for them, though,” said Welch, agitated. “If they think I’m gonna confess to some skirt headshrinker they can suck it, because I didn’t do what they’re accusing me of.”
“How do you explain all this evidence they have against you?”
“How do you explain why they sent you in here?” he shot back.