He took it. “Good. Serra, can you please bring them down? I’d like you there.” Slosser walked out the door and down the hall to the interrogation room. He sat in a chair he selected for himself at the end of the bare table. When the door opened, Detective Serra held it open for the two girls. They stood at the other end of the table looking around at the uncomfortable room. He said, “Have you been given the chance to use the bathroom?”
They looked at each other, then looked at him. The taller one, Ariana, said, “I’d like to go now.”
“Detective Serra, will you please take them there?”
“We know where it is,” said the shorter one, who was Irena.
“I know.”
While they were gone, he sat alone, thinking about his interrogation and studying the file. He knew where he wanted to go. It was only a question of getting them to take him there. His detectives would have kept them separated all this time, trying to keep them from concocting the same lies and to deprive each of the other’s support.
As they came in the door, he looked at them. They were both thin, both Hispanic, with long, dark brown hair that had been straightened with a flat iron so it hung straight down as though it were heavy. They both wore tank tops, short skirts, and flip-flops. He watched them sit down near the end on opposite sides of the table, then turn to him, their dark eyes wary.
He said, “I’m Lieutenant Nicholas Slosser. I’m the boss of the detectives you spoke with earlier. This is going to be your best chance to make the rest of this experience smooth and easy by answering my questions and telling me the truth.”
Their expressions didn’t mask the fact that they’d heard it all so many times that the actual words fell to the ground before they reached them. It was always about the choice between cooperation and suffering. He decided to start with the taller one, Ariana. She had a naive, earnest look, not hard-eyed yet like the other. “Ariana. Your fake ID says you’re twenty-two. How old are you?”
“Seventeen.”
He examined the driver’s license from the file. “It’s a pretty good fake.”
“Yes,” she said.
“Why do you use it?”
“I like to go to clubs.”
He turned to the other girl. “It’s Irena, right?”
“Right.”
“Same question to you. I assume you like clubs too. How old are you?”
“Twenty-one.”
“Are you sure?”
“That’s what it says on my license.”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Slosser. “As long as you’re over sixteen, it’s all the same. You’ll be charged as an adult.”
“At Disneyland they charge you as an adult when you’re ten.”
“Really?”
“Yes. It’s a lot too. Like a hundred bucks.”
“Let’s talk a little about why you’re here. Last night, there was a murder in Malibu, at the house of Manuel Rogoso. He and two men who worked for him, Alvin Tatum and Chuy Sanchez, were shot to death. The house was set on fire. At noon today, Alvin Tatum’s black BMW turned up in Sunland. Police officers watched the car, and then somebody came along, got in, and fired up the engine. You.” He looked at Ariana. “Help me out.”
Irena said, “Is there a question in there?”
“Tell me why I’m not supposed to think you two killed those three men, set the fire, and stole the car.”
Ariana said, “Because we didn’t do that. We never killed anybody or started any fires. We don’t know anything about any fire or any murder.”
“Then you’re very unlucky. You’re the only ones who can be positively placed at that beach house that night. The BMW was seen parked there before the killings, but wasn’t there when the firefighters arrived and found the bodies.”
“We have an alibi” Irena said. “We were at a party all evening.”
“Where?”
“At my friend’s house, in Echo Park.”
“What’s the friend’s name?”
“Maria.”
“Last name?”
“I don’t know her last name. But she stays around there, near Echo Park.”
“What time did it start?”
“Like eight o’clock.”
“And it went until two,” Irena said.
“Maybe later,” Ariana said.
Lieutenant Slosser took a blank piece of paper from the folder and a pen from his pocket and set them down on the table. “Write down the names of some of the people at the party.”
“Who, me?”
“Either of you. Both of you.” He watched as the two whispered and added names. When they seemed to have run out of names, he pointed and said, “Who is this one to you?”
“A friend.”
“This one?”
“My sister.”
“This one?”
“A cousin.”
Irena said, “Are you going to tell us that they don’t count because they’re friends and relatives?”
“No. That wouldn’t be fair. But if you can please write down all the addresses and phone numbers you can remember, we’ll be able to use them.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ll have to have police officers go and pick them all up and bring them down here to prove your story before I can let you go.”
“You can do that?”
“Sure. We just keep you in this room, and we’ll put them in another and ask them where they were between eight and two last night.”
Irena took the pen and began to write for a few seconds, then crumpled up the paper and held the ball in her hand. “All right. It wasn’t a party. We just hung out together at Wash in Hollywood, but it got too crowded, so we left.”
“Why did you lie to me?”
“Because we were afraid, and we wanted to be sure we didn’t get arrested. We didn’t kill anybody,” Ariana said. “All we did was borrow a car, drive it to our neighborhood, park it, and go home.”
“So you didn’t steal the car from Alvin. You just borrowed it from him.”
“Yes.”
“You were at this house in Malibu and he just handed you the keys and said you could take it home?”
“No,” said Irena. “We were at Wash. We were hot and tired and it was crowded, so we asked, and he gave us the keys.”
“So you dropped him off at Rogoso’s house in Malibu, and then drove straight home?”
“No. We didn’t go to Malibu.”
“Then how did he end up there?”
“I don’t know. We were gone. Maybe he went there with a friend, or maybe he took a cab. Maybe anything. But he wasn’t with us, and we didn’t go near Malibu.”
“Okay, so how did you know Alvin Tatum so well he would lend you his fifty-thousand-dollar car?”
“We met him at a club. It might have been Adder or the Room. I don’t remember. Once in a while we’d see him again, and he would come over and talk to us. If it was late, he might ask if we needed a ride home.”
