Bandoni stood with a grunt. “While we’re talking to Kelly, remember what I told you. We keep firing questions at him. Bounce around. Don’t let him find a pattern.”
Kelly lay on his side when we walked in, one hand still handcuffed to the bed railing, the other tucked between his legs. He was pale beneath his tattoos, but his gaze was hot.
Bandoni and I took a second to look through Kelly’s belongings, which Petzky had bagged. The brass knuckles. Forty-three dollars in cash. A light-rail pass. And two joints.
Bandoni dove right in. “Where’d your asshole partner go to ground?”
“I look like his mommy?” Kelly said.
“Tough guy. Here’s the thing, Kelly. Patterson’s in the wind. But we got you. Resisting arrest. Those brass knuckles. Arrestable offense right there. Plus, our cop’s a little fuzzy on who actually hit him.”
“Say what? What kind of bullshit is that? You can’t charge me for that cop getting hurt.”
“Depends on which cop we’re talking about. Did you hit a railroad cop a couple of nights ago?”
Kelly’s gaze went from Bandoni to me and back, his eyeballs jittering in their sockets like windup toys.
“What are you talking about?” His voice wobbled.
“It gets worse, though,” Bandoni said.
“Whaddaya mean?”
Bandoni leaned back, jammed his fists in his armpits. “Why’d you run tonight?”
“Instinct, dude. Self-protection. Smart, huh? My face looks like pepperoni pizza.” His eyes darted to me. “Thanks to that bitch.”
“I have a different theory. You want to hear it?”
Kelly rubbed his free hand along his thighs. “I want my phone call.”
“You’re not under arrest, asshole. Not yet.”
“I want my call.”
“By all means,” Bandoni said. “You want to make that call right now? Call your fancy-pants lawyer? You’ve got one, right? Or do you want to find out what you’re looking at first?”
“I’m the one with the complaint. That psycho dog. I had my hands up. She sicced the dog on me anyway.”
Bandoni looked at me with an eye roll. “That true?”
“You ever see a guy surrender by running away?”
“You hear that, Kelly? Your word against hers. Or maybe not. Half those businesses you ran past have cameras.”
That was bullshit. But Kelly probably had no idea.
“You want that phone call now?”
His gaze dropped. “I’ll wait,” he muttered.
“Where’s your partner in crime, Kelly? Help us out, maybe we’ll forgive a few of your indiscretions.”
Kelly rubbed his nose on the plastic ID band on his wrist. “Fuck you.”
“That a no?” Bandoni said. “I’ll go ahead with my theory, then.” He swung a plastic chair around and planted a foot on the seat. “I think you made that cop and that got you to thinking about something else you did. Something worse. And that got you worried about why the cop had eyes on you. You panicked.”
“The only thing in my head was how I had a pair of dicks following me around.”
Bandoni tossed his empty coffee cup into the trash and dropped an elbow to his knee. “You’re looking at some serious time, Kelly. You and your partner. You know what I’m thinking?” Bandoni directed this question toward me.
“What are you thinking?” I asked.
“I’m thinking this guy has something he’s trying to hide. Something even worse than hitting a railroad cop. That true, Kelly? You do something so bad you don’t want us to know about?”
Kelly licked his lips. “I didn’t hit any cop.”
“You want to know what the really bad thing is? I’m talking murder, Kelly. Cold-blooded murder.”
“What?” Kelly started up from the bed, then squealed when he rolled onto the stitches. He collapsed back onto his hip. The handcuffs clanked.
Bandoni’s grin was a shot of ice. “Now you feeling me?”
Kelly’s good eye was wide now. The black eye looked like a pit. He rubbed his thigh with his free hand, and the bed squeaked. “What are you talking about? I don’t know a damn thing about a murder.”
“Noah Asher.”
“Who?”
“The guy you and your asshole friend beat to death. Tell us what happened, Kelly. It’s always better when you cooperate. Judges like that. Juries, too. Did this guy get on your train? Try to muscle into your turf?”
Kelly stared through us. His mouth was a thin line.
“That how you get that black eye and the lip?” Bandoni pressed. “Noah hit you?”
“Why don’t you kiss my pimpled ass?”
I leaned forward. Drew in a breath. “You know what you smell like, Kelly?”
He sniffed, then sneered at me. “All I can smell is cop pussy.”
I looked at Bandoni. “He smells like fowl.”
“Fowl. As in chickens.” Bandoni took a sniff. “You’re right. He smells just like the inside of that poultry car.”
“What?” Kelly’s gaze went from my face to Bandoni’s, back and forth. “What are you talking about?”
“Let’s see your hands,” I said.
Kelly flinched and curled his hands into fists. “You got me handcuffed, case you forgot.”
“It’s not like we duct-taped that wrist,” Bandoni said. “Hold ’em out. Or do we need to get the dog again?”
“You can’t do that,” Kelly said. But he held out his hands, palms down.
I gestured for him to turn them over.
Kelly sighed the sigh of the aggrieved. But he rotated his hands.
The palms and fingers were splotched yellow and black.
“A bitch, isn’t it?” I said. “Getting spray paint off your skin.”
Kelly tucked his free hand back between his legs. “Nothing illegal about me having paint on my hands.”
I held up my phone, showed him the photo I’d taken of the tagging on the reefer car. “Vandalism’s a minor charge. Three to twelve months in jail. Nothing next to murder.”
His eyes darted to the curtain the nurse had drawn across the bay, like he was measuring the distance from his bed to freedom. “What is this murder shit you keep talking about?”
Bandoni leaned in. “Word on the street is that you saw a murder. But we think you’re more than just a witness.”
Kelly pulled his gaze back to Bandoni, then let it slide sideways. “That’s bullshit.”
“And there’s the railroad cop. You tried to silence him. But it didn’t work.”
Kelly’s tongue flicked out. He licked
