Dave showed him pictures of others who were in Mileski’s circle, and he did not recognize any of them. Mileski was just the guy who had taken him to Helen’s house once or twice. Dave leaned on him harder and harder. Lloyd could either be a witness or a suspect, his choice. He showed again the old police sketch, and Danette Shea’s old statement about being followed and stared at. Then Dave laid out more explicitly their theory: Mileski groomed teenage boys, like Lloyd, to help him pick up little girls. If Lloyd would help them make that case, he might avoid being charged himself.
“That’s the thing,” insisted Lloyd. “The only time I ever saw that person was at that church and he never, ever offered me anything. He never said I want you to do this for me.”
Lloyd talked on, making little sense. One minute he would repeat the Takoma Park story, and in the next breath acknowledge that the older statement was his. Then he began to recall more details about the day: how he and Helen had arrived, by bus; where they had applied for jobs; where they’d stopped to eat. But he continued to stress that he had no connection to Mileski.
“I can’t honestly say that I saw him at the mall,” he said. “I ain’t gonna lie about it.” He firmly denied following girls. “I’m baffled,” he said.
The detective and the inmate kept at it for an hour more. There was a curious contradiction to Lloyd. He kept denying that he knew anything but also kept hinting that he could tell Dave more if he chose.
Dave kept trying to make the Mileski connection.
“I think in the back of your mind, if you did ID him as the person in the mall, you’re saying, ‘I’m fucked.’ Because you put yourself in the mall already. You put yourself with this guy, and if you ID him as the one with the girls, you’re thinking, ‘Man, that dude across that table is gonna fuckin’ walk out of here, and in about six months I’m gonna be looking at how much more additional time.’ Tell me I’m not right?”
“Yeah, you are right,” said Lloyd, laughing. “I done told you, that piece of paper I signed in there with you, that could be torn up, and my name could be signed on a new piece of paper.”
“I wouldn’t do anything crazy like that.”
“No, no, I’m just saying. I mean, you gotta look at my perspective. Right? Yeah, I’m incarcerated. Okay, this guy’s dead. Well, okay, we can pin this on somebody else and boom!”
They were at an impasse.
“We’re stuck,” said Dave.
“Right.”
“I’m just putting it all out there for you. We need you, and we’re not here to say okay, you ID this guy and we’re gonna run out of here and say thank you and then turn around and charge you. That’s not the goal here. What the hell will that do for me? You’re already in jail.”
“Right.”
“I don’t get a bonus. It doesn’t do anything for me.”
Lloyd laughed.
“You know what I’m saying? I think we both have established that you’re only gonna give up so much because you have an absolute right to protect yourself, and I get that.”
“But, see, the thing is, I’m trying to do the right thing,” said Lloyd. “I’m trying to change my life around and get out and live a good life and have a normal life, and if I can take this mind of mine and push everything that happened thirtyeight years ago and push it all up front and give you the information right now, I would. I didn’t think about it until I sat down in this office. Actually, I didn’t think about it until we got back in that van there from the prison, and I said, ‘Where the hell am I going?’ And they said, ‘Dover Police Department. Goin’ for an interview.’ I’m like, ‘What the hell? An interview?’ And that’s when it all started coming together. And then I’m like, ‘Oh shit, they’re gonna pin some shit on me.’ And it ran through my mind.”
“Yeah, it has to.”
“You know?”
“I mean it. It absolutely has to.”
Lloyd complained bitterly about his experience with the law, how unjust his current sentence was.
“I was kind of surprised,” said Dave. “It’s a lot of time.”
“I mean, the medical records show that the girl was a virgin. All’s I did was put my little finger in, put my tongue in, I ate her, and that was it! I got thirty-three years! You know? I’ve talked to guys who have literally raped women, literally raped kids and stuff like that, and they did ten to fifteen years. So, yeah. It worries me. I ain’t gonna lie. It worries me. Yeah, I feel like I’m going to get railroaded for sure. I feel like I’m gonna do this time because he’s dead. For something that I didn’t do.”
Lloyd complained that he was tired. He’d been awakened early. Perhaps if he had time to rest he might be able to remember more.
“Somehow, we need to take that next step,” said Dave. He explained that the department already had some ideas about where the girls might be buried—he was referring to the basement of Mileski’s old house. “If you can say he was in the mall, that would give us the ability to go out and look for those girls.”
“Even if I think about it and relax my mind and get a good night’s sleep, and it all starts coming back to me, I couldn’t tell where he put them or what he did to them.”
“I’m going to put this out to you,” Dave said. “We don’t have any hard-core evidence on anyone. None. So what your role or no role or full involvement is, only you will know. So if you came to me and said, ‘All right, enough’s enough, I’m gonna tell you just this little much: I know that guy; I know him by name; I was in the mall with him; he took those girls.’ That would give us enough to go find where we think they are, to spend the money, to fill the paperwork out and justify doing what we need to do to find these girls. It would have no bearing on you because you didn’t give us any knowledge.”
Lloyd said he didn’t have the answers they wanted.
“Think about it,” he said. “If I was in cahoots with somebody to take two little girls, why’d I stop at them two little girls? I’m just a stupid person who got myself caught up in this.” He agreed that he’d probably stared at girls that day in the mall. “I mean, I was young. I probably did!”
“I appreciate that,” said Dave. “If I were to say, are you holding out on me because you’re worried about being charged with it? Answer that honestly so I can get a judgment call on maybe what we need to try to do next.”
Lloyd offered to take a polygraph to show his innocence.
“I ain’t gonna lie. I’m scared to death. I mean if you brought a piece of paper in here that [said] I wasn’t going to be charged with anything, would I believe that piece of paper? No. No. For the simple reason, ’cause you’d go right down the hall and tear it right up. And it disappears. And it disappears, and now you’ve got Lloyd Welch going to court in Maryland and getting all kinds of time. I mean, I don’t want to sound cruel. No. I really seriously want to help you, but I am scared to death.”
Dave made a suggestion: “If I were to try and come up with a solution—and I can’t make any promises, just as I can’t threaten you in any way. I just need to know what I have to work with.” He didn’t want to go through the process of obtaining blanket immunity for Lloyd unless he had something material to offer. If he did, “Would you have additional information? There’s no sense in me trying to sell something to somebody if you don’t have anything to offer.”