“I was scared.”
“If you are so scared, why would you? You would stay as far away from that mall as you possibly could.”
“Because I thought that, even though he threatened me at that time, he wouldn’t know that I said anything.”
Lloyd said that at the time he wasn’t thinking straight.
“Think straight now, Lloyd,” Mark said.
“Well, I am thinking straight. I want to know if he is alive or not.”
TWO NAKED GIRLS
“So, if I have this straight, you are at the mall, you see Teddy and this other guy grab these girls,” said Mark. “The next day you go to this other guy’s house to party, and these two naked little girls are there. And you get scared and you run.”
“Yeah.”
“What guy’s house?”
“The one that Teddy was living at.”
“So it’s not the guy whose picture we showed you. That was all bullshit. Was that to just steer us in the wrong direction?”
“No, that guy looked familiar.”
“You just latched onto that guy because we gave him to you.”
“No, I am saying he did look familiar. I can’t say I knew him.”
“So, let me ask you, why would you go to that house that day if he threatened you?” asked Katie.
“No, he didn’t threaten me that day. It was the next day that he threatened me. I didn’t say that day.” Lloyd repeated that he had run away after seeing Teddy with the two girls. “I left,” he said. “I went to my mom’s house.”
“What was it you saw?” asked Mark. “You say you saw something.”
“Two girls in the house naked.”
“What were they doing?”
“Laying on the bed.”
“What part of the house was this?”
“It was in the basement part.”
“Who else was in the basement?”
“Teddy and another guy, and then there was another guy I don’t know. I had never seen him before. I left. Teddy saw me; he actually saw me. I went back to my mom’s house. I was scared. Later on that day he came over, and he said, ‘I know you saw something. Leave it alone, don’t worry about it. Or you are going to be hurt.’”
“So you were looking just to party, so you went to the house?” asked Katie. “To get high, drink, whatever?”
“Yeah.”
“Did you walk in the house without being invited? Is that kind of what you guys did?”
“Yeah.”
“So you walk in, and you saw these two girls. Were they tied up? Were they laying down?”
“No, they were laying down. They looked like they were drugged. They looked like they were high. They looked like they were partying all night long.”
“But they were little?”
“Well, I couldn’t see the entire face, body, and everything like that. I mean I saw one girl’s face. She didn’t look young-young. But I left. I got scared.”
To sell his new story, Lloyd was offering lurid new details, all of which deepened his credibility problem. If he knew these things, things he could no longer claim to have forgotten, why hadn’t he told the detectives earlier? They had begged him for the truth.
“What you told us before, was it true? About seeing them pushed in the car or something?” asked Mark. It was hard to keep track of all the versions.
“Yeah.”
“And the little one was crying?”
“Yeah.”
“You remember that?”
“Yeah.”
“Was the taller one crying?”
“I can’t say if she was or not. All I saw, like I said before about the car, it was a Camaro and it was Teddy’s, and I think it was blue. I don’t remember the color.”
“I think that’s what you told me last time,” said Katie—actually, up until now, the car had always been maroon.
“Yeah. I think it was blue. I am not sure. I am not good on remembering colors. I saw two girls getting into the car. We were getting on the bus. I don’t know. We left on the bus, that was it. The girl getting in the back seat looked like she was crying. You know, she had her head down, [but] you can hear it. You know, it wasn’t that far away. I mean the bus was right there; you can tell that she has been crying. We left.”
“Was he doing anything? Trying to shut her up?” asked Mark.
“Just pushing her in the car. Not literally push. But putting her head in there. I didn’t think about it at that time. I mean I was eighteen years old. I was stupid. I mean I didn’t do anything about it. That’s what I am talking about being stupid. If I was smart enough I would have done something. But I didn’t do anything. I went to the house the next day, I saw the girls there.”
This story didn’t make sense, so Mark went back to his original strategy, trying to give Lloyd an excuse to say what happened without implicating himself.
“I think what you just said lines up totally with my theory here,” said Mark. “That you were out with those guys that day, probably at the mall trying to pick up chicks, because that’s what people did back then. And this shit went sideways, and you got out. You bailed out of it. That makes more sense to me. You know, because here is the thing. Think of it this way: Three guys go to rob a bank. Okay, it sounds like a good idea. They are down on their luck, they need some money. ‘All right, let’s go rob a bank.’ One guy has the gun, the other guy puts his finger in his pocket, pretends he has a gun. And the third guy is just driving the getaway car. He never even goes in the bank. All right? And he is thinking to himself, ‘I am just along for the ride. I will get a little money out of this. I am not going to hurt anybody, I am not going to confront anybody. I am just driving the car.’ You know, all of a sudden these guys go into the bank and wind up shooting somebody. Well, the guy driving the car never expected that; he didn’t sign up for that. You know what I mean? So he gets the hell out of there. Leaves them, leaves them with the mess they created. Is that what happened here?”
Lloyd was briefly silent, weighing it. He was taking extreme care not to link himself with the kidnappers.
“No, that’s not what happened,” he said. “I wasn’t there with them. I went to the house to party. Like I always did.”
“You thought really hard about that.”
“No, I listened to everything you said.”
“I know.”
“I mean, I was taking in everything that you were saying.”
“No, but after I was done it seemed like you were really contemplating that. You know what I mean?”
“So, you want me to say?”
“I just want the truth, Lloyd.”
“No, you want me to say that I went to the mall with them and I picked up chicks and everything like that. Sounds like a good theory, but it’s not the way it went. I am sorry. I can’t say anything else because I don’t know anything else.”
It was, of course, another lie—except for the parts that were true.
6
One Hundred and One Percent the God’s Honest Truth