"I don't know."
"I assume you did. You can't reach into a pocket with winter gloves on."
"Okay," he snapped. "You know so much, then I did."
"With the temperature as cold as it was, why would you do that ten minutes before you got to the subway station?"
"You can't talk to me this way."
She said in a firm, low voice, "And you didn't check the time on the subway platform, did you?"
"Yes, I did. It was nine thirty-five."
"No, you didn't. You're not going to be flashing a five-thousand-dollar watch on the subway platform at night."
"Okay, that's it. I'm not saying anything else."
When an interrogator confronts a deceptive subject, that person experiences intense stress and responds in various ways to try to escape from that stress--barriers to the truth, Dance called them. The most destructive and difficult response state to break through is anger, followed by depression, then denial, and finally bargaining. The interrogator's role is to decide what stress state the suspect is in and neutralize it--and any subsequent ones--until finally the subject reaches the acceptance state, that is, confession, in which he finally will be honest.
Dance had assessed that though Cobb displayed some anger he was primarily in the denial state--such subjects are very quick to plead memory problems and to blame the interrogator for misunderstandings. The best way to break down a subject in denial is to do what Dance had just done--it's known as "attacking on the facts." With an extrovert you slam home weaknesses and contradictions in their stories one after another until their defenses are shattered.
"Ari, you got off work at seven-thirty and went to Hanover's. We know that. You were there for about an hour and a half. After that you walked two blocks out of your way to Cedar Street. You know Cedar real well because you go there to pick up hookers. Last night between nine and nine thirty, one of them stopped her car near the alley. You negotiated a price and paid her. You got into the car with her. You got out of the car around ten fifteen or so. That's when you dropped the money by the curb, probably checking your cell phone to see if your wife had called or getting a little extra cash for a tip. Meanwhile, the killer had pulled into the alley and you noticed it and saw something. What? What did you see?"
"No . . ."
"Yes," Dance said evenly. She stared at him and said nothing more.
Finally his head lowered and his legs uncrossed. His lip was trembling. He wasn't confessing but she'd moved him up a step in the chain of stress response states--from denial to bargaining. Now Dance had to change tack. She had both to offer sympathy and to give him a way to save face. Even the most cooperative subjects in the bargaining state will continue to lie or stonewall if you don't leave them some dignity and a way to escape the worst consequences of what they've done.
She pulled her glasses off and sat back. "Look, Ari, we don't want to ruin your life. You got scared. It's understandable. But this is a very dangerous man we're trying to stop. He's killed two people and he may be going to kill some more. If you can help us find him, what we've learned about you here today doesn't have to come out in public. No subpoenas, no calls to your wife or boss."
Dance glanced at Detective Baker, who said, "That's absolutely right."
Cobb sighed. Eyes on the floor, he muttered, "Fuck. It was three hundred goddamn dollars. Why the hell did I go back there this morning?"
Greed and stupidity, though Kathryn Dance. But she said kindly, "We all make mistakes."
A hesitation. Then he sighed again. "See, this's the crazy thing. It wasn't much--what I saw, I mean. You're probably not going to believe me. I hardly saw anything. I didn't even see a person."
"If you're honest with us we'll believe you. Go on."
"It was about ten-thirty, a little after. After I got out of the . . . girl's car I started to walk to the subway. You're right. I stopped and pulled my cell phone out of my pocket. I turned it on to check messages. That's when the money fell out, I guess. It was at the alley. I glanced down it and saw some taillights at the end."
"What kind of car?" Sachs asked.
"I didn't see the car, just taillights. I swear."
Dance believed this. She nodded to Sachs.
"Wait," Rhyme said abruptly. "The end of the alley?"
So the criminalist had been listening after all.
"Right. All the way at the end. Then the reverse lights came on and it started backing toward me. The driver was moving pretty fast so I kept walking. Then I heard the squeal of brakes and he stopped and shut the engine off. He was still in the alley. I kept on walking. I heard the door slam and this noise. Like a big piece of metal falling to the ground. That was it. I didn't see anybody. I was past the alley at that point. Really."
Rhyme glanced at Dance, who nodded that he was telling the truth.
"Describe the girl you were with," Dennis Baker said. "I want to talk to her too."
Cobb said quickly, "Thirties, African-American, short curly hair. Her car was a Honda, I think. I didn't see the license plate. She was pretty." He added this as some pathetic justification.
"Name?"
Cobb sighed. "Tiffanee. With two e's. Not a y."
Rhyme gave a faint laugh. "Call Vice, ask about girls working regularly on Cedar," he ordered his slim, balding assistant.
Dance asked a few more questions, then nodded, glanced at Lon Sellitto and said, "I think Mr. Cobb here has told us as much as he knows." She looked at the businessman and said sincerely, "Thanks for your cooperation."
He blinked, unsure what to make of her comment. But Kathryn Dance wasn't being sarcastic. She never took personally the words or glares (occasionally even spittle or flung objects) from the subjects. A kinesic interviewer has to remember that the enemy is never the subject himself but simply the barriers to truth that he raises, sometimes not even intentionally.
Sellitto, Baker and Sachs debated for a few minutes and decided to release the businessman without charging him. The skittish man left, with a look at Dance that she was very familiar with: part awe, part disgust, part pure hatred.
After he'd left, Rhyme, who was looking at a diagram of the scene of the killing in the alley, said, "This's curious. For some reason the perp decided he didn't want the vic at the end of the alley, so he backed up and picked the spot about fifteen feet from the sidewalk. . . . Interesting fact. But is it useful?"
Sachs nodded. "You know, it might be. The far end of the alley didn't get any snow, it looked like. They might not've used salt there. We could lift some footprints or tire treads."
Rhyme made a call--with an impressive voice recognition program--and sent some officers back to the scene. They called back a short time later and reported that they had found fresh tire treads at the end of the alley, along with a brown fiber, which seemed to match the ones on the victim's shoe and wristwatch. They uploaded the digital pictures of the fiber and treads and gave the wheelbase dimensions.
Despite her lack of interest in forensics, Dance found herself intrigued by this choreography. Rhyme and Sachs were a particularly insightful team. She couldn't help but be impressed when ten minutes later, the technical man, Mel Cooper, looked up from a computer screen and said, "With the wheelbase and those particular brown fibers, it's probably a Ford Explorer, either two or three years old."
"Odds are it's the older one," Rhyme said.
Why did he say that? Dance wondered.
Sachs saw the frown on her face and answered, "The brakes squealed."
Ah.
Sellitto turned to Dance. "That was good, Kathryn. You nailed him."
Sachs asked, "How'd you do it?"
She explained the process she'd used. "I went fishing. I reviewed everything he'd told us--the afterwork bar, the subway, the cash and money clip, the alleyway, the chronology of events and the geography. I checked out his kinesic reaction to each response. The cash was a particularly sensitive subject. What was he doing with the money that he shouldn't've been? An extrove
rted, narcissistic businessman like him? I figured it was either drugs or sex. But a Wall Street broker's not buying street drugs; he'd have a connection. That left hookers. Simple."
"That's slick, don't you think, Lincoln?" Cooper asked.
Dance was surprised to see that the criminalist could shrug. He then said noncommitally, "Worked out well. We got some evidence it might've taken us a while to find." His eyes went back to the board.
"Linc, come on. We got his vehicle make. We wouldn't have if it hadn't been for her." Sellitto said to Dance, "Don't take it personal. He doesn't trust witnesses."
Rhyme frowned at the detective. "It's not a contest, Lon. Our goal is the truth, and my experience has been that the reliability of witnesses is somewhat less than that of physical evidence. That's all. Nothing personal about it."
Dance nodded. "Funny you say that. I tell people in my lectures the same thing: that our main job as cops isn't throwing bad guys in jail, it's getting to the truth." She too shrugged. "We just had a case in California--death row prisoner exonerated the day before his scheduled execution. A private eye friend of mine spent three years working for his lawyer to get to the bottom of what happened. He just wouldn't accept that everything was what it seemed to be. The prisoner was thirteen hours away from dying and it turned out he was innocent. . . . If that PI hadn't kept looking for the truth all those years, he'd be dead now."
Rhyme said, "And I know what happened. The defendant was convicted because of a witness's perjured testimony, and DNA analysis freed him, right?"
Dance turned. "No, actually there were no witnesses to the killing. The real killer planted fake physical evidence implicating him."
"How 'bout that," said Sellitto and he and Amelia Sachs shared a smile. Rhyme glanced at them both coolly. "Well," he said to Dance, "it's fortunate that things worked out for the best. . . . Now I better get back to work." His eyes returned to the whiteboard.
Dance said good-bye to them all and pulled on her coat as Lon Sellitto showed her out. On the street Dance walked to the curb, where she plugged the iPod earbuds back in and clicked the unit on. This particular playlist contained folk rock, Irish and some kick-ass Rolling Stones (once at a concert she'd done a kinesic analysis of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards for her friends' benefit).
She was waving down a cab when she realized there was an odd, unsettled feeling within her. A moment passed before she recognized it. She was feeling a nagging sense of regret that her brief involvement in the Watchmaker case was now over.
Joanne Harper was feeling good.
The trim thirty-two-year-old was in the workshop a few blocks east of her retail flower store in SoHo. She was among her friends.
That is to say, roses, cymbidium orchids, birds-of-paradise, lilies, heliconia, anthurium and red ginger.
The workshop was a large ground-floor area in what had been a warehouse. It was drafty and cold and she kept most of the rooms dark to protect the flowers. Still, she loved it here, the coolness, the dim light, the smells of lilac and fertilizer. She was in the middle of Manhattan, yes, but it seemed more like a quiet forest.
The woman added some more florist's foam to the huge ceramic vase in front of her.
Feeling good.
For a couple of reasons: because she was working on a lucrative project that she had complete discretion to design.
And because of the buzz from her date the previous night.
With Kevin, who knew that angel trumpets needed exceptionally good drainage to thrive, and that creeping red sedum flowered in brilliant crimson all the way through September, and that Donn Clendenon whacked three over the wall to help the Mets beat Baltimore in 1969 (her father had captured two of the homers with his Kodak).
Kevin the cute guy, Kevin with the dimple and grin. Sans present or past wives.
Did it get any better than that?
A shadow crossed the front window. She glanced up, but saw no one. This was a deserted stretch of east Spring Street and pedestrians were rare. She scanned the windows. Really ought to have Ramon clean them. Well, she'd wait till warmer weather.
She continued assembling the vase, thinking again about Kevin. Would something work out between them?
Maybe.
Maybe not.
Didn't really matter (okay, sure it did, but a thirty-two-year-old SUW--single urban woman--had to take the didn't-really-matter approach). But the important thing was she had fun with him. Having played the post-divorce dating game in Manhattan for a few years, she felt entitled to have some fun with another man.
Joanne Harper, who bore a resemblance to the redhead on Sex and the City, had come here ten years earlier to become a famous artist, live in a storefront studio in the East Village and sell her paintings out of a Tribeca gallery. But the art world had other ideas. It was too harsh, too petty, too, well, unartistic. It was about being shocking or troubled or fuckable or rich. Joanne gave up on fine arts and tried graphic design for a while but was dissatisfied with that too. On a whim she took a job in an interior landscaping company in Tribeca and fell in love with the business. She decided that if she was going to starve at least she'd be hungry doing what she was passionate about.
The joke, though, was that she became a success. She managed to open her own company a few years ago. It now included both the Broadway retail store and this--the Spring Street commercial operation, which serviced companies and organizations, providing daily flowers for offices and large arrangements for meetings, ceremonies and special events.
She continued to add foam, greens, eucalyptus and marbles to the vases--the flowers would be added at the last minute. Joanne shivered slightly from the chill air. She glanced at the clock on the dim wall of the workshop. Not too long to wait, she reflected. Kevin had to make a couple of deliveries in the city today. He'd called this morning and told her he'd be at the retail shop in the afternoon. And, hey, if you're not doing anything, maybe we could go for some cappuccino or something.
Coffee the day after a date? Now that--
Another shadow fell on the window.
She looked up again quickly. No one. But she felt uneasy. Her eyes strayed to the front door, which she never used. Boxes were stacked up in front of it. It was locked . . . or was it?
Joanne squinted but with the glare from the bright sun she couldn't tell. She walked around the worktable to check.
She tested the latch. Yes, it was locked. Joanne looked up, and gasped.
A few feet from her, on the sidewalk outside, was a huge man, staring at her. Tall and fat, he was leaning forward and staring through the window of the workshop, shielding his eyes. He was wearing old-fashioned aviator sunglasses with mirrored lenses, a baseball cap and a cream-colored parka. Because of the glare, and the grime on the windows, he couldn't see that she was right in front of him.
Joanne froze. People sometimes peeked in, curious about the place, but there was an intensity about his posture, the way he hovered, that bothered her a lot. The front door wasn't special glass; anyone with a hammer or brick could break in. And with the sparse foot traffic in this part of SoHo an assault here might go completely unnoticed.
She backed up.
Perhaps his eyes grew accustomed to the light or he found a bit of clean window and noticed her. He jerked back, surprised. He seemed to debate something. Then he turned and disappeared.
Stepping forward, Joanne pressed her face against the window, but she couldn't see where he'd gone. There was something way creepy about him--the way he'd just stood there, hunched over, head cocked, hands stuffed into his pockets, staring through those weird sunglasses.
Joanne wheeled the vases to the side and glanced outside again. No sign of the man. Still, she gave in to the temptation to leave and go to the retail store, check the morning's receipts and chat with her clerks until Kevin arrived. She put on her coat, hesitated and left via the service door. She looked up the street. No sign of him. She started toward Broadway, west, the direction the big man had gone. She ste
pped into a thick beam of perfectly clear sunlight, which seemed nearly hot. The brilliance blinded her and she squinted, alarmed that she couldn't see clearly. Joanne paused, not wanting to walk past the alley up the street. Had the man gone in there? Was he hiding, waiting for her?
She decided to walk east, the opposite direction, and loop around to Broadway on Prince Street. It was more deserted that way, but at least she wouldn't have to walk past any alleys. She pulled her coat tighter around her and hurried up the street, head down. Soon the image of the fat man had slipped from her mind and she was thinking once again about Kevin.
Dennis Baker went downtown to report on their progress, and the rest of the team continued to examine the evidence.
The fax phone rang and Rhyme looked at the unit eagerly in hopes it was something helpful. But the pages were for Amelia Sachs. Rhyme was watching her face closely as she read them. He knew the look. Like a dog after a fox.
"What, Sachs?"
She shook her head. "The analysis of the evidence from Ben Creeley's place in Westchester. No IAFIS hits on the prints but there were leather texture marks on some of the fireplace tools and on Creeley's desk. Who opens desk drawers wearing gloves?"
There was, of course, no database of glove marks but if Sachs could find a pair in a suspect's possession that matched this pattern, that would be solid circumstantial evidence placing him at the scene, nearly as good as a clear friction-ridge print.
She continued to read. "And the mud I found in front of the fireplace? It doesn't match the soil in Creeley's yard. Higher acid content and some pollutants. Like from an industrial site." Sachs continued. "There were also some traces of burned cocaine in the fireplace." She looked at Rhyme and gave a wry smile. "A bummer if my first murder vic turns out to be not so innocent."
Rhyme shrugged. "Nun or dope dealer, Sachs, murder's still murder. What else do you have?"
"The ash I found in the fireplace--the lab couldn't recover much but they found these." She held up a photo of financial records, like a spreadsheet or ledger, which seemed to show entries totaling millions of dollars. "They found part of a logo or something on it. The techs're still checking it out. And they'll send the entries to a forensic accountant, see if he can make any sense of it. And they also found part of his calendar. Stuff about getting his car oil changed, a haircut appointment--hardly the agenda for the week you're going to kill yourself, by the way. . . . Then the day before he died he went to the St. James Tavern." She tapped a sheet--the recovered page from his calendar.