Marcie's Murder (44 page)

As
t
he class clapped
,
Karen
walked up to the lect
e
rn
and
leaned on it with a casual hand.

“Thanks. Glad to be here. Y’all are in third year, so by now you’ve
probably studied all that stuff about communication
,
verbal and non-verbal behavior, body language, listening skills, the difference between open questions and closed questions, blah blah blah
, drone drone drone
.
”

She stared at them as they got the titters out of their system.
“It’s a
ll good stuff. All very important.
Your professor here, Dr.
 
Morley, said you’ve been reviewing
the difference between an
interview and an interrogation, and she wanted me to talk about interrogation techniques, so that’s what I’m here for.

“She would’ve made it clear to you already i
f you’re just interviewing some guy,
if
you’re just asking him some questions to see if he knows
something
important
,
then you’ll use a bit of technique on him
to make him comfortable enough to talk
.
Make a little small talk
, check him out, ask good questions, remember his answers. If you’re like my
l
ieutenant back there, you
’ll
be sure to take
notes while you’re
at
it.”

She waited
for
the ripple of laughter to pass. “But if you’re interrogating
somebody
, you’ve only got one thing on your mind. You think he did it, or else he knows who did it, and he’s gonna tell you what he knows or there’s gonna be hell to pay.”

She saw
a
look of concern jump across the face of
Colleen Richardson
and
gave
her
an
aw-shucks
,
down-home Texas
shit-eatin’
grin.
“Don’t get me wrong. I
know
everybody’s
got their
constitutional rights and all that stuff, and
I know
a confession
has
to be admissible in court
or else it’s no good
. I get that, and so does every other experienced law enforcement officer out there. I’m just trying to make it clear
that
an interrogation isn’t some polite conversation over tea and biscuits. You’re trying to break some
bod
y’s will. You’re trying to outsmart him, out-think him
,
and out-tough him. It’s you against him. You’re the good guy and he’s the scumbag. Show one sign of weakness and he’
s gonna eat your
damned
lunch
.”

Karen let go of the lectern and walked around it.
“
I guess a
lot of people don’t like the word ‘interrogation.’ I can see your Sociology professor
is one of them,
just from the look on her face.”

Several students turned around to glance at
Colleen Richardson
at the back of the room
.

“Frankly, Detective,”
Richardson
said
,
frowning,
“you’re right. I don’t like the word. If it were me, we’d be discussing interviews and advanced interviews. I’ll even bet that the rooms in which you question
people
back in Maryland are called interview rooms
. I
sn’t that right?”

Karen
nodded
.
“That’s exactly what they’re called, and we do a lot of interviews in them, too. Only now and again
,
we get some
bastard
we just
know
was
there
with the guy
who shot
the
eighty
-
year-old woman in her studio apartment and
stole all the money she’d hid in her underwear drawer, and we need to get a little firm with him. Just a little firm. Make it clear that we’ve got his sorry ass right where we want it
,
and he needs to
cough up
his accomplice
or it won’t go well for him. So we interrogate him. Firm
-
like.”

She sat down on the corner of the nearest table. The two students sitting at that table were female, one a redhead and the other
, sitting closest,
had
long, glossy
brown
hair pulled back into a ponytail. Karen looked for a moment at the one with the ponytail.

“Being good at interrogation is a skill,” she went on
, turning back to the class
. “It takes practice. You need experience with all that stuff I mentioned at first, reading body language,
noticing what their eyes are doing when they talk,
listening to the words they use to tell their lies, and there aren’t a lot of people who are really good at it right out of the box. It’ll take some time for you to develop your own style with it, so stay patient. One thing I’ve found is that it goes real well if you work with a good partner.
”

She pointed at Hank. “Take the
l
ieutenant. No offense to anybody else in the room, but you’ll never find a sharper, smarter cop than him. I’ve been real lucky to be able to work with him, and we’ve grilled a few suspects in our time. It’s probably not hard to guess that our approaches are completely different. He takes notes, he likes to sit in the weeds, be analytical, surprise them with an angle they don’t expect. I’m more up front and in their faces. Not good
-
cop bad
-
cop because everybody’s seen that
on
TV a hundred times and it gets tired real fast
. But it’s
a question of rhythm. Right, Lou?”

“That’s right,”
Hank
said
.
“It’s important to reach a point with a suspect where he’s going to be willing to tell you what really happened. Sometimes he’ll feel more comfortable with only one other person in the room, he’ll even be willing to establish what he thinks of as a relationship of trust with you, and that’s often easier to do if there’s only one
officer
asking the questions. But what Detective Stainer is describing in a two
-
officer
scenario is entirely true, and as she says, it works best if you avoid the good
-
cop
bad
-
cop thing altogether and use something called the expressive
-
cop silent
-
cop cycle. That’s where one officer establish
es
a relationship with the suspect and hold
s
his attention at all times while the other officer just listens and takes notes. Then at an appropriate moment
,
the two officers trade roles
. T
he second officer
then
use
s
a different technique or introduce
s
a completely new set of questions.”

“You get a sense of when it’s time to slap hands and jump in,” Karen said. “Maybe he’s sticking to his story and needs shaking up. Maybe you want to catch him off guard and get him to answer something he thinks is harmless but is going to take him somewhere he’s
not
gonna
like
.”

“Isn’t a two-officer interview just an expression of police paranoia?” asked the redhead. “A mistaken belief that everything you do has to be corroborated by another officer or it won’t be found
to be
credible in court?
Isn’t a partner
really
just a crutch that limit
s
a police officer’s initiative and self-confidence?”

Karen twisted around to look at her. “I’ll bet you
don’t believe in having
a study buddy
, either
.” She looked at the
brunette
with the ponytail. “Are you her study buddy?”

The
brunette
shook her head.

“Thought not.” Karen kept
her eyes
on the
brunette
, letting her feel a little of the heavy weight of an experienced law enforcement officer’s stare
. “You’re Rachel Meese, aren’t you?”

The
brunette
nodded.

“Thought I recognized you. You almost ran me down the other day.”

Rachel blushed furiously. “Sorry about that.”

“No problem.” Karen moved her gaze back to the redhead. “No, to answer your question, a two-officer interview, or interrogation, is not an expression of police
paranoia;
it’s just teamwork, pure and simple. Nothing says you can’t question a suspect all by your bitty self, particularly since most interrogations are recorded nowadays anyway.
Sometimes your partner’s busy in the other room talking to your suspect’s buddy.
But if you’ve got the opportunity to work
a suspect
with a
good partner
,
you’d be
nuts
to pass it up. That’s all I’m saying. A good partner
is
almost as important as a reliable firearm.
” She winked at Hank.
“
Almost.”

She
casually stood up and moved back to the lect
e
rn. “Let me give you an example.
The
l
ieutenant and I were recently assisting Deputy Chief Branham in
the
investigation of a murder here in Harmony.
At that time we had occasion to interview, and I do mean interview in this case, Professor Brogan, who’s with us this morning.
R
ight,
P
rofessor?”

At the back of the room,
Brogan looked mortified. “Uh, um, yes it is.”

“Right. Now, we don’t need to get into
too many
specifics because the case
has
been transferred to Detective Muncy
,
who’s standing right
there,
and it’s up to him
now
what should or shouldn’t be said about it. But we’ve got a good opportunity
here
to get some feedback from a real, live interviewee.” Karen
gestured at Brogan
. “So why don’t you tell the class what you thought of our interviewing technique, Professor Brogan
.
Did you find it effective?”

“Um, yes, I suppose so.”

“The victim
, Marcie Askew,
happened to have been in one of the
p
rofessor’s
photography
classes a while ago
,
”
Karen told the class.
She looked at Muncy. “I suppose it’s all right to tell them that, isn’t it, Detective?”

Muncy shrugge
d grumpily.

“How did you feel,” Karen asked, turning her gaze back to Brogan, “when we were asking you all those questions?
Stressed? Pressured?”

Brogan looked surprised. “No. Not at all.”

“You felt comfortable telling us what you knew about Marcie Askew?”

“Yes, of course.”

“So apparently it was an appropriate tone for an interview,” Karen
said
, her eyes flicking briefly at
Colleen
Richardson before returning to Brogan. “Who asked the questions, do you remember? Did I, or did Lieutenant Donaghue?”

“Um, uh, I think you did.”

“So I was the expressive cop and the
l
ieutenant was the silent cop, that right?”

“Yes, actually, I think that’s right. I see what you mean.”

Karen nodded, then shifted her posture
to
look at the class. “Let’s try something interesting now, just for fun. A little case study to demonstrate good interrogation techniques. Let’s say the
l
ieutenant and I wanted to question
two people
as part of a case we’re working on. Say they were brought in together but we nee
d to question them separately.”

She turned around and looked at Morley, who was sitting on a chair against the wall below the projection screen. Amused by the puzzled look on Morley’s face, Karen pointed. “Let’s say we’re gonna start with you, Professor Morley. How about that?”