The Interrogation

by Thomas H. Cook

  Dunlap handed the photograph back to Cohen. “Nobody runs the shop but me.” He tried for a joke. “What do I look like, General Motors?”

  “What about when you go out buying things?” Cohen asked. “Nobody watches the place for you?”

  “People bring stuff here,” Dunlap answered. “I don’t go out looking for it. What’d you say the guy’s name was again?”

  “Smalls.” Pierce returned the old postcard to the crowded box. “Albert Jay Smalls.”

  Dunlap’s hand rose to the black stubble on his jaw. “I wish I could help you. A little girl. Jesus. But I ain’t never heard of the guy. I mean, the name, it ain’t familiar.”

  “Well, the thing is, the guy’s heard your name, Harry.”

  Dunlap’s eyes widened. Terror covered them like a film. “Me? He’s heard of me?”

  Cohen nodded. “Your actual name, Harry. He came up with your actual name.”

  Pierce drew away and moved among the shelves of junk, eyeing the old bottles, the rusty car tags, a debris that suggested nothing but a shop whose entire stock was composed of things other people wished only to be rid of.

  “He didn’t mention anybody else,” Cohen said, giving Dunlap a little taste of his icy stare. “Just you, Harry.”

  Dunlap glanced toward Pierce, then back at Cohen. “Is this a shakedown? ’Cause I ain’t done nothing to deserve no shakedown.”

  “Shakedown?” Pierce asked.

  Dunlap kept his eyes on Cohen. “You know what I mean.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t, Harry,” Cohen told him.

  “A way of looking my place over without no warrant,” Dunlap said cautiously.

  Pierce picked up a handful of brightly colored marbles from a tin bucket. “What would we be looking for, Harry?”

  “I don’t know,” Dunlap said. “Anything.”

  “Stolen property, is that what you’re referring to, Harry?” Cohen asked with a slight smile.

  “You got me once,” Dunlap said. “I did my time on that bust. But I ain’t got nothing here. Nothing … illegal. And so you ain’t got no … what you call it … no probable cause.”

  “Sounds like you been hitting the law books, Dunlap,” Pierce said.

  Dunlap looked at Cohen imploringly. “I’m just making a point here. I don’t want no trouble.”

  Pierce rattled the marbles back into the bucket. “So, you’re sure you never had any dealings with this guy?”

  Dunlap shook his head firmly. “Never. You know why? ’Cause a bum like that comes into my store, I’d figure him for a shoplifter.” He glanced from one detective to another. “Know what I mean? A guy I’d keep an eye on.”

  “The little girl was wearing a locket,” Cohen told him. “Heart-shaped. Silver. Whoever killed her took it with him. If it happens to turn up, I’d expect a call.”

  “Yeah, sure …”

  “We’ll be in touch,” Cohen said. He turned toward the door.

  “Just make sure you have a warrant next time,” Dunlap chirped lightly.

  Pierce wheeled, grabbed him by the shirt, and slammed him into the wall, pressing hard against him.

  “Don’t fuck with me, Dunlap,” Pierce snarled. “A little girl is dead.”

  Cohen grabbed Pierce’s shoulders. “Come on now, Jack. Jack—you’ve made your point.” He drew Pierce backward, his eyes on Dunlap sternly. “I am right about that, aren’t I, Harry? My partner has made his point, hasn’t he?”

  Dunlap adjusted his rumpled sweatshirt. His brow gleamed with perspiration. “Yeah, sure, he made his point.”

  Cohen studied Dunlap’s doughy face, looking for some hint of conscience, but found only the usual animal rapacity, force the only thing this man would ever understand. “Because if you hold out on us, we’ll come back in a real bad mood,” he said.

  Dunlap nodded briskly. “Yeah, okay.”

  “A real bad mood,” Pierce said threateningly, then turned on his heel and slammed out the door.

  8:43 P.M., September 12, Interrogation Room 3

  “So, according to Harry Dunlap, you never sold him anything,” Pierce said. “Harry Dunlap swore he’d never even seen you, heard of you, nothing.”

  “He’s lying,” Smalls insisted.

  “No, you’re lying, Smalls. You’re lying about Dunlap. You never sold him a fucking thing. Toys or anything else. Look at me, Smalls. You collected those toys because you intended to use them to lure some little kid over to you. Isn’t that right?”

  “I never lured anybody.”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake,” Pierce snapped. “Stop lying to me!”

  Cohen stepped forward, placed a firm hand on Pierce’s shoulder, a silent signal that Pierce was making no progress.

  Pierce nodded reluctantly, giving in to Cohen’s conclusion. He shoved his chair back, walked to the door of Interrogation Room 3, glanced back, and in that instant saw something glimmer darkly in Smalls’ eyes. He had seen the same glimmer in Costa’s eyes. Because of that he knew without the slightest doubt that Smalls was concealing something terrible, the murder of Cathy Lake. He started to speak, but he knew whatever he said would be a threat, so he said nothing more.

  Once outside the interrogation room, Pierce took the stairs two at a time down to the garage, passing the Criminal Files Room, a single light burning inside the room. There, hunched over a table, he saw Chief Burke. He went inside.

  “I wanted to let you know that I’m going to Seaview.”

  Burke looked up from the files. “Why?”

  “Cohen thinks Smalls may have come from there. It’s possible we could find something. An outstanding warrant or something we could use in the interrogation.”

  “It’s not going well, then?”

  “No,” Pierce admitted. “So far, Seaview is our only lead. The rest is just the same crap we’ve been getting for the last eleven days.”

  Burke nodded. “Seaview, then.”

  Pierce knew he was being dismissed. “Yes, sir.”

  Moments later he drove out of the garage. A hard right on Madison took him around the southeast corner of the building. Most of the offices were closed now, the lower floors steeped in darkness.

  At Trevor, he turned and headed toward the river, the bridge rising in the spectral mist before him. In his mind he saw Costa’s body float toward it, swirl in the tidal eddies, then come to rest beneath it, bumping softly—as he knew it had—against the mossy ramparts. The body had been discovered by a passing tugboat captain the following morning, dragged on board with a grappling hook, and left to lie on the cold, wet deck until the police arrived to claim it. He could easily recall the look in the Commissioner’s eyes as he’d told him of Costa’s death. Perhaps, Jack, there is some justice in this world.

  The ramp to the bridge rose in a wide loop, and at its highest point Pierce saw all the city spread out before him, the businesses and apartment houses, the stadium, the convention center, but it was the park that drew his attention, the shadows where he could still see a child’s body lying faceup on the dead grass, a vision that brought back the day they’d found Debra in almost the same condition, fully clothed but in every other way horribly disheveled, her hair matted with blood, her dress wrinkled, dirty, the red velvet bracelet torn from her wrist so that nothing but the steel brace she wore on her right leg seemed still in place, its chrome sheen glinting softly in the dappled light of the culvert where she lay. Had he known rage until that moment? he wondered as he drove across the bridge toward Seaview, this consuming anger that shook him like an earthquake and whose aftershocks, despite Costa’s death, still trembled inside him, cracking the hard, dry ground upon which he worked to rebuild his life? He thought of Anna Lake, and the fire that ceaselessly licked at his heart died slightly. Was that what he sought more than vengeance now, he asked himself, the cool, restoring water of this woman’s love?

  8:58 P.M., Criminal Files Room

  Chief Burke closed the Catherine Lake file, waited a moment, then opened it again, de
termined to read it through a third time … go over everything again.

  And so he read the police dispatcher’s record of Anna Lake’s first call to Police Headquarters, this time focusing on the description she’d provided of her missing daughter.

  Catherine Augusta LAKE (CAL) Eight years old. Four feet tall, 54 pounds. Dark brown waist-length hair.

  Last seen wearing red dress with puffed sleeves, black shoes, a heart-shaped silver locket. Mother (Anna Lake—AL) dropped CAL off at Clairmont Towers, 490 Clairmont Street. Child to attend a birthday party in Apartment 5-G. When AL came to pick child up at 7:00 P.M., CAL was not waiting in the lobby of 490 Clairmont Street. AL questioned building superintendent, who said he saw girl fitting CAL description in lobby of building. Superintendent called away, and when he returned, the girl was no longer in lobby. AL proceeded to Apartment 5-G. Mrs. Loretta Kraft reported that CAL had left Apartment 5-G at approximately 6:45 P.M. APB issued for CAL at 7:47 P.M.

  AL advised of this action, 7:48 P.M.

  AFAP

  AFAP. All Further Action Pending.

  It was the Commissioner who’d ordered that this designation be included at various stages of any police investigation, and for Burke it added an unsettling tone to an otherwise matter-of-fact record.

  In the case of Cathy Lake, AFAP meant that no further action would be taken until someone spotted Cathy wandering alone, took her hand, and led her to the nearest police precinct. If no one noticed Cathy, then a search would begin, all further action pending until she was found. And if she were found, then there would be no further action until her whereabouts for the missing hours could be ascertained. Had the child merely wandered away or gotten lost, all further action would be suspended until it could be known whether, during the course of her absence, she had been harmed by anyone. And if she had not, Cathy Lake would be returned to the custody of her mother. No further action pending … ever.

  The door of the Criminal Files Room opened.

  “’Evening, Tom.”

  “I didn’t expect to see you back here tonight,” Burke told the Commissioner.

  The Commissioner idly scanned the long rows of police files. “So, has there been any progress?”

  “Not so far. Pierce is on his way to Seaview. He thinks Smalls may have come from there.”

  “And if he did?”

  “Pierce is hoping to find something we can use. Either to keep Smalls in custody, or to help with the interrogation.”

  The Commissioner frowned. “I’d hoped for some sort of break. Clearly, there hasn’t been one.”

  “Not yet, no.”

  “Which puts me in a difficult position.” The Commissioner took a seat opposite Burke and leaned forward. “Since it looks like this last interrogation isn’t going to go any better than the earlier ones, we have to think about what we’re going to do with this fellow to make sure he doesn’t kill another child in this city.”

  Burke said nothing.

  “You know what I mean?” The Commissioner asked it pointedly.

  “You want me to kill him, Francis?” Burke answered.

  The Commissioner scowled. “No, Tom, I don’t.”

  “When he’s released, I could put a man on him.”

  “Surveillance? For how long? The rest of his life?” Grimly, the Commissioner shook his head. “Imagine how the Mayor would react to that budget item. One whole police officer doing nothing but following a bum around town making sure he doesn’t kill some little girl.”

  “I don’t know what else we can do. Once Smalls is released, he’s free to go wherever he likes.”

  “Yes, he is.” The Commissioner looked at Burke regretfully. “Remember Tara?”

  Tara. Commissioner Dolan’s name for the concrete shed where certain men, the suspects Dolan designated as incorrigible, were taken for what the old Commissioner called “correction.” It was a place without windows, a brutal square of concrete covered by a piece of corrugated tin. There was no desk inside it, no chair, not even so much as a naked bulb. Dolan had designed it that way, designed it to demonstrate by its bareness the desperate nature of the case, the fact that the time for interrogation had come to an end. There would be no more questions or answers, no more coffee or cigarettes, no more cat-and-mouse games with the suspect. In Dolan’s shed there was room only for the brutal application of raw force.

  The only trouble, Burke remembered, was that a visit to Tara didn’t work on men who were too self-destructive to be reached by fear or pain, men so mired in self-hatred, so hungry for punishment, they actually relished the beatings they underwent in Dolan’s shed, men who took the worst you could give them and swallowed it like honey, spit their broken teeth into your face and grinned. Men like Scottie, Burke thought, recalling his son’s degraded habit of getting drunk in Harbortown bars, insulting sailors and dockworkers twice his size, provoking them to the beatings they were more than happy to provide.

  “Find a way, Tom, that’s what I’m saying,” the Commissioner said. “You have to find a way to keep this fellow locked up.” With that he rose and exited the room.

  In the silence that followed, Burke returned to Case File 90631, the murder of an eight-year-old girl with long dark hair. He saw her stroll obliviously toward her doom. In the autumn light, her hair rippled gently across her narrow shoulders. He heard the pad of her feet along the trail she’d taken that evening, then a second set of footfalls, closing in behind her, slowly at first, then faster as the festering urge broke free. A rustle in the wet leaves, one body upon another, the whimper and the gasp. A pair of hands snatched a gleaming silver locket, and it was done, no further action pending in the life of Cathy Lake.

  9:03 P.M., City Park, Drainage Pipe 4

  Terry Siddell stopped dead twenty feet from the pipe. “I don’t like this.”

  “You don’t have to like it,” Eddie Lambrusco told him. “You just have to clean it.”

  “I don’t want to go in there.”

  “Yeah, well, you got to,” Eddie muttered. He moved toward the pipe, then noticed that Siddell remained in place. “What’s the matter with you?”

  “This is where that guy was living,” Siddell reminded him. “The one who killed the little girl. I read about it in the paper. Strangled her.”

  Eddie thought of Laurie, the only little girl who mattered to him. He shoved all the others from his mind. That was how you had to think about it. Take care of your own kid and forget the rest. “Let’s get to work.” He took four steps forward, then stopped and looked back.

  Siddell remained motionless.

  “You know this kid or something?” Eddie asked.

  Siddell looked offended by the question. “’Course I didn’t know her.”

  “So what’s the big deal? You take care of your own, you don’t let nothing else bother you.” He waved his hand. “Come on.”

  Siddell did not move. His eyes remained fixed on the tunnel.

  Watching him, Eddie concluded that rich kids were mostly gutless. If they didn’t control things, they got scared. But none of that mattered since in the end Terry Siddell would control plenty. He would control Siddell Carting for one thing, and by that means he would also one day control Eddie Lambrusco. Eddie found this thought so troubling, he refused to dwell on it and so directed his attention to the immediate matter at hand.

  “Bottom line, Terry, we got to clean this place up. So let’s just get to it. Okay?”

  Once again, Siddell didn’t move. “I’m not going in that tunnel.”

  Eddie stepped toward him, ready to argue the matter, but a sudden glint in Siddell’s eye stopped him cold. The look was sharp and pointed, like a fang, and Eddie knew exactly what it meant: Get the fuck out of my face, you worthless shit, or when I take over, you’ll be out on your ass!

  He stepped back. “Look, Terry, we don’t have no choice in this thing. Your father made that real clear, right? We got to do it, otherwise I get fired.”

  Siddell stared at something in the t
unnel, his eyes fixed upon it with a dark intensity.

  “What are you looking at?” Eddie asked.

  When Siddell gave no answer, Eddie turned, shined his light into the pipe, and saw for the first time what Siddell had glimpsed in shadow. A crayon drawing of a girl, her thin body draped in a white robe. He peered closely at the face but didn’t recognize the features. Who is this kid? he wondered. Only one thing was clear. Something was wrong with her. Terribly wrong. There was no light in her eyes. Her skin was pale and bloodless. There was no luster to the skin nor any movement in her limbs.

  “She looks dead,” Siddell said.

  Dead.

  Eddie thought of Laurie, how he’d never forgive himself for not being at her side when she got sick, for letting work come first, though he had to work, so that in the chilling silence and the darkness, there seemed no way to do the right thing, no ground a man could stand upon between fatherhood and survival, no way to support a little girl and not take something precious from her life.

  PART II

  You remember what we found?

  9:37 P.M., September 12, Interrogation Room 3

  Cohen took off his jacket and draped it over the chair, watching Smalls as he did so. A shadow of a man, he thought, skeletally thin, pale. Not ghostly, because a ghost, having lived, had a certain substance, the accumulated residue of a life. Smalls had nothing of this sort. He floated emptily, like no experience had ever stuck to him. Without the weight of that experience, he seemed feathery, something the most tremulous puff of air could sweep across the floor.

  Every aspect of Smalls’ character gave off this willowy insubstantiality but one. His steadfast denial that he’d had anything to do with the death of Cathy Lake. On that issue he had demonstrated the impenetrably opaque surface of a granite slab. Beneath that slab, enclosed in adamantine secrecy, Cohen was certain that something shameful lay hidden. He could see its guilty shape swimming behind Smalls’ eyes like a fish in a tank of murky water, swift and unreachable, well-adapted to the shadowy depths.