by John Cutter
Lieutenant Polk had been true to his word. Two blocks away, a BPD SWAT team was standing by in a tactical vehicle, and sharpshooters had been deployed to the roofs of two adjacent buildings, just in case. Morrison was hopeful that they wouldn’t be necessary, but knew from experience that the Lieutenant’s precautions were completely reasonable. Chance favored the prepared mind, as Morrison was fond of saying; and with every suspect—especially two whom they suspected of such heinous crimes as these—you had to expect the unexpected.
The hope was for one or both of the suspects to exit the dorm, where a group of NYPD and BPD detectives would approach them and try to persuade them to come back to D-14 voluntarily. Although no mention of a firearm had been made during any of their investigations, these two were suspected of being a couple of the most violent preppies ever to don an alligator shirt, and nobody knew what a knock at their dorm-room door might bring about. A lot of perps did extreme things when they found they were being brought to justice for the crimes they’d committed, and in a dorm setting, there was no telling how many people these two could hurt if they decided to go out in a blaze of glory.
After several hours had passed without movement on the part of their suspects, the decision was made to try to lure one or both of them out to Anderson’s car. Pat McNamara was the best voice actor among them, so he made the phone call to their room. Someone picked up on the second ring.
“Hello,” McNamara said, in a remarkably subtle Indian accent. “This is Dr. Patel from the Boston Health Department. Is this Mr. Brian Anderson?”
“No,” the voice on the other end replied flatly. “This is his roommate.”
“Do you know where Mr. Anderson is right now?” McNamara asked.
“Sure, he’s right here—hold on.”
McNamara gave a thumbs-up—both suspects were in the apartment. “Hello?” Anderson’s voice sounded nervous.
“Mr. Anderson, this is Dr. Patel from the Boston Health Department,” McNamara went on. “We need to see you as soon as possible. We have had one of your girlfriends here with a serious venereal disease, and it would be in your best interests if you could come in right away.”
“What? What do you mean, serious?”
“I’d rather not discuss it with you over the phone, Mr. Anderson.”
McNamara could practically hear Anderson quaking over the phone. “Is it—is it AIDS?”
“Again, Mr. Anderson, I’d really rather not talk about it over the phone. We need to see you in person.”
“Okay—okay. I’ll jump in the shower and be right down. What was the address?”
As McNamara read off the address, the rest of the team went quietly into action. Fifteen minutes later, they were waiting in the dorm lobby as both Anderson and Rutherford came out of the elevator. Before they could exit the lobby, a few of the detectives approached them.
“Brian Anderson and Adam Rutherford,” one of the BPD detectives said, “I’m Detective Manchester. We’d like to talk to you about something, if we may.”
“We’re on our way somewhere. What’s this about?” Rutherford asked, in an almost condescending tone.
“We just want to talk to you about some criminal activity in New York City—it shouldn’t take long.”
This was the do-or-die moment. If the two refused to cooperate, the detectives would have to take them into custody, and things could get ugly really fast. Anderson looked over at his friend; there was no way he was going to make the decision on his own. Rutherford took the lead.
“No problem, officer,” he said, his tone dropping into a practiced smugness. “We’ll help out any way we can.”
The two were separated, and taken to D-14 in different cars.
On the ride to the stationhouse, both were read their Miranda rights, despite not being under arrest yet; Morrison didn’t want to take any chances. It was another critical moment, as one of the provisions offered them the use of an attorney, but once again, neither Anderson nor Rutherford disappointed. Both waived their rights, and were willing to talk.
Morrison had decided in advance that Alexander Medveded would be the first to talk to Anderson, while Rutherford would be left with Kasak and Marchioni. Medveded always preferred to work alone in these situations, as he took a more cerebral approach to the interview process, and didn’t want to have anyone else there to distract or derail him. The Coke boys, on the other hand, invariably worked as a pair, playing off of each other in a classic good-cop-bad-cop partnership.
As Morrison later learned, the two car rides were very different for their two suspects.
Adam Rutherford was actually rather chatty with Tina Koreski and the BPD’s Detective Manchester, with whom he rode back to the stationhouse. Perhaps it would be better to say he chatted at them than with them, as Koreski remained quiet through the whole ride to keep her New York accent to herself for the time being. He went on for a while about who his family was and who they knew—greasing the skids, as he seemed confidently to expect, for his eventual release.
Brian Anderson, on the other hand, was extremely quiet; and Detective Medveded, who rode next to him, observed his eyes welling up a number of times. Anderson turned his head a few times, stifling his sobs under coughs or clearings of the throat, but it was already far too late for these shows of emotion to go unobserved. Alexander Medveded’s chess match with this opponent had already begun.
23
By the time Alexander Medveded stepped into the interview room at District D-14, Brian Anderson had been expertly prepared. On top of Medveded’s silence in the car on the way over, he’d instructed the BPD detectives to bring Anderson past the holding cells, where the overnighters were being held. That spectacle was enough to scare anyone: cells crammed full of sick, angry people, deranged with hostility and screaming at anyone who passed. For a quiet little rich white boy like Anderson, it had been sufficient to get the tears flowing again.
Now, like a conductor before a performance, Medveded paused outside the interview-room door, took a breath, and went in. Before he could even sit down, Anderson opened his mouth.
“Look, it’s not like it’s my fault,” Anderson blurted out. Medveded was a little disappointed; he hadn’t even touched a chess piece yet, and his opponent had already revealed his primary weakness. But none of this made it onto the detective’s face. With a casual nod, made without looking in the suspect’s direction, he slowly sat down.
“I completely get it,” Medveded said gently, favoring Anderson with an empathic look, “and I want you to know that I appreciate your cutting to the chase. It’s going to be a lot easier to help you that way. If you were to ask me, I’d say you look like a bit player in all this.”
“All—this?” Anderson said, catching himself. “Yes, all this,” Medveded said patiently.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Anderson backtracked. “What is it exactly that you want to ask me about?”
This time Medveded allowed his disappointment to show. “Come on, Brian,” he said. “You know as well as I do, what this is about. The women, Brian.”
“What women?”
“Well, let’s start with the one on Sutton Place in Manhattan, shall we?”
Anderson sat quietly, refusing to speak; but Medveded could see the horror of that night playing itself out behind his eyes.
“Look,” he said, moving his chair closer to Anderson’s side of the table, “I can tell it upset you. It’s obvious that it did. I’ve seen a lot of killers—all ages, classes, and colors—and I can see you’re no killer. But you’re going to have to meet me halfway; that’s why we separated you guys, so we could get a straight story from you. I can help you out here, believe me; and with the truth out in the open, I think we can get past what happened together—because you are not the guy who started this. Am I right?”
Anderson sniffed and looked down at the table, despondent. “Yeah, that’s right,” he said finally. “Adam was the one—it was Adam’s idea.”
; “Right, that much is obvious,” Medveded said dismissively. “When did he get the idea to do this?”
Anderson sat quietly again, silent tears rolling down his cheeks. Medveded touched his hand. Anderson recoiled.
“Why would I talk to you?” he said, suddenly vehement. To his surprise, Medveded laughed, shaking his head pityingly.
“Look, why do you think I’d want to talk to you?” he asked. “The investigation is already over. Do you think we came to your dorm not knowing what had happened? Not a chance, Brian. But we need to give everyone a chance to speak for themselves—especially in a situation like this one, where there is more than one person involved, and it’s all too easy to pin everything equally on both of them. If you don’t think that’s how it went down—like I don’t—you need to hear both sides of the story. But look, Brian, if you trust Adam that much, by all means, don’t speak with me, and whatever he tells us will be what happened. I believe you, when you say it isn’t your fault—I’ve seen too much to disbelieve you. Adam is obviously a nasty guy, and he obviously has a problem with women. But taking it for granted that he was in charge, when did this—thing—of his start?”
Anderson looked at him hard. “Did Adam speak to you already?” he asked.
“He’s talking to one of the other detectives. I don’t imagine they’re having a great time with him—I believe you’re telling the truth, but it’s hard to believe Adam’s capable of it. He’s a good-looking, tall, young guy, and he’s always gotten over. It’s easy to see that he hasn’t really had to learn honesty.”
Anderson turned his eyes back to the table, but his face had taken on a new expression. Medveded knew his next move would put Brian in check, so he played it carefully.
“Come on, Brian,” he said. “Are you going to put up with it again? How many times in your life have you been blamed for something that was all his idea?”
Anderson looked up at him, a different kind of hard passion blazing in his eyes. “Not this time,” he said. He shook his head. “Not again. It doesn’t work for me anymore.”
“That’s why we’re here,” Medveded said. “Take your time, Brian. Start from as far back as you need to.”
Anderson wiped his face with his hands, and looked away again. “We’ve been friends since we were kids,” he said. “He’s always pushed me around. This thing—well, we always take our Christmas breaks together. We’ve done that for as long as I remember. This year we started out in Cancun, but we had six weeks off, so we made a stop over in La Jolla, you know, California?”
“Of course,” Medveded said patiently.
“So we stop in this little grill along the road, in San Diego,” Anderson went on. “Old Town. You know where I’m talking about?”
“Yeah,” Medveded said. “A lot of rich people there.”
“Exactly. Anyway, we were having a few drinks at the bar, and there’s this woman on the other side. Looking at her, you could tell she had money. Good-looking, blonde hair, big tits, a little older but well put-together. Turns out she lived in a place right by the PCH. So Adam decides to start talking to her. He walks over, usual Mr. Big Shit stuff, and she blows him off.”
“Is that how it began?”
“Yeah. I mean, she really blew him off. Like, made him look like two cents in front of a bunch of people. He was really pissed off. So he comes back over to where I’m sitting, and goes, Come on, we’re out of here. I figure, okay, whatever he says—guy’s obviously pretty embarrassed. So we get outside and jump in the car, and Adam can’t stop talking about what a bitch she is, and how he’s going to teach her a lesson, she doesn’t know who she just fucked with, et cetera. We must have sat there another hour in the car, him just blowing off steam.”
“Okay.”
“So then she comes strolling out of the place, looking like she’d had a few too many. She gets in her pretentious little fucking two-seater Porsche, and we follow her out of the parking lot. I figure he’s just going to fuck with her a little while she’s driving, but he just stays behind her all the way to her house.”
“He followed her home?”
“Yeah. We watched her pull into her driveway. She looked wasted—she stumbled through her front door. We watched her house for a little while, then Adam decided she was home alone.” Anderson’s expression darkened as he looked back at Medveded. “He decided—not my idea—he decided we were going to knock on her door.”
“And you? What’d you say?”
“I was really scared. I was like, Adam, what the fuck are we doing here? He just told me to shut up and follow his lead. We banged on her door—it must’ve taken her five minutes to answer it.” Medveded noticed that Anderson’s voice had fallen into a distant monotone. “When she got to the door, she was still in her clothes, but she looked really drunk. Adam started talking to her, and grabbed her arm. She wasn’t as wasted as we thought. She remembered Adam from the restaurant. She asked him why he was at her house, and he said that she’d left her credit card and we stopped to drop it off on the way home. She said I thought I took my card. She turned to check her purse, and that was when Adam pushed her inside. He started choking her. She kicked him in the balls, and tries to run down the hall. Adam tells me to grab her, so I chase her down the hall and grabbed her hair and pulled her down. She started screaming, and Adam ran over and covered her mouth with his hand. She was wearing a real short red dress and he pulled it up over her waist. She bit him on the hand, and he lost it. He tore her underwear off and stuffed it in her mouth to stop her from screaming. That’s how he started.” Anderson paused, his face a mask. “Can I have some water?”
“Of course,” Medveded said, moving swiftly to the door to call for a bottle of water. He knew this moment was critical—he needed to keep Anderson talking, and give him as little time as possible to think about what was happening. “Water’s on the way, Brian—can you remember what happened next? I know sometimes it’s hard to remember—”
“No, I remember fine,” Anderson said. Medveded noted just the subtlest hint of braggadocio in his voice. “She started to calm down—I guess she figured she couldn’t fight her way out with both of us holding her down. Adam had this look in his eyes—he didn’t say much, but I’ve seen that look before, and it always ended badly. It was never this bad before, though. He took the underwear out of her mouth, and started asking her questions about where she kept her money and jewelry in her house. She said she had a safe in the basement, and we could take everything she had. She starting telling us her husband would be home at any minute, but looking around the house it didn’t seem like anyone else lived with her. She was crying, totally scared. I went to check the closets and there were no men’s clothes anywhere. Adam called her a lying bitch—First you bite me, and then you lie to me, he says—and that’s when he really went crazy. He had me hold her, and he went into the kitchen. He ripped out all the drawers, and came back with a plastic supermarket bag. He put the bag over her head and took off his belt, and started to choke her with the bag over her head. He kept tightening and releasing his belt, to kind of control her breathing.”
“Did you ever try to stop him, or leave the house without him?”
“No,” Anderson said. “He’s my best friend, even though he was acting crazy. And I couldn’t leave him alone.”
“I understand,” Medveded said, betraying no emotion. The son of a bitch had just locked himself in as a willing accomplice.
One of the Boston detectives came in and handed Medveded two bottles of water. The interruption came at a good time; the flow of the interrogation was undisturbed. Medveded handed Anderson one of the bottles, and cracked the other open.
“Cheers,” he said, raising his bottle with a slight smile.
“Cheers,” Anderson replied, returning the smile.
No remorse there, Medveded thought. No one who felt any compunction for having done something like this could smile, much less return a toast, during their confession. It was as surefire a tell as the so-c
alled “sleep of the guilty,” when suspects fell fast asleep on the hard wooden benches in their cells almost as soon as their cell door had been shut.
“Right—so go on, what happened next?” Medveded asked.
“Well, we dragged her into the basement with the bag on her head. She looked terrified, but in a weird way I think she liked it. You know, one of those freaky chicks.”
“And how many times did you have sex with her?”
“None. I mean, I guess I did, technically. But I didn’t even want to do it at first—I even tried to take the bag off her head. Adam told her to blow me, and pushed her face at my crotch. I was afraid that she might bite me, but Adam had the belt around her neck and told her if she bit me, he’d kill her. Like a dog on a leash. They tend to do as they’re told—it was kind of cool. She was good. I came down her throat and all over her hair. She was a freaky bitch—I’m telling you, she kind of liked it. I got a bit scared, because of all the CSI shows talking about DNA, but Adam said not to worry, because we didn’t have any on file.”
“And did he have sex with her too?”
Anderson gave a short, scoffing kind of laugh. “He tried, but he was having a little problem,” he said. “Probably because he’d drank too much.”
“So he couldn’t get an erection,” Medveded said.
Anderson laughed out loud.
“What’s so funny?” Medveded asked, smiling along with him. “Oh, just the word erection,” Anderson said. “I just don’t hear it much, and it makes me laugh. But yeah, he couldn’t get an erection.”
“Did that make him more angry?”
“Yeah, a lot more. He told me he wanted to get some jumper cables, and went into another room in the basement to try to find some.”
“What did you do while he was gone?”
“Nothing, really. I just held the belt and made her crawl around on all fours like a dog, you know, just trying to keep her scared. He came back in and said he couldn’t find any cables, but that these would do, and he held up a pair of pliers and a box cutter. She started screaming again, and he stuffed her panties back in her mouth. He tried to get it up and fuck her again, but it just wasn’t happening, so he starts telling her it’s her fault, because she’s such an ugly whore, and starts biting her all over. He told me that if I wanted to be even with him I better do the same, and I didn’t want to, but I did. He had the gag in her mouth and watched her face while he pulled at her pussy with the pliers. It was brutal, man; I couldn’t really stand it. He really started biting her, really frantic, and I wanted to go. He tried to fuck her one more time and he just couldn’t, and he lost it and cut off her lips. She passed out and I got some water and threw it on her and tried to revive her. We moved her to the couch; she was bleeding real bad. Then he put the bag over her head and made it so she stopped breathing. I didn’t do that—he did that.”