by Jill Leovy
Skaggs and Farell now retreated to the hallway, leaving Devin in the room. Skaggs had no idea how he was going to proceed. Yet Farell could perceive nothing out of the ordinary in his manner. It was as if he were embarking on a weekend errand.
Skaggs prepped his tape recorder and noted the date and time. They headed back to the room. Skaggs sat down, not across from Devin, but on the same side of the table, pulling his chair so close that their knees almost touched. He always sat this way for interrogations. He was not being menacing in any way, yet he was violating Devin’s personal space. This subtle breach was unsettling.
Skaggs began speaking, sounding mild and reasonable. “Okay, Devin,” he said. “This is where we get to take care of all our business. Okay?”
Breezy. Businesslike. A light touch of regret. As if they were friends with an unpleasant matter to settle.
Devin was ready, in defensive mode. He had arranged himself in a posture signaling noncompliance, slumped way back, sullen, put out. “I’m gonna ask you to speak up. I’m a little hard of hearing,” Skaggs said, his standard line. He told Devin to sit up straight. “Show a little respect … a little mutual respect … If you’re sitting up straight, I know I have your attention! All right?” The last note was bright and lively.
Devin shifted in his seat and mumbled his assent—“Yes sir … yes sir,” he said wearily. It was typical gangster-cop interplay—the affected politeness, excessive use of courtesy titles, and emphasis on “respect.” The ’hood was perhaps the only context in America outside the military where the word “sir” was still appended sentence by sentence in conversational speech. Devin, it was clear, had spoken to many a cop.
Skaggs went on, oversimplifying. “My name is John Skaggs. This is my partner Corey Farell. We work homicide. Do you know what that means?”
“No,” Devin replied. Skaggs played it straight. “Homicide investigators investigate people who get killed,” he explained dutifully. “Not shot at. Not jumped on. Not robbed. When somebody gets killed on the streets, they call us, and we go to work.”
Skaggs launched his attack. He began talking aimlessly about the investigation. He started in the middle, digressed, and doubled back. He hinted at a Very Serious Talk about to occur. But instead of starting it, he burrowed into technicalities. He declared his intention to be up-front. Then he wandered. He promised to get to the point. Then he didn’t. He peppered his speech with various throat-clearing asides—“Are you with me?” “So, listen!” “We’ll get to that!” But he never got anywhere. Every gesture and inflection assured Devin that he was being clear and direct. But the words delivered only discursiveness and confusion.
It was infuriating—and effective. The tactic had served Skaggs well for years. Ordinarily, Skaggs was a man who never procrastinated, never went in circles. But in interrogations, circling was his weapon of choice.
“Your name came up in a murder investigation,” Skaggs told Devin gravely. “Flat out.” He paused, letting the flat-out-ness of his statement sink in. Then he was not flat out. He digressed, droning on about the video camera and its fictional video, its quality.
Then, finally: “So here’s what happens. Back in May, okay? You know the months of the year?” Devin was silent. Skaggs continued: “So kind of at the end of winter. The start of good weather …” And Skaggs riffed on weather.
Devin released a long sigh. “Some people loaded up …” Skaggs went on, using the same tone as he had used describing the sunny day in May. But Devin interrupted him, in revolt against Skaggs’s intrusive knees.
“Mind if I move my legs?” he said.
Skaggs was genial. “You can put ’em anywhere! Just don’t kick me!” he said. Devin shifted heavily as Skaggs talked some more. “I’m going to give you the opportunity to say what’s on your mind,” he said. “But let me talk for about five minutes.” Skaggs nodded toward the fat murder book he held. “This is what I want to talk to you about today.” He wandered again, and then finally, speaking fast, almost collegially, returned to the investigation. He presented it as if it were a problem he expected Devin to help him fix:
“So, what I know is a black Suburban gets on Saint Andrews, a dude gets out, and somebody gets killed, okay?” he said. “And you’re in that video. Not only that, I got the Suburban. The Suburban is in custody. I will show you photos of it. I’m gonna show you everything so that you can see I’m not talking out of my ass.”
Here Devin interrupted again, for some reason objecting, not to the idea that he might have committed murder, but to the suggestion that he didn’t trust Skaggs. “I’m not trippin’ on you! I’m listening to you!” he said, his voice high and indignant.
Skaggs continued, his tone conciliatory. “We all know how there’s stories about cops who try to pull a fast one and stuff like that. I want to be up-front with you.”
Devin kept insisting that he wasn’t, as he put it, “trippin’.” Skaggs got him to calm down, then said: “This is the real deal. And this is the only—the one and only time—you will ever have a chance to talk to the two guys who investigated that murder.”
“Can I ask you a question?” Devin said.
“Absolutely!” Skaggs sounded downright buoyant.
“This is not going to affect my time in camp, right?”
He had been asking some version of this question over and over, in different forms, all afternoon. “That is a ridiculous question,” Skaggs said, sounding exasperated. Davis objected, sputtering. Skaggs raised his voice: “Let me talk!”
“That’s what we are talking about,” Skaggs said, when he had Devin’s attention again. “We are talking about your future. So, we will get to that part of your future when it comes up.”
Devin was beginning to whine. Skaggs scolded him to “act like a man.” Then his voice softened and he promised he would soon address Devin’s concerns. Once again he hinted at the Very Serious Talk that was about to start.
“We are going to see what’s in your mind, whether you are going to be straight up,” he said. “So we’ll get to that.”
Skaggs was back in his mild, businesslike tone, spinning wool in the guise of being forthcoming. He told Devin that snitches “put him on Front Street” and called him by his gang name, Baby Man.
“I ain’ no Baby Man,” Devin said, drawling a little. “We’ll get to that, we’ll get to that,” Skaggs said. Always promising, never delivering.
Devin was starting to fray. “Tell me!” he pleaded. “You say you’ll be up-front! Well then lemme know everything.”
“Absolutely!” Skaggs said. Bright and helpful.
Then he returned to his obfuscations. He made reference to Starks, saying Starks was “a bitch.” Devin thought Skaggs was referring to a woman; street slang could be confusing even to seasoned users. Skaggs corrected him. He’d meant that Starks had broken down easily. Devin chortled.
Skaggs said he had found Starks’s phone number on a slip of paper in Devin’s bedroom. Devin demanded to see it.
Skaggs obliged, producing a page of the murder book. “That way you know what’s happening,” he said. Devin looked, and switched gears instantly: “I know him,” he said. “I’m not going to lie to you … I’m an honest person,” he said.
For several more minutes, Skaggs let Devin page selectively through the murder book on the pretext of demonstrating how up-front he was. He showed Devin a letter in which Devin declared he belonged to One Hundred and Thirteen Blocc Crips. “I got put off of there, though,” Devin objected. The gang had beaten him up and kicked him out, he said. “Hold on! Devin!” Skaggs said, interrupting him. “We’re talking! You don’t have to answer to nothing!”
“All right,” Devin said, suddenly sounding weary. “Then I go back to camp after this?”
“You are going back to camp when we’re done here,” Skaggs said.
“And that’s it,” Devin said.
“What do you mean, ‘that’s it’?”
“I won’t have to worry about hea
ring this never again,” Devin said.
“I don’t know. We ain’t done talking about this, are we?” Skaggs said.
Devin emitted a pained laugh. “I’m not trying to make you mad or nuthin’,” he said.
“You can’t make me mad,” Skaggs replied airily.
He began producing letters he alleged Devin had written and making reference to a fictitious handwriting analysis. The letters talked about killing “Snoovers,” the derogatory term for Hoovers. At the word “Snoovers,” Devin giggled.
Skaggs showed Devin a letter in which Devin referred to himself as Baby Man. “Oops!” Skaggs said sarcastically.
“I ain’t from that shit no mo’,” Devin whined. Skaggs grew sharp again: “Devin!”
“All right! They call me that. I guess.” It was the second time Skaggs had forced Devin to backtrack. Skaggs acted exasperated. Devin asked again if he was going back to camp. Skaggs told him to stop asking. Devin turned back to the murder book, manhandling it.
“Hold it! Easy, tiger!” Skaggs said, keeping his hands on it. He showed Devin more pages. A picture of the Suburban. A picture of Midkiff. “Who the fuck is this bitch?” Devin said. He called the interview “bullshit” and demanded that Skaggs get around to his questions.
Skaggs calmly bade him to wait, flipping pages of the book. Outside, on the streets of the Seventy-seventh Division, a siren wailed.
“We’re gonna do some talking,” Skaggs said. “We’ll get to the good talking in just a second.”
“Can I get lunch? Please? I’m hungry,” Devin said.
“We’ll do that in a minute,” Skaggs said.
“ ’Cause I’m ready, sir! I mean, I’m doing my time—”
This was danger. What Skaggs feared most was that Devin would abruptly back out and demand to be taken back to camp. He’d had interviews end that way before, with a suspect declaring: “I ain’t sayin’ shit! Fuck you!” Skaggs couldn’t risk that now.
He shifted his tone, growing serious. “So here’s, here’s where we’re at. Devin. There’s some snitches from Bloccs, and there’s some snitches from the nine-oh’s.”
The word “snitches” caught Devin’s attention. Skaggs went back to talking about a killing, daylight, a video camera, witnesses.
“So I’m in big, big, trouble?” Devin interrupted.
Skaggs downplayed it: “Well, what I’m sayin’ is, I’ve got people saying you shot a boy …”
Twenty minutes had passed and this was the most direct Skaggs had been about his suspicions. He introduced the murder accusation casually.
Devin, who for most of those twenty minutes had been exhorting Skaggs to get to the point, now seemed suddenly eager to turn him back. He cut Skaggs off, voice urgent:
“So, I—I’m getting in trouble for it, right?”
“Hold on! Eeeeasy, tiger!” Skaggs downplayed it. The heavier the mood, the lighter his tone.
But Devin got worked up. “I wish you’d just tell me the truth, sir!”
“There ain’t no truth yet. We ain’t done talking! When we’re done talking, I’ll answer anything you want. Okay? You with me?” Skaggs’s voice held impatient humor, fatherly, reassuring, exasperated. It worked. “Yes, sir,” Devin said.
Skaggs took a breath and then repeated his infuriating mantra: “Listen to me. We are gonna do some talkin’.”
Rick Gordon had elicited evidence this way, too: breaking suspects down through a simple tactic he called Boring Them to Death. Skaggs returned to his meanderings, saying that snitches had said Devin had been put up to the crime by Starks, but then burying the allegation in lesser ones, saying Devin had done this and that. Devin was reduced to denying small allegations in pieces: “That’s on my mom!” he exclaimed at one point, swearing on some denial. Skaggs used the occasion to open a discussion about Devin’s mother for no reason. Devin took the bait. They digressed.
Then Skaggs mentioned Midkiff again. “She is not going to take a hit for you,” he said.
“I’m not gonna take a hit for her!” Devin retorted hotly.
Skaggs pounced. “What she do?” he said swiftly.
But Devin saw it, and pedaled back. “Shi’, I dunno … I’m not takin’ a hit for nobody,” he muttered.
Skaggs resumed as if nothing had happened. Devin protested. “It’s just—you said you had more to tell me,” he said. Skaggs assured Devin that he did. Devin needed only to listen.
“But I mean all the other stuff you’re sayin’, reee-ally makin’ my blood pressure go up,” Devin said.
“I bet it does,” Skaggs said. “It’d make me fuckin’ freak out.”
Devin agreed. It certainly was making him freak out. “It should,” Skaggs told Devin, suddenly quiet. “Someone just told you you’ve been fingered on a killing.”
Devin mumbled something. Skaggs zeroed in. “Hmm?”
“Nothin’,” Devin said. “I’m sayin’ it to myself, just thinkin’ out loud.”
“That’s cool!” Skaggs was light again, and he went on as if Devin’s internal dialogue held no interest for him. He droned on about the evidence, this time inserting the phrase “killin’ a cop’s kid.”
“Killin’ a cop’s kid!” Devin sounded shocked.
“Yeah,” Skaggs said, suddenly sounding annoyed. “I don’t expect you to admit to anything, Devin.”
“I ain’t lyin’ to you, sir! I been honest with you the whole time!” Devin cried. Skaggs disagreed. An argument ensued. “You didn’t even admit your name was frickin’ Baby Man!” Skaggs said.
Devin’s voice was tight. He retreated, pleading: “Can we just keep it low-low? Like, ’cause it’s, like, I feel like you gettin’ mad and stuff.”
“Why would I get mad?” Skaggs’s easy tone was back. Devin again asked him to move his legs. Skaggs acted surprised. He asked if Devin was “claustrophobic or something.” Devin said he was. “Okay!” Skaggs said amiably. “I’ll stay back.”
He launched into his meandering talk again, getting nowhere. This time he assured Devin that “we are gonna get to some questions, but first I wanted to lay it all out for you.” At one point, he stalled with the phrase, “As you know, we know our business—”
“I know! I’d put you up for a job! Truthfully!” Devin interrupted.
Skaggs ignored this endorsement and went on. Devin again cut him off. “Okay, but are you gonna tell me who is snitchin’ on me?” he demanded.
“If this was to go to court, absolutely you are going to find out. But I ain’t going to tell you today,” Skaggs said.
Devin started. Going to court? He wasn’t going to court, was he? People didn’t usually go to court on something like this—did they? Skaggs told him that it was up to the DA. Only when they finished talking would they be “locked in,” he said.
Devin got quiet. “What you mean by locked in?” he said.
Skaggs spoke very slowly. He would prepare his findings. The DA would decide what to do, he said. Then, “What do you think the DA’s gonna do to the person that’s in the video bustin’ on some kid?”
Devin let out a sharp burst of air. “I’ll be there for the rest of my life,” he breathed, as if speaking to himself. He sounded resigned. Then he rebelled: “I got a baby on the way, though!”
They had been in the room for twenty-eight minutes. Devin began to cry. “You and I need to have a heart-to-heart talk,” Skaggs said.
But Devin was working up to sobs. “I’m about to have a son. I won’t see my own baby be born!”
Skaggs tried for calm. This was dicey. Devin seemed to be cracking. But he had not yet been Miranda-ized. “You and I are gonna have a real-deal talk here,” Skaggs said, scrambling.
“It don’t matter! I’m gonna go to jail anyway. I’m gonna sit in there for the rest of my life anyways. I ain’t gonna never go home!” Devin wailed. “Fuckin’ sucks!” Then the inevitable addendum: “ ’Scuse my language.”
This was like the overuse of “sir.” For some reason, swearing, then apologi
zing for it, was a common gang tic.
Skaggs downplayed Devin’s tears and resumed talking about the case. Devin interrupted him.
“You already said—that he put me up to it,” Devin said, then dissolved into a cascade of snuffles.
The statement was thunderous. But still not quite a confession. “Wait!” Skaggs sought to wind the conversation back. But Devin sharpened up again, pausing mid–whimper. “I’m not admittin’ to it,” he said.
Devin said he hoped the cops would help him. “I’m not here to hurt or help,” Skaggs said. “I’m here to find the truth. That’s why we need to get to the point.”
The phrase seemed to send Devin around the bend. “That’s what I’m askin’! Just get to the point!” He sounded desperate.
Skaggs was sympathetic and promised to get to his questions very soon. He made a seamless transition: “For me to ask you questions—well, you’ve had your rights read to you before, right?”
Devin had. This could be a scary moment for detectives. The reading of rights broke the mood. Skaggs spoke easily. He even made a game of it, asking Devin if he knew his rights well enough to recite them. Devin tried, then trailed off. He was in his own world, tears flowing, head bowed. “I’m never gonna go home,” he wept.
Skaggs offered to read the rights for him, magnanimous, as if doing Devin a favor. Devin listened at first, sniffing, then interrupted: “I don’t even want to hear it, sir. It’s just gonna hurt me more,” he said.
“Well,” Skaggs said mildly, as if dispensing with unpleasant business, “I have to. So let me just go over them … And then we’ll talk.” He read the Miranda rights, slowly and clearly, stopping for Devin’s “Yes, sir” after each line.
A pause. Devin still wept. “I feel for you, for the predicament you’re in,” Skaggs said softly.
He suggested they take a break. He offered Devin a tissue. He said he would steer the conversation away, give Devin a chance to relax. He brought up Devin’s mother again. “Your mom is a very nice lady,” Skaggs said. “I feel for your mom.” This was true: Skaggs did think Sandra James was a nice lady.