by John Case
Who could forget the Susan Smith case? The smiling faces of her sons blanketed the news for days as their distraught mother begged for their return, the return of boys she herself had sent rolling into the cold water of a lake, belted into their car seats. How could she do it? I wondered – everyone wondered – did she watch the water rise, did she watch them go under? I also remember a couple in Florida who made tearful appeals for the return of their adorable daughter, whose mangled body was later discovered buried in their backyard.
Would you be willing to take a polygraph test? It is in this company – Susan Smith, the tearful infanticidal Florida couple – that I am being placed.
So I know. Asking me to take a polygraph test means that the bloody shirt… or maybe they’ve found something else in the house… makes them think I might be involved in the boys’ disappearance. And, of course, I also know that they’re wrong.
Before I can answer Shoffler, he does that traffic cop thing with his hand. “You’re not required to take the test,” the detective says. “It’s strictly voluntary – you understand that, right?”
“What?” Liz says. “What?”
I just stand there. Anger bubbles up in me. “I’ll take the test,” I say, “but it’s a waste of time. I don’t get it. There had to be hundreds of people who saw my kids at the fair. And Kevin called me, he called me from here. Your guy – Christiansen – he was in the car.”
Shoffler screws up his face, looks at the ceiling, as if he’s getting some kind of information from up there. Then he nods, makes up his mind about something. “Look,” he says, “the phone call? You say that was your kid – but no one else can confirm that. It could have been anyone. Even if the call did come from here.” It seems as if he’s going to say more, but he changes his mind and just shakes his head.
I know what he’s thinking though, and the word goes off in my mind like a cherry bomb: accomplice.
“It’s just like that shoe you spotted out by the fence,” Shoffler says. “You know? I’m not implying anything here, but the thing is – who spotted it?”
“What shoe?” Liz asks in a panicky voice. “There’s a shoe?”
“We found a child’s shoe at the fairgrounds,” Shoffler says. “According to your husband, it belongs to one of your boys.”
“Kevin,” I say. “One of Kevin’s Nikes.”
“You can understand why we’d like you to take a test,” Shoffler says in what I guess is meant to be a soothing voice, “because… the thing is, what we’ve got, it’s all…” He stops there, ending with a little shrug. He doesn’t say it, but I get the message. I could have put the shoe there, outside the jousting ring, then pointed it out to Shoffler. An accomplice could have made the phone call from this house to my cell phone. There’s been no ransom note, no telephone call. Shoffler himself said it: Why take two kids? It’s not like a bake sale. There’s no outside corroboration for my story. It all begins and ends with me.
“Somebody had to see us there,” I say. “I mean – it’s crazy. Thousands of people saw us.”
“Well, as for the fair visitors,” Shoffler says in a conciliatory tone, “I’m sure you’re right. For certain we got plenty of volunteers claiming to remember you.” He makes that clicking noise with his mouth. A regretful click. “But of course the thing’s been all over the tube. Most of the folks who have come forward weren’t even there during the right stretch of time. Now, I’m sure we’ll eventually find plenty of reliable witnesses who saw you and your sons and can confirm the time frame.” His hands shoot up in a what-can-I-do gesture. “But until we do, my advice is – take the test.”
“Of course I’ll take the test,” I say.
“Good,” the detective says. “I’ll schedule it.”
My parents and Jack have materialized in the hall behind the detective. “They told us to go to the kitchen,” my mother says.
“What’s this about a test?” Jack asks.
“They want Alex to take a polygraph,” Liz blurts out in a shaky voice.
“A lie detector test?” my father says to Shoffler. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
Shoffler holds out his traffic cop hand. “It’s routine,” he says. “Exclusionary.”
“Like the fingerprints?” my mother puts in.
Shoffler nods.
My father squares his shoulders. “Look, Detective Shoffler,” he says, “be frank with me: Do we need a lawyer here?”
“This is all on a strictly voluntary basis,” Shoffler says. “If your son wants-”
“No,” I say, interrupting the detective. “Dad – Jesus! No lawyer – I don’t need a lawyer.”
“It’s not…” my father starts, “I don’t mean…” He shakes his head. I see that he’s holding my mother’s hand tight, their fingers intertwined, knuckles white. “It’s just, I don’t like this is all, Alex. I don’t like the way this is going.”
“I’ll set it up for the morning,” Shoffler says.
For a moment, the false accusation gets to me – to be accused of such a thing. I can write the sound bites myself, imagine the breathless but somber delivery:
“More developments in the case of the missing Callahan twins: Police found a blood-soaked T-shirt in the father’s house.”
“Police have requested that the father take a polygraph test.”
But my wounded outrage about being accused, the flare of sadness – these emotions persist for only a few seconds. They barely register against the despair that’s enveloped me since Shoffler displayed Kevin’s blood-drenched T-shirt. The one glimmer of hope came from a thought that in itself was so hideous I hate to admit to it: there was only one T-shirt, not two. Maybe two kids were too much trouble. And it was Kevin’s shoe, too. Maybe Sean…
I’m sinking.
It isn’t that consciously I’ve put much into believing that Shoffler and the authorities will track down whoever took my sons, will find Kevin and Sean and bring them home. Yet on some level I invested more in that idea than I realized. I put faith in the professionalism and energy of the authorities, in their manpower and resources, in helicopters, search grids, canine trackers, evidence technicians, and databases.
But if the request that I take a polygraph means – and what else can it mean? – they think I played some active role in my sons’ disappearance, then there’s no hope. The authorities are so far off the track that I may as well put my faith in the yellow ribbons neighbors have begun to string around the trees up and down Ordway Street.
CHAPTER 11
The polygraph test is scheduled for this morning at eleven. Despite my innocence, I can’t help worrying. How can a machine designed to measure galvanic response (and I have only a vague idea what this is) distinguish kinds of stress? How can a mechanical device separate anxiety about telling deliberate lies from anxiety about taking the test, about being falsely accused, about the fate of my missing children?
Mostly, though, the test is a distraction – almost a welcome one – from the horror of the T-shirt. And although I don’t look forward to the walk to the car, especially since Shoffler failed to keep news about the “child’s blood-soaked T-shirt” from leaking to the press, in a way I can’t wait to get out of the house. Hour by hour, the atmosphere becomes more suffocating, a bell jar of anguished waiting.
Every time the phone rings – which is at least once every five minutes – we wait, suspended between hope and fear.
Mostly fear. We’re relieved when the call offers no information about the boys, when it’s just another call from the press or the police, from a friend or a stranger wanting to help. The cliché turns out to be true. No news is good news; no news feels like a reprieve.
My parents and Liz may be incensed over the accusations against me, but with Jack I’d have to say the jury’s out. He’s not sure. In some ways, this is easier to take than my mother’s constant litany of affronted woe.
My father wants to go with me to the police station, even Liz makes the offer, bu
t I won’t put them through it.
At this morning’s press conference, which we all watched in the family room, Shoffler refused to answer questions or comment about the bloody T-shirt and warned against “leaping to conclusions.”
Still, I know what to expect when I step out the door.
And then it’s time. Christiansen arrives with a fellow officer to escort me to the squad car. Although I’m not in handcuffs or shackles, escorting doesn’t begin to describe how I’m hustled down the steps and propelled through the shouting, strobe-dappled crowd.
I’m not under arrest yet, but the body language of my companions makes it clear what this is: a perp walk. I fight against my natural inclination to avoid eye contact. It’s not easy. Reflex alone makes me want to turn my head and avert my eyes from the constant explosions of light. I work to keep my head up. By the time we get to the car, I’m blind from the dazzle.
Christiansen pushes me inside. I’m being transported to the Park Street station for the polygraph. D.C. is involved now because there are “jurisdictional questions to be resolved, dependent on the location and the nature of the crime.” This is the way Shoffler explained it at this morning’s press conference, for which, Christiansen tells me, they badged 318 representatives of the media.
Like most authorities, Shoffler didn’t explain what he said – despite pleas from the press.
I got it, though – along with the millions of Americans who watched various “experts” deconstruct Shoffler’s statement. It comes down to this.
Scenario 1: I murdered my kids at home, disposed of their bodies, then drove sixty miles to Cromwell, Maryland. I then wandered around the fairgrounds for a couple of hours to establish my alibi before reporting the kids missing. Jurisdiction: D.C.
Scenario 2: I murdered my children in Maryland, somewhere in the vicinity of the Renaissance Faire. Jurisdiction: Anne Arundel County.
Scenario 3: The boys were kidnapped from the Renaissance Faire (this has now been referred to by at least one broadcaster as “the father’s version of events”). Jurisdiction: Anne Arundel County in conjunction with the FBI.
The police station has a kind of played-out atmosphere that against all odds calms me down. It’s so different from the adrenalized energy at home. It reminds me of the DMV.
I get the sense that most of the people who work here, from clerk to detective, see enough barbarity on a regular basis that it’s blunted their emotional response. No matter how unthinkable a crime – even the murder of children – there’s a precedent, a number for it in the criminal code.
It’s all procedure. There’s a process to deal with every conceivable type of human wrongdoing, a process that doesn’t leave much room for passion or outrage. While I’m here, everyone – if not exactly polite – at least treats me with professional disdain, interested only in advancing that process. I’m here for a polygraph test; the idea is to get it done and move on to the next chore.
Just like getting fingerprinted, though, there’s something sordid about the procedure. I feel trapped, caught in a lose-lose situation, the lie detector test a not-so-modern version of the test given to the Salem witches. As I remember it (from a History Channel special), if the accused woman, weighted down with stones, managed not to drown – as a normal person would – it signified guilt and she was burned as a witch.
The test is the same. Just being asked to take a polygraph counts against me. I won’t fail the test, but as someone who’s covered a lot of court cases, I know it’s possible the result will be “inconclusive.”
If I pass, that won’t help. It’s just that refusing it would have been worse. Passing means nothing because no one actually trusts the results – which, I am reminded, as the technician asks me to take a seat, are not “admissible in court.” He offers a thin smile.
“Kind of makes you wonder why they bother,” I hear myself say, instantly irritated by my nervous chatter.
He shrugs. “The results can be instructive,” he says, “even if not on the evidentiary level.”
We both know why they bother with lie detector tests. They can be instructive in many ways. It means one thing if someone agrees to take the test, another if he hires his own technician, who might frame a slightly different set of questions or put them in a more client-friendly way.
Gary Condit took the test, but hired his own tech. Same with the parents of JonBenet Ramsey. I remember these deviations from the accepted path of innocent behavior. So does everybody else.
For the most part the test is a form of pressure, pure and simple. You have a suspect, you squeeze him, make him nervous in every possible way. We’ve all seen it a million times. That’s what Shoffler wants: to squeeze me.
The technician squirts gel onto the sensors and attaches them to my skin. The gel is very cold.
The polygraph man himself also seems cold – even mechanical – as he explains the procedure. After a long pause to check his machinery, he begins to ask me his list of prepared questions.
The inflection of his voice does not vary, whether he’s asking me routine establishing questions (“Is your name Alex?” “Do you reside in North Dakota?” “Is the shirt you are wearing blue?”) or the ones at the heart of the matter (“Did you kill Sean and Kevin Callahan?” “Do you know the whereabouts of Sean and Kevin?”)
There is a long interval between each question while he adjusts his machine and makes notes. I catch myself holding my breath when I’m answering the questions and can’t stop myself from mentioning this. The technician offers a weak smile. “That won’t matter,” he says, in a way that does not reassure me.
And then it’s over. I’m handed a foil-wrapped wipe to remove any residue of gel from my skin. I roll down my sleeves expecting to return to the squad car and be driven home.
Instead, Shoffler materializes, with a young African-American man he introduces as Detective Price.
The three of us go to Price’s cubicle. On the monitor, tropical fish swim through waving aquatic vegetation. The gray fabric walls of the cubicle display a dozen or more photographs of a little smiling boy.
“Tell me something, Alex,” Shoffler asks, “you mind going through your story one more time? I’d like Detective Price to hear it – he’s been assigned to assist us with the case.”
I shrug. I don’t see the point, but once again, why not? “Fine.”
“Thing is, Detective Price has some special training in… ah… questioning people. What I hear is he’s got a real gift for tickling the memory bank. What I hope is maybe you’ll come up with something that will help us find your sons.”
“Some kind of lead,” Price says in an earnest baritone. “That’s what we all want.”
This is bullshit and all three of us know it. Shoffler’s looking for inconsistencies in my story. Which means that’s what he thinks it is – a story.
“Whatever you want,” I say.
A heavyset woman with huge round earrings raps on the side of the cubicle wall. “Yoo-hoo, need you to sign something, Jason.” She beckons with one red-nailed finger. “Come to my parlor please.”
Shoffler studies the array of photographs pinned to the cubicle walls. “Cute kid,” he says, and then he lets out a regretful jet of air. “Jeez, I’m sorry.”
“What about the ticket?” I ask him.
“What?”
“Ticket to the fair. One adult, two children. I showed it to you. I think I gave it to you, didn’t I?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s got the time right on it, when we went in. One adult, two kids.”
Shoffler shakes his head, his face showing a kind of get-real look. “Alex – you do realize this ticket means nothin’.” His hands rise up, fall down. “You could have bought a ticket for one adult and ten kids, you know what I’m saying?”
To my surprise, I’m embarrassed.
Acoustics.
Liz and I did the backpack thing right out of William and Mary. In London, we went to St. Paul’s Cathedral and cli
mbed halfway up the dome to the Whispering Gallery. Our guidebook noted an acoustical anomaly: someone halfway across the vast dome could whisper against the wall and the sound, if unimpeded, would travel around to anyone listening on the opposite side. Liz insisted we try it out, and we took up our positions, waiting several minutes until no one was in the way. I still remember the shock of Liz’s voice in my ear, so intimate and immediate, when I could see her only as a small shape across a distance of a hundred yards or so. “Meet me back at the hotel,” she whispered, “and I’ll show you a good time.”
Through some trick of acoustics, I now hear Detective Price’s voice, although I can’t even see him in the crowded and noisy space of the police station. His words float to my ear, precise and clear. “No, that’s what I’m telling you. That’s why we’re going for it. The guy is not lawyered up – you believe that? Not yet, anyway.”
He sits across from me, straddling a chair, arms making a kind of platform upon which he rests his handsome head. “You must be sick of this,” he says, with a sad swivel of his head. “I can only imagine.”
Price is good, I have to acknowledge that. I was expecting – I don’t know – gamesmanship, I guess. Good cop, bad cop with Shoffler, I don’t know. Some kind of heavy manners.
It’s not like that. It’s just me and Detective Price in the room. Shoffler is nowhere in sight, although I don’t doubt he’s behind the long mirror against the opposite wall.
I give my permission for the use of a tape recorder.
We start by going through my account of Saturday one more time, in great detail.
Then we move on to my finances.
“It’s tough, isn’t it, running two separate households on more or less the same income?”
I admit that it’s a strain, financially, but tell Price that Liz and I are getting by.
“I understand you were late with your support payments on two occasions.”