Roadside Crosses

nodded his thanks.
    “Now could you tell Deputy O’Neil here what you saw?”
    “Sure.” Pfister explained again about pulling over to make calls. “The boy had a dead animal of some sort. A squirrel, I think. He walked around in a circle three times without the body. Then he plants the cross and walks around it five times. He was talking to himself. It was weird. Like a different language.”
    “And then?”
    “He wrapped the squirrel up in this parchment paper and held the knife over it. He said something else in that weird language again. Then he left.”
    “Interesting,” O’Neil said. “You’re right, Kathryn.”
    It was then that Dance pulled off herpale-pink-framed glasses and polished them. And subtly swapped them for a pair with severe black frames.
    O’Neil caught on immediately that she was putting on her predator specs and stepped back. Dance moved closer to Pfister, well into his personal proxemic zone. Immediately, she could see, he felt a sense of threat.
    Good.
    “Now, Ken, I know you’re lying. And I need you to tell me the truth.”
    “Lying?” He blinked in shock.
    “That’s right.”
    Pfister’d been pretty good at his deception, but certain comments and behaviors had tipped her off. Her suspicions arose initially because of content-based analysis: considering what he said rather than how he said it. Some of his explanations sounded too incredible to be true. Claiming he didn’t know who the boy was and that he’d never heard about the Roadside Cross attack—when he seemed to go online regularly to get news. Claiming Travis was wearing a hoodie, which several of the posters to The Chilton Report had said, but not remembering the color—people tend to remember the hues of clothing far better than the garments themselves.
    Pfister had also paused frequently—liars often do this as they try to craft credible deceptive lines. And he’d used at least one “illustrator” gesture—the finger at the throat; people use these subconsciously to reinforce spurious statements.
    So, suspicious, Dance had then used a shorthand technique to test for deception: In determining if somebody’s lying, an interviewer will ask to hear his story several times. One who’s telling the truth mayedit the narrative some and remember things forgotten the first time through, but the chronology of events will always be the same. A liar, though, often forgets the sequence of occurrences within his fictional narrative. This happened with Pfister in retelling the story to O’Neil; he’d mixed up when the boy had planted the cross.
    Also, while honest witnesses may recall new facts during the second telling, they’ll rarely contradict the first version. Initially Pfister had said that Travis was whispering and that he couldn’t hear the words. The second version included the detail that he couldn’t understand the words, which were “weird,” implying that he had heard them.
    Dance concluded without a doubt that Pfister was fabricating.
    In other circumstances Dance would have handled the interrogation more subtly, tricked the witness into revealing the truth. But this was a man whose liar’s personality—she assessed him as a social deceiver—and slippery personal attitude would mean a long bout of tough interviewing to get to the truth. She didn’t have time. The second cross, containing today’s date, meant that Travis might be planning the next attack right now.
    “So, Ken, you’re real close to going to jail.”
    “What? No!”
    Dance didn’t mind a bit of double teaming. She glanced at O’Neil, who said, “You sure are. And we need the truth.”
    “Oh, please. Look . . .” But he offered nothing for their examination. “I didn’t lie! Really. Everything I told you is true.”
    This was different from assuring her that he’d actually seen what he said he had. Why did the guilty always think they were so clever? She asked, “Did you witness what you told me?”
    Under her laser gaze, Pfister looked away. His shoulders slumped. “No. But it’s all true. I know it!”
    “How can you?” she asked.
    “Because I read that somebody saw him doing what I told you. On this blog. The Chilton Report. ”
    Her eyes slipped to O’Neil’s. His expression matched hers. She asked, “Why did you lie?”
    He lifted his hands. “I wanted to make people aware of the danger. I thought people should be more careful with this psycho out there. They should take more precautions,