The Cold Moon

glasses.
    Now—she was going to snare him.
    Kathryn Dance smiled and said, “Thank you, Vincent. I think that’ll be it. Hey, you thirsty?” the agent added. “Want a soda?”
    Vincent nodded. “Yeah. Thanks.”
    Dance glanced at Rhyme. “Could we get him something?”
    Rhyme blinked and shot a perplexed look at Sachs, who was frowning. What the hell was Dance thinking? She hadn’t gotten a single bit of information out of him. The criminalist was thinking, A waste of time. That’s all she’s going to ask him? And now she’s playing hostess? Reluctantly Rhyme called Thom, who brought Dance a Coke.
    Dance put a straw in and held it up for the handcuffed man to drink from. He drained the glass in seconds.
    “Vincent, just give us a few minutes alone, if you don’t mind, and I think we’ll get this all straightened out.”
    “Okay. Sure.”
    The patrol officers escorted him out. Dance shut the door behind him.
    Dennis Baker shook his head, staring unhappily at the agent. Sellitto muttered, “Worthless.”
    Dance frowned. “No, no, we’re doing fine.”
    “We are?” Rhyme asked.
    “Right on track . . . Now, here’s the situation. I got his baseline readings and then asked him about the reverse order of events—it’s a good way to catch up deceptive subjects who’ve been improvising. People can describe an actual series of past events in any order—from start to finish or backward—without a problem. But people fabricate events in only one direction, start to finish. When they try to reconstruct it backward, they don’t have the cues that they used in creating the scenario and they trip up. So, I learned right up front that he’s the Watchmaker’s assistant.”
    “You did?” Sellitto laughed.
    “Oh, that was obvious. His recognition responses were off the charts. And he’s not afraid for his personal safety, like he claimed. No, he knows the Watchmaker and he’s been involved in the crimes but in a way that I can’t figure out. More than just a getaway driver.”
    “But you didn’t ask him about any of that,” Baker pointed out. “Shouldn’t we be picking apart where he said he was at the times of the attacks at the florist shop and the apartment in Greenwich Village?”
    Rhyme’s observation, too.
    “Oh, no. Worst thing to do. If I did, those are the subjects he’d stonewall on instantly.” She continued. “He’s a complicated person, there’s a lot of conflict going on inside him, and my feeling is that he’s in the second state of stress response, depression. That’s essentially anger turned inward. And it’s very difficult to break through. Given his personality type, I’d need to create a sympathetic bond between us and it would take days, maybe weeks, to get to the truth with traditional interrogation methods. But we don’t have days. Our only chance is to try something radical.”
    “What?”
    Dance nodded at the straw Vincent had used. “Can you order a DNA test?” she asked Rhyme.
    “Yes. But it’ll take some time.”
    “That’s okay, as long as we can say truthfully it’s been ordered.” She smiled. “Never lie. But you don’t have to tell a suspect everything.”
    Rhyme wheeled around to the main portion of the lab, where Mel Cooper and Pulaski were still working on the evidence. He explained what they needed and Cooper packaged the straw in plastic and filled out a DNA analysis request. “There. Technically it’s been ordered. The lab just doesn’t know it yet.” He laughed.
    Dance explained: “There’s something big he’s keeping from me. He’s very nervous about it. His response to my question about being arrested was deceptive but it’s also very rehearsed. I think he was collared but it was a while ago. There’re no prints on file so he fell through the cracks—maybe a lab screwup, maybe he was a juvenile. But I know he’s run into the law before. And I finally got a sense of what it might be. That’s why I took my jacket off and had Amelia walk around in front of him. He’s eating up the two of us with his eyes. Trying not to but he can’t help it. That makes me think there’s a sexual assault or two in his past. I want to bluff and use that against him.
    “The problem is,” she continued, “that he could call me on it. Then we lose our bargaining power and it’ll take a long time to grind him down and get anything helpful.”
    Sellitto said to Rhyme, “I know where you come down on it.”
    Hell, yes, Rhyme thought.