The Cold Moon

man, who was uneasy and angry, and nodded him to a chair. She sat across from him—nothing between them—and scooted forward until she was in a neutral proxemic zone, the term referring to the physical space between a subject and an interviewer. This zone can be adjusted to make the subject more or less comfortable. She was not too close to be invasive but not so far away as to give him a sense of security. (“You push the edge of edgy,” she’d say in her lectures.)
    “Mr. Cobb, my name’s Kathryn Dance. I’m a law enforcement agent and I’d like to talk to you about what you saw last night.”
    “This is ridiculous. I already told them”—a nod at Rhyme—“everything I saw.”
    “Well, I just arrived. I don’t have the benefit of your previous answers.”
    Jotting responses, she asked a number of simple questions—where he lived and worked, marital status, and the like—which gave her Cobb’s baseline reaction to stress. She listened carefully to his answers. (“Watching and listening are the two most important parts of the interview. Speaking comes last.”)
    One of the first jobs of an interviewer is to determine the personality type of the subject—whether he’s an introvert or extrovert. These typesaren’t what most people think; they’re not about being boisterous or retiring. The distinction is about how people make decisions. An introvert is governed by intuition and emotion more than logic and reason; an extrovert, the opposite. Assigning personalities helps the interviewer in framing the questions and picking the right tone and physical demeanor to adopt when asking them. For instance, taking a gruff, clipped approach with an introvert will make him withdraw into his shell.
    Ari Cobb, though, was a classic extrovert and an arrogant one at that—no kid gloves were needed. This was Kathryn Dance’s favorite kind of subject. She got to kick serious butt when interviewing them.
    Cobb cut off a question. “You’ve held me way too long. I have to get to work. What happened to that man isn’t my fault.”
    Respectful but firm, Dance said, “Oh, it’s not a question of fault. . . . Now, Ari, let’s talk about last night.”
    “You don’t believe me. You’re calling me a liar. I wasn’t there when the crime happened.”
    “I’m not suggesting you’re lying. But there still might’ve been something you saw that could help us. Something you think isn’t important. See, part of my job is helping people remember things. I’ll walk you through the events of last night and maybe something’ll occur to you.”
    “Well, there’s nothing I saw. I just dropped some money. That’s all. I handled the whole thing badly. And now it’s a federal case. This is such bullshit.”
    “Let’s just go back to yesterday. One step at a time. You were working in your office. Stenfeld Brothers Investments. In the Hartsfield Building.”
    “Yeah.”
    “All day?”
    “Right.”
    “You got off work at what time?”
    “Seven thirty, a little before.”
    “And what did you do after that?”
    “I went to Hanover’s for drinks.”
    “That’s on Water Street,” she said. Always keep your subjects guessing exactly how much you know.
    “Yeah. It was a martini and Karaoke thing. They call it Martuney Night. Like ‘tunes.’”
    “Clever.”
    “I’ve got a group I meet there. We go a lot. Some friends. Close friends.”
    She noticed that his body language meant he was about to add something—probably he was anticipating her asking for their names. Being too ready with an alibi is an indicator of deception—the subject tends to think that offering it is good enough and the police won’t bother to check it out, or won’t be smart enough to figure out that having a drink at 8 P.M. doesn’t exculpate you from a robbery that happened at seven thirty.
    “You left when?”
    “At nine or so.”
    “And went home?”
    “Yes.”
    “To the Upper East Side.”
    A nod.
    “Did you take a limo?”
    “Limo, right,” he said sarcastically. “No, the subway.”
    “From which station?”
    “Wall Street.”
    “Did you walk?”
    “Yes.”
    “How?”
    “Carefully,” he said, grinning. “It was icy.”
    Dance smiled. “The route?”
    “I walked down Water Street, cut over on Cedar to Broadway then south.”
    “And that’s where you lost your money clip. On Cedar. How did that happen?” Her tone and the questions were completely nonthreatening. He was relaxing now. His attitude was