The Cold Moon

often?”
    “No. I just happened to last night.”
    “If you don’t walk it often then how do you know so much about Cedar Street? The fact there’re no residences, the closing time of the restaurants and the construction work?”
    “I just do. What the hell’s this all about?” Sweat was dotting his forehead.
    “When you dropped the money, did you take your gloves off to get your subway pass out of your pocket?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “I assume you did. You can’t reach into a pocket with winter gloves on.”
    “Okay,” he snapped. “You know so much, then I did.”
    “With the temperature as cold as it was, why would you do that ten minutes before you got to the subway station?”
    “You can’t talk to me this way.”
    She said in a firm, low voice, “And you didn’t check the time on the subway platform, did you?”
    “Yes, I did. It was nine thirty-five.”
    “No, you didn’t. You’re not going to be flashing a five-thousand-dollar watch on the subway platform at night.”
    “Okay, that’s it. I’m not saying anything else.”
    When an interrogator confronts a deceptive subject, that person experiences intense stress and responds in various ways to try to escape from that stress—barriers to the truth, Dance called them. The most destructive and difficult response state to break through is anger, followed by depression, then denial, and finally bargaining. The interrogator’s role is to decide what stress state the suspect is in and neutralize it—and any subsequent ones—until finally the subject reaches the acceptance state, that is, confession, in which he finally will be honest.
    Dance had assessed that though Cobb displayed some anger he was primarily in the denial state—such subjects are very quick to plead memory problems and to blame the interrogator for misunderstandings. The best way to break down a subject in denial is to do what Dance had just done—it’s known as “attacking on the facts.” With an extrovert you slam home weaknesses and contradictions in their stories one after another until their defenses are shattered.
    “Ari, you got off work at seven-thirty and went to Hanover’s. We knowthat. You were there for about an hour and a half. After that you walked two blocks out of your way to Cedar Street. You know Cedar real well because you go there to pick up hookers. Last night between nine and nine thirty, one of them stopped her car near the alley. You negotiated a price and paid her. You got into the car with her. You got out of the car around ten fifteen or so. That’s when you dropped the money by the curb, probably checking your cell phone to see if your wife had called or getting a little extra cash for a tip. Meanwhile, the killer had pulled into the alley and you noticed it and saw something. What? What did you see?”
    “No . . .”
    “Yes,” Dance said evenly. She stared at him and said nothing more.
    Finally his head lowered and his legs uncrossed. His lip was trembling. He wasn’t confessing but she’d moved him up a step in the chain of stress response states—from denial to bargaining. Now Dance had to change tack. She had both to offer sympathy and to give him a way to save face. Even the most cooperative subjects in the bargaining state will continue to lie or stonewall if you don’t leave them some dignity and a way to escape the worst consequences of what they’ve done.
    She pulled her glasses off and sat back. “Look, Ari, we don’t want to ruin your life. You got scared. It’s understandable. But this is a very dangerous man we’re trying to stop. He’s killed two people and he may be going to kill some more. If you can help us find him, what we’ve learned about you here today doesn’t have to come out in public. No subpoenas, no calls to your wife or boss.”
    Dance glanced at Detective Baker, who said, “That’s absolutely right.”
    Cobb sighed. Eyes on the floor, he muttered, “Fuck. It was three hundred goddamn dollars. Why the hell did I go back there this morning?”
    Greed and stupidity, though Kathryn Dance. But she said kindly, “We all make mistakes.”
    A hesitation. Then he sighed again. “See, this’s the crazy thing. It wasn’t much—what I saw, I mean. You’re probably not going to believe me. I hardly saw anything. I didn’t even see a person.”
    “If you’re honest with us we’ll believe you. Go on.”
    “It was about ten-thirty, a little after. After I got out of the . . .