Triple Threat

day the water view might be fine but the fog had descended and the scenery was gray and gloomy. Inside, though, with the holiday lights and dimmed overheads, the banquet room took on a warm, comfy tone.
    Hal was walking around in his conservative suit, white shirt andoversized Santa hat. People sipped wine and punch, snapped digital pictures and clustered, talking about politics and sports and shopping and impending vacations.
    Also, a lot of comments about interest rates, the Fed, and the euro.
    With bankers you couldn’t get away from shop talk. Ever.
    “We heard there’s a surprise, Carol,” one of the members called.
    “What?” came another voice.
    “Be patient,” she said, laughing. “If I told you it wouldn’t be a surprise, now would it?”
    When the party seemed to be spinning along on its own, she walked to the stage and tested the PA system once again. Yes, it was working fine.
    Thank goodness.
    The “surprise” depended on it. She’d arranged for the chorus from one of her grandson’s high schools to go up on stage and present a holiday concert, traditional and modern Christmas and Hanukkah songs. She glanced at her watch. The kids would arrive at about 3:45. She’d heard the youngsters before and they were very good.
    Carol laughed to herself, recalling the entertainment at last year’s party. Herb Ross, a VP at First People’s Trust, who’d injected close to a quart of the “special” punch, had climbed on the table to sing—and even worse (or better, for later water cooler stories) to act out—the entire Twelve Days of Christmas himself, the leaping lords being the high point.
    # # #
    Kathryn Dance spent a precious ten minutes texting and talking to a number of people in the field and here at headquarters.
    It seemed that outside the surreality of the interrogation room, the investigation hadn’t moved well at all. Monterey’s Forensic Services Unit was still analyzing trace connected with the Taurus and the suspects’ pocket litter and Abbott Calderman said they might not have any answers for another ten or fifteen minutes.
    Lord, she thought.
    Michael O’Neil, when last heard from, had been pursuing the third conspirator in the abandoned army base. A police chopper had lost him in a cloud of dust and sand. She’d had a brief conversation with FBI agent Steve Nichols in a nearby mobile command post, who’d said, “This Paulson isn’t saying anything. Not a word. Just stares at me. I’d like to waterboard him.”
    “We don’t do that,” Dance had reminded.
    “I’m just daydreaming,” Nichols had muttered and hung up.
    Now, returning to the interrogation room with Wayne Keplar, Dance looked at the clock on the wall.
    3:10.
    “Hey,” said Wayne Keplar, eyeing it briefly, then turning his gaze to Dance. “You’re not mad at me, are you?”
    Dance sat across the table from him. It was clear she wasn’t going to power a confession out of him, so she didn’t bother with the tradecraft of kinesic interviewing. She said, “I’m sure it’s no surprise that, before, I tried to analyze your body language and was hoping to come up with a way to pressure you into telling me what you and Gabe and your other associate had planned.”
    “Didn’t know that about the body language. But makes sense.”
    “Now I want to do something else, and I’m going to tell you exactly what that is. No tricks.”
    “Shoot. I’m game.”
    Dance had decided that traditional analysis and interrogation wouldn’t work with someone like Wayne Keplar. His lack of affect, his fanatic’s belief in the righteousness of his cause made kinesics useless. Content-based analysis wouldn’t do much good either; this is body language’s poor cousin, seeking to learn whether a suspect is telling the truth by considering if what he says makes sense. But Keplar was too much in control to let slip anything that she might parse for clues about deception and truth.
    So she was doing something radical.
    Dance now said, “I want to prove to you that your beliefs—what’s motivating you and your group to perform this attack—they’re wrong.”
    He lifted an eyebrow. Intrigued.
    This was a ludicrous idea for an interrogator. One should never argue substance with a suspect. If a man is accused of killing his wife, your job is to determine the facts and, if it appears that he did indeed commit murder, get a confession or at least gather enough information to help investigators secure his