by Daniel Blake
They went back and forth like this for a while: Patrese probing and Levenfish defending, Patrese putting up flares and Levenfish shooting them back down again. An hour went by, two, and Patrese was getting nowhere. A more loquacious – hell, a more normal – man than Unzicker might have started talking by now, but it was lunchtime, fourteen hours or so since the arrest, and they were pretty much where they’d been to start with. Not so much back to square one as never having left square one in the first place.
Patrese paused the interview and stepped outside with Anderssen.
‘This is not going well,’ Patrese said.
‘You said it. I hoped he’d be a plumber and we could get to him that way, but no.’ A plumber was cop slang for someone who often needed to take a piss. You could usually threaten such people by refusing to let them go to the toilet until they’d co-operated.
‘It’s like interviewing Marcel Marceau.’
‘At least Marcel Marceau makes you laugh.’
‘He’s still at the dead point of absolute denial. We have to get him away from that. We’re not going to be in business till we do. We need to change our strategy around.’
‘How?’
‘If I knew that, we wouldn’t be out here in the first place.’
Levenfish emerged from the interview room. ‘Can you get us two coffees, please?’
‘Do I look like a fucking busboy?’ Anderssen snapped. ‘Machine’s down the end of the corridor. Get it your damn self.’
The arch of Levenfish’s eyebrow was superciliousness itself. ‘I see the Bureau have got better manners than the Cambridge police.’ He strode off towards the coffee machine.
‘The fuck does he think he is?’
Patrese held up a hand: wait. Anderssen furrowed his brow in puzzlement. Patrese waited till Levenfish was out of sight before he spoke.
‘That’s it.’
‘That’s what?’
‘That’s what we have to do.’
‘What are you talking about?’
Patrese mimicked Levenfish’s voice. ‘I see the Bureau have got better manners than the Cambridge police. Divide and rule, oldest play in the book: set the snobby Bureau against the salt-of-the-earth police.’
‘So?’
‘So that’s what we have to do back to them. Drive a wedge between Levenfish and Unzicker. Get them arguing. Get Unzicker to distrust his own lawyer.’
‘Sounds like a plan. But how are we going to do that?’
‘Find out what we can about Levenfish. Must be something we can use.’
Ten minutes on Google provided exactly that something. Mixing his metaphors with abandon, Patrese thought that you didn’t get to be lawyer to a man like Nursultan without being near the top of the tree, but sometimes you didn’t climb that tree without sailing close to the wind.
And so it proved with Levenfish. Levenfish had pulled off some spectacular results in the past, but there had also been what might charitably be described as setbacks. Patrese printed out the links, gave thanks to Brin–Page, Supreme God of the Search Engine, and went back into the interview room.
‘You know, Thomas, you don’t have to take the first attorney you’re given,’ he said.
Levenfish clicked his tongue. ‘What is this, Agent Patrese? Amateur hour?’
‘Thomas, you don’t have to say anything in reply to what I’m about to tell you. You don’t have to worry about incriminating yourself or anything like that. I just want to tell you a few things about Mr Levenfish here.’
‘This is deeply unprofessional. You have no right …’
‘I have every right. If I speak an untruth, I’m sure you’ll tell me. So let’s start with this. Who’s paying for your services, Mr Levenfish? Mr Nursultan, I presume. What’s Mr Nursultan’s aim here? Truth, justice and the American way? Or the preservation of your liberty, Thomas, so you can keep working on Misha? Mr Nursultan cares about you in one way and one way only: the value you can bring to that project, and by extension to him and his company. He doesn’t have your best interests at heart.’
‘That’s an untruth, right there,’ Levenfish said.
‘OK, let me amend that. He has your best interests at heart only as long as they coincide with his. The moment they diverge, he’ll drop you like a stone.’
‘Garbage.’
‘You want to take a bet on that? More to the point, Thomas, you’re putting yourself in a position where you’re beholden to him. At the moment, you work for him, he pays you, and whatever deal you have over Misha, that’s what you have – and, no offense, I bet the deal favors him rather than you. But for every minute Mr Levenfish sits here, every minute he bills on this case, Mr Nursultan has another favor to call in off of you, another hold over you. You ever get difficult with him, he’ll remind you that he sent someone to help you out when you were in trouble. People like him don’t forget those kinds of things, ever. It’s a debt you’ll owe him as surely as if you owed him money. And believe me, Mr Levenfish isn’t coming cheap.’
‘You get what you pay for. Pay peanuts, get monkeys. Pay my rates, get the best.’
‘The best? That right? Thomas, let me tell you a couple of things about your attorney. He’s been sued by clients for overcharging them and defrauding them.’
‘A case that I won.’
‘A case that you settled.’ Patrese took one of the printouts and slid it across the table to Unzicker. Levenfish picked it up. ‘No, you don’t,’ Patrese said. ‘You may not prevent me from showing your client such items.’
Levenfish glared at him, and put the printout down in front of Unzicker.
‘Thank you,’ Patrese continued. ‘He’s also been accused of laundering drugs money for clients.’
‘This is absurd. Accused? The case didn’t even make it to court.’
‘Largely because one of the major witnesses was killed in a car crash.’
‘Tragic.’
‘Empty road, good conditions, modern car, no alcohol or drugs found in the deceased’s system. That kind of car crash.’
He slid the second printout across to Unzicker. Levenfish made no attempt to intercept this one. Unzicker glanced at it, then looked up. Interest. Alarm.
‘You didn’t hire him, Thomas,’ Patrese continued. ‘But you can fire him, any time you like. We can find you another attorney.’
‘A state-funded one,’ Levenfish spat. ‘Losers who can’t make it in private practice.’
‘Let’s have a break,’ Patrese said.
They took Unzicker back to his cell and said they wouldn’t be questioning him again for a few hours. Levenfish could go: they’d call him in good time for him to make it back before the next session.
‘You don’t know who you’re fucking with,’ he said.
‘On the contrary,’ Patrese replied. ‘I think I know exactly who I’m fucking with.’
Patrese had told Levenfish they wouldn’t be questioning Unzicker again without him being there, but he hadn’t said anything about simply talking to Unzicker. Every half-hour, more or less, Patrese went down to Unzicker’s cell; just to see how you’re doing, he said. And on each visit, Patrese would insinuate how much better off Unzicker would be without Levenfish, though he never said so explicitly.
There was another reason for the regularity of Patrese’s visits, of course: to rule out the possibility of Unzicker getting any proper sleep. Repeatedly letting someone fall asleep and then waking them up after half an hour is as damaging as not letting them sleep at all. Patrese wanted to knock away at Unzicker’s resistance, tire him out, disorientate him. He made sure officers discussed the case as they walked past Unzicker’s cell door. Tricks of the trade that are second nature to law enforcement, but which work time and again on inexperienced suspects.
When Unzicker was looking even worse than he had done at the start of the day, Patrese called Levenfish and told him they were starting questioning again in a half-hour. Levenfish arrived, even edgier than he had been earlier. He’d doubtless repo
rted back to Nursultan, who’d equally doubtless put a rocket up his ass.
All of which suited Patrese just fine. The quickest way for Levenfish to alienate Unzicker was to become too aggressive, to fulfill the image of him as a ruthless shyster that Patrese had tried to plant in Unzicker’s brain.
So off they went again: asking Unzicker for the third time to tell them what he was doing yesterday. They were looking for inconsistencies, things he’d said before that he contradicted now, things he hadn’t said before that he did say now, things he’d said before that he didn’t say now.
Levenfish started to get antsy at this, as they’d hoped he would; blustering about the police wasting everyone’s time, about how they hadn’t got any evidence with which to charge Unzicker, and so on. Patrese asked Levenfish to shut up and let his client answer. Anderssen asked Levenfish whether he was getting paid by the word or the minute. No wonder Levenfish’s clients had sued him, Patrese added.
Back and forth, back and forth, Unzicker in the corner like a piece of spare meat as they all argued over him. Happy to be ignored? Not if Patrese could help it. While Anderssen argued with Levenfish, Patrese began talking softly to Unzicker; Leave them to their silly battles, his tone seemed to say, let’s you and me talk like men.
Anderssen had distracted Levenfish so effectively that it was a minute or so before Levenfish noticed that Patrese and Unzicker were talking; and Anderssen had riled Levenfish so effectively that he went straight off the deep end.
‘Don’t talk to him!’ Levenfish yelled: at Patrese, but at Unzicker too. ‘Don’t you damn well talk to him! Don’t tell ’em a damn thing, Thomas! Shut the fuck up! Sit there and keep quiet, same as you always do.’
Unzicker looked at Patrese. He opened his mouth to say something, and Levenfish was in his face instantly. ‘No! Shut the fuck up! You don’t say anything, they can’t get you on anything! Which part of that massive freaky nerd brain of yours doesn’t get that?’
Patrese wouldn’t smile: not now, not yet, not while Unzicker could see him. Levenfish sat back in his chair, suddenly and belatedly conscious that he might have gone too far. He wouldn’t say sorry, Patrese guessed: he didn’t look like the kind of guy who ever said sorry, especially not to a client in front of the cops.
Unzicker opened his mouth again, and this time he did speak.
‘I’d like you to leave, please.’
With Levenfish gone, and a replacement on the way – though quite who and when was left deliberately vague – they got down to business again. Patrese and Anderssen against Unzicker, good cop and bad cop, interviewer and interrogator. Anderssen jabbed his points home like a boxer. You killed O’Kelly. You said you were down by the river. The river’s where the boathouses are. Chase Evans was found at the Harvard boathouse.
Then Patrese, more thoughtful. It must be a privilege to kill a human, no? What an honor, to be the last person to see someone alive, the first to see someone dead, the only witness to the transition between the two. Half and half, midway between states of existence. Like a vampire.
Anderssen again. Darrell Showalter was from Cambridge. Connections, connections. You worked out this plan with Kwasi over the course of your work on Misha. You killed the first two victims together in New Haven, more or less equidistant between your home and Kwasi’s. Tell us. You killed them. Tell us. You killed them. Tell us.
Unzicker was flinching with every accusation that Anderssen made. His head jerked back, as though he was being physically hit. He looked round for help; at Patrese. Patrese said nothing, but made the slightest gesture with his hand: there’s only one way to stop this, and you know it as well as I do. Just give in. You’ll feel better.
Showalter: hit, flinch. Boathouse: hit, flinch. Evans: hit, flinch.
It was warm in the interview room. Patrese poured two glasses of water. He handed one to Anderssen, drank the other himself. A third glass remained empty.
Anderssen was prowling, snarling, sweating. A few hours before, with a lawyer present, this wouldn’t have worked; but Unzicker was even more tired now than he had been then, and he was alone and outnumbered. His fear of being treated like this was pitched squarely against his desire for it to stop. He was crumbling, fingers clinging on to the sheer face of his innocence, and Anderssen was kicking those grips away one by one.
‘I did it,’ Unzicker said suddenly. ‘I did it. I killed them. I killed them all.’
It was dark outside. They’d put Unzicker back in his cell while they went through the formalities: typing the confession, talking to the DA who’d lead the prosecution, and so on. Normally, they’d announce the charges to the media in fairly short order, but Patrese wanted to hold off. There were two issues here, he said, and only one of them had been taken care of. They’d wanted Unzicker to confess, but they also wanted to get to Kwasi somehow, and right now they had little idea how to do that.
Telling the world that Unzicker was being charged with triple homicide would send Kwasi deep underground. They still had half their forty-eight hours left, and Unzicker was going nowhere. They’d go and get some sleep, and convene tomorrow morning to discuss how best to play this, how best to tempt Kwasi out of hiding. They didn’t have to tell anyone anything until round about ten o’clock tomorrow evening, when the original time period would expire.
Patrese went back to his hotel – his second hotel, of course, because most of his stuff was still in New Haven – liberated a couple of beers from the minibar, and flicked uninterestedly through the TV channels. It had been a long day: interrogations – sorry, interviews – always were, unless you got someone who confessed right off the bat. Patrese hadn’t known many of those in his time; in fact, the only one he could remember was a woman in Pittsburgh whose boyfriend had been killed, and who could hardly wait to tell Patrese how she’d done it. Patrese’s problem that day hadn’t been getting her to talk; it had been getting her to shut up.
And, as it had turned out, there was a reason she’d sung so freely. She hadn’t done it at all. She’d confessed in order to take the heat for the real killer – her son.
That was what was nagging at Patrese. It had been Anderssen who’d gotten the confession, not him; and Anderssen’s methods were exactly the type that produced false confessions. Yes, Patrese had been instrumental in persuading Unzicker to get rid of Levenfish, which in turn had given Anderssen a clear run, but only now, in the cold dark of the night, did he really let himself wonder: was Unzicker’s confession on the level?
47
Friday, November 19th
Patrese tossed and turned till the small hours, flipping things over in his head until they all zoomed in on each other like a tangle of wires. That Unzicker had confessed didn’t make him guilty, but nor did it make him innocent. Most people tried to hold out for a while. If you started doubting every confession, then where would you be?
But, but … many people outside law enforcement think the only way you can get a false confession is to beat it out of the subject. Patrese knew that wasn’t true. Criminologists divide confessions into three categories: voluntary, involving no external pressure (though the confession itself may not be true for any number of reasons, including psychosis, preserving another’s reputation, and so on); ‘coerced-compliant’, where the confessor knows they aren’t guilty but confesses anyway to receive a promised reward or avoid an adverse penalty; and ‘coerced-internalized’, when an innocent suspect is induced to believe they’re guilty.
Patrese remembered some Bureau report about a lab experiment demonstrating these last two points. Students were paired with researchers. The researcher read out individual letters, which the student typed into a computer. Each student was warned that they should on no account touch the ALT key, because a bug in the program would crash the computer and lose all the data. A minute into the experiment, unseen by the student, the researcher secretly crashed the computer, and then accused the student of pressing the ALT key. Every single student denied it at first. Each researcher the
n wrote out a confession and asked their particular student to sign it, getting angry with those who refused. Eventually, more than two-thirds of the students signed. Half of those added false details to embellish and justify their confessions. And, interestingly, there was a direct correlation between the speed at which the researchers had read out the initial letters and the likelihood of the students confessing. The quicker they’d been obliged to type, the more likely they were to sign. They’d been flustered, agitated, browbeaten.
Just like Unzicker had been.
A confession didn’t make you guilty. A false confession didn’t take the real killer off the streets. A confession, true or false, ran the risk of them losing their lifeline to Kwasi.
Patrese had been wrong about Kwasi. Was he wrong about Unzicker? One didn’t presuppose the other. Take each case on its own merits. But that was easier said than done. When you work in law enforcement, sooner or later you end up thinking that it’s better to put an innocent man inside than let a guilty one go free. The civil liberties mob see it the other way round, of course; but the civil liberties mob don’t exactly have traction in police stations and Bureau offices up and down the nation.
Anderssen wouldn’t care whether the confession was true or not, Patrese knew. Anderssen had got his man, and that was enough for him. Anderssen gave thought only to what happened on his patch: Showalter, Evans, O’Kelly. The rest of the investigation – what Dufresne was doing in New York, what Kieseritsky had found in New Haven, the whole operation Patrese was conducting – none of that was Anderssen’s concern. Patrese didn’t blame him for that, but he did have to take account of it. He wouldn’t mention his concerns to Anderssen. Anderssen would only try to talk him out of it.
Patrese needed sleep more than anything. It wasn’t coming. Figuring that rest was better than nothing, he lay in the darkness for several hours, trying to relax. Maybe he dropped off at some stage, maybe he didn’t. But by six he was dressed and driving back to the police station.
