By CI I mean “cognitive interview.” Witness recollections and accounts are one of our bugbears. People see too little, or don’t remember what they’ve seen, due to trauma and emotion. They can remember things that didn’t really happen. Cognitive-interview technique has been in use for a long time, and while it has a specific methodology, its application is more of an art form. I’m very good at it. Callie is better. Alan is a master.
The basic concept behind the cognitive interview is that simply walking a witness through from the start of the event to the end, over and over, does not, as a rule, lead to more recollection. Instead, three techniques are used. The first is context. Rather than starting from the beginning of the event, you take them prior to it. What their day was like, how it was going, what life worries/happinesses/banalities were running through their head. Get them to recall the normal flow of their life prior to the abnormal event you want them to remember. The theory is that this serves to put the event you want them to recall into context. By grounding them in memories prior to the event, they are more able to move forward through the event and will remember in greater detail. The second technique is to change the sequence of recall. Rather than starting them from the beginning, start them from the end, and go backward. Or begin in the middle. It makes the witness start and stop and reexamine. The last part of a good CI is changing perspective. “Wow,” you might say, “I wonder what that looked like to the person standing by the door?” This shifts their inspection of the event and can jar more facts loose.
With someone like Jenny, who is a trained investigator with excellent memory, cognitive interviewing can be very, very effective.
“It’s late afternoon,” I say, starting. “You’re in your office, doing…?”
She looks up toward the ceiling, remembering. “I’m talking to Charlie. We’re going over a case we’ve been working on. Sixteen-year-old prostitute, beaten to death and left in an alley in the Tenderloin.”
“Uh-huh. What are you saying about it?”
Her eyes get sad. “It’s what he’s saying. About how no one gives a shit about a dead whore, even if she’s just sixteen years old. He’s mad and sad, and venting. Charlie doesn’t do well with dead kids.”
“How did you feel at the time, listening to that?”
She shrugs, sighs. “About the same. Mad. Sad. Not venting about it the way he was, but understanding. I remember looking down at my desk while he was ranting away, and noticing that the side of one of the photos from her file was sticking out. It was a picture from the scene, where we found her. I could see part of her leg from the knee down. It looked dead. I felt tired.”
“Go on.”
“Charlie wound down. He finished spewing, and then he just sat there for a second. He finally looked over and gave me that silly, lopsided smile of his, and said he was sorry. I told him it was no big deal.” She shrugs. “He’s listened to my ranting in the past. It’s one of the things partners do.”
“How did you feel about him, at that moment?”
“Close.” She waves a hand. “Not lovey or sexual, or anything like that. That’s never come up between us. Just close. I knew he’d always be there for me and vice versa. I was happy to have a good partner. I was about to tell him that, when the call came in.”
“From the perp?”
“Yeah. I remember feeling kind of…disoriented when the perp started talking.”
“Disoriented how?”
“Well, life was—normal. I was sitting there with Charlie, and someone says ‘you got a phone call’ and I say ‘thanks’ and pick it up—circumstances and motions I’ve experienced and done a thousand times. Normal. Suddenly, it wasn’t. I went from the usual to talking to something evil”—she snaps her fingers—“just like that. It was jarring.” Her eyes are troubled as she says this.
This is the other reason I decided to use CI technique with Jenny. The biggest problem with witness memory is the trauma of the event. Strong feelings cloud recall. People outside law enforcement don’t understand that we experience our own trauma. Strangled children, chopped-up mothers, raped young boys. Talking to murderers on the phone. These experiences are shocking. They are filled with emotion, however well suppressed. They are traumatic.
“I understand. I think we have context here, Jenny.” My voice is smooth and quiet. She’s letting me put her in the “then,” and I want to keep her close to it. “Let’s move forward. Take it from when you are walking up to the door of Annie’s apartment.”
She squints at nothing I can see. “It’s a white door. I remember thinking it was the whitest door I’d ever seen. Something about that made me feel hollow. Cynical.”
“How so?”
She looks at me and her eyes seem ancient. “Because I knew it was a lie. All that white. Total bullshit. I felt it in my gut. Whatever was behind that door wasn’t white, not at all. It was going to be dark and rotten and ugly.”
Something cold twinges inside of me. A kind of vicarious déjà vu. I have felt what she is describing.
“Go on.”
“We knock, and we call her name. Nothing. It’s quiet.” She frowns. “You know what else was strange?”
“What?”
“No one peeked out their door to see what was going on. I mean, we were ‘cop knocking.’ Loud and pounding. But no one looked. I don’t think she really knew her neighbors. Or maybe they just weren’t close.”
She sighs.
“Anyway. Charlie looks over at me, and I look back at him, and we both look at the uniforms, and we all unholster our weapons.” She bites her lip. “That bad feeling was really strong. It was an anxiety ball bouncing around in my stomach. I could feel it in the others too. Smell it. Sweat and adrenaline trembles. Shallow breathing.”
“Were you scared?” I ask her.
She doesn’t answer for a moment. “Yeah. I was scared. Of what we were going to find.” She grimaces at me. “Want to know something weird? I’m always scared just before I get to a scene. I’ve been on homicide for over ten years, and I’ve seen everything, but it still scares me, every time.”
“Go on.”
“I tried the doorknob, and it turned, no problem. I looked at everyone again and opened the door, wide. We all had our weapons up and ready.”
I switch perspectives on her. “What do you think the first thing Charlie noticed was?”
“The smell. It had to be. There was the smell, and the dark. All the lights were off, except for the one in her bedroom.” She shivers, and I realize that she’s unaware of it. “You could see the doorway to her bedroom from where we were standing. It was down a hallway almost directly in line with the front door. The apartment was close to being pitch-black, but the bedroom doorway was kind of…outlined by light.” She runs a hand through her hair. “It reminded me of that whole ‘monster in the closet’ thing I had sometimes as a kid. Something scratching on the other side of that door, wanting out. Something awful.”
“Tell me about the smell.”
She grimaces. “Perfume and blood. That’s what it smelled like. The smell of perfume was stronger, but you could smell the blood underneath it. Thick and coppery. Subtle, but kind of…aggravating. Disturbing. Like something you could see out of the corner of your eye.”
I file this away. “What then?”
“We did the usual. Called out to the occupants, cleared the living room and the kitchen. We used flashlights, because I didn’t want anyone touching anything.”
“That’s good.” I nod, encouraging.
“After that, we did what made sense—we went toward the bedroom door.” She stops and looks at me. “I told Charlie to put on gloves before we even entered, Smoky.”
She is telling me she knew, felt, that murder was on the other side of that door. That she was going to be dealing with evidence, not survivors. “I remember looking at the doorknob. Not wanting to turn it. I didn’t want to look inside. To let it out.”
“Go on.”
“Charlie turn
ed the knob. It wasn’t locked. We had a little trouble opening it because there was a towel stuffed along the bottom of the door.”
“A towel?”
“Soaked in perfume. He’d put it there so the smell of your friend’s corpse wouldn’t come wafting out. He didn’t want anyone finding her until he was ready.”
And just like that, part of me wants to stop this. Wants to get up, walk out the door of this coffee shop, hop in the jet, and go home. It is a feeling that surges over me, almost overpowering. I fight it back.
“And then?” I prompt her.
She is quiet, staring off. Seeing too much. When she begins to speak again, her voice is flat and empty. “It hit us all at once. I think that’s what he wanted. The bed had been moved so that it was in line with the door. So that when we opened it, we could see it all, smell it all, in an instant.” She shakes her head. “I remember thinking of that white, white front door. It made me feel so fucking bitter. It was just too much to process. I think we stood there for at least a minute. Just looking. It was Charlie that realized it first—that Bonnie was alive.” She stops talking, staring into that moment. I wait her out. “She blinked, that’s what I remember. Her cheek was lying against her dead mother’s face, and she looked dead herself. We thought she was. And then she blinked. Charlie started cursing, and”—she bites her lip—“crying a little. But that’s between us and the uniforms we had there, okay?”
“Don’t worry.”
“That was the first and—I hope—only fuckup. Charlie just ran into the room and untied Bonnie. Trampled all over the scene.” Her voice sounds both hollow and bemused. “He wouldn’t stop cursing. He was cursing in Italian. It sounds very pretty. Strange, huh?”
“Yeah.” I’m gentle in my reply. Jenny is there, completely in the moment, and I don’t want to jar her out of it.
“Bonnie was limp and nonresponsive. Boneless. Charlie untied her and whisked her right out of that apartment. Right out, before I could even think to say or do anything. He was desperate. I understood.” Her face twists. “I sent the uniforms out to call EMS and CSU and the ME, blah, blah, blah. That left me there with your friend. In that room, smelling like death and perfume and blood. Feeling so angry and sad I could have puked. Staring down at Annie.” She shivers again. Her fist clenches and unclenches. “You ever notice that about the dead, Smoky? How still and quiet they are? Nothing alive could ever fake that kind of stillness. Still and silent and nobody home. I shut off at that point.” She looks at me and shrugs. “You know how it works.”
I nod. I do. You get over the initial shock, and then you shut down the part of you that feels so that you can do your job without weeping or puking or losing your mind on the spot. You have to be able to give horror a clinical eye. It’s unnatural.
“It’s funny to look back at it, in a way. It’s like I can hear my own voice in my head, some kind of robotic monotone.” She mimics this as she speaks. “White female, approximately thirty-five years of age, tied to her bed in the nude. Evidence of cuts from neck to knees, probably made by a knife. Many cuts look long and shallow, showing probable torture. Torso”—her voice wavers for a second—“torso cavity open and seems to be empty of organs. Victim’s face is twisted, as though she was screaming when she died. Bones in her arms and legs appear to be broken. Killing looks purposeful. Appears to have been slow. Posing of the body suggests prior thought and planning. Not a crime of passion.”
“Tell me about that,” I say. “What’s the sense you got of him from the scene, at that exact moment?”
She is silent for a long time. I wait, watching as she looks out the window. She turns her eyes to me.
“Her agony made him come, Smoky. It was the best sex he ever had.”
These sentences stop me. They are dark, cold, and horrible.
But they are some of what I was looking for. And they ring true. Even as they empty me out, leave me hollow, I begin to smell him. He smells like perfume and blood, like doorways in shadow, outlined by light. He smells like laughter mixed with screams. He smells like lies disguised as truth, and decay seen out of the corner of your eye.
He is precise. And he savors the act.
“Thanks, Jenny.” I feel empty and dirty and filled with shadows. But I also feel something beginning to stir inside. A dragon. Something I was afraid was dead and gone, amputated from me by Joseph Sands. It’s not awake, not yet. But I can feel it again, for the first time in months.
Jenny shakes herself a little. “Pretty good. You really put me in it.”
“It didn’t take much skill on my part. You’re a dream witness.” My response sounds listless to me. I feel so tired right now.
We sit for a moment, quiet. Contemplative and disturbed.
My mocha no longer tastes exquisite, and Jenny seems to have lost interest in her tea. Death and horror do that. They can suck the joy from any moment. It’s the one thing that you have to struggle with, always, in law enforcement. Survivor’s guilt. It seems almost sacrilegious to savor a moment in life while talking about the screaming end of someone else’s.
I sigh. “Can you take me to see Bonnie?”
We pay the check and leave. The whole way over, I’m dreading the thought of seeing those staring eyes. I smell blood and perfume, perfume and blood. It smells like despair.
11
I HATE HOSPITALS. I’m glad they are there when they’re needed, but I have only one good memory of being at one: the birth of my daughter. Otherwise, a visit to the hospital has always been because I am hurt, or someone I care for is hurt, or someone is dead. This is no exception. We have entered a hospital because we need to see a young girl who was bound to her dead mother for three days.
My own time in the hospital is a surreal memory. It was a time of intense physical pain and an unending wish to die. A time of not sleeping for days, until I’d pass out from exhaustion. Of staring at a ceiling in the dark, while monitors hummed and the soft sound of nurses’ shoes shuffled down the hallways, overloud in the cotton-stuffed quiet. Of listening to my soul, which had the empty rushing sound you hear when you put your ear to a seashell.
I smell its smell, and shiver inside.
“Here we are,” Jenny says.
The cop in front is alert. He asks to see my identification, even though I’m with Jenny. I approve.
“Any other visitors?” Jenny asks.
He shakes his head. “Nope. It’s been quiet.”
“Don’t let anyone in while we’re inside, Jim. I don’t care who it is, got it?”
“Whatever you say, Detective.”
He sits back in his chair and unfurls a newspaper, and we enter.
I feel dizzy the moment the door closes and I see Bonnie’s still form. She’s not asleep, her eyes are open. But they don’t even move in response to the sound of our entrance. She is small, tiny, made more so as she is dwarfed not just by the hospital bed, but by her circumstances. I am amazed how much she looks like Annie. The same blond hair and upturned nose, those cobalt-blue eyes. In a few more years she will be almost a twin of the girl I held on a bathroom floor in high school so many years ago. I realize I’ve been holding my breath. I exhale, walking over to her.
She’s on the barest of monitoring. Jenny had explained on the way over that a thorough exam showed no rape and no physical injury. There is a part of me that is thankful for that, but I know her wounds run much deeper. They are gaping and bloody and no doctor can stitch them, these wounds of the mind.
“Bonnie?” I speak in a soft, measured voice. I remember reading somewhere about talking to people in a coma, how they can hear you and it helps. This is close enough to that. “I’m Smoky. Your mother and I were best friends, for a long time. I’m your godmother.”
No response. Just those eyes, staring at the ceiling. Seeing something else. Maybe seeing nothing. I move to the side of the bed. I hesitate before taking her small hand in mine. A wave of dizziness crashes over me at the feel of her soft skin. This is the hand of a ch
ild, not fully grown, a symbol of that which we protect and love and cherish. I held my daughter’s hand like this many times, and an emptiness opens up as Bonnie’s hand fills that space. I start to speak to her, not sure of the words until they tumble from my lips. Jenny stands off, silent. I’m barely aware of her. My words sound low and earnest to me, the sound of someone praying.
“Honey, I want you to know that I’m here to find the man who did this to you and your mother. That’s my job. I want you to know that I know how bad this is. How much you are hurting inside. Maybe how you want to die.” A tear rolls down my cheek. “I lost my husband and my daughter to a bad man, six months ago. He hurt me. And for a long time, I wanted to do exactly what you’re doing now. I wanted to just crawl inside myself and disappear.” I stop for a moment, draw a ragged breath, squeeze her hand. “I just wanted you to know I understand. And you stay in there, as long as you need. But when you’re ready to come out, you won’t be alone. I’ll be here for you. I’ll take care of you.” I’m weeping openly now, and I don’t care. “I loved your mother, sweetheart. I loved her so much. I wish she and I had spent more time together. Wish I’d seen more of you.” I smile a crooked smile through my tears. “I wish you and Alexa had known each other. I think you would have liked her.”
I am growing dizzier, and the tears just seem to keep on coming. Grief is like that sometimes. Like water, it finds any opening, forces itself through any crack until it explodes, inexorable. Images flash through my mind of Alexa and Annie, turning the inside of my head into some insane, strobe-lit disco. I have only a moment to realize what’s happening. I’m passing out.
Then things go dark.
This is the second dream, and it is beautiful.
I’m in the hospital, in the throes of labor. I’m giving serious thought to killing Matt for his part in putting me here. I am being cleaved in two, I’m covered in sweat, grunting like a pig, all in between screams of pain.
There is a human being moving through me, trying to come out. It does not feel poetic, it feels like I’m shitting a bowling ball. I’ve forgotten about the supposed beauty of having a child, I want this thing out of me, I love it I hate it I love it, and all of this is reflected in my screams and curses.
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