Murder and Salutations - By Elizabeth Bright Page 0,140
the first place.”
Gordon asked the cops to leave the room, then went to work. He walked swiftly to Keefe at the end of the table, grabbed a chair with one hand and plunked it down on the suspect’s right side, invading his space. Keefe turned to face Gordon. The large bald head leaned in, inches way. Gordon’s blue eyes looked fierce, and he talked fast.
“I just gave you the polygraph test, and you can tell them anything you want, but you and I both know you did it,” he said. He let that sink in a moment. “I just have one question. Did you kill her for drug money, or was it a lovers’ spat and she came at you with a knife and you defended yourself? The clock is running and you don’t have any more time.”
Keefe said, “Neither.”
Gordon’s eyes flared. “Listen, don’t insult my intelligence.”
“Neither.”
Gordon scowled. “OK, if you’re telling me it’s neither, I know you’re lying. Therefore I have to assume it’s the worst-case scenario: You killed her for the drug money. There’s no reason to talk to you anymore.”
Gordon propelled his bulk from the chair, stood up, and walked out, shutting the door behind him.
As Gordon emerged, the chief sent Whitney and his partner back in. The young cops were itching to close the case they had worked so hard on. Meanwhile, Gordon conferred with Fleisher. It was time, the two Vidocqeans agreed, to use the technique Fleisher called “The Everything Must Go Sale.” Getting a confession was the ultimate sales job, Fleisher said.
“You’re convincing a guy that it’s better to confess and go to jail for twenty years than to say nothing and walk free,” he said. “It’s the all-time sale. You’re convincing him he needs the very last widget the company has made, when in fact there are seven million more gathering dust on the shelves. Time is everything. You gotta act now; the clock is ticking.”
He and Gordon discussed possible approaches. “We have DNA evidence,” Fleisher suggested, “and if you don’t tell us what really happened by midnight, we’re going to have to go with it. We’re going to have to nail you.”
Gordon looked at his watch. They had less than a half hour to go. Whitney and his partner were still in the interrogation room with Keefe, getting nowhere. Gordon grabbed the biggest guy in uniform he could find, a sergeant, and pulled him aside. “I want you to go into the room and say, ‘Mr. Gordon came out, he says you did it, we don’t want to talk to you anymore,’ and walk out.” The sergeant went in, made his announcement, and came out.
Less than a minute later, patrolman Whitney came out of the interrogation room, grinning widely. He’d gotten the confession. “Keefe confessed. It was a lovers’ spat. He says he was trying to defend himself.” The suits and uniforms congratulated him as cheers filled the hallway.
Gordon quietly pulled the young officer aside. “I want you to go back in and take his cigarettes from him, turn your chair so you’re parallel at the table, right across from him, and tell him, ‘Bullshit. There’s no way a woman gets stabbed twenty times, suffocated, and beaten; it’s not gonna work as self-defense.’ ”
Whitney returned to the room and three or four minutes later emerged with a report. “As soon as I turned the chair and sat across from him, his head went down, his body gave in, and he admitted he killed her for money to buy drugs.”
Gordon nodded. “Good work. Now I want you to go back in and take a statement, name, birth, graduated, such and such—start from the beginning and then everything he did that night. I want it written down he’s confessing of his own free will, no threats or promises of anything. Ask him, why did he confess? In court it’ll be attacked—why would a person voluntarily give a confession against his own interests? So we need him to write down what his interests are—why did he confess?”
Whitney went back in. Minutes passed, the door stayed shut. The group in the hall fidgeted nervously.
Half an hour later he came out waving a handwritten confession and cheers went up in the hallway, louder now. The DA and deputy DA, the chief, Sergeant Cloud and his officers, and Gordon, Fleisher, and Gaughan were shaking hands, slapping backs, high fives all around. The Vidocq men felt excited to be part of the team. Rivalries and criticisms melted away instantly