is still weighing on me, especially the one weird question Corbet asked.
I throw off the covers, climb out of bed, and after plopping down at my desk in the alcove, I open my laptop. Then I google “Techniques detectives use in interviews and in interrogations.”
A host of links pop up—to blog posts, descriptions of courses on the subject, even pages from textbooks. I start with the first link and begin scrolling, my eyes racing over the words. Cops, it turns out, use all sorts of cagey strategies to elicit the truth, sometimes pinning people to a psychological wall. Before long I find a reference to a common strategy that makes my skin crawl: offering a suspect an acceptable excuse for committing the crime. It allows—even encourages—the person to confess without losing face.
I realize, staring at the words, that Corbet had used that technique on me, when she mentioned the idea of someone losing their temper and not really meaning to cause any harm. My heart sinks.
Could she possibly believe I was the one who’d killed Jaycee Long?
21
SESSION WITH DR. ERLING
By the time I reach Dr. Erling’s office the next day, I’m nearly jumping out of my skin.
She greets me warmly and ushers me into her inner sanctum. She’s in slim black pants and a cobalt-blue silk blouse, perfectly polished as usual.
“How are you doing today, Ally?” she asks once I’m seated.
“Not good. I guess I don’t feel as fragile as I did on Monday, but so many things seem to be unraveling at the same time. I haven’t remembered anything else, by the way. Which makes it all worse.”
“Why don’t you start with what’s worrying you the most?”
I tell her about going to see the police in New Jersey yesterday, my realization that the body was in rigor when I found it, and the possible ramifications of my deception.
“I feel really guilty,” I say. “If I’d told the truth, it might have allowed the police to pinpoint the time of death—and figure out who the killer was.”
“How did the police respond to the information you shared with them?”
“Oh, they pretended to understand why I wasn’t forthcoming as a nine-year-old. But later, the lead detective asked these weird questions. It was almost like she was trying to trip me up.”
“Trip you up how?”
“She wanted me to repeat certain details, even though she’d taken notes when I was talking. And then—she said this one thing that was really odd, like a trick question. . . . She wanted to know if I thought someone might have lost their temper with Jaycee and hurt her without really meaning to.”
“Why did that feel like a trick question?”
I look away without meaning to.
“It was so out of the blue, and besides, how would I know? It was like this detective thought I might respond, ‘Yes, that’s exactly what happened. I took Jaycee from her yard to play with her in the woods and when she started to cry, I just wanted to get her to stop, and I ended up smashing her head with a rock.’ I can see why innocent people confess to crimes they didn’t commit. The police lay all these traps for you when you’re already nervous and confused just from being there.”
Erling steeples her hands and taps them lightly against her lips a few times. I’m familiar with most of her gestures, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen this one before. Does it mean something?
“What was your response to her?” she asks.
“That there wasn’t any excuse. And there isn’t, not for hurting a child. It’s been hard to even think about the whole thing again. That little girl being brutally attacked and dying and stuffed under a pile of leaves.”
She leans forward and her expression shifts from neutral to sympathetic.
“It does sounds like the interview was very stressful,” she says. “What if you looked at it another way? That the detective was probably just trying to do her job, covering her bases, and that it doesn’t mean she really thinks you could have been the one who hurt Jaycee?”
“That’s what Roger said. But what if the police want to see me again? And oh, you should have seen Hugh’s reaction when I told him what I’d done back then. For a split second he looked totally wigged-out, like he’d just noticed I had one of those suicide belts strapped around my waist and was going to detonate it any second. Then he asked if I might have been in a