“Yeah, I do, but so what? All the hacks do…. Hey, what is this? I’m on your side.”
A typical denier’s deflection, which Dance ignored. “And you said it’s possible some prisoners would be in that office. Has Pell ever been in there?”
“Nonviolent felons are the only ones allowed in—”
“Has Pell ever been in there?”
“I swear to God I never saw him.”
Dance noted adaptors—gestures meant to relieve tension: finger-flexing, foot-tapping—his shoulder aimed toward her (like a football player’s defensive posture) and more frequent glances at the door (liars actually glance at routes by which they can escape the stress of the interrogation).
“That’s about the fourth time you haven’t answered my question, Tony. Now, was Pell ever in any room in Capitola with a computer?”
The guard grimaced. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be, you know, difficult. I just was kind of flustered, I guess. I mean, like, I felt you were accusingme of something. Okay, I never saw him on a computer, really. I wasn’t lying. I’ve been pretty upset by this whole thing. You can imagine that.” His shoulders drooped, his head lowered a half inch.
“Sure I can, Tony.”
“Maybe Daniel could’ve been.”
Her attack had made Waters realize that it was more painful to endure the battering of the interrogation than to own up to what he was lying about. Like turning a light switch, Waters was suddenly in the bargaining phase of deception. This meant he was getting close to dropping the deception but was still holding back the full truth, in an effort to escape punishment. Dance knew that she had to abandon the frontal assault now and offer him some way to save face.
In an interrogation the enemy isn’t the liar, but the lie.
“So,” she said in a friendly voice, sitting back, out of his personal zone, “it’s possible that at some point, Pell could’ve gotten access to a computer?”
“I guess it could’ve happened. But I don’t know for sure he was on one.” His head drooped even more.
His voice was soft. “It’s just…it’s hard, doing what we do. People don’t understand. Being a hack.
What it’s like.”
“I’m sure they don’t,” Dance agreed.
“We have to be teachers and cops, everything. And”—his voice lowered conspiratorially—“admin’s always looking over our shoulders, telling us to do this, do that, keep the peace, let them know when something’s going down.”
“Probably like being a parent. You’re always watching your children.”
“Yeah, exactly. It’s like having children.” Wide eyes—an affect display, revealing his emotion.
Dance nodded emphatically. “Obviously, Tony, you care about the cons. And about doing a good job.”
People in the bargaining phase want to be reassured and forgiven.
“It was nothing really, what happened.”
“Go ahead.”
“I made a decision.”
“It’s a tough job you have. You must have to make hard decisions every day.”
“Ha. Everyhour. ”
“So what did you have to decide?”
“Okay, see, Daniel was different.”
Dance noted the use of the first name. Pell had gotten Waters to believe they were buddies and exploited the faux friendship. “How do you mean?”
“He’s got this…I don’t know, power or something over people. The Aryans, the OGs, the Lats…he goes where he wants to and nobody touches him. Never seen anybody like him inside before. People do things for him, whatever he wants. People tell him things.”
“And so he gave you information. Is that it?”
“Goodinformation. Stuff nobody couldn’t’ve got otherwise. Like, there was a guard selling meth. A con OD’d on it. There’s no way we could’ve found out who was the source. But Pell let me know.”
“Saved lives, I’ll bet.”
“Oh, yes, ma’am. And, say somebody was going to move on somebody else? Gut ’em with a shank, whatever, Daniel’d tell me.”
Dance shrugged. “So you cut him some slack. You let him into the office.”
“Yeah. The TV in the office had cable, and sometimes he wanted to watch games nobody else was interested in. That’s all that happened. There was no danger or anything. The office’s a
maximum-security lockdown area. There’s no way he could’ve gotten out. I went on rounds and he watched games.”
“How often?”
“Three, four times.”
“So he could’ve been online?”
“Maybe.”
“When most recently?”
“Yesterday.”
“Okay, Tony. Now tell me about the telephones.” Dance recalled seeing a stress reaction when he’d told her Pell had made no calls other than to his aunt; Waters had touched his lips, a blocking gesture.
If a subject confesses to one crime, it’s often easier to get him to confess to another.
Waters said, “The other thing about Pell, everybody’ll tell you, he was into sex, way into sex. He wanted to make some phonesex calls and I let him.”
But Dance immediately noticed deviation from the baseline and concluded that although he was confessing, it was to a small crime, which usually means that there’s a bigger one lurking.
“Did he now?” she asked bluntly, leaning close once again. “And how did he pay for it? Credit card?
Nine-hundred number?”
A pause. Waters hadn’t thought out the lie; he’d forgotten you had to pay for phone sex. “I don’t mean like you’d call up one of those numbers in the backs of newspapers. I guess it sounded like that’s what I meant. Daniel called some woman he knew. I think it was somebody who’d written him. He got a lot of mail.” A weak smile. “Fans. Imagine that. A man like him.”
Dance leaned a bit closer. “But when you listened there wasn’t any sex, was there?”
“No, I—” He must’ve realized he hadn’t said anything about listening in. But by then it was too late.
“No. They were just talking.”
“You heard both of them?”
“Yeah, I was on a third line.”
“When was it?”
“About a month ago, the first time. Then a couple more times. Yesterday. When he was in the office.”