“It was a frame job from your bacon-loving friends that got me charged before,” Dan snapped, throwing a look of contempt Nate’s way.
“For all three of the assaults?” Nate asked, flipping a page pointedly. “Including the one where there was camera footage of it happening?”
“That was a set-up job,” Dan fumed, attempting to fold his arms over his chest with a rattle and then settling for staring hotly into the corner behind Laura’s head. He obviously had anger issues. Even now, he was having a hard time holding it in.
“Right, right,” Nate said, and then closed the file very deliberately, looking their suspect in the face. “And this is a set-up too, is it?”
“What do you expect from a Black cop like you -”
“ALRIGHT,” Laura said loudly, mostly because she wasn’t about to sit there and listen to Nate be insulted for the color of his skin – but also because she didn’t want this to escalate into something that he could use in court. If he provoked one of them, he could claim he was subjected to police brutality, and then they could be looking at a retrial or even a failed conviction. “Let’s get this settled, shall we? Why did you change your name?”
Dan looked at her and scoffed as if she was the stupidest person he’d ever met. “Why do you think? You said it yourself already. They don’t hire people with criminal records. Nobody does. I had to fake everything just to get this crappy warehouse job.”
“How terrible for you,” Laura said flatly, with no sympathy whatsoever. She’d read his file in detail. All three of his assaults were committed against women who were left battered, blackened, and bruised. One of them had ended up in hospital for an extended stay. He was a piece of crap, and he deserved anything bad that happened to him. “Where were you the last four nights?”
“I don’t know,” he shrugged. “At home. Where were you? Out getting some?”
Laura ignored the obvious attempt to provoke her further, even when she saw Nate’s fist curl slightly tighter on the table next to her. They needed to stay focused. The guy was just trying to distract them from the point at hand. “You’re saying you have no alibi at all for the times in which we know both the thefts and the murders were committed, is that right?”
“I don’t need an alibi,” he sneered. “I’m innocent. Anyway, if you really want to know where I was, you’d better ask your mom.”
Oh, God. He really was scraping the barrel of the most juvenile insults and responses. They weren’t particularly getting anywhere, but it didn’t matter too much. They had him. They had all the time they needed to talk to him. And they had other tools at their disposal, too.
“As we speak, there are detectives going through your home,” Laura said, doing her own intentional provoking this time. “Looking in every room, under every cushion, at every single thing you own. Every private thing you thought you had. And they’re going to find something which tells them it was you.”
“They’re not going to find a damn thing,” he scowled, though she could see how uncomfortable he was at the idea. She didn’t blame him. It was uncomfortable, having someone go through your home. But murderers and assaulters didn’t deserve anything less.
“Really?” she asked. “You’re absolutely confident in that? Because I know you know how this works. You keep denying it now, and you’re going to get the worst possible sentence that judge can throw at you. On the other hand, if you cooperate, things will go a lot easier on you and we can get this done with the minimum amount of trouble. Maybe even make sure that you get put in a nicer facility with a few perks, instead of the worst place they can think to throw you.”
“That’s great,” Dan said, then slammed his hands on the table with a rattle of his cuffs and leaned forward to stare at her. “But I didn’t do it!”
Laura shook her head. He wasn’t willing to give in; she could see that. But she wasn’t willing to give in, either.
They were going to sit here and carry on having this conversation for as long as it took. And in the end, if he didn’t break, the evidence would get him. It always did. These days, even the criminals that thought they were good at it were inevitably leaving behind far too much evidence to keep them free for long. There were too many ways for them to test things now.
Confidence and faith in the system. That was what got Laura through when she faced a killer like this, who refused to give anything away.
There was a soft knock at the door. Laura looked up, seeing no need to refuse an interruption since they weren’t getting anywhere anyway.
“Enter,” she called out, and the door cracked open just a tiny amount to show the face of Detective Thorson wielding a piece of paper.
“For the tape, we’re pausing the interview at seven twenty-eight P.M.,” Nate said, getting up. “We’re not done, Martin. You better think carefully about how you want this to go.”
Laura followed him out of the room and into the corridor. With the heavy interview room door shut behind them, she gestured towards the next door. All three of them walked into the room which overlooked the interview, standing behind the one-way glass. They could see Dan Martin, sitting with his head bowed low and one leg twitching up and down, but he couldn’t see them.
“He looks furious,” Laura commented.
“You’re getting to him,” Nate replied. “Keeping going, L. We’re going to crack him. Or, do we even need to, Detective?”
Detective Thorson gave an apologetic wince. “Sorry. I have the report from the search of his home.”
“And?” Laura asked.
“Nothing to connect him with the murders,” she said. “The techs haven’t found any evidence of a digital connection with him and the victims, either. Of course, he would have come into contact with Perez through his job, and we could argue that he might have seen the other two victims going into the therapist’s office, but it’s tenuous.”
“Any lawyer worth the bar would be able to dismiss that as circumstantial,” Laura sighed. “Damnit. I was hoping we would have something to force his hand to confession and we could be getting a plane home tomorrow.”
“We did find some illegal narcotics, though,” Detective Thorson said. “That’s something.”