change. If Shapiro has taken the case, then it’s going to be a media circus. The guy lives for it. Worse, he’ll sew Vanderhorst’s lips shut and feed him through a straw.”
She understood then that this hurried effort to interrogate Vanderhorst resulted from Boldt’s hand being forced-they were about to lose their suspect to the wheels of television justice. The time frame of twenty-five minutes seemed laughable-typically barely enough time to get a couple cups of coffee into the Box. Win a confession in that amount of time?
“Lou?” she said.
“Listen, the PD must not like Shapiro’s grandstanding any more than we do, or he wouldn’t have advised his client to sit down with us. I’m not sure who to fear more, Shapiro or the feds. Peterson’s a good guy, and I know he thinks he’s helping us by putting out the possibility of extradition to a death penalty state, but all it really means is we’ll lose Vanderhorst, and I just don’t like that idea.”
“So it’s a full-court press,” she said. Another LaMoiaism.
Boldt’s expression registered complaint.
“Something like that,” he said. About to throw the door open, he said in a whisper, “In any case, it’s show time.”
With the out-of-state crime scene photos in hand, Boldt stepped into Homicide’s conference room A-the largest of three such rooms-Matthews close on his heels. She gently shut the door. Initially, neither of them acknowledged Vanderhorst’s presence on the far side of the small table. Instead, they moved chairs around, Boldt took off his sport coat and hung it on the back of a chair like a man ready to spend the rest of the day here, and Matthews switched off her cell phone and took a seat alongside Boldt-the combined impression that of two people digging in.
Vanderhorst, transferred from lockup, wore the humiliating orange jumpsuit issued by county jail, manacles on his ankles and a waist harness that secured the chain of his handcuffs to where his hands were free to move but their motion limited.
Boldt started the double-cassette tape recorder, introduced himself and Matthews, and naming the suspect, stated that Vanderhorst had requested counsel, had met with counsel several times over the past twenty-four hours, and that counsel had been notified of this interview and was “expected any minute.”
Boldt carefully placed the seven pages facedown in front of Vanderhorst and, like a Vegas card dealer, then rolled three of them over, as deliberately and dramatically as possible. With no time to waste, he had to forgo the usual “warm-up” of introducing the suspect to the roles that would be played, of the small talk that often began such an interrogation in an effort to establish a rapport. There was no time for a rapport. This was to be the emotional equivalent of slapping the man around.
Stabbing each in succession with a determined index finger, Boldt said, “Fort Worth, Little Rock, Santa Fe.” The victims hung from walls, their ankles taped to their thighs with duct tape, their garments torn, their chests and crotches exposed.
Boldt had hoped for the power of shock value. He saw no response. He yielded to Matthews, who said, “You remember each of these as if it happened yesterday, don’t you, Per? Is it all right that I call you Per?” she asked rhetorically, not allowing him to respond. “The way the air smelled just before you abducted them … that incredible rush as you overpowered them …”
Vanderhorst looked up from the photos, met eyes with Matthews. She felt nothing from him. Disappointed, she pressed on.
“Oh, yes,” she said, “I know how it felt for you.”
The suspect lowered his head, but more out of boredom, she thought. No remorse, no excitement, no fear or trepidation. This, in turn, filled her with curiosity, for she had expected, at the very least, a sense of surprise from him. She felt the clock running, ticking off the minutes, and wished Boldt hadn’t told her about the arrival of the attorneys.
Boldt figured the photos had to have surprised the man, regardless of his outward appearance. He followed this with what he hoped would be another surprise, sliding the evidence bag containing the skeleton key across the table.
Vanderhorst looked up, the first seams of terror breaking his cool fac?ade.
“Been looking for that?” Boldt asked.
The man’s eyes tightened. “Never seen it before.”
They had him talking. Matthews leaned back in the steel chair.
Boldt said, “We found them.”
The suspect cocked his head like Blue when he heard an errant noise. Matthews experienced a shudder of cold. She glanced up at the room’s air vent, then back to the suspect.
Boldt leaned across the table and rolled over the next photographs-first Randolf, then Hebringer. “Five women in four states in the last eighteen months. The best chance you have is to get ahead of this, Vanderhorst. Once it breaks, there isn’t a juror you can draw who hasn’t heard something about it-judges, too, for that matter. No matter what jurors and judges claim about their remaining objective, it just isn’t possible. The smart money says you preempt all that by getting in front of it.”
“I’ve never seen any of them,” Vanderhorst claimed. “Never seen that key, either.”
“Is that right?” Boldt said. “Then you wouldn’t have any interest in seeing the videotape of you entering that elevator car, of you keying the back panel and disappearing into that shaft.
That video confirms you had both the necessary knowledge and access to move the bodies once you’d abducted them in front of the ATMs.” His intention was to keep stacking evidence on him, one surprise after another. “You think we won’t find physical evidence that those two women made that trip? You were in a hurry, Vanderhorst. Of course there’s evidence, and the more we collect the less agreeable we are to listening to your side of this.” He’d leave Matthews to sort out or to exploit the man’s guilt and what she believed would prove to be his relief at having been caught and stopped.
Vanderhorst studied the final two blank pages in the line of seven but made no attempt to turn them over.
Feeling the time pressure, Matthews saw no choice but to go for the jugular. She said, “This is the last time you’ll see any of these. You understand that, don’t you … that it’s over?”
His brow furrowed. She considered any and all responses victories. She caught a flicker from Boldt’s sideways glance-he saw it, too.
“What do you feel with it being over?” she asked. “Relief? Anger?”
Vanderhorst’s attention remained on the final two sheets of paper that remained facedown.
She thought she saw him shrug his shoulders, but it might have been nothing more than him trying to get comfortable, an impossibility in these chairs.
“Does it feel good that it’s over?”
She thought for sure he’d nodded.
“You tried, but you couldn’t stop yourself.” She made it a statement, quickly adapting to the asocial personality she believed in front of her. “You left each city, not because you were afraid of being caught, but because you thought the change of scenery might allow you to stop.”
Boldt signaled her to notice the tape recorder: He wanted Vanderhorst’s answers spoken onto tape.
“You can talk to us,” she said calmly. A part of her disliked playing so deceptively sweet to killers like Vanderhorst; she owed it to the victims to show more disgust and abhorrence with the nature of the crimes. A part of her enjoyed the game, the challenge of tricking the criminal mind into unraveling, exploit-ing the guilt, when present, the sense of remorse, if any. The art of deception here was feigning empathy and understanding in the pursuit of truth and discovery. She, too, had victims: the perpetrators of these crimes who allowed themselves to open up to her and admit those things they had protected so carefully.
“It’s not like what you think,” he said.
She felt a wave of relaxation just hearing him speak. “Help us out here.”
“I don’t know anything about any of this.”
“We might surprise you,” she said. “Maybe we know more about it than you think.”
“I don’t think so,” he said.
Matthews knew there were no voices in Vanderhorst’s head, no whispered “messages from God” to kill. She wasn’t dealing with a display of a so-called psychopath, but with a man suffering from antisocial personality
