“No.”
“Okay, look… Harry uses some pretty rough language. He doesn’t mean anything by it, and he’s one of the best cops I’ve ever known. All you have to do is give it a few minutes, and you don’t even notice it anymore.”
“That sort of thing,” said Volont, “doesn’t bother me at all.”
“I know,” I said. “But I think you might want to, well, alert some of the other federal officers. You know. Like Hawse.”
Volont looked like a kid about to pull the wings off a fly. “Oh, sure. Thanks for the warning.”
That look told me that he wasn’t about to mention anything to his superior. I made a mental note to try to be out of the room if Hawse ever met Harry.
Fifteen minutes after that, arrest warrant in hand, the four of us left for the Conception County Jail, George and Volont in one car, Hester and me in another. We arrived there at 14:14 on the dot.
“For Christ’s sake,” said Harry. “It took ya long enough!”
Harry had run all the data on our Mr. Skripkin, and gave us a brief rundown.
“Three or four minor entries on his CCH,” he said. He was referring to the Computerized Criminal History check that is run on every prisoner upon being booked into jail. “One simple po; two traffic, both speed; and one public intox.”
“Okay,” I said. A first offender, then, in the felony world. “The simple po and the intox come on the same date?” I suspected that possession of a small amount of marijuana and being stoned could easily arise from the same incident.
“Damn,” said Harry, glancing at the dates. “You still got it.”
“Thanks. It’s not much of a rap sheet, is it?” I noticed that, while it would have been normal to just hand me the thing, Harry was keeping the sheet to himself. Knowing Harry, that was an indicator that there was something else lurking on that piece of paper. Like he said, I still got it.
“Well, maybe it’s more than you’d think,” he said. The familiar grin spread over his face. “The charges were all filed by the San Diego PD. Less than a year ago.”
Ah. “No kidding?”
“Yep. And when we inventoried his shit when we booked him, we found DLs from California, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Iowa, and Kentucky.” He handed me the sheet, finally. “All with his name, but all with different dates of birth. All bright and shiny, and all ‘issued’ on 02/18/2000.” He looked very pleased with himself. “We ran ‘em all, just to see, but there’s no record of any of these except the California one. Like the others don’t exist, which they don’t.”
“Fascinating,” I said, looking at the sheet. “Just checking…the OLN on Iowa licenses is the same as the SSN. Just wanted to see if he was using a familiar number…but he isn’t.” I was just a bit disappointed.
“Any chauffeur’s licenses?” asked Hester.
“Oh, yeah,” said Harry. “All but California, as a matter of fact. Hester, you are one sharp lady.”
“Did any of them have hazardous material certification on them?”
That stopped him. “Shit. Shit, I’ll be right back,” he said, and headed out to the booking area to check the DLs.
George looked at Hester. “Nice one.”
It had become something of an indicator, the hazmat certificate on the fake chauffeur’s license. It looked like somebody high in terrorist networks figured that, in case they wanted to ship dangerous materials by road, if they had somebody with that type of license drive the vehicle, they could just breeze through any encounter with the cops. What they apparently didn’t quite grasp was that, with the additional testing for hazardous materials transport, nobody got those certifications just for the hell of it. Only those who did that for a living would have them, and they were able to answer any question a cop had about the proper procedures right off the top of their heads. Arcane questions like which letters on the diamond-shaped warning were required for particular materials.
Harry returned. “All the chauffeurs have hazmat certification. Every fuckin’ one of ‘em.”
Volont had been on his cell phone to Harriet Glee at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Cedar Rapids during most of the conversation with Harry. Dirty Harriet had told him that there had been no agreement reached regarding the immunity or protection, but that she’d be talking to Linda’s attorney within an hour. In the meantime, she’d emphatically told him that the name Skripkin had never been mentioned, nor had any other individual. Period.
“So,” said Volont, “it looks like Skripkin’s fair game. That was a nice bit,” he said to Hester, “about the hazmat certification. Good job.” The way he looked at George when he said it meant that he thought that George should have caught that first. “You advised him of his rights? “he asked Harry. Fuckin’ ay.
“And he’s fluent in English?”
“Sure sounds like it,” said Harry. “He tells a mean story.”
“Okay.” Volont, who was sitting in a tipped-back chair with his feet on Harry’s desk, made a tent shape with his hands and tapped his chin with the tips of his fingers. I’d seen him do that before, and it told me that he was really being careful.
“Tell you what,” he said. “Why don’t we do it this way? Carl, you’ve got this Skripkin cold as an accessory to murder, based on an admission against interest after being advised of his rights pursuant to Miranda.” He glanced at Harry. “He did waive those rights, didn’t he?”
“Of course, my man,” said Harry. “Here.” He handed Volont a rights waiver form, signed by Skripkin. “Black and white.”
“Excellent. Carl, here, owes you supper.” A satisfied smile appeared on Volont’s face. Things were coming together. “So, then, Carl, you and Hester interview him regarding the Cueva murder. Now, your witness is sure that this Skripkin was not the trigger man?”
“Absolutely certain.”
“Good. Okay, so let’s see what he says to you. Don’t let him know we’re anywhere around. Find out all you can about motive, and just why this Juan Miguel Alvarez is also called Hassan Ahmed Hassan. And remember, you aren’t allowed to even mention the possibility of an immunity agreement with Linda. It could look like an intimidation tactic, by making him believe he was being hung out to dry by his friends. It could contaminate the whole interview.” He looked over at Harry. “Do you have a room where we can view and hear the interrogation without being observed by the suspect?”
“Shit, yes,” said Harry. “Where do you think you are, Iowa?”
I wanted to come back with something snappy in defense of my state, but Harry’s jail was three years old, and ours was over a hundred. The only way we could have done what Volont wanted would have been to hide somebody in a closet.
“Go get ‘em,” said Volont to Hester and me.
“Just a sec,” I said. “If this guy asks if he’s covered under some sort of immunity deal…”
“We tell him he’s not,” said Hester. “But only if he brings it up. He has to introduce it himself. You gotta be truthful. He asks, you tell him. Then, if he chooses not to talk, at least we give him something to think about while he waits for his court-appointed attorney.”
“Good enough,” I said. “Okay with you?” I asked Volont and George.
It was.
Hester and I stashed our handguns in individual lockers and gave a jailer the keys. She gave us each a number to be used to repossess our weapons when we were leaving.
As Harry led us back to the interview room, he said to Hester, “This Skripkin is one worried dude.”
“I would be, too,” said Hester.
I noticed how busy and noisy it was in the halls. Lots of staff. In our jail, you could clap your hands and get an echo.
We entered a room without windows, about fifteen by twenty-five feet, a mirror on the wall, and a long table with four chairs, arranged two to a side.
I knew the mirror was one-way, but it still could have fooled me. “Holy shit, Harry,” I said. “This looks like a movie set.”
He chuckled. “Strange you should mention that…the video camera is up in that corner there,” he said, pointing, “and the real video equipment is behind the glass. Great sound, so don’t say anything to each other in a whisper if you don’t want Skripkin’s attorney to hear you. That mike system picks up everything. It’s all
