commander’s office, seated at the desk, was George Wamsley.
They were all eager to know the same thing: Was it possible this bug-eyed bald-headed towering mental case might actually be the Strangler?
Nast had managed to stay on the run for five days after the attack on the girl in the alley. He was discovered sleeping next to a furnace in the basement of an apartment building on Hemenway Street. The janitor who found Nast thought he might have been staying there awhile; he had made a bed out of oily rags and old blankets scrounged from the storage bins in the basement. He had also left an enormous turd on the floor. It reared up like a coiled cobra, which disturbed the janitor much more than the possibility that the Mad Strangler had nested in his building (“Who’s gonna pick that thing up? I’m not gonna pick that thing up…”). When the cops came down into the basement, Nast blurted, “I know what this is about” and “It’s about that girl.” He gathered up a few of his things from the floor, crammed them into his pockets, and submitted to the handcuffs. He was taken straight to BPD Homicide.
Why George Wamsley decided to conduct the interrogation himself was a mystery to the assembled sergeants and detectives from Boston. As far as anyone knew, Wamsley had never interrogated a suspect in a homicide or, for that matter, a jaywalking. It was arrogance, pure and simple, that was the consensus. Typical Wamsley. Typical of the whole farcical Strangler Bureau, which was disdained within Boston PD as a political stunt designed to turn Alvan Byron from politician to hero and thus to governor. Once the halo was fitted to Byron’s nappy head, he would no doubt lose all interest in the city and its murders. Now, as Wamsley’s interview stretched into its second ineffectual hour, there was a sinking feeling in the room that Wamsley would cost them their only chance to question Arthur Nast. From here Nast would be booked, then taken to the Boston Municipal Court to be arraigned on two life felonies-assault with intent to rape on the girl in the alley and assault with intent to murder on Joe- whereupon he would be appointed a lawyer. That, no doubt, would be the end of the interrogations. With each futile question from Wamsley, the cops’ frustration grew.
Brendan Conroy groaned, sniffed, shook his head, rolled his eyes heavenward. Lord, save us from amateurs.
Wamsley: “The girl in the alley, where did you first see her?”
Nast: “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
Shrug.
“Was she walking?”
“I guess.”
“And you thought she was attractive.”
“Probably.”
“Did you know her? Before that night, I mean.”
“No.”
“Well, how did you approach her, what did you say?”
“I didn’t say nothing, I just…”
“You just what?”
“I don’t know, I just-We were kissing.”
“And you wanted to have…sexual relations with her?”
“I guess.”
“Did she want to kiss you?”
“Yes.”
“That’s not the way she tells it.”
Shrug. No answer. Nast bowed his head, waiting for the next question. He was no genius, but he had the sensible instinct to ball up like a sow bug until the danger passed.
“Did she like it when you put your hands on her neck?”
“I guess so. Ask her.”
“I did. She said she was screaming.”
“Was she?”
“Was she? A policeman heard her three blocks away!”
Shrug.
Wamsley massaged the back of his neck. “Arthur, have you heard of the Strangler?”
“No.”
“Never?”
“No.”
Wamsley said, a little helplessly, “Well, I find that hard to believe, Arthur.”
Standing among the Homicide detectives, Michael felt his sympathies streaming toward them. Lord, save us from amateurs. But the sight of Brendan Conroy’s massive Easter Island head, his back puffing with contemptuous sighs, jerked Michael back to Wamsley’s side. What was Conroy up to? What possible advantage could there be in undermining Wamsley now? Michael tried to force his attention back to the interview, but he could not pull his eyes away from the silver back of Conroy’s head, the plush of thick hair sheared close to the scalp, and he felt himself start to seethe. It was as if a key had been turned and a little engine inside him began to grumble. Michael had not always disliked Brendan Conroy. When Conroy and Joe Senior had been partners for years, Michael had regarded him as a sort of laughing rogue uncle, the guy you could count on to spill his drink on the tablecloth or tell a dirty joke to Aunt Theresa the nun. But now it was a struggle to control his distaste. True to his self-critical nature, Michael found a way to extract guilt and self-reproach from the situation; he rebuked himself for his lack of self- possession. But the thing was loose in him now, and working with Conroy only fed it.
So when Conroy snorted one time too many at the lack of progress, Michael snapped, “Give him a fucking chance.”
The profanity gave away a little too much. The others turned to look.
“Just give him a chance,” Michael repeated, more meekly.
Wamsley’s mistake was in presuming that interrogation was a sort of debate, in which facts and logic count. Wamsley was clever and intelligent and correct, Nast was none of these; therefore, Wamsley must win. The A.G. was not prepared for a suspect who simply turtled, refusing to hear logic or acknowledge obvious facts, refusing to respond in any meaningful way. Unfortunately everyone on the opposite side of that mirror knew what Wamsley did not: a real-world interrogation was not a short, intense grilling that climaxed in a tearful confession to the crime; more often it was a very long conversation during which a wary, exhausted suspect let slip a single tiny clue. It was about noticing the seemingly insignificant detail-the fact a suspect should not have known, or the one he got wrong in some small, telling way, or the inconsistency between one statement and another. It was about the needle in the haystack. The best interrogator did not expect to walk out with a full confession. Murder confessions-common as pennies in movies and TV shows-never happened in real life. So the good interrogator just wanted the suspect to “give him something.” By those standards, Wamsley’s Q amp;A was painful to watch.
Wamsley hung in with Nast for another half hour or so. When he emerged, he had extracted some superfluous, arguably incriminating statements about the attack on the girl and on Joe-a bulletproof case already, with two unimpeachable victim-witnesses-but nothing on the Strangler murders. He was sheepish in front of the assembled cops, but buoyed to see Michael there.
“Well.” Wamsley sighed toward Michael. “I guess that’s it, then.”
“George, come here, we need to talk.”
Michael huddled with his boss at the opposite end of the long room, in which eight desks were arranged for the eight Homicide sergeants. Beside the two lawyers, a grinning cardboard Santa Claus was taped to the wall. On a chalkboard, the city’s homicide victims were listed according to date of death. The list still included all the Strangler victims killed within city limits. Strangler Bureau or no Strangler Bureau, Boston Homicide was not ready to cede those cases just yet.
“He’s lying,” Michael said. “He told you he’s never heard of the Strangler; his shrink says he specifically asked to talk about the Strangler. Didn’t you know that?”
“No. I guess I-”
“Look, you can’t keep challenging this guy, you can’t keep cornering him. He’s like a kid. He’s scared. He’s an idiot, but even he knows he’s in deep shit. He feels like you’re trying to trap him, so he’s covering up. You have to
