“Please,” Joanna murmured. She had dreaded bringing Jenny into the conference room for the interview, and she was more than happy to let Frank do the summoning. Jennifer entered the conference room clutching Harry Potter to her chest, as though having the book with her might somehow ward off the evil wizards. She paused in the doorway and surveyed the room. Joanna sensed that the conference room—a place Jenny knew well and where she often did her homework—had suddenly been transformed into alien territory. When Jenny’s eyes finally encountered her mother’s, Joanna responded with her most reassuring smile.
“You know both Detective Carbajal and Detective Carpenter, don’t you?” she asked.
Jenny nodded gravely.
“They’ll be the ones asking you questions and taping your answers. It’ll be important for you to tell them everything you know, down to the smallest detail. Sometimes it’s those tiny bits of information that provide investigators with their most helpful leads. Understand?”
Jenny nodded again.
“And you have to remember not to nod or shake your head,” Joanna added. “We may know what you mean, but your answer won’t show up on the tape.”
At that point, Ernie Carpenter stood up and took control of the proceedings. “Thanks for coming, Jenny,” he said, leading her to a chair. “Make yourself comfortable.”
For Joanna, the next hour and a half lasted an eternity. The process was excruciating for her. Motherly instinct made her want to prompt her daughter and encourage her, but the rules of interview procedure required her to keep still. There was too much likelihood that she might end up putting words in Jenny’s mouth. On the other hand, knowing how the game was played, it was difficult for Joanna to sit silently on the sidelines while Ernie Carpenter and Jaime Carbajal volleyed questions at Jenny. The process was designed to tell them which of the two had established a better rapport with the witness—which had succeeded in gaining her trust. As a police officer Joanna recognized and applauded the way the detectives manipulated her daughter; as a mother she hated it.
Ernie Carpenter’s children were grown and gone. Jaime Carbajal still had young children of his own at home. Whether or not that made the difference, soon after the interview began, it was clear the younger detective would be doing most of the questioning.
“So tell me about your friend Dora, Jenny,” Detective Carbajal said, settling back into his chair and crossing his arms.
Jenny stuck out her lower lip. Joanna’s heart constricted at that familiar and visible sign of her daughter’s steadfast stubbornness. “I knew Dora,” Jenny answered. “But she wasn’t my friend.” “But you were tentmates on the camp-out.”
“That’s because Mrs. Lambert made us,” Jenny said. “She had us draw buttons—sort of like drawing straws. If two people got the same color button, they were partners for the whole camp-out. That’s how I got stuck with Dora.”
“Tell me about her.”
“What do you want to know?”
Jaime Carbajal shrugged. “Everything,” he said.
“She wasn’t very smart,” Jenny began.
“Why do you say that?”
“Because she had been held back—at least one grade and maybe even two. She was thirteen. Everybody else in our class is only twelve. Dora always looked dirty, and she smelled bad. She smoked, and she acted like she knew everything, but she didn’t. And she wasn’t very nice.”
“I can understand why Dora smelled funny and looked dirty,” Jamie Carbajal said quietly. “The place where she lived with her mother was filthy. The bathroom had been turned into a meth lab and the kitchen sink was bill of dirty dishes and rotten food. There was no place for Dora to shower or bathe.”
Jenny looked questioningly at Joanna. The idea of living with a mother who preferred manufacturing drugs to allowing her child to be clean must have seemed incomprehensible to her, just as it did to Joanna.
“There was some food in the house, but not much, and most of that wasn’t fit to eat,” Jaime Carbajal continued. “All in all, I don’t think Dora Matthews’s mother knew much about being a good mother. There’s a reason I’m telling you all this, Jenny. I understand why you may not have wanted to be Dora’s friend while she was alive,
