'She did not!' I exclaim.
'She did, I promise.'
We all stop talking as Alan's cell phone rings, and watch as he answers it and listens. 'Yeah. No kidding? Thanks, Gene.' He hangs up, looking at me. 'The prints from our suspect in custody match the prints taken off the bed in Annie's apartment. We also have some of his DNA for comparison--'
'How did we pull that off?' I interrupt.
'He cut his lip as a result of that mix-up you guys had taking him down. Barry offered him a handkerchief to clean himself up with.'
I smile, grim. 'Smart.'
Alan leans forward, looking at me. 'He's one of the guys, Smoky. For sure, one hundred percent. Maybe not provable yet, but close enough. What do you want to do?'
They are all looking at me, the same question in their eyes. What do you want to do? The answer is simple.
We kill him and eat him? the dragon asks.
In a way, I think.
'One of us is going to do the interrogation of our lives and crack him wide, wide open, Alan.'
49
WE'RE STANDING IN the observation room with Barry, looking through the one-way glass at Robert Street. He's seated at a table, cuffed at the wrists and ankles.
He's nondescript, which surprises me on some level. He has brown hair, and a hard face made up of planes and edges. His eyes are hot and angry, while the rest of him is relaxed. He's staring back at us through the mirror.
'Pretty cool cucumber,' Alan says. 'We know anything about this guy yet?'
'Not much,' Barry says. 'Name is Robert Street. Thirty-eight years old, single, never been married, no kids. Works as a martial-arts instructor in the Valley.' He looks at me, nodding to indicate my swollen lips.
'But you already found that out.'
'Do you have an address on him yet?' I ask.
'Yeah. He lives in an apartment in Burbank. With the match to the prints found in your friend's place, we'll be able to get a warrant. I have someone on that now.'
'Who should do the interview?' Alan asks. 'You said 'one of us'--so who's it going to be? You or me?'
'You. No question.' It's a no-brainer for me. Alan is the best, and the man inside that room holds the key to finding the real Jack Jr. To ending all of this. He gives me a long look and nods, turning to watch Robert Street through the glass. He watches him for long moments. Barry and I are patient, we wait him out; we know that we are disappearing for Alan, that he is fixing himself firmly into the zone, studying Street like a hunter studies game.
Getting ready to crack him like a walnut.
We need to break him, for all kinds of reasons. The truth is, we don't have him, not yet. The fingerprints at Annie's apartment could be explained away. A good defense attorney might argue that the prints got there when he moved the bed doing his whole pest-control thing. Which, while fraudulent and compelling in its own right, doesn't add up to murder, per se. We have his DNA but no results back yet. What if it's Jack's DNA under Charlotte Ross's fingernail and not Street's?
More than all of this, we need him to lead us to Jack Jr. Alan looks at Barry. 'Can you let me in?'
Barry takes him outside and, not long after that, I watch Alan enter the interview room. Robert Street looks up at him. Cocks his head, examining. And smiles.
'Wow,' he sneers. 'I guess you're the bad cop, huh?'
Alan saunters over, the picture of someone with plenty of time on his hands, and pulls up a chair so that he's seated directly in front of Street. He straightens his tie. Smiles. Watching, I know that every move is calculated. Not just the moves, but their speed. How close they come to Street. The pitch of his voice when he speaks. It's all an act, with one end in sight.
'Mr. Street, my name's Alan Washington.'
'I know who you are. How's the wife?'
Alan smiles, shaking his head, and waggles a finger at him. 'Smart,'
he says. 'Trying to get me rattled and angry right out of the box.'
Street yawns in exaggerated boredom. 'Where's that cunt Barrett?'
he asks.
'She'll be around,' Alan says. 'You popped her pretty good in that apartment.'
This elicits a nasty smile. 'Glad to hear it.'
Alan shrugs. 'Hey--between you and me? I feel like popping her one myself, sometimes.'
Street's eyes narrow. 'Really?' He sounds doubtful.
'Can't help it. I'm old-school. I was raised, women have a place.' He grins. 'And it's under me, not over me, if you know what I mean.' He chuckles. 'Hell, I've had to slap the wife around every now and then. Just to make sure she remembers where she stands.'
Alan has Street's full attention now. The monster's gaze is full of fascination, desire warring with doubt. He wants Alan to mean what he's saying, and this need is overcoming his distrust.
The days of rubber hoses and 'good cop bad cop' are long gone. There is an established science of interview and interrogation, tried and proven. It is a dance based on psychology, involving a certain art mixed with tremendous observation. Step one is always the same: Establish a rapport. If Street liked bass fishing, Alan would become an instant sports-fishing enthusiast. If he was a gun nut, Alan would draw him out with a knowledge of weapons. Street likes to hurt women. And so, for now, Alan does too. And it will work. I have seen it work on hardened criminals. I have even seen it work on cops who know this technique and are trained in it. It's human nature, irresistible and inevitable.
'What would the FBI think about that?' Street asks. Alan leans forward, full of menace. 'She knows to keep her mouth shut.'
Street nods, impressed.
'Anyway,' Alan says. 'You hit Smoky pretty good. Some of the other guys too. They said you were doing some fancy martial arts in there. You teach, right?'
'That's right.'
'What style?'
'Wing chun. It's a form of kung fu.'
'No shit? Bruce Lee, huh?' He smiles. 'I got a black belt in karate.'
He looks Alan up and down, gauging his size. 'Are you any good?
Do you take it seriously? Or is it just for show?'
'I spar twice a week, do my kata daily, and have for the last ten years.'
I look at Barry. 'Alan doesn't know a karate chop from a roundhouse kick.'
Street nods. A little dip of man-to-man respect. Alan is connecting with him. 'That's good. You have to keep yourself sharp. A big man like you, you could be pretty lethal.'
Alan holds his hands open, a 'hey, I try' gesture. 'I have my moments. What about you? What year did you start with kung fu?'
I see Street pause, thinking. Doing what Alan wants without knowing it. 'I don't remember the exact year . . . I was five or six. We were living in San Francisco.'
Alan whistles. 'Long time. How long does it take--average--for a guy to go from nothing to competent in kung fu?'
Street considers. 'That's hard to say. It depends on the person. But as a general rule--four to five years.'
Alan is using innocuous questions to create a baseline. He's using a technique called neurolinguistic interviewing, which involves asking the subject two types of questions. One type asks him to remember something. The other requires him to use his cognitive process. Alan is noting Street's body language as he does this, what
