Ridley Pearson - The Art of Deception

Evidence suggested he had kept them alive: There was packaged food discarded on the floor, some of which had spilled down their clothes or adhered to their skin. He had revisited them, a fact that would contribute to the profile Matthews would later build. He had kept them awake, used them up, one at a time until replacing them became necessary. He had kept them on the wall like trophies.

“ ‘Strung up like marlins,’ ” Matthews quoted. “I remember Walker saying that. Walker, not Vanderhorst.” This revelation clearly stole Boldt’s attention briefly from the bodies. Walker had supplied the key as well, but this was Vanderhorst’s scene-Boldt said so in a whisper.

He added, “The ATM connection was Vanderhorst’s, not Walker’s.”

“Oh … God … no …” They heard a gurgle and splat behind them. Babcock, the university professor, had somehow talked her way down here. Heads would roll. But in the meantime they had her vomit to deal with.

“Help her out,” Boldt instructed Matthews, refusing to move himself, refusing to break his train of concentration. She understood the importance of everything Boldt took in now, before he steeled himself to the sight and smell, before the SID techies stuck little paper flags around the room making it into a parade route, now, before any other living person, except one (the killer), experienced this horror for what it truly was. The crime scene offered insight into the events that had taken place here, insights that could prove invaluable to the prosecution of Per Vanderhorst. Boldt’s latex gloved fingers slipped out his notepad and she watched as he began to sketch. “John?” he said. “The camera?”

LaMoia had brought along the department’s pocket-sized digital camera as well as a handful of evidence bags.

“What the hell’s going on here?” Babcock moaned.

“Shhh.” Matthews attempted to console the woman. “He’s working the scene.”

For several hours Boldt and his team managed to keep their discovery confidential, avoiding the inevitable media stampede that promised both to steal their focus and to give Vanderhorst’s defense attorney information the PA’s office didn’t want him having. Knowing that even on a Saturday such a news blackout wouldn’t last forever, Boldt had asked Lofgrin to pick his two most trusted SID technicians to work the site. Boldt had also tasked his information technology squad to work the National Crime Information Center’s database for like crimes, and they had already produced results. Three of the seven pages he now carried were crime scene photographs gleaned from an advanced search on the NCIC database. Filling out a detailed database query that included such information as the use of duct tape, the sustaining of the victim’s life, the blood type of the secretor (semen had been collected from both Hebringer and Randolf, and was currently being DNA-typed), the age and specifics of the two victims, SID-IT had matched the Hebringer/Randolf murders to three other similar unsolved cases. These results, once the product of weeks, months, or even years of interstate detective work, had been accomplished in less than forty minutes.

“So far, so good,” Boldt put to Matthews when asked how things were going. “Though that may be about to change.”

She indicated the door to the interrogation room, on the other side of which sat Per Vanderhorst, waiting. “You can’t honestly think that Walker was any part of these murders.” Following the trip into the Underground, she’d changed into a pair of blue jeans that she normally reserved for weekends and, tucked in at the waist, a white, oversized, tailored shirt belonging to LaMoia.

She had the shirt’s starched sleeves and cuffs rolled up on her forearms nearly to her elbows.

“Walker delivered the key. That puts him in this, like it or not.”

“There’s an explanation for that,” she said.

“Not that I’ve heard, there isn’t.”

“So Vanderhorst will explain it to us now,” she said.

“He’d better. No matter what, Walker faces obstruction charges. At the very least, he knew about that death chamber.

If Vanderhorst doesn’t sort it out for us, I’m going to tie them both up in this.”

“Lou, that’s preposterous, and you know it! Walker stumbled onto this in the Underground, nothing more.”

“The various sections of Underground don’t connect, Daffy.

You’ll need a better explanation than that.”

“Maybe they do somehow and we just haven’t found it yet.”

Reading his wristwatch, Boldt signaled the end of the discussion, telling her, “In twenty-five minutes Tim Peterson from the U.S. Attorney’s office is going to be arriving here to meet with Mahoney and Tony Shapiro.”

“Shapiro?”

“There’s a report he took the case pro bono as of about an hour ago. That’s why I said I think things may 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.