Ridley Pearson - The Art of Deception

Boldt had hoped for the power of shock value. He saw no response. He yielded to Matthews, who said, “You remember each of these as if it happened yesterday, don’t you, Per? Is it all right that I call you Per?” she asked rhetorically, not allowing him to respond. “The way the air smelled just before you abducted them … that incredible rush as you overpowered them …”

Vanderhorst looked up from the photos, met eyes with Matthews. She felt nothing from him. Disappointed, she pressed on.

“Oh, yes,” she said, “I know how it felt for you.”

The suspect lowered his head, but more out of boredom, she thought. No remorse, no excitement, no fear or trepidation. This, in turn, filled her with curiosity, for she had expected, at the very least, a sense of surprise from him. She felt the clock running, ticking off the minutes, and wished Boldt hadn’t told her about the arrival of the attorneys.

Boldt figured the photos had to have surprised the man, regardless of his outward appearance. He followed this with what he hoped would be another surprise, sliding the evidence bag containing the skeleton key across the table.

Vanderhorst looked up, the first seams of terror breaking his cool fac?ade.

“Been looking for that?” Boldt asked.

The man’s eyes tightened. “Never seen it before.”

They had him talking. Matthews leaned back in the steel chair.

Boldt said, “We found them.”

The suspect cocked his head like Blue when he heard an errant noise. Matthews experienced a shudder of cold. She glanced up at the room’s air vent, then back to the suspect.

Boldt leaned across the table and rolled over the next photographs-first Randolf, then Hebringer. “Five women in four states in the last eighteen months. The best chance you have is to get ahead of this, Vanderhorst. Once it breaks, there isn’t a juror you can draw who hasn’t heard something about it-judges, too, for that matter. No matter what jurors and judges claim about their remaining objective, it just isn’t possible. The smart money says you preempt all that by getting in front of it.”

“I’ve never seen any of them,” Vanderhorst claimed. “Never seen that key, either.”

“Is that right?” Boldt said. “Then you wouldn’t have any interest in seeing the videotape of you entering that elevator car, of you keying the back panel and disappearing into that shaft.

That video confirms you had both the necessary knowledge and access to move the bodies once you’d abducted them in front of the ATMs.” His intention was to keep stacking evidence on him, one surprise after another. “You think we won’t find physical evidence that those two women made that trip? You were in a hurry, Vanderhorst. Of course there’s evidence, and the more we collect the less agreeable we are to listening to your side of this.” He’d leave Matthews to sort out or to exploit the man’s guilt and what she believed would prove to be his relief at having been caught and stopped.

Vanderhorst studied the final two blank pages in the line of seven but made no attempt to turn them over.

Feeling the time pressure, Matthews saw no choice but to go for the jugular. She said, “This is the last time you’ll see any of these. You understand that, don’t you … that it’s over?”

His brow furrowed. She considered any and all responses victories. She caught a flicker from Boldt’s sideways glance-he saw it, too.

“What do you feel with it being over?” she asked. “Relief? Anger?”

Vanderhorst’s attention remained on the final two sheets of paper that remained facedown.

She thought she saw him shrug his shoulders, but it might have been nothing more than him trying to get comfortable, an impossibility in these chairs.

“Does it feel good that it’s over?”

She thought for sure he’d nodded.

“You tried, but you couldn’t stop yourself.” She made it a statement, quickly adapting to the asocial personality she believed in front of her. “You left each city, not because you were afraid of being caught, but because you thought the change of scenery might allow you to stop.”

Boldt signaled her to notice the tape recorder: He wanted Vanderhorst’s answers spoken onto tape.

“You can talk to us,” she said calmly. A part of her disliked playing so deceptively sweet to killers like Vanderhorst; she owed it to the victims to show more disgust and abhorrence with the nature of the crimes. A part of her enjoyed the game, the challenge of tricking the criminal mind into unraveling, exploit-ing the guilt, when present, the sense of remorse, if any. The art of deception here was feigning empathy and understanding in the pursuit of truth and discovery. She, too, had victims: the perpetrators of these crimes who allowed themselves to open up to her and admit those things they had protected so carefully.

“It’s not like what you think,” he said.

She felt a wave of relaxation just hearing him speak. “Help us out here.”

“I don’t know anything about any of this.”

“We might surprise you,” she said. “Maybe we know more about it than you think.”

“I don’t think so,” he said.

Matthews knew there were no voices in Vanderhorst’s head, no whispered “messages from God” to kill. She wasn’t dealing with a display of a so-called psychopath, but with a man suffering from antisocial personality disorder-APD-a person so distanced from his fellow human beings and a sense of right and wrong that he committed these acts with little understanding of the consequences. The time had come to prove herself, to convince Vanderhorst she knew more about him than he knew about himself. And, she thought, just maybe she did.

“You watched women in their hotel rooms,” she said, knowing him much better already. “In their apartments and condo-miniums. Undressing. Bathing. You imagined yourself in there with them, leading a normal life, a part of their lives.”

Vanderhorst cringed, shifting in the chair nervously. He studied her intently and she stood up to it, not to be undermined.

Boldt regarded her with a pale face and nervous expression.

A knock on the door gave them all a moment’s pause. A uniformed woman officer entered and handed Matthews a pink telephone memo. She said, “I wouldn’t have bothered you, but the girl apparently sounded pretty bad and said it was urgent.”

The message read: “Problems with the baby. Please come. I’m above Mario’s.” It was signed Margaret. Matthews thanked the officer, folded up the message, and tucked it away in her jeans pocket, disappointed in herself for briefly abandoning the teen but knowing the time line of the interrogation had to take pre-cedence.

With the door shut again, she confidently told Vanderhorst, “You followed them-some of them-hoping they might notice you, might speak to you. So much of your life you’ve spent just wanting to be noticed. And yet it terrifies you when a woman actually notices you, doesn’t it?” She knew by his squirming that she had him pegged. He looked both shell-shocked and curious. Just right. “Susan Hebringer … you peeped her, and then, surprise, she showed up at the ATM. And you had to have her. Randolf? That was what: a look she gave you? The way she said hello to you? Tell me.” Knowing that at some point he would attempt to tune her out, she quickly continued, “You were caught between those two worlds, weren’t you, Per-wanting the attention, yet not wanting it?” His eyes held on to hers all the more tightly. Stay with me, she silently encouraged. “What were their crimes, Per? For what did you punish them? Did they say hello to you? Ask you the time of day? Or was it simply a look they gave you-a look you took as an invitation? It’s only women that confuse you, isn’t it? The men you can handle.