Jeffery Deaver - The Sleeping Doll

She decided that, given his career as a life-long prison guard and the ease with which he'd tried to take charge of the conversation and lead her away from the truth, Waters was in yet another category. He was an "actor," someone for whom control was an important issue. They don't lie regularly, only when necessary, and are less skilled than High Machs, but they're good deceivers.

Dance now took off her glasses-chic ones, with dark red frames-and on the pretense of cleaning them, set them aside and put on narrower lenses encased in black steel, the "predator specs" she'd worn when interrogating Pell. She rose, walked around the desk and sat in the chair beside him.

Interrogators refer to the immediate space around a human being as the "proxemic zone," ranging from "intimate," six to eighteen inches, to "public," ten feet away and beyond. Dance's preferred space for interrogation was within the intermediate "personal" zone, about two feet away.

Waters noted the move with curiosity but he said nothing about it. Nor did she.

"Now, Tony. I'd just like to go over a few things one more time."

"Sure, whatever." He lifted his ankle to his knee-a move that seemed relaxed but in fact was a glaring defense maneuver.

She returned to a topic that, she now knew, had raised significant stress indicators in Waters. "Tell me again about the computers at Capitola."

"Computers?"

Responding with a question was a classic indicator of deception; the subject is trying to buy time to decide where the interrogator is going and how to frame a response.

"Yes, what kind do you have?"

"Oh, I'm not a tech guy. I don't know." His foot tapped. "Dells, I think."

"Laptops or desktops?"

"We have both. Mostly they're desktops. Not that there're, like, hundreds of them, you know." He offered a conspiratorial smile. "State budgets and everything." He told a story about recent financial cuts at the Department of Corrections, which Dance found interesting only because it was such a bald attempt at distracting her.

She steered him back. "Now, access to computers in Capitola. Tell me about it again."

"Like I said, cons aren't allowed to use them."

Technically, this was a true statement. But he hadn't said that cons don't use them. Deception includes evasive answers as well as outright lies.

" Could they have access to them?"

"Not really."

Sort of pregnant, kind of dead.

"How do you mean that, Tony?"

"I should've said, no, they can't."

"But you said guards and office workers have access."

"Right."

"Now, why couldn't a con use a computer?"

Waters had originally said that this was because they were in a "control zone." She recalled an aversion behavior and a slight change in pitch when he'd used the phrase.

He now paused for just a second as, she supposed, he was trying to recall what he'd said. "They're in an area of limited access. Only nonviolent cons are allowed there. Some of them help out in the office, supervised, of course. Administrative duty. But they can't use the computers."

"And Pell couldn't get in there?"

"He's classified as One A."

Dance noticed the nonresponsive answer. And the blocking gesture-a scratch of his eyelid-when he gave it.

"And that meant he wasn't allowed in any…what were those areas again?"

"LA locations. Limited access." He now remembered what he'd said earlier. "Or control zones."

"Controlled or control?"

A pause. "Control zone."

"Con trolled -with an ed on the end-would make more sense. You're sure that's not it?"

He grew flustered. "Well, I don't know. What difference does it make? We use 'em both."

"And you use that term for other areas too? Like the warden's office and the guards' locker room-would they be control zones?"

"Sure… I mean, some people use that phrase more than others. I picked it up at another facility."

"Which one would that be?"

A pause. "Oh, I don't remember. Look, I made it sound like it's an official name or something. It's just a thing we say. Everybody inside uses shorthand. I mean, prisons everywhere. Guards're 'hacks'; prisoners are 'cons.' It's not official or anything. You do the same at CBI, don't you? Everybody does."

This was a double play: Deceptive subjects often try to establish camaraderie with their interrogators ("you do the same") and use generalizations and abstractions ("everybody," "everywhere").

Dance asked in a low, steady voice, "Whether authorized or not, in whatever zone, have Daniel Pell and a computer ever been in the same room at the same time at Capitola?"

"I've never seen him on a computer, I swear. Honestly."

The stress that people experience when lying pushes them into one of four emotional states: they're angry, they're depressed, they're in denial or they want to bargain their way out of trouble. The words that Waters had just used-"I swear" and "honestly"-were expressions that, along with his agitated body language, very different from his baseline, told Dance that the guard was in the denial stage of deception. He just couldn't accept the truth of whatever he'd done at the prison and was dodging responsibility for it.

It's important to determine which stress state the subject is in because that allows the interrogator to decide on a tactic for questioning. When the subject is in the anger phase, for instance, you encourage him to vent until he exhausts himself.

In the case of denial, you attack on the facts.

Which was what she now did.

"You have access to the office where the computers are kept, right?"

"Yeah, I do, but so what? All the hacks do… Hey, what is this? I'm on your side."

A typical denier's deflection, which Dance ignored. "And you said it's possible some prisoners would be in that office. Has Pell ever been in there?"

"Nonviolent felons are the only ones allowed in-"

"Has Pell ever been in there?"

"I swear to God I never saw him."

Dance noted adaptors-gestures meant to relieve tension: finger-flexing, foot-tapping-his shoulder aimed toward her (like a football player's defensive posture) and more frequent glances at the door (liars actually glance at routes by which they can escape the stress of the interrogation).

"That's about the fourth time you haven't answered my question, Tony. Now, was Pell ever in any room in Capitola with a computer?"

The guard grimaced. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be, you know, difficult. I just was kind of flustered, I guess. I mean, like, I felt you were accusing me of something. Okay, I never saw him on a computer, really. I wasn't lying. I've been pretty upset by this whole thing. You can imagine that." His shoulders drooped, his head lowered a half inch.

"Sure I can, Tony."

"Maybe Daniel could've been."

Her attack had made Waters realize that it was more painful to endure the battering of the interrogation than to own up to what he was lying about. Like turning a light switch, Waters was suddenly in the bargaining phase of deception. This meant he was getting close to dropping the deception but was still holding back the full truth, in an effort to escape punishment. Dance knew that she had to abandon the frontal assault now and offer him some way to save face.

In an interrogation the enemy isn't the liar, but the lie.

"So," she said in a friendly voice, sitting back, out of his personal zone, "it's possible that at some point, Pell could've gotten access to a computer?"

"I guess it could've happened. But I don't know for sure he was on one." His head drooped even more. His voice was soft. "It's just…it's hard, doing what we do. People don't understand. Being a hack. What it's like."

"I'm sure they don't," Dance agreed.

"We have to be teachers and cops, everything. And"-his voice lowered conspiratorially-"admin's always looking over our shoulders, telling us to do this, do that, keep the peace, let them know when something's going down."