James Patterson - 7th Heaven

“I may have said things like that. Interrogations aren’t one size fits all. Sometimes you’ve got to raise your voice. Sometimes you’ve got to be sympathetic. And sometimes you’ve got to lie to a subject,” I said. “There are legal boundaries for interrogations, and my partner and I stayed within those boundaries.”

Davis smiled, turned, and walked toward the jury, turned back to face me.

“Is that so?” she said. “Now, you’ve testified that the defendant asked you to turn off the tape during your interrogation at the police station.”

“That’s right.”

“So let me get this straight, Sergeant. You videotaped everything – up to the point when Ms. Moon ‘confessed.’ That confession is not on the tape.”

“The defendant seemed reluctant to talk because the camera was running. So when she asked me to turn it off, I did so. And then she told us what happened.”

“So what are we to make of the fact that you recorded everything this young woman had to say except her confession ? I guess you’re suggesting that the defendant was being cagey when she asked you to shut off the camera,” Davis said, shrugging her shoulders, sending a nonverbal message to the jury that she thought I was full of crap. “You’re saying she was sophisticated enough to confess off the record.”

“There is no such thing -”

“Thank you, Sergeant. That’s all I have for this witness,” said Davis.

Yuki shot to her feet, said, “Redirect, Your Honor.”

“Proceed, Ms. Castellano,” said the judge.

“Sergeant Boxer, are you required to tape a confession?”

“Not at all. A confession’s a confession, whether it’s written or verbal, on tape or off. I’d rather have a taped confession, but it’s not required.”

Yuki nodded.

“Did you have any idea what Ms. Moon was going to tell you when she asked you to turn off the video camera?”

“Had no idea. I turned off the camera because she asked us to – and I thought it was the only way we were going to get the truth. And you know what, Ms. Castellano? It worked .”

YUKI WISHED ALL of her witnesses were as good as Rich Conklin. He was solid. He was believable. Made you think of a young military officer, a mother’s good son. It didn’t hurt that he was also good to look at. In answer to her questions, Conklin affably told the jury that he’d been with the SFPD for five years and that he’d been in the homicide division for the last two.

“Did you interview the defendant on the night of April nineteenth?” Yuki asked Conklin.

“Sergeant Boxer and I talked with Ms. Moon together.”

“Did you have any preconceived notions about her guilt or innocence before you talked to her?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Did you read Ms. Moon her Miranda rights?”

“Yes, I did.”

“As I understand it, Ms. Moon wasn’t in custody when you Mirandized her, so why did you warn her that anything she said could be used against her?”

“It was a gamble,” Conklin told Yuki.

“When you say it was a gamble, could you explain what you mean to the jury?”

Conklin brushed his forelock of brown hair away from his eyes. “Sure. Suppose I say to a suspect, ‘I want to interview you. Can you come down to the station?’

“And the suspect comes in of his or her own volition. That person doesn’t have to answer our questions and can leave at any time. I don’t have to Mirandize that person when we sit down to talk because they’re not in custody.”

Conklin sat back comfortably in his seat and continued, “But, see, if that subject then starts to get wary, he or she could ask for a lawyer, who would end the interview. Or that subject could simply leave. And we’d have to let her go because that person is not under arrest.”

“If I understand you, Inspector, you were taking a precaution, so that if Ms. Moon incriminated herself, you’d already be covered by having told her that anything she said could be used against her?”

“That’s right. I was thinking how Ms. Moon was our only witness, maybe a suspect in a serious crime, and I didn’t want to take a chance that if she had something to do with Michael Campion’s disappearance, we’d have to stop the interview and Mirandize her. That might have ended the interview. And we not only wanted the truth, we wanted to find Michael Campion.”

“And did Ms. Moon ask for a lawyer?”

“No.”

“Did she give you the details of Michael Campion’s death and the disposal of his body?”

“Yes, she did.”

“Inspector Conklin, what was her demeanor as she confessed to you and Sergeant Boxer?”

“She seemed sad and remorseful,” Conklin said.

“And how did you determine that?”

“She cried,” said Conklin. “She said she was sorry, and that she wished she could change everything that happened.”

“INSPECTOR CONKLIN,” Davis said, smiling. “You sound like a very smart police officer.”

Yuki tensed. She could almost see Davis setting the trap, baiting it, tying the trap to a tree. Conklin just looked at Davis until she spoke again.

“Isn’t it true that from the beginning, the defendant denied that she’d ever met Michael Campion?”

“Yes, but ninety-nine times out of a hundred, a suspect is going to say they didn’t do it.”

“You’ve interviewed a hundred homicide suspects?”

“Figure of speech,” Conklin said. “I don’t know how many homicide suspects I’ve interviewed. Quite a few.”

“I see,” Davis said. “Is it a figure of speech to say that you and Sergeant Boxer tricked and bullied my client until she confessed?”

“Objection!” Yuki called out from her seat.

“Sustained.”

“I’ll rephrase. As we all know, Ms. Moon’s ‘confession,’ ” Davis said, making the universal symbol for quote marks with the first two fingers of each hand, “wasn’t on tape, isn’t that right?”

“That’s right.”

“So we don’t know the tenor of that interview, do we?”

“I guess you just have to trust me,” Conklin said.

Davis smiled, wound up for the pitch. “Inspector, did you take notes of Ms. Moon’s statement?”

“Yes.”

“I asked to see those notes during discovery,” Davis said, “but I was told you no longer had them.”

Conklin’s cheeks colored. “That’s right.”

“I want to make sure I understand what you’re telling us, Inspector,” Davis said in the snotty tone she’d perfected over decades and was using now in an attempt to undermine and humiliate Conklin.

“You were investigating a probable murder. As you told us, Ms. Moon was your primary witness, or maybe a suspect. You had no taped record, so you made a written record. That was so you could tell the court and the jury what the defendant said, right? And then you threw the notes away – can you tell us why?”

“I used my notes as the basis for my report. Once my report was typed, I didn’t need them anymore.”

“No? But what’s a better record of that interview? The notes you took that night? Or the report you filled out a couple of days later? You’re supposed to keep those notes, aren’t you, Inspector?… Inspector?

“Your Honor, please direct the witness to answer my question.”

Yuki clenched her fists under the table. She hadn’t known Conklin had destroyed his notes, but while it wasn’t kosher, homicide cops did it all the time.

Judge Bendinger shifted in his seat, asked Conklin to answer the question.

Reluctantly, Conklin said, “My notes would be more of a verbatim account, but -”

“But still, you felt it was appropriate to throw them out? Is there a shortage of storage space at the Hall of Justice? Were the file cabinets full, maybe?”