S White - Hermit

‘So, several reasons. First: whatever we think he’s done, and however strange he may seem, he’s a vulnerable person. I think we always need to bear that in mind. The court certainly will; we need to regularly show good faith, in my opinion. Second, I knew he was about to confess to two hundred crimes: we had the journal and he was only confirming what we knew. I didn’t want a subsequent defence to claim he was manipulated because he didn’t have support. I told him to get a lawyer and he expressly refused: I wanted us to have that transparent indemnity. Third, I need him to trust me. Especially after telling him about finding his cave, I had some bridges to build. I think that helped to build them. That’s why I only pushed for enough details to confirm the journal. He was pleased not to have to dwell too much on something that was humiliating. So I won back some trust. Was my thinking. Boss.’

He broke into a smile. ‘And mine.’ He sat back again and she breathed out. ‘You’re right. He thinks you have his welfare at heart. He thinks you’re his only buddy in a world that’s let him down.’

It seemed to Dana that everyone was patting her on the back for pretending to like Nathan and care about him just to open him up. Which would make her what? A liar? An actor? A hypocrite? Whichever; she wouldn’t want to look in the mirror. And it made her wonder about how Machiavellian her colleagues thought she was; how inauthentic and calculating she appeared to them.

‘Well,’ she replied, ‘I’m about to burst what bubble he has. We’re going to talk about why he left home, and why then. Which means it’ll probably come out about his parents. Maybe we should prep for that.’

She wasn’t surprised that Bill was way ahead of her. ‘I’ve asked the doc to be ready. We should re-check anyway on Whittler’s fitness for interview: it’s coming up on ten hours in custody. And Whittler’s going straight back to the Lecter Theatre after this interview. I still want uniform watching him, with a ten-minute signature log. Agreed?’

‘Totally.’

‘What about this possible Alvarez connection?’ asked Bill. ‘Think that has legs?’

No , she thought, I don’t. I’m all in on Nathan Whittler now, even though I probably shouldn’t be.

‘Possible. Lou certainly knew Miguel Alvarez, by all accounts, and corner stores and restaurants are the preferred washing machines for bad cash. Mikey has someone at Central digging deeper.’

Bill tilted his head. ‘How’re you doing with all this, Dana?’

She could feel herself blush: pastoral questions made her self-conscious. ‘Uh, fine. Bit tired, but we’re gradually clearing impediments. Mikey’s emailing you updates about Megan Cassavette and the lawyer, Spencer Lynch.’

‘Piece of work, Lynch, isn’t he?’

Surprisingly, no , she thought. Mike had a fairly benign view of him, and even Lucy had softened slightly. It was one of the reasons they’d downgraded Lynch’s chances of being the killer.

‘Kind of, but not really. Mikey will explain. I also think we have a handle on why that particular knife was used, and why it means Whittler used it.’

‘Oh?’

Again, Bill’s face was hard to read. Or rather, hard for her to read. Holding back the Day was taking an increasing toll: the exhaustion was seeping through. She had maybe ninety minutes of her professional self left today, before she’d have to stop and go home.

‘So, the knife from the packet was an ad-hoc, panic measure: in the dark, in an emergency. So we infer it was done quickly, desperately; totally on instinct.’ She looked to Bill for a confirmatory nod but got nothing. ‘In which case, instinct has to guide the choice of the third-largest knife, rather than the biggest. There’s no rationale in that situation to select a smaller knife, is there?’

‘No, there isn’t. In for a penny…’

‘Exactly. So, selecting the middle knife was entirely because of the chooser’s underlying, unstoppable instincts. It was the middle knife because that preserved the symmetry. It kept two knives either side of the empty space. Only Whittler would do that. Only Whittler’s OCD tendencies would make him do that.’

Now she said it out loud to Bill, it seemed flimsy, plucked from the air. The reasoning felt tinny and insubstantial. Yet she was sure they were right.

‘Okay.’ Bill thought for a second. Then nodded. ‘A little weird for my tastes, but I can see where you’re coming from. At the very least, it makes Whittler more likely. When will you tackle him on that?’

‘I’m still thinking it’s the last call I’ll ever make with him. If we go okay with this session, I want to bottom out everything else I can before I take him on about Jensen’s. I can’t afford to try it twice: either he tells, or he clams up for ever. I still think that second option’s how it could pan out.’

Bill closed the paperwork. ‘Yeah, that might be a confession too far, for today. We’ll review after this session, see if we need to put off that final scenario until tomorrow. Judges hate the idea of us leaning on someone because he doesn’t have a lawyer.’

Dana had thought the same thing. In truth, she calculated that the five interviews so far added up to only ninety minutes in the past nine hours. The number had surprised her; the level of concentration Nathan required, plus her own gradual debilitation, made it seem like days of effort. But she didn’t want the appeal court to have a reason to even read the file. Everything had to be done right.

Mike looked through the glass door at the figure sitting in reception. A huge splayed insect of a man: limbs stretching out towards the main desk, pate gleaming under the fluorescent light, slight gut visible below his waistcoat. A clean-shaven head ended in a near-monobrow that made him appear permanently frustrated. His face looked angled forward even when he leaned back against the poster behind him; like an Easter Island statue with the body added.

Jeb Whittler was hard to read from a distance; something about him said aggressive and intimidating, but perhaps that was simply his size. He was dressed in the kind of suit Mike would need a mortgage for – probably by putting up one of his children as extra collateral. Although Mike had stated outright to Dana that if, or when, he was in the business of sacrificing offspring, it would be for a new car. At the very least, a demonstrator.

‘Jeb Whittler? Hello, I’m Detective Mike Francis. We can talk in here.’

The handshake was grabby and fierce, the eye contact a little too assertive. But again, Mike reprimanded himself for equating physical size with aggression. He indicated a little anteroom off the reception area and slid the tag to ‘occupied’.

‘Thanks. Got here as fast as I could. The call said you’ve found Nate. That true? I mean, is it definitely him?’ Jeb’s voice was the kind of bass rumble that Mike expected, but with a strangely whiny tinge to it, like a sports car with a fading gearbox.

They sat facing each other across a Formica table which had three blistered burn marks of the kind that seem to find only Formica tables. The room echoed with each of Jeb’s booming sentences – he was the kind of person who didn’t adjust his volume for the location.

‘Oh, it’s definitely him. We found ID; everything matches. DNA confirmed against hospital samples. There’s no doubt.’

Jeb shook his head. There was a slight sheen of sweat around his temples, but Mike suspected that was caused by rushing down the freeway; thinking the whole journey that his long-lost brother was alive and well after all.

‘Okay. Is he all right? Can I see him? I really need to see him.’