Jonathan Santlofer - Anatomy of Fear

Schteir put her hand on Terri’s shoulder. I wasn’t sure it was the right move, but maybe she just wanted to run the show.

“What?” Terri barked.

“I think it’s time we showed Mr. Karff the photos we have of his late-night drives.” She maneuvered herself in front of Terri, who backed up and took a few deep breaths to regain her composure.

Schteir spread a new set of photos across the table. I couldn’t see them, but Karff could, his eyes twitching, frontalis muscles wrinkling his forehead, mentalis muscles quivering his chin. “Here we have you leaving your Queens home and getting into your station wagon at eleven-fourteen P.M.,” said Schteir. “You can see how the digital camera notes the time and date in the lower corner. Terrific invention, the digital camera, don’t you think? Not to mention the zoom lens.”

“I see the date,” said Karff. “And I also see these are six months old.”

“We have similar ones from one week earlier, and then a week or so before that. I suppose the photographer got bored taking the same pictures over and over.” She laid another photo in front of him. “Let’s see where your car ends up, shall we? Ah, here it is, on the other side of the river, in Manhattan, at eleven forty-seven P.M., on West Fourteenth and Greenwich Street. I wonder what you were doing there at close to midnight?”

She slid another picture out of the stack. “Here you are, on the corner, and there’s a really tall woman leaning into your driver’s-side window. A black woman. I’ve misjudged you, Mr. Karff, thinking you were a racist. It just goes to show you how wrong snap judgments can be.” Schteir peered at the photo. “No, wait a minute-that’s no woman!” She handed the picture to Terri.

“Oh, Carl, what a bad boy you are.” She snickered. “Would you look at that, Agent Archer.” Terri waved the photo. “Carl here gets off on she-males.”

Karff had turned pale.

“And what is happening here at eleven fifty-two P.M.?” Schteir had already turned to another photo. “It appears as if that same tall woman-excuse me, that tall black man dressed as a woman -has gotten into your car, and the two of you are…oh, my, look at this.” She raised the photo for Archer and Terri to see.

“I’ve got an idea,” said Terri. “Let’s put these pictures on Carl’s personal website-or even better, the World Church’s website. What do you think?”

“Great idea,” said Schteir, smiling.

“Those pictures are a fake,” said Karff.

“Well…Let’s just see what others make of them, shall we?” said Schteir.

“For starters,” said Terri. “How about…Carl’s wife?”

“You can’t do that.”

“Mr. Karff,” said Schteir. “I am the FBI. And I can do whatever I want.”

Karff’s lower lip was trembling. “I told you I don’t know those people.”

“Well, maybe you do and maybe you don’t,” said Schteir. “As we speak, our lab technicians are checking your weapons and we will soon know for sure whether or not they have been fired recently. If the bullets match, we will know if you knew these people. In the meantime, I’ll tell you what I want. I want names. Names and addresses of everyone who is connected to your church in this geographic section of the world. I want to know who you talk to and who talks to you. I want to know who has come to you for guidance, orders, repentance, or whatever the hell else you people talk about. You understand, Mr. Karff? I hope so, because I am one tough Jewish bitch who would like nothing better than to put your pathetic white ass in an Attica cell with murderers and rapists and let them know that you refer to them as mud people. ”

Karff’s face hardened again, features pulled toward the center and tensed. “My Aryan brothers will protect me.”

I knew he was referring to the Aryan Brotherhood, The Brand, as they liked to call themselves, which had started back in the sixties in San Quentin, a way for the whites prisoners to protect themselves against the blacks and Latinos.

“Oh, I think we can find a place where the Aryan Brotherhood is outnumbered,” said Terri.

Schteir nodded. “So, what do think, Mr. Karff? It’s either you or someone you know who is responsible for these killings. And even if it isn’t you, we’re going to hold you-which we can do for a very long time-if even one of the forty-six guns recovered from your home is not licensed. And that’s just for starters. So, any of this getting through to you?” She turned to Archer. “I’d like a set of close-ups of this African American gentleman in the wig and hot pants and his statement as well. It’s in the large file on Mr. Karff. I believe the gentleman goes by the name of Veronique, who, by the way, Mr. Karff, will testify that you are the man in the Ford station wagon that she, excuse me- he -has been servicing for quite some time now.”

Karff raised his head, ice-blue eyes gazing at the ceiling. “Any day now the angels will sing and the trumpets will herald the end of days, and chains like these”-he yanked at his handcuffs and rattled the shackles at his ankles-“will fall from my body, and we will take up arms and all will be restored with the world.”

“Yeah,” said Terri, hissing the word. “While you rot in a prison cell.”

Schteir slid the victims’ photos back in front of Karff, but it was no good. He was gone, hiding behind rhetoric.

Terri took a step toward Karff, ready to go at him again, but Schteir stopped her.

Karff had neutralized his face, but his fingers were twitching.

It gave me an idea.

“Get him to draw,” I said.

“What?” said Collins.

“Have Karff draw something. Anything. So we can compare it to the sketches left at the scenes.”

“He’s not going to do it just because we ask him to.”

She had a point, but I could see she was considering it. She wanted to be in there, to contribute something. I just had to convince her.

“Look, just take his cuffs off, leave a pencil and paper on the table, and let him sit there for a while, alone. He was a commercial artist, right? People who draw, just do. They doodle all the time. It’s like a reflex.”

Collins didn’t say anything, but the next thing I knew she was on the other side of the glass, whispering to Dr. Schteir. A moment later they took the cuffs off Karff. Archer disappeared and came back with a big cup of coffee. Schteir gathered up the photographs and files, but made it look accidental when she left a few blank sheets of paper behind. She also left a black pen.

“Nice idea,” said Schteir when she came out. “But he’s probably too smart to fall for it.”

“Well, he’s not going to do some full-out drawing for us, but maybe a doodle.” I turned to Terri. “You did good in there.”

“Not good enough,” she said, directing her comment to Schteir. “You see how he reacted when Archer touched him or when I was in his face? He didn’t like it one bit-a black man and a woman invading his space. We could have done more with that if-”

“Detective.” Schteir spoke quietly but clearly. “You were a participant by our permission. Lest you forget this is a bureau interrogation. We do things a bit differently. You did…just fine. But we’ll take it from here.”

Terri pressed her lips together, hard, containing her rage.

“At least the coffee is going make him want to pee,” said Archer. “And I’m not letting him out of there for…a long time.”

“I think you showed great restraint,” I said to Archer.

“So far,” said Archer.

Then we all stared at Karff like a bug behind glass.

After a few minutes he picked up the pen and we leaned forward. He put it down and we sat back.