“That’s it, sir.”
“You didn’t force your cousin to perform an unnatural—”
“Sir, I loved my cousin and I did not kill her. I simply did not kill her. My sister has got to be crazy, that’s all there is to it.”
“Do you and your sister get along well?” Locke asked.
“Yes, sir, we do. I always thought we got along fine. But now I don’t know what to say, I honestly don’t know what’s got into her. Sir, if I may make a suggestion, I would like to suggest that you have a psychiatrist look at her, because, sir, she has got to be crazy to be making this kind of an accusation.”
“Mr. Lowery, I’m going to ask you some personal questions,” Locke said. “If you don’t want to answer them, just say so, all right? Is that all right with you, Counselor?”
“Yes, that’s fine,” Harris said. “I want the record to show that my client has cooperated in every respect. He had nothing to do with this crime, and—”
“Mr. Lowery, where do you live, can you tell me that?”
“I live at 1604 St. John’s Road.”
“With your parents?”
“Yes.”
“And your sister?”
“Yes.”
“And your cousin, when she was alive?”
“Yes.”
“How large an apartment is it?”
“There are five rooms counting the kitchen.”
“What are those rooms, can you tell me?”
“There’s the kitchen, and the living room, and three bedrooms.”
“How many bathrooms are there?”
“Two.”
“Mr. Lowery, can you describe the layout of those bedrooms to me?”
“Layout? What do you mean? The way they’re furnished?”
“No. The relationship of one bedroom to another. Where they are in the apartment.”
“What’s the point of this, Counselor?” Harris asked suddenly.
“If I may—”
“I just want to know what the point is.”
“He knows where the bedrooms are, doesn’t he?”
“I suppose so, but why—?”
“Will he answer the question or not?” Locke said. “It seems like a very simple question, but if you feel it’s in some way incriminating, then please let the record show that your client refuses to answer it.”
“He’ll answer the question,” Harris said. “Go ahead, please. Answer his question.”
“Well, the bedrooms are all in a hallway off the living room. My parents’ bedroom’s on the right, and mine is in the middle, and at the end of the hall the bedroom there is Patricia’s and... and Muriel’s, when she was alive.”
“Doors on all these bedrooms?”
“What?”
“Doors?”
“Yes, sure. Doors? Sure, there are doors.”
“With locks on them?”
“Yes. Well, the lock on my door is busted. But all the doors have locks on them, yes.”
“And where are the bathrooms?”
“There’s one where you come in. Between the kitchen and the living room. And there’s another in the hall outside the bedrooms.”
“So to get to the bathroom from any one of the bedrooms, it’s necessary to walk into that hallway.”
“Yes.”
“For either your sister or Muriel to have gone to the bathroom in the middle of the night, they would have had to walk into the hallway, is that right?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Did that in fact ever happen?”
“What, sir? Did what happen?”
“That either of the two walked into that hallway in the middle of the night? To go to the bathroom?”
“Well, I suppose so. I mean, it’s perfectly natural for people to get up at night and—”
“Yes, but did your sister or Muriel in fact ever do so?”
“Yes, I suppose so.”
“You saw them in that hallway?”
“I suppose I saw them.”
“Your door was open?”
“Sometimes I sleep with the door open. In the summertime, usually. It’s cooler that way.”
“What were the girls wearing on those occasions when they were in that hallway in the middle of the night? Were they wearing nightgowns? Or were they in fact wearing any—?”
“I think that’s enough, Counselor,” Harris said.
“I was merely...” Locke started.
“Yes, I know what you were merely,” Harris said. “And I am merely telling you that my client will not answer any further questions. Gentlemen, I believe we’re finished with the interrogation. Let’s get on with what you have to do.”
It was now five minutes to 9:00. In the days before Miranda-Escobedo, cops involved in a big homicide case would try to keep a defendant at the station house long enough to avoid night court. Nine P.M. was usually a safe hour. If the interrogation and the booking and the mugging and the printing went past 9:00 P.M., the prisoner would have to stay at the station house over-night and would not be arraigned till the next morning. Since Miranda-Escobedo, the police were required to begin their questioning as soon after arrest as possible, and were not permitted to keep a man in custody for more than a reasonable amount of time before booking him. “Soon after arrest” and “reasonable amount of time” were not euphemisms. The police respected Miranda-Escobedo because they did not want airtight cases kicked out of court on technicalities of questioning or custody. So these days, even publicity-seeking cops could not delay an interrogation or a booking in order to hit the morning papers with news of having cracked a homicide.
The interrogation of Andrew Lowery was completed by five minutes to 9:00, but they still weren’t through with him. While the assistant district attorney smoked a cigarette and philosophized to Carella about the nicest-seeming kids turning out to be the most vicious killers, Kling took three sets of Lowery’s fingerprints, one for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, another for the state’s Bureau of Criminal Identification, and a third for the city’s Identification Section. As he took the prints, he chatted with Lowery, putting him at ease — the same way an internist will chat with a patient while simultaneously peering through a sigmoidoscope. He told Lowery that in this city a defendant in a murder case was never allowed bail, and he also explained that unless a material witness agreed to be fingerprinted, he wouldn’t be allowed bail in any kind of case. He wiped Lowery’s hands when the fingerprinting was done, and then asked if he would mind having his picture taken. Lowery asked if they wouldn’t be taking it anyway when he got to jail, and Kling said, Yes, they’d be taking his picture in the morning, but the squad liked to have a record, too, though Lowery could say no if he wanted to. Lowery agreed to have his picture taken, and Kling took a Polaroid photo of him. Then he filled out two arrest cards, and turned the prisoner over to Carella, who had originally caught the squeal, and who was responsible for booking Lowery now.
Together with Lowery’s attorney, and the assistant district attorney, Carella and the prisoner went down to the muster room. By that time an assistant deputy inspector had been sent over from Headquarters — this was a homicide arrest — and was waiting at the muster desk. The desk sergeant asked Lowery his name and address, which he wrote into the book, and then he looked up at the clock and wrote down the time and the date, and asked Carella if this was his case. Carella said it was his case, and the desk sergeant wrote his name into the book, too, and then asked him what the case number was, and Carella said it was 12-1430B, and the sergeant wrote that into the book as well. Then, after all of this, he wrote the words “Arrested and charged with (1) Homicide and (2) First-Degree Assault in that the defendant did commit the crimes aforesaid.” And he listed as being present at the booking — in addition to Detective 2nd/Grade Stephen Louis Carella — Assistant District Attorney Roger M. Locke, and Assistant Deputy Inspector Michael Lonergan, and attorney for the defendant, Gerrold R. Harris. In the upper right-hand corner of the page, he wrote the arrest number, and then he asked Lowery to empty his pockets, and he made a list of all of Lowery’s personal property, and tagged the stuff, and put it into an envelope. In the book, he wrote “And to cell,” and then he summoned a patrolman to take Lowery down to the basement, where the precinct’s eight holding cells — four for men, four for women — were located. The cells were small, scrupulously clean, each fitted with a toilet bowl and sink, and furnished with a bed and blanket. Locke watched Lowery as he was led out of the muster room. He had not been in handcuffs during the interrogation, but he was in handcuffs now. Several moments later a light on a panel behind the muster desk flashed red, telling the sergeant that one of the holding-cell doors was open. In another moment the light winked out. Locke lit another cigarette. Exhaling the smoke, he said to Carella that this one looked like real meat.