“The idea?” Michael said, and rolled his eyes, and shook his head in disbelief. “It’s not an idea, it’s a fact. I did kill them. Can’t you understand that? I killed them, and I want to confess to the crime and get it over with. That’s what I want to do, and all you want to do is find out what I told the goddamn patrolman. That’s what I told him. That I killed them. That’s what I’m telling you. I killed them.”
“Were those your exact words?”
“Man, you never quit, do you?” Michael said, and let out his breath in exasperation. “I showed him the license, right? He looked at the beard in the picture, right? He said something about did I shave off the beard, and I said, Yeah, and then he said, Michael Purchase, is that your name? And I said, Yeah, that’s my name. He looked at me and he said, Are you any relation to Dr. James Purchase? And I said, Yes, I’m his son. Then he said, How long’ve you been here in these woods, Michael? And I said I couldn’t remember, I’d just gone in there and I guess I’d fallen asleep. So he asked me when I went in there and I said I guessed it was last night sometime, and he said, When last night? I told him I didn’t remember. He said, Where’d you get that blood on your clothes, Michael? I looked at him, he... he was looking me right in the eye, he said again, Where’d you get that blood on your clothes, Michael? And I just nodded and said, Okay, I did it.”
“Then what?”
“He had a walkie-talkie on his belt, he switched it on and called for somebody to get down there right away, said he had the killer.”
“Did he use that word?”
“Which word? Killer?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t know. He either said killer or murderer, I don’t know.”
“All right, Michael, now listen to me. If you don’t want me to call in a lawyer who can help you more than I can, then you’ve got to at least listen to me and do what I ask you to do. Ehrenberg’s going to question you about last night. I want you to remain silent, Michael. That’s your privilege. They’ve already read your rights to you once, and I’m sure they’ll read them again before they start questioning you, and they’ll tell you it’s your privilege to remain silent, and that’s what I want you to do. I don’t want you to say another word about any of this. Not another word. Have you got that?”
“I’ve got it,” he said, “but it’s not what I want to do.”
“Michael...”
“I want to tell them.”
Jamie was waiting for me when I came out of the captain’s office. I told him essentially what his son had said, and he nodded and then asked Ehrenberg if it was all right for him to talk to Michael now. Ehrenberg told him to go on in. As soon as the door closed behind him, I said, “Mr. Ehrenberg, the boy’s about to make a statement against my advice. There’s nothing I can do about it, but I want to sit in on the questioning anyway.”
“That’s fine with me,” Ehrenberg said. “Few things I wanted to discuss with you while the father’s in there with him. First off, I checked with some of those people who were at the poker game last night, and it seems the doctor wasn’t losing when he left, way he told it to me, but instead was winning something like sixty, seventy dollars. Told the other players he was tired and wanted to go home, get some sleep. Now that doesn’t sound like a man who later spent an hour and a half drinking at The Innside Out. I don’t know where he went when he left that poker game, but I do know he was lying about being a loser, and my guess is he was lying about The Innside Out, too.
“I haven’t yet been able to reach the bartender who was on duty last night, but I spoke to the owners this morning, nice couple, they told me the bar was relatively quiet last night, maybe a half-dozen people in there around the time Dr. Purchase says he was there. So chances are if I go around with a picture of him, or even run a lineup for the bartender or the fellow they’ve got entertaining there, one or the other’ll recognize him if he was really there. Meanwhile, I’m wondering why he lied to me. I guess you asked him did he have anything to do with those murders?”
“I asked him.”
“And I’m assuming he told you the same thing he told me, that he didn’t commit those murders.”
“That’s what he told me.”
“That’s what the wife said, too, the former wife. I went to see her this morning, she claims she was home all night last night. Only trouble is, none of the neighbors are able to say for sure whether she was or not. Oh yes, she can reel off all the television shows she watched, but anybody could’ve got those from the TV Guide. I’m telling you all this, Mr. Hope, because I don’t know what’s going on with the boy saying right off he did it. I’ll be questioning him in just a little bit now, soon as his father’s done in there, but in the meantime it looks like I’ve got a man who was maybe lying about where he actually was at the time of the murders, and a woman who says she was home when for all I know she was maybe—”
“You little son of a bitch.”
The voice was Jamie’s, the words came from behind the closed door to the captain’s office. A pained look came onto Ehrenberg’s face as he turned and began walking heavily toward the door, as though Jamie’s outburst was not entirely unexpected, but was nonetheless an additional problem that had to be dealt with. As he approached the door, Jamie shouted, “I’ll kill you!” and Ehrenberg responded to the threat instinctively and immediately. He seemed almost about to thrust his massive shoulder against the door in imitation of movie cops breaking into a suspect’s apartment. He grabbed the knob and did indeed use his shoulder, but only as a forceless battering ram, opening the door and throwing it wide, and then releasing the knob and rushing into the room, directly to where Jamie and Michael were struggling in front of the captain’s desk.
Jamie’s hands were on his son’s throat. His face was ashen, his mouth skinned back over his teeth, his eyes red with rage. Michael danced a jig at the ends of his father’s arms, stepping again and again onto the photographs of the black girl that had earlier been on the captain’s desk and were now strewn on the floor. His face was flushed, he was choking under the tightening pressure of his father’s fingers. Ehrenberg clamped his left hand onto Jamie’s shoulder and spun him back and away from his son. I thought for certain he was going to smash his fist into Jamie’s face. It seemed the logical one-two action, spin the man around with your left hand, hit him with your right. But instead of hitting him, Ehrenberg reached out with his right hand to grab hold of the lapels of Jamie’s leisure suit, his fist twisting into the material. Effortlessly, he pushed him back against the paneled wall. Very calmly he said, “Now let’s just relax, doctor.”
“I’ll kill him,” Jamie said.
“No, you’re not going to kill anybody,” Ehrenberg said.
“Kill the bastard,” Jamie said.
Across the room, Michael was still gasping for breath. “You okay?” Ehrenberg asked, and Michael nodded. “Then I’d like to talk to you now, if that’s all right with you.”
“Yes,” Michael said. “Okay.”
“You monster,” his father said.
7
The interview room was a five-by-eight rectangle with a small table and three armless chairs in it. There was a mirror, on the wall facing Michael. I suspected it was a two-way mirror, and asked Ehrenberg if it was. He readily admitted that it was, and then assured me that no photographs were being taken and that none would be taken until Michael was officially charged with a crime. He said this while fiddling with the tape recorder he’d carried from the squad room into the interview room. I knew that “interview” was a euphemism for “interrogation,” but I made no comment. I was fully cognizant of the fact that Michael Purchase was determined to make a statement to the police, and that if I said anything or did anything to annoy him he would simply ask me to leave. Moreover, I was thoroughly convinced that Ehrenberg had done nothing to jeopardize Michael’s constitutional rights, nor would he do so at any time during the interview, or interrogation, or whatever he chose to call it. I had the feeling he preferred the word “interview.” I had the feeling that everything about police work, and especially about this case, troubled him. I visualized him as an antiques dealer in some New England town. I visualized him as a man running a nursery someplace, selling potted hyacinths or gloxinias. The room was air-conditioned, but Ehrenberg was perspiring as he spoke a few test words into the recorder, played them back, and reset the machine for taping.