Eventually, Cordero brought the conversation around to a description of the john.
“He was average,” said Agnes. “Not too short, not too tall. You know. Average.”
For her part during the interview, Brittany kept her mouth clamped tight as she ground her teeth back and forth. Harvath couldn’t tell if it was from nervousness or the meth. Considering her eyes were dilated, he figured she’d recently used, which only made her harder to read.
He had been trained in the Secret Service to watch for micro-expressions: small, almost imperceptible facial cues that indicated when a person was lying or under a tremendous amount of stress because they were concealing the truth or intent upon doing harm. It was a great tool to use in interrogation, but considering the condition of their current subjects, it might just be a waste of time.
That changed, though, when Cordero asked about the man’s hair. “He was wearing a skally,” Agnes replied, “but you could still see his whiffle.”
Harvath had no idea what a skally or a whiffle was, but Brittany did, and even in the midst of her drug-induced fidgeting, he saw her shudder.
“Hold on a second. What the hell is a whiffle and what does it have to do with whatever a skally is?” he asked the detective.
“A skally is a type of cap,” she replied.
“Like a baseball cap?”
“No. More like a driving cap.”
“And a whiffle?”
“It’s a tight haircut with clippers. Kind of like a military crew cut.”
The revelation took Harvath aback and his silence encouraged Cordero to continue the interview.
He waited until Cordero was done and then suggested they speak with Brittany alone. Agnes, of course, was keen to keep on talking. The patrol officers humored her and moved her toward the street so Harvath and Cordero could talk with Brittany.
Cordero went from good cop to bad cop so fast that Harvath almost got whiplash. She’d been downright congenial with Agnes, but then again Agnes was cooperative. The moment Brittany refused to engage, Cordero went nuclear and it scared the hell out of the young woman.
“You want to see what he did to your friend Kelly?” she pushed. “Let’s go now. C’mon. They just fished her out of the Charles. She’s still lying on the dock under a plastic tarp. He’s got a special signature, this guy. You haven’t eaten breakfast, have you?”
Brittany shook her head.
“Good, ’cause I don’t want you puking all over your shoes. We’ll take my car. You’re okay with that, right? Kelly was your friend. You want to say goodbye, right? Even if somebody comes up with the money, it’s going to have to be a closed casket service. This’ll be more personal for you. Friends should say goodbye, right? Face-to-face, as it were.”
Brittany continued to shake her head and Harvath saw her jaw tighten as she ground her teeth harder.
Cordero moved closer, deeper into her personal space. “If you think Kelly’s going to be this guy’s only victim, you’re wrong, sweetheart. She’s not even his first. You want Agnes to be next? Better yet, how about if it’s you?”
The young woman said nothing.
“See this man next to me?” the detective asked, nodding at Harvath. “He came to Boston to stop this guy. But that’s not going to happen unless you cooperate.”
Brittany’s gaze shifted to Harvath.
“Nobody needs to know you told us anything,” he said. “You’re not in any trouble here. You’ve got a chance to do something right. You can help us catch the person who killed your friend.”
“I don’t want you to catch him,” the young woman stated.
Harvath tilted his head to hear her better. “You don’t?”
“No. I want you to kill the motherfucker.”
“What did I tell your friend about that language?” Cordero interjected.
Brittany shot her daggers, while Harvath held up his hand for the detective to back off. “I understand how you feel,” he told Brittany. “There are quite a few people who’d agree with you, but we need to focus on finding this guy. Anything you can tell us, no matter how small, will help.”
The woman shifted nervously from her left foot to her right, looking back and forth between Harvath and Cordero. Finally, she settled her eyes on him and began to tell her story about the man who had photographed her yesterday in the cemetery.
Cordero took copious notes while Brittany recounted her tale. The F-bomb got dropped multiple times, but the detective was smart enough to let it go. Now that the young woman was cooperating, interrupting her narrative would have been a mistake.
It was obvious that Brittany cared not only about what had happened to Kelly Davis, but about stopping Kelly’s killer. She hadn’t seen the john who picked her up that night, but the man described by Agnes sounded exactly like the man who had assaulted her. Neither Harvath nor Cordero had reason to doubt the young woman. She had been incredibly forthright, even admitting to having solicited the would-be killer.
Cordero asked her several follow-up questions. When she was done, Brittany asked, “You’re not going to bag me for the solicitation, are you?”
“No,” the detective replied. “I’m not. I appreciate your cooperation. Is there anything else you can think of, anything at all?”
The young woman was quiet for a moment and then responded. “That’s pretty much it.”
Cordero looked at Harvath. “Anything you want to add? Any questions I missed?”
Harvath’s eyes had drifted down to Brittany’s hands again. “I do have one question.” Looking up at the young woman, he asked, “You’re right-handed, correct?”
The young woman nodded.
“So when you tried to slap him, you did it with your right hand, which is when he caught you by the wrist and twisted your right arm behind your back?”
“Yes,” she replied.
Harvath removed a wedge of cash from the pocket of his trousers and peeled off two hundred-dollar bills. Brittany’s eyes widened at the sight of the money. Pointing at the tarnished metal cuff on her right wrist, he said, “Detective Cordero could seize that as evidence, but I’d like to rent it from you. I only have one condition.”
The young woman looked at the cuff and then back up at Harvath. “What is it?”
He peeled off two more hundreds and held all four bills out for her. “You and Agnes stay off the street until Detective Cordero and I catch this guy. Deal?”
The wheels were turning in the young woman’s head. She was undoubtedly doing some sort of calculation and it wasn’t about how many holy candles she and her pal could purchase with that kind of money. Finally, she replied, “Deal.”
After tucking the money away, Brittany removed the cuff and placed it into the handkerchief Harvath had retrieved from his jacket.
He then let her rejoin her friend, while Cordero phoned her department to make sure they had the young woman’s complete arrest record in the system.
Satisfied, Cordero asked the ladies for a few more details, including contact information, and then gave each of them her business card along with her cell phone number on the back. With that, the patrol officers were asked to drive the women back to South Boston.
“You’re definitely not a cop,” the detective said to Harvath, as they watched the cruiser pull away from the curb and head toward Southie.
“Why’s that?”
“Because outside of a drug buy, no one hands over that kind of cash for something the law empowers them to take.”