“It’s not…” my father starts, “I don’t mean…” He shakes his head. I see that he’s holding my mother’s hand tight, their fingers intertwined, knuckles white. “It’s just, I don’t like this is all, Alex. I don’t like the way this is going.”
“I’ll set it up for the morning,” Shoffler says.
For a moment, the false accusation gets to me – to be accused of such a thing. I can write the sound bites myself, imagine the breathless but somber delivery:
“More developments in the case of the missing Callahan twins: Police found a blood-soaked T-shirt in the father’s house.”
“Police have requested that the father take a polygraph test.”
But my wounded outrage about being accused, the flare of sadness – these emotions persist for only a few seconds. They barely register against the despair that’s enveloped me since Shoffler displayed Kevin’s blood-drenched T-shirt. The one glimmer of hope came from a thought that in itself was so hideous I hate to admit to it: there was only one T-shirt, not two. Maybe two kids were too much trouble. And it was Kevin’s shoe, too. Maybe Sean…
I’m sinking.
It isn’t that consciously I’ve put much into believing that Shoffler and the authorities will track down whoever took my sons, will find Kevin and Sean and bring them home. Yet on some level I invested more in that idea than I realized. I put faith in the professionalism and energy of the authorities, in their manpower and resources, in helicopters, search grids, canine trackers, evidence technicians, and databases.
But if the request that I take a polygraph means – and what else can it mean? – they think I played some active role in my sons’ disappearance, then there’s no hope. The authorities are so far off the track that I may as well put my faith in the yellow ribbons neighbors have begun to string around the trees up and down Ordway Street.
CHAPTER 11
The polygraph test is scheduled for this morning at eleven. Despite my innocence, I can’t help worrying. How can a machine designed to measure galvanic response (and I have only a vague idea what this is) distinguish kinds of stress? How can a mechanical device separate anxiety about telling deliberate lies from anxiety about taking the test, about being falsely accused, about the fate of my missing children?
Mostly, though, the test is a distraction – almost a welcome one – from the horror of the T-shirt. And although I don’t look forward to the walk to the car, especially since Shoffler failed to keep news about the “child’s blood-soaked T-shirt” from leaking to the press, in a way I can’t wait to get out of the house. Hour by hour, the atmosphere becomes more suffocating, a bell jar of anguished waiting.
Every time the phone rings – which is at least once every five minutes – we wait, suspended between hope and fear.
Mostly fear. We’re relieved when the call offers no information about the boys, when it’s just another call from the press or the police, from a friend or a stranger wanting to help. The cliché turns out to be true. No news is good news; no news feels like a reprieve.
My parents and Liz may be incensed over the accusations against me, but with Jack I’d have to say the jury’s out. He’s not sure. In some ways, this is easier to take than my mother’s constant litany of affronted woe.
My father wants to go with me to the police station, even Liz makes the offer, but I won’t put them through it.
At this morning’s press conference, which we all watched in the family room, Shoffler refused to answer questions or comment about the bloody T-shirt and warned against “leaping to conclusions.”
Still, I know what to expect when I step out the door.
And then it’s time. Christiansen arrives with a fellow officer to escort me to the squad car. Although I’m not in handcuffs or shackles, escorting doesn’t begin to describe how I’m hustled down the steps and propelled through the shouting, strobe-dappled crowd.
I’m not under arrest yet, but the body language of my companions makes it clear what this is: a perp walk. I fight against my natural inclination to avoid eye contact. It’s not easy. Reflex alone makes me want to turn my head and avert my eyes from the constant explosions of light. I work to keep my head up. By the time we get to the car, I’m blind from the dazzle.
Christiansen pushes me inside. I’m being transported to the Park Street station for the polygraph. D.C. is involved now because there are “jurisdictional questions to be resolved, dependent on the location and the nature of the crime.” This is the way Shoffler explained it at this morning’s press conference, for which, Christiansen tells me, they badged 318 representatives of the media.
Like most authorities, Shoffler didn’t explain what he said – despite pleas from the press.
I got it, though – along with the millions of Americans who watched various “experts” deconstruct Shoffler’s statement. It comes down to this.
Scenario 1: I murdered my kids at home, disposed of their bodies, then drove sixty miles to Cromwell, Maryland. I then wandered around the fairgrounds for a couple of hours to establish my alibi before reporting the kids missing. Jurisdiction: D.C.
Scenario 2: I murdered my children in Maryland, somewhere in the vicinity of the Renaissance Faire. Jurisdiction: Anne Arundel County.
Scenario 3: The boys were kidnapped from the Renaissance Faire (this has now been referred to by at least one broadcaster as “the father’s version of events”). Jurisdiction: Anne Arundel County in conjunction with the FBI.
The police station has a kind of played-out atmosphere that against all odds calms me down. It’s so different from the adrenalized energy at home. It reminds me of the DMV.
I get the sense that most of the people who work here, from clerk to detective, see enough barbarity on a regular basis that it’s blunted their emotional response. No matter how unthinkable a crime – even the murder of children – there’s a precedent, a number for it in the criminal code.
It’s all procedure. There’s a process to deal with every conceivable type of human wrongdoing, a process that doesn’t leave much room for passion or outrage. While I’m here, everyone – if not exactly polite – at least treats me with professional disdain, interested only in advancing that process. I’m here for a polygraph test; the idea is to get it done and move on to the next chore.
Just like getting fingerprinted, though, there’s something sordid about the procedure. I feel trapped, caught in a lose-lose situation, the lie detector test a not-so-modern version of the test given to the Salem witches. As I remember it (from a History Channel special), if the accused woman, weighted down with stones, managed not to drown – as a normal person would – it signified guilt and she was burned as a witch.
The test is the same. Just being asked to take a polygraph counts against me. I won’t fail the test, but as someone who’s covered a lot of court cases, I know it’s possible the result will be “inconclusive.”
If I pass, that won’t help. It’s just that refusing it would have been worse. Passing means nothing because no one actually trusts the results – which, I am reminded, as the technician asks me to take a seat, are not “admissible in court.” He offers a thin smile.
“Kind of makes you wonder why they bother,” I hear myself say, instantly irritated by my nervous chatter.
He shrugs. “The results can be instructive,” he says, “even if not on the evidentiary level.”
We both know why they bother with lie detector tests. They can be instructive in many ways. It means one thing if someone agrees to take the test, another if he hires his own technician, who might frame a slightly different set of questions or put them in a more client-friendly way.