Of course, I go ballistic. “Look,” I say, my voice shaking. “I didn’t kill my children.”
“Mr. Callahan. Maybe we should take a break here. Maybe you should consult an attorney.”
“I don’t need a break and I don’t need a fucking attorney.”
“Did Detective Shoffler tell you that someone saw you in the parking lot, opening your car – and this was after you reported the boys missing.”
“I was checking to see if the boys went to the car when they couldn’t find me. The security guy – he suggested it.”
It goes on like this. One hour, two hours, three, four. We’re into hour five, when Price, after asking me if I need to use the facilities, excuses himself to do so. When he comes back, he brings me some water and suggests we go over the whole story again.
We do. “Remind me,” he starts, “whose idea was it to go to this festival? You come up with that?”
“No,” I tell him, “I’ve told you. It was their idea. It’s not my kind of thing.”
“What is your kind of thing?”
It goes on.
“You say you heard Kevin’s voice on your cell phone,” Price says when we reach that point. “He said one word: ‘Daddy.’ So what I want to know is – how you could tell it was Kevin? They’re identical twins, right?”
“They’re my kids. I could tell.”
“You could tell.” Price makes quotation marks in the air.
“That’s right.”
He looks as if he’s about to challenge this, but then he smiles. “I guess I can accept that.” He shakes his head. “Must have been rough, though,” he says with what seems to be genuine concern. “Tantalizing.” A regretful sigh. “Just that one word, and then he never called back.”
“No. That was it.”
“Boy,” Price says, then suddenly veers off in another direction. “Why don’t you tell me about the night before. Hmmmm?”
“I don’t see-”
“Do you not want to talk about that?” He frowns and then apologizes, as if he’s inadvertently hit a sore spot.
“No, I don’t mind talking about it. I just-”
Price shrugs. “Look, you never know when something’s gonna come up that will help.”
I nod.
“Okay, so the night before – Friday night – you said you had a lot of work to do. So, let’s talk about dinner, okay? You cook, or did you eat out?”
“We ate out. Pizza.”
“What pizza? Where?”
“The Two Amys – on Wisconsin.”
“Anyone see you?”
“Sure. The waiter, other customers.”
“You pay with a credit card or cash?”
“Probably a credit card.”
“You don’t remember.”
“I don’t remember.”
He waves the significance of this away, tosses me a smile. “I don’t always keep track of that kind of shit, either.”
Jason Price has a powerful charm and he uses it all to persuade me that he wants to be my friend, he really does. And the way to get in tight with my new friend is to tell him what he wants to hear. And what he wants to hear – not that he’d hold it against me, he’s had some bad moments with Derrick, he wouldn’t lie to me – is that I did it. I lost it, we all do, it’s the human condition. Nobody is under control 100 percent of the time. And so on.
I’m making it sound hokey and easy to dismiss, but it isn’t like that. It’s an almost religious yearning, the impulse to confess. If only I could confess, I’d be cleansed and reborn, I could start over.
As the hours slide by, I begin to slip into a dangerous apathy. I want to stop talking. I want to sleep.
I’ve read more than once about survivors pulled back from the brink. There’s a point where the will begins to fade. Just before freezing to death, the victim of hypothermia is said to get warm and sleepy; the drowning person, to find himself immersed in a burst of light. I take it from such accounts that oblivion can be enticing, a welcome respite from struggle and pain.
We’re going over the journey through the fairgrounds yet again when someone raps on the door. Detective Price frowns, says “excuse me one moment,” gets up, opens the door a crack, conducts a brief conversation with someone else. Although this discussion is conducted at the volume of a whisper, I can tell it’s an argument. Then, without a word, he leaves me alone.
I wait in a kind of dull reverie, checking my watch every few minutes. Ten minutes go by. Twenty. Half an hour.
When Price comes back, he launches into a whole new line of questioning, one that baffles me.
“What is your religion, Alex?”
“What?”
“Your religious conviction. Your faith.”
“I’m not very religious.”
“Are you an atheist, then?”
“No, not exactly. What does this have to do with anything?”
“Bear with me, okay? Say you had to check off a box, for instance – would you check off atheist?”
“No. I’m sort of a lapsed Catholic. I – I don’t know. I’d check off Christian, I guess.”
“You guess.”
There are questions about what I think about animal sacrifice, about a piece I once did about Santería in south Florida, about my spiritual convictions, my opinion on religions such as Wicca.
“Look,” I say finally, “where are we going with this? I don’t understand the relevance.”
“You don’t like this line of questioning?” Price asks, a surprised frown on his face.
“I just don’t get it,” I tell him.
“It’s not idle curiosity,” he says. “I can assure you of that.”
And looking at him, at the professionally disappointed expression on his face, I finally realize that no amount of cooperation on my part is going to exonerate me. I’m trying to prove a null hypothesis – and you just can’t do that. No matter how many questions I answer correctly, Jason Price is interested only in answers that point toward my guilt. And since I’m not guilty, there’s no reason to sit here and endure this.
I tell him I want to go home.
“You refuse to submit to further questioning.”
“I don’t see the point.”
“You refuse. Is that what you’re telling me?”
I shake my head. “You don’t quit, do you?”
Jason Price offers a thin smile. “Is that a yes?”
I decide to oblige him. What can it matter? “Yes,” I say. “I refuse.”
Price gets up. He leaves me alone in the room.
CHAPTER 12
A rap on the door jolts me out of a half-sleep. I don’t know how much time has passed, but it’s Shoffler, not Price, who steps into the room. “Let’s go,” he says.
I know right away that something’s happened. His attitude toward me has changed, but in a way I can’t read. He turns off the tape recorder, and I follow him out to his car. It’s a big white Ford, a Crown Victoria. It’s daytime – morning. I spent the night in the interrogation room.
It scares me when Shoffler holds open the door for me. Why is he suddenly solicitous of my feelings? Because: He feels sorry for me.
When he gets in and fastens his seat belt, I brace myself, rigid against the expected somber tone, the terrible news, the very worst news. It isn’t until we’ve gone a couple of blocks that I realize I’m holding my breath.
“The test came back,” Shoffler says, shaking his head.
“What?” This is not what I’m expecting, and my relief is immediate and profound. “You mean the polygraph test?”
“No,” Shoffler says. “No – the lab test. The test on the T-shirt.” He lets out a jet of air as he steers the car around a corner.
“And… what?”
“Chicken blood,” he says, with a quick look my way. “The shirt was soaked in chicken blood.”
“Chicken blood!” I repeat, elated. I’m not sure what it means, but it’s good news, I know that much. The blood was not human blood. It wasn’t my kid’s blood.