When people are deceptive (either actively misstating or failing to give the whole story) they experience stress and this stress reveals itself. Charles Darwin said, “Repressed emotion almost always comes to the surface in some form of body motion.”
The problem for interrogators is that stress doesn’t necessarily show up as nail biting, sweating and eye avoidance. It could take the form of a pleasant grin, a cheerful nod, a sympathetic wag of the head.
You don’t say…
Well, that’s terrible…
What a body language expert must do is compare subjects’ behavior in nonstressful situations with their behavior when they might be lying. Differences between the two suggest—though they don’t prove—deception. If there is some variation, a kinesic analyst then continues to probe the topic that’s causing the stress until the subject confesses, or it’s otherwise explained.
In interrogating Wayne Keplar, Dance would take her normal approach: asking a number of innocuous questions she knew the answer to and that the suspect would have no reason to lie about. She’d also just shoot the breeze with him, no agenda other than to note how he behaved when feeling no stress. This would establish his kinesic “baseline”—a catalog of his body language, tone of voice and choice of expressions when he was at ease and truthful.
Only then would she turn to questions about the impending attack and look for variations from the baseline when he answered.
But establishing the baseline usually requires many hours, if not days, of casual discussion.
Time that Kathryn Dance didn’t have.
It was now 2:08.
Still, there was no option other than to do the best she could. She’d learned that there was another suspect, escaping through the old military ordnance storage and practice ground, with Michael O’Neil in pursuit (she knew the dangers of the base and didn’t want to think of the risks to him). And the Monterey crime scene team was still going over the Taurus and the items that Paulson and Keplar had on them when arrested. But these aspects of the investigation had produced no leads.
Dance now read the sparse file once more quickly. Wayne Keplar was forty-four, high school educated only, but he’d done well at school and was now one of the “philosophers” at the Brothers of Liberty, writing many of the essays and diatribes on the group’s blogs and website. He was single, never married. He’d been born in the Haight, lived in San Diego and Bakersfield. Now in Oakland. He didn’t have a passport and had never been out of the country. His father was dead—killed in a Waco/Ruby Ridge–type standoff with federal officers. His mother and sister, a few years older than he, were also involved in BOL, which despite the name, boasted members of both sexes. Neither of these family members had a criminal record.
Keplar, on the other hand, did—but a minor one, and nothing violent. His only federal offense had been graffiti’ing an armed forces recruitment center.
He also had an older brother, who lived on the East Coast, but the man apparently hadn’t had any contact with Keplar for years and had nothing to do with the BOL.
A deep data mine search had revealed nothing about Keplar’s and Gabe Paulson’s journey here. This was typical of militia types, worried about Big Brother. They’d pay cash for as much as they could.
Normally she’d want far more details than this, but there was no more time.
Fast…
Dance left the folder at the desk out front and entered the interrogation room. Keplar glanced up with a smile.
“Uncuff him,” she said to Albert Stemple, who didn’t hesitate even though he clearly wasn’t crazy about the idea.
Dance would be alone in the room with an unshackled suspect, but she couldn’t afford to have the man’s arms limited by chains. Body language analysis is hard enough even with all the limbs unfettered.
Keplar slumped lazily in the gray, padded office chair, as if settling in to watch a football game he had some, but not a lot of, interest in.
Dance nodded to Stemple, who left and closed the thick door behind him. Her eyes went to the large analog clock at the far end of the room.
2:16.
Keplar followed her gaze then looked back. “You’re goin’ to try to find out where the…event’s takin’ place. Ask away. But I’ll tell you right now, it’s going to be a waste of time.”
Dance moved her chair so that she sat across from him, with no furniture between them. Any barrier between interviewer and subject, even a small table, gives the perp a sense of protection and makes kinesic analysis that much harder. Dance was about three feet from him, in his personal proxemic zone—not so close as to make him stonewall, but near enough to keep him unsettled.
Except that he wasn’t unsettled. At all. Wayne Keplar was as calm as could be.
He looked at her steadily, a gaze that was not haughty, not challenging, not sexy. It was almost as if he were sizing up a dog to buy for his child.
“Wayne, you don’t have a driver’s license.”
“Another way for the government to keep tabs on you.”
“Where do you live?”
“Oakland. Near the water. Been there for six years. Town has a bad rap but it’s okay.”
“Where were you before that?”
“San Diego.”
She asked more about his personal life and travels, pretending not to know the answers. She’d left the file outside.
His responses were truthful. And as he spoke she noted his shoulders were forward, his right hand tended to come to rest on his thigh, he looked her straight in the eye when he spoke, his lips often curled into a half-smile. He had a habit of poking his tongue into the interior of his cheek from time to time. It could have been a habit or could be from withdrawal—missing chewing tobacco, which Dance knew could be as addictive as smoking.
“Why’d you leave San Diego, Wayne? Weather’s nicer than Oakland.”
“Not really. I don’t agree with that. But I just didn’t like it. You know how you get a vibration and it’s just not right.”
“That’s true,” she said.
He beamed in an eerie way. “Do you? You know that? You’re a firecracker, Kathryn. Yes, you are.”
A chill coursed down her spine as the near-set eyes tapped across her face.
She ignored it as best she could and asked, “How senior are you in the Brothers of Liberty?”
“I’m pretty near the top. You know anything about it?”
“No.”
“I’d love to tell you. You’re smart, Ms. Firecracker. You’d probably think there’re some pretty all right ideas we’ve got.”
“I’m not sure I would.”
A one-shoulder shrug—another of his baseline gestures. “But you never know.”
Then came more questions about his life in Oakland, his prior convictions, his childhood. Dance knew the answers to some but the others were such that he’d have no reason to lie and she continued to rack up elements of baseline body language and verbal quality (the tone and speed of speech).
She snuck a glance at the clock.
“Time’s got you rattled, does it?”
“You’re planning to kill a lot of people. Yes, that bothers me. But not you, I see.”
“Ha, now you’re sounding just like a therapist. I was in counseling once. It didn’t take.”
“Let’s talk about what you have planned, the two hundred people you’re going to kill.”
“Two hundred and change.”
So, more victims. His behavior fit the baseline. This was true; he wasn’t just boasting.
“How many more?”
“Two hundred twenty, I’d guess.”
An idea occurred to Dance and she said, “I’ve told you we’re not releasing Osmond Carter. That will never be on the table.”