Twenty-Seven Bones

3

“Back in the day-waaay back in the day-when I was a sheriff’s deputy in upstate New York, my boss used to boast that there was no murder he couldn’t solve.”

At the lectern, Special Agent E. L. Pender, FBI, Ret., paused dramatically; the red- and blue-shirted students waited with their pens poised.

“What he’d do, he told me, he’d take the first person to find the body and the last one to see the vic alive, then beat the crap out of both of ’em until one of ’em confessed.”

Muted consternation in the auditorium. The red shirts were the best and brightest of the nation’s law enforcement officers, attending the FBI’s eleven-week National Academy training course at Quantico; the blue shirts were FBI trainees.

“Right,” said Pender. “Judging from your response, I can see I don’t have to tell you that those days are gone. I’m not saying it’s a good thing, and I’m not saying it’s a bad thing, I’m just saying it’s over. And that is why I’m in front of you today to spread the gospel of the affective interview.

“As you already know, when two interrogators team up for good cop, bad cop, it’s almost always good cop who ends up inside the interrogation room taking the confession, if any, while bad cop watches through the one-way glass. What you may not know, however, is that unless bad cop has the freedom to ratchet up to a realistic threat level, the game isn’t worth the candle.

“For every perp who comes clean, you’ll get five who either clam up or lawyer up or have their confessions thrown out on the grounds of coercion-and that’s not even taking into account witnesses slash suspects who turn out to be innocent, but have information of probative value that they’re not going to share with an interrogator who’s been threatening or frightening them, or who reminds them even subconsciously of the schoolyard bully who terrorized them when they were itty-bitty citizens.

“And to anticipate your next question: what if the person you’re interviewing is the schoolyard bully. Won’t he be more likely to respond to a show of toughness and a threat of force?

“The answer, surprisingly, is no. Why? Because as any psychiatrist will tell you, it is a fact of life, a psychological home truth, that every human being from Mother Teresa to Jack the Ripper operates from the same basic needs, using the same basic defenses, and accessing the same basic pool of emotions as every other human being. Deep down below the surface, we all want to be safe, we all want to be loved, and we all want to be respected.

“The affective interview takes all that into account, recognizes the basic emotional needs and the feelings of the interviewee, and makes use of them in order to extract what should, and I emphasize should, be the goal of every interview a law enforcement officer ever conducts: the truth. You’re not in that room to get a confession or to corroborate a theory, you’re there to elicit truthful information.

“Now we have a lot of ground to cover this morning. Before break I hope to get through the basics of proxemics, kinesics, and paralinguistics, and if there’s time we’re going to break into small groups for role-playing. Any questions before we get started?”

“Yeah.” Red shirt slouched in the fourth row of the auditorium, cowboy boots sticking out diagonally into the aisle. “You sayin’ if I want to get the truth out of some child rapist, I have to respect him going in?”

Pender stepped out from behind the lectern. “You questioning my expertise, you shit-for-brains, redneck peckerwood?”

The man was already on his feet-the only question was which way he was going to go, out the door or straight for Pender.

Pender stepped back and held up both hands in a gesture of surrender. “Just making a point. What’s your name, man?”

“Bafferd.”

“See-I treat you with disrespect, I can’t get so much as a first name out of you.”

“It’s Ray.” Bafferd sat back down-there were a few chuckles around the room, but none from anyone within arm’s reach of the man.

“The answer to your question, Ray, is that it wouldn’t hurt. But at the very least, you have to recognize that he has the same need for respect that you do, and if you doubt it, just ask yourself how likely you’d have been to cooperate with me thirty seconds ago, when I disrespected you.

“Any other questions? Okay, let’s get started. Proxemics, the science of spatial psychology. Most people brought up in our culture consider eighteen inches the optimum distance for intimate conversations. Casual but friendly conversation: eighteen to forty-eight inches. Anything beyond four feet is impersonal, anything beyond six feet is public. So unless you’re dealing with somebody from another continent, which we’ll get to later, here’s how you want to set up your interview space….”