Deputy prosecuting attorney Penny Smyth was on her third cup of coffee. She winced every time she sipped the police brew, but took it as medicine against the hour of 2:00 A.M. On the other side of the one-way glass, a handcuffed Cornelia Uli sat at the Box’s cigarette-marred table between the NO SMOKING sign and the ashtray. The suspect looked restless and agitated. Looking at her, Daphne said, “She’s going to talk, this one.”
“You both know the rules,” Smyth said. “I don’t have to tell you the rules, and I’m sure as hell not coming in there with you, or you might have to observe them.” The one area in which police were allowed a significant amount of latitude was in the interrogation of suspects. The interrogating officer could blatantly lie and make as many false promises as he or she wished, so long as the suspect kept talking. Silence and time were a suspect’s only real defense in the opening twenty-four hours of confinement. A suspect could demand a court-appointed attorney, but the officer did not have to deliver that attorney for as long as the suspect continued to communicate. This being an arresting officer’s only clear opportunity to quickly clear a case, many detectives had perfected the interrogation, promoting it to an art form. As a team, Daphne Matthews and Lou Boldt were among the best, and they were known on the fifth floor as “Sweet and Sour.”
Smyth explained, “She has a long pink sheet, which at twenty-one speaks volumes. Convictions on gang activity, drugs, check kiting. Arrests, but no charges, on a handful of others, including second-degree murder. She has seen a lot of us. I’d keep that in mind. We’ve got her cold on this extortion, and with the connection to the threats and the murders, maybe on an accessory charge. If she doesn’t talk, she may be going away forever. That’s your carrot and whip.”
The Box smelled of human fear. They could wash it, even repaint it, but within a week it smelled the same. Like an old worn-down railroad terminal, it was the end of the line, the last stop. For many who entered these walls, this was their last time in civilian clothes for years to come. The more experienced-the guilty-knew this. No matter his anger at what crime a suspect had committed, Boldt rarely entered this place without pity lurking somewhere in his heart. He had to wonder what events in people’s lives had combined to deposit them here in this cheerless, vapid, dreary space, where a bulldog of an overworked public servant went to work on them like a butcher with a sharp knife.
She might have been pretty once, he thought. But the streets had aged her prematurely, drying her skin and creasing her eyes and placing torment and fear inside so that it bubbled out in a twitchy nervousness that kept Boldt on edge.
Daphne pulled up a chair. Boldt remained standing. Sweet and Sour got down to business. Daphne stared at the young woman. Boldt paced the tight room, in long, heavy strides, hands clasped behind his back. Neither spoke. They waited out their suspect, who finally said, “I want an attorney.”
“An attorney?” he asked. To Daphne he said, “She wants an attorney.”
“I’ll make a note of that.”
“Now.”
“You want your attorney now?” Boldt asked.
“I just said so.”
“Are you sure that’s what you want? Because I was about to give you a chance to skate this whole mess you’re in. And if you insist that I get you an attorney, well then, hey! that’s all she wrote. An attorney is yours, and I’ll see you in court. On the other hand, if you keep you wits about you, Ms. Cornelia Uli, I might turn out to be your knight in shining armor.”
“Fat chance.”
“She called me fat.”
“You look all right to me,” Daphne said.
“What? You’re a comedy team? I want an attorney.”
“And we will assign you one, Cornelia. It’s taken care of.” To Daphne, Boldt said, “You wrote it down, right?”
“It’s right here,” she informed him, pointing to her stenographer’s pad.
“It’s right there,” Boldt told the suspect. “It’s taken care of.”
“Bullshit.”
He slapped the table with an incredible force. Uli jumped back. Daphne did not flinch. “Listen to me!” he bellowed. “I am your last chance.” Effecting a noticeable calm, he said, “You play or you pay. It’s that simple. You know what we’ve got you on? Do you know what we intend to charge you with?” To Daphne he said, “Go ahead, tell her.” Boldt checked his watch. Two-thirty. He could not remember ever feeling this tired. Any minute LaMoia should have the preliminary results of the search of Uli’s loft apartment. Boldt had been present when a SWAT team had kicked the place-hoping for Caulfield-but he had left the detail work for the ID unit and LaMoia.
Daphne read an incredible list of charges, including extortion and concluding with first-degree murder.
When this final charge was read, Uli’s eyes flashed darkly between them and she said, “That’s bullshit.”
“She doesn’t know,” Boldt told Daphne. “We’re supposed to believe that this woman is some innocent runner, some accomplice, when in fact we know it was her all along.” To Uli he said, “The account number is listed in one of the threats, young lady. That is a direct connection to you and these threats, to you and the poisoning deaths of ten individuals. Ten. And believe me, if you’re thinking you will somehow get life instead of lethal injection, you have not been paying attention to what’s been going on out at Walla Walla. This state is in the killing mood, Ms. Uli. And crimes like this are exactly the cases that I’m talking about.”
“On the other hand,” Daphne said, before Uli could issue the prerequisite string of denials, “if you have something to tell us, your cooperation might keep you off death row.”
“It might let you walk out of here,” Boldt said.
“She’s not that smart,” Daphne told him. “Girls like this always think they know better than us,” and to Uli, “which is bizarre to me, since we spend all of our time putting people like you away. And people like you spend all of their time behind bars. Isn’t that strange?”
“I want an attorney.”
Daphne said to Boldt, “I told you she’s not that smart. She can’t even remember that I already made a note of that.”
Boldt said seriously, “You can probably sell sex to the guards for cigarettes. I hear that oral sex is worth a pack. The real thing, a carton. At least for a couple of years you can. You have a nice body. You’re young. But others come along younger than you. And then it gets tough in there, because the guards are through with you. We try to police that, you know. We don’t like it. But it’s the prisoners who keep it going. They get a little desperate in there. Women liking other women. Are you into that stuff?”
“She’s into it all,” Daphne said.
“Fuck you!”
“She understands the topic,” Boldt said.
“Definitely,” Daphne replied.
Boldt looked at his watch again. “I’m tired, how ‘bout you?” he asked Daphne.
“Exhausted.”
“She’s not going to cooperate.”
“I think you’re right.”
“Who says?” asked Cornelia Uli.
Boldt told her, “You’re not exactly being forthcoming here, Cornelia.”
“Can I stand up?” the suspect asked.
“Please,” Boldt said.
“I think better on my feet,” she said.
“By all means, think better,” Boldt encouraged.
She wandered the small room for a few minutes, and after a short time Boldt observed that Daphne was tracking her with an increased intensity and interest. Confusion knitted the psychologist’s brow, and she squinted, saying suddenly to the suspect, “Put your arms over your head again. Like you just had them.” Uli stopped walking the floor. “Clasp your hands over your head.”
Uli looked to Boldt for support. The sergeant said, “Do as she asks.”
Uli obliged, lifting her arms and lacing her fingers on the top of her head. “What’s going on?”
She had small, high breasts that disappeared when she lifted her arms. She was thinner than Boldt had first judged her, and her neck was long and elegant.
“Turn around,” Daphne instructed.
She did so, asking, “Come on. What’s going on?”
“Turn around!” Daphne was out of her chair now. “Who gave you that ATM card?”
Facing the wall, the suspect said, “It was sent to me in the mail.”
Daphne sounded angry. “No it wasn’t. You applied for it by mail. You opened an account.” Daphne produced the scanned copy of the account application provided by Lucille Guillard. “A handwriting expert will connect you to this application. We’re confident of that. But who put you up to it?”
She began to lower her arms.
“Keep them that way. Turn back around.” To Boldt she said, “Do you see it?”
He wanted to support her, but she had lost him. He looked at her inquisitively.
“Who told you to open that account?” Daphne asked.
Uli was looking down at the document on the table, blank-faced, her hands still held on her head. “I …”
“And don’t hand me a crock of shit, Uli, because I’m running out of patience with you.”
Sweet and Sour. They never really knew who would play which role. Sometimes they planned it out in advance: who would befriend the suspect, who would lean. Sometimes it evolved, and they found their roles as the interrogation wore on.
“I can’t say,” Uli said.
Boldt felt a spike of heat rush up his spine. By these words, Uli had just admitted her culpability in the crimes.
They interrogated her for another forty-five minutes, talking in circles.
Sometime after three, they elected to send her down to lockup. They would try again the next morning.
In the elevator, on their way to the garage, Boldt asked her, “What was the choreography about?”
A worried look about her, Daphne answered carefully: “It’s not that I understand it, Lou, but I’ve seen that woman before.”