It made suspects nervous to have cops in the room with them while taking a polygraph, so they watched the test from another room down the hall, on a TV that’d been hooked up with a video feed. The technician, an unassuming older woman, had taken her time clipping the nodules to Evans’s fingers and chest and temples, where they’d best measure his body’s reactions to the questions asked. Evans was polite and pleasant.
“Mr. Evans, have you ever taken a polygraph test before?”
“Yes.”
“Do you recall when?”
“About twenty years ago.”
“Do you recall the circumstances surrounding that polygraph?”
“Yes.” That was all. Evans wasn’t the type to volunteer anything. The tech made a small noise through her nose, or maybe it was only an exhalation and not meant as a judgment.
“Just to review, I’ll first be asking you yes or no questions, and I’ll then have you give me the details of the night your wife died. You are aware this session is being video-recorded?”
Evans’s eyes flickered up to the camera above his head.
“Yes.”
“Do you have any questions before we begin?”
“No.”
“I’ve never seen someone look so damn comfortable,” Spengler said.
On the TV, the female technician nodded.
“Great. Let’s begin, then.”
Loren grunted and kept watching the screen. Spengler had the file Ortiz had given her rolled up and tucked under her arm.
“Why are you giving this to me?” she’d asked Ortiz out on the street when he’d first shoved it in her hand. “What do you want from me?”
“I need your help. Men open up to their partners and share things.”
“I told you before, I’m not his partner.”
“Close enough. Look, I don’t want much. Just read the file, maybe ask Loren a few questions. See if you can find out anything that might help my case.”
“Have you spoken to Loren yet?”
Ortiz had a grin like a shark.
“Oh, that’s coming. I’m trying to build my case first.”
“Have you ever met Loren? He’s not exactly an open book.”
Ortiz had smiled in a way she didn’t much like.
“But surely a pretty young woman like yourself could get him to open up.”
And then she understood. She’d heard plenty of this sort of bullshit before. Use your feminine wiles, Spengler. Charm a confession out of him. Flutter those eyelashes, reach out and touch his hand. Bend over more often than you need to. As if she was nothing more than tits and ass with a badge. A pretty young woman like you. How many times had she heard some variation of that over the years? Too many to count. Every time it happened she’d tried to tell Tony about it, turn it into a joke, but it always upset him. Not that trying to make it funny did much for her, either. Whoever said laughter was the best medicine had obviously never been told to tighten their bra straps and thrust out their chest while interviewing suspects.
Ortiz had found out who she was but hadn’t dared to come into the station to talk to her—Loren would’ve seen him and known what was up. So he’d waited for her outside, watching for her so he could spring his trap. Like one of those spiders that hides under a rock until the unsuspecting prey wanders by to be snatched up.
She wasn’t going to be snatched up by anyone.
“Mr. Evans, were you born in 1971?”
“Yes.”
“Do you have two daughters?”
“Yes.”
“Is there a particular reason you never told the detectives you’d been married before?”
Evans blinked rapidly. He might’ve been surprised, or maybe he had something caught in his eye.
“I didn’t think it was pertinent,” he said slowly.
“Did you murder your wife?”
Evans turned to look at the tech.
“Pardon?” he asked politely. “Marie wasn’t murdered.”
The tech glanced down at her notes.
“Not Marie, Mr. Evans. Your first wife. Janice Roscoe Evans. Do you have any idea who was behind her murder?”
“What does this have to do with Janice?”
“If you could just answer the question, Mr. Evans.”
“I added a few questions to the list,” Loren said. He was excited. There was nothing that’d perk Ralph Loren up faster than throwing a shock into someone. “Just to shake things up a bit.”
“Janice’s boss was arrested for her murder,” Evans said. “Jesse O’Neil.”
“And you do believe Jesse O’Neil was responsible for the death of your first wife?”
Evans stared straight ahead again. He didn’t move, but there was something about his posture that said he was thinking, hard. The wheels were turning so fast there was smoke coming off them. He looked like a stray Spengler had once watched get chased down by the dogcatcher, his eyes bright and shining with fear and intelligence. He was cornered, that was what the look on his face said, and he was desperately trying to think of a way out but was coming up empty.
The polygraph machine would capture all the info about his pulse and heart rate and even how much he was sweating, but Spengler wished she was in there, too. When a person spins a lie there’s a change in the air a machine can’t measure. It made her think of the old console TVs. When she was a kid she could tell when someone turned one on in her apartment building—not because of anything she heard, but because of the low buzz in the back of her head, like a whine that came to her brain instead of her ears. She wondered if she’d hear that buzz coming off Evans if she was in there now.
“Mr. Evans?”
There’s an old saying: life turns on a dime. It can go one way or the other, or lose its balance and topple over completely, and Spengler had interviewed suspects before and seen that moment of decision, when things could go one way or the other. This way or that. It’s those moments that lead to confessions—or not. The truth or a lie. You’d never be able to guess which way the dime would spin, gleaming dizzily as the light bounced off the silver face.
This time, the dime spun away from them, out of reach.
“I don’t know,” Evans said. “I don’t know anything about Janice’s murder. The police handled all of that.”
“Did you murder your first wife?”
“No.”
“On Tuesday, August twenty-eighth, did your second wife, Marie Evans, fall off a cliff in Rocky Mountain National Forest?”
“Yes.”
“Did you see her fall?”
“No.”
“Did you push her off that cliff?”
“No.”
“Have you ever killed anyone?”
There was a long pause. Through the TV’s speakers, Spengler thought she could hear the wet, smacking sound of Evans’s lips separating as he finally spoke.
“Didn’t you just ask me that same question?” he asked.
The tech shrugged, noncommittal.
Evans’s eyes flicked up to the camera, and Spengler didn’t have to be in the room with him to feel the old buzz in her head.
“No,” he said. He dropped his eyes again. “I’ve never killed anyone.”
He was lying.
And the questions went on.
“You know these questions you gave me are highly unorthodox and will never hold up in a court of law,” Judy, the tech who’d run the polygraph, said. Evans had already left.
“I don’t need any of it to stand up in a court, you sweet thang,” Loren said. Judy, who had to be at least seventy years old, glared at him. “What’d the test tell you?”
“The same thing every one of these tests tells me. He was nervous in there. Heart rate was up, respiration too. Blood pressure was fairly high, but he’s the right age for hypertension—”
“Am I crazy or are you a doctor conducting a physical exam in there, Judy?” Loren demanded. “Did you grab the guy by the balls, ask him to turn his head and cough? Maybe you slipped a finger up his ass while we weren’t watching to check his prostate, too? Christ on a cross, lady. I don’t need to know all that other garbage. I just want to know if he was lying or not.”
“Are you new here, Loren?” Judy asked waspishly. “You know how this works. Polygraph testing is an imperfect science. All I can tell you is when I see spikes in his heart rate or an elevated level of perspiration. Those jumps might mean he’s lying, or they might mean nothing at all.”
“Were there certain questions that caused a spike?” Spengler asked, holding up a hand and speaking before Loren could begin another fresh rant.
“There were definitely moments,” Judy said. She turned her laptop so Spengler could see the screen. “See how the measurements stay mostly level until here? Then everything jumps up. Then it all lowers again, and there’s a second spike.”
“What did you ask to cause that first one?” Spengler said.
“That was when we were discussing the man who killed his first wife. Jesse O’Neil? It’s when I asked Mr. Evans if he thought O’Neil was the one behind her murder. He said he didn’t know, but based on his body’s reactions I’d say that was a lie.”
Spengler put her hand on the back of Judy’s chair and leaned closer to the laptop’s screen.
“What about this second spike?”
“That was when I asked if he’d ever killed anyone,” Judy said. “He said no, but again, looking at these results I’d say that was a lie.”
“But when you asked if he’d pushed Marie off the cliff—” Spengler began.
“His vitals all stayed flat. No reaction. He’s telling the truth. He didn’t push his wife off the cliff. But he seems to be lying about whether he’s killed anyone before.”
“You called the polygraph an imperfect science,” Spengler said. “How accurate have you found it to be?”
Judy hesitated. Shrugged.
“It’s controversial,” she said.
“How long have you been administering polygraphs?” Spengler asked. Behind her, Loren was silent, but she could feel him listening.
“Almost thirty years.”
“And in those thirty years, how accurate have you found it to be?”
The old woman started to shrug again, but stopped when Spengler gently touched her shoulder.
“Off the record,” Spengler said. “I’m just looking for your personal opinion. No harm, no foul.”
Judy sighed and pinched her leg, yanked on the skin. Amusedly, Spengler realized it wasn’t skin but panty hose, the same kind her mother always wore under her waitress uniform. Sheer, with the seam running across the toes and a control top.
“Oh, a polygraph is accurate enough,” Judy said. “I’ve been running these tests a long time, I’ve done hundreds of them. Lots of people are good liars on a day-to-day basis, but when I’m measuring a person’s physiological response to questions, it tells a completely different story. Most people couldn’t do it. When you lie, your body gives you away. It wants to tell the truth, even if your mouth doesn’t.”