Mercer waited patiently until I was satisfied with the finished product. Then he signaled me to join him in the sergeant’s office, where I started on my third or fourth cup of coffee, wide awake and tingling with the excitement of a good arrest and the rush of caffeine.
“Well, I’ve moved him along a little. When we glommed him in the bank, it was the usual ”I-don’t-know-what you-talking-about“ bullshit. Then I unrolled his birth certificate and the Parole letter and stuck it up in front of his nose just now, and he mumbled something about making a mistake and knocking on the Jeters’ door when he was really looking for his Uncle Louie’s apartment. Of course, he doesn’t have a fuckin‘ clue where his Uncle Louie lives. And I spent the last half-hour talking fingerprints, a little lecture about DNA, and then some yammer about everything the Jersey cops told me about his priors, and how similar they are to these cases.”
“Where’d that get you?”
“First he insisted that he was completely cured in that prison treatment center. Doesn’t do that kind of stuff anymore. Likes women now, understands them better.”
“The therapist hasn’t been born yet who can rehabilitate one of these predators. I once had a defendant who’d been treated in one of those programs tell me that if I broke the sstic word ”therapist“ into two words, it forms ”the rapist.“:s as How’s that for rehabilitation, huh?” gger Mercer went on, “He saved the best for the last.” r the Sergeant Barbero stuck his head in.
“You guys taking calls bes yet? These phones are wild.”
“Hold everything, Sarge. I want to see if he’ll talk to Cooper.”
“What’s the best?” I asked.
“After I laid it all out, I began to jerk his chain about how smart he was, you know, the ruse about Con Ed and talking his way into the apartment. Man, this guy is a sucker for having you tell him he’s smart.”
It was odd what worked with different suspects what approach would make them want to talk to you. The most unpleasant part of this process for me had always been sitting in these rooms, face to face with men who were capable of monstrous acts against other humans, and speaking to them civilly when the evidence of their guilt was overwhelming. Doing it, one hoped, to get even more information to use against them.
“I hit the button with Montvale. Enough times of complimenting him and he actually wanted to tell me how he I did it. Not the whole thing, he’s still not admitting the I in rapes. Says that till today he had never guessed wrong about which apartment he wanted to be in.”
I listened as Mercer went on.
“Getting past doormen is easy. He says you never have to wait more than an hour, even to get into the best buildings. Sooner or later, guy gets distracted by a couple of moving men, an argument with a porter or handyman, pain in the ass tenant who expects him to know what the temperature is today and what time it was when I went out to walk their dogs. None of that happens, the guy eventually has to leave his post to take a leak. That gets him in the front door and on his way upstairs.
”This is his favorite part. Montvale says his prime time is the middle of the day. He walks up and down the hallways, listening at the doors. If he hears the television, and the noise is a soap opera, it’s a pretty sure bet you got a woman home alone watching the tube. Sometimes she opens the door and it’s an old lady, so he’s not interested.
And sometimes there’s extra baggage, like Mr. Jeter, so he usually just apologizes and walks away, saying he made a mistake. But he says the city is full of housewives and unemployed broads who are addicted to the soaps the way you and Chapman like your quiz show shit, and he thinks he can smell ‘em right outside their doors.
“Days of Our Lives,”
“All My Children,”
“General Hospital”-says they’re a dead giveaway.“
“Thank goodness for watching American Movie Classics and reading great murder mysteries. Even when I’m home sick, I’ve never in my life seen a soap opera.”
“Anyway, that got him going.”
“Foolish question, Mercer, but did you read him his rights?”
“I told you how scared we all are of you, didn’t I?
You think I’m gonna risk your wrath over a little thing like that?“
“And no noise about a lawyer?” I asked.
“How’d we get so lucky?”
“If I were you, I’d get Bannion ready to roll right away.
I don’t know how long this’ll last. Montvale knows the system better than we do he’s probably been in court more times in his life than you have.” stic Mercer returned to the holding cell to continue talking with the prisoner while I sent a detective down to the gger lobby to help Bob Bannion bring his video equipment the upstairs and get ready for filming a statement. I called the Deputy Inspector of the Police Department’s Public her Information Office and urged him not to allow Montvaleto be photographed by the press on his way down to Central Booking, since we had other witnesses who had not yet had a chance to see an array, and his identification would be the key issue. The polite conversation became heated and, over my objections, it looked as if the inspector was headed to staging a press conference on the steps of the station house before I could even finish my work and get out of the way. Bannion had cleared a place to set up in the sergeant’s office. Montvale would sit behind the desk, and a huge wall clock over his head would show the court and other viewers that the sequence of the questioning if the Q and A went as long as I hoped it would had not been tampered with. He would face Wallace and me in the two chairs, our backs to the camera, which Bob had moved to the far side of 8 the desk. As usual, I would ask the questions and Wallace I would cue me if there were specifics about a particular one I of the cases or details provided by a victim that only the assailant could confirm. We were ready to go. I called to Mercer to bring Montvale into the room, and watched as he opened the barred cell and walked the sullen suspect down the hall to where Bannion and I were moving around the desktop letter trays and clutter to keep everything out of arm’s reach. He took his seat and I took mine, three feet away from him, head to head, about to try to see how he described these hours of horror that so completely altered the lives of the women he’d encountered.
I repeated to Montvale what Mercer had told him about the video process and explained that I would begin the taping by telling him again, as Mercer had done hours ago, what his rights were. He leered as if he was looking forward to playing with the camera, and his smile broadened when Wallace leaned over and removed the handcuffs from his wrists.
“My name is Alexandra Cooper. I’m an assistant district attorney, and I am here with William Montvale and Detective Mercer Wallace of the Special Victims Squad, Thursday evening at‘ – I glanced up at the clock on the wall above Montvale – ’nine fifty-five.” I was putting the necessary heading on the tape.
“Mr. Montvale, I am going to ask you some questions about events that occurred in this county on a series of dates over the past six weeks, but before I do, I want to advise you of your rights.”
This is the part of doing interrogations where I always hold my breath and rely on whatever inexplicable phenomenon has made confession work so well for centuries in the ecclesiastical settings. Ignore what I am about to tell you about your legal entitlements, Mr. Montvale, and spill your guts to me. Tell me what you did. Every raw minute of it, so that you can pay for it for the rest of your miserable life.
“You have the right to remain silent and to refuse to answer questions, do you understand that?”
His head moved up and down, but he didn’t speak.
“Mr. Montvale,” I pushed him softly, ‘it would help if you spoke your answers aloud, instead of just nodding.“ ton ”Yes, yes, Miss Cooper. I got it. Understood.“ stk ”Anything that you do say tonight may be used against you later in court, do you understand that?“ ”I certainly do.“ the ”You have the right to consult with an attorney before est you answer our questions, and to have an attorney present her during this questioning, as well as in the future. Do you understand that?“