Autopsy of a Mind

Chapter 83: Going In Guns Blazing

"Do you even care that your friend is dead?" he asked. He had calmed down, but the condescension in his tone was yet to be gone. 

"Yes."

"You don't sound like you are." For a couple of seconds, they stared at each other. I could see the dip of the detective's head and his gaze fell to the table. I sighed. 

He had lost eye-contact again. William was still looking at him while he had broken contact. He had given William the ego-boost that he needed to increase his psychological run. He wouldn't exhaust himself any time soon. 

The questions turned to things the police had found in his apartment. 

"What about the pair of women's underwear in your apartment that was cut out like a mask?" 

What? I paused and had to think about this for a second. Who's underwear was it? If it was Irene, the maximum they could pin on him was stealing underwear and trespassing. It didn't prove that she was murdered by William. 

"No."

The conversation continued but my head was stuck at the underwear. It was not easy to catch me off guard, but this certainly did. 

"Whose underwear was it?" I asked, turning to him as the detective remained silent, thinking about the next question. 

"Irene's," he said without much hint of emotion.

"He took the time to steal her underwear after disposing her body and then cut it up to make a makeshift mask?"

"Yeah, while I have never personally spoken to him, I think he was trying to live out his fantasy again in this way. The act of cutting up her underwear was another attack on her being, as such. I know it's a long stretch but sometimes, the fantasy world that stalkers inhabit doesn't make much sense to those who haven't ventured into it," he explained. I thought for a minute. 

"I would also think that everyone's psychosis is different and the same symptoms manifest differently." He nodded. 

"True." I turned back to the screen and continued to watch. 

"Earlier today when you sat there and spoke to me, you were fine. Now you are acting like you don't know what is going on." There was a pause as the suspect kept staring blankly at the detective. "Did something happen that you would like to tell me? Why are you shutting down?"

"Are you scared?"

"No."

"You are not scared, are you?" William's demeanor doesn't waver the first twenty minutes, so the detectives took an aggressive approach. He attacked the subject's character to coax the suspect out of his act and try to defend his dignity. 

"Of course. You know everything, but you are a sorry piece of shit that doesn't give a fuck. Right?" What in the name... Was this considered professional? I remembered Sebastian saying that interrogators need to hide their true feelings. This seemed like a gross misdemeanor.

"No." The tone sounded almost like a taunt, slightly different from the monotonous performance he had been giving. 

"You sure sounded confident this morning when you were talking to us. Now you have to tell me the truth." There wasn't footage from that conversation, so I had to trust the detective on his word.

"I don't know where she is."

"What you are doing right now isn't going to work with me. So, you need to snap out of it and tell me." And therefore, the detective broke down. All his attempts to make him speak the truth had been thwarted. He had somehow acknowledged that William was having a psychological break. This could be disastrous in court even if Williams ended up confessing to his crime. He could just say that the police had coerced him into a confession when he was not sound of mind. 

The detective went out. Whether it was planned or not, another detective entered the room with similar aggressive behavior. Report development was thrown out of the window from the very beginning. There was no point to this change apart from psychologically nursing the previous detective. It seemed that the interrogation had taken a worse toll on him than the suspect. 

What an irony.

The interrogation continued and I grew more agitated. The method wasn't working and the detectives couldn't really get a grasp of his performance or how to break it. 

They tried to get him to say that he was attracted to her. And he kept acting bewildered. It was frankly frustrating to watch. I knew that these detectives probably weren't sexist or engaging in locker room talk, but the tone they took to coax him to admit that he found women attractive, wanting to 'bang' the victim and watch pornography. 

"Your anger is justified," Sebastian told me when he saw me gritting my teeth. "Usually, detectives don't use this tactic, I am using this interrogation as an example for you to understand what not to do when you are in front of the suspect. Lead them, make them feel comfortable, maybe even make them feel guilt. Get a grasp of their personality and their personal and professional background before you go in and use any one particular method." 

"In my opinion, they started in an aggressive tone, making it impossible for them to turn back or increase the psychological pressure later on. In this state, he got desensitized to the questions and didn't feel the need to defend himself. As you said personal and professional background is also important. While assumptions can lead you a long way, stretching the narrative and guessing blindly will get you in trouble. Here the detective says that they found blood in his apartment, and he looks unaffected. I would think that they found nothing of the sort and the crime scene was Irene's apartment, making it impossible for them to find anything in his apartment except for memorabilia. Furthermore, he was studying to be a criminal lawyer, you would think the detectives would take that into account and not try to teach him what could happen to him. He already knows the stakes, exaggerating it to him is of no use whatsoever." I analyzed it carefully.