Free The Interrogation by Thomas H. Cook

hurry.”
    “If you see this guy again,” Zarella told her, “yell for us and we’ll be back in a flash.”
    “Yeah, thanks.”
    She watched as the two patrolmen walked down the path, turned to the right at the spot where she’d told them the bearded man had slid off into the brush. Alone now, with nothing but the light from the street-lamps to pierce the darkness, she felt her fear steadily building, a chill wave that rose like water around her, lapping first at her ankles, then rising higher and higher. Come back , she pleaded silently. But the officers didnot return, and in their absence she began to shiver in the autumn darkness.
    Then suddenly, a voice broke the silence, and she gasped.
    Someone was calling in the distance, words clear and firm and full of warning.
    Don’t move.
    Lisbon stepped backward, as if shoved there by a protective officer, told to get down, take cover.
    The voice sounded again, still harsh in stern command.
    Stay where you are.
    Lisbon adjusted the thick glasses she wore and peered out into the darkness, listening intently to the distant voices.
    Put your hands on your head.
    Get to your feet.
    Okay, real slow now.
    She stepped back and felt something coil around her ankle. She jerked her foot from the ground, shaking at the coil, then lost her footing and tumbled backward, twisting helplessly to the right, knees buckling as she keeled sideways through the shrub, cleaving the branches until her body finally thudded hard onto the ground.
    Keep your hands above your head.
    She sucked in a quick breath and realized that her glasses had fallen off. She reached out, blind now, in a universe of smudged glass, and felt something hard but pliant, like a thick, soft root.
    Keep your hands above your head!
    In the blur, she dragged herself forward, her hands clasped to the tapered shaft until she felt a soft, rounded knob. She pressed down on the knob and lifted herself to a sitting position.
    Now move forward slowly.
    In the blackness she could see nothing. She fumbled along the earth until she found her glasses, then, turning back toward the root, put her glasses on … and screamed.
    8:31 P.M. , September 12, Interrogation Room 3
    Pierce felt the flame leap triumphantly in him as he glared into Smalls’ pinched eyes. “You remember all this, don’t you? The woman who saw you on the path? The one who screamed?”
    “Yes.”
    “Why did you threaten her?”
    “I didn’t.”
    “That move you made. What was that?”
    “I didn’t know what to do.”
    “You didn’t know what to do? What does that mean?”
    “Maybe I should run. Maybe I should just stay where I was. I couldn’t tell what to do. I was afraid.”
    “Afraid? Of a little woman like that. That’s real hard to believe, Smalls. Unless you had a reason to be scared of her. But you did have a reason, didn’t you? You were scared of her because you didn’t want her to get close, right? Close to you or close to the body of the little girl you’d murdered. What were the toys for? The ones we found in the pipe. Where did you get them?”
    “I found them.”
    “Found them? Where did you find them?”
    “Dumpsters.”
    “Why did you want to have toys?”
    “To sell to Dunlap, sir.”
    “Yes, you told us that before.”
    “It’s the truth.”
    “Yeah, when you first came up with that story we thought it might be the truth, Smalls,” Pierce said. “So we went over to Dunlap’s place to check it out … and guess what we found?”
    9:00 A.M. , September 2, Dunlap’s Collectibles, 217 Cordelia Street
    Pierce peered through the dusty glass. Inside the store, he could see a chaos of colored bottles, rusted tools, shoeboxes overflowing with yellowing photographs and old postcards. “What a shit-hole. You know the guy who runs this place?”
    “Harry Dunlap,” Cohen said. “The name rang a bell, so I looked him up. Turns out he was a fence until he got hammered pretty bad.”
    “What’d he get?”
    “Three years. Out in a