Free Lineup by Liad Shoham

Nevo?” he asked.
    Nevo shook his head.
    Nachum snickered maliciously.
    “You’re gonna regret your decision, you can’t even imagine how much you’re gonna regret it. I already got your confession. Not writing it down for me, that’s your mistake. You know what an asshole you are? You’re leaving here a confessed rapist without my help. I haven’t seen a loser like you in a long time.”

Chapter 12
    NACHUM wasn’t happy. Something had gone wrong at the last minute. Nevo was broken, consumed by remorse, ready to make a full confession, and then for some reason he’d backed off. How had he fucked up? He was so sure he had Nevo right where he wanted him that he’d taken the bait, swallowed the hook, and all he had to do was reel him in. Secretly, he was even hoping that once he confessed to raping Adi Regev, he could get him to confess to prior acts as well. There was a good chance this wasn’t the first time he did it. Adi’s father had seen him stalking another victim.
    Had he been too eager to hand him the pen and paper? Timing is everything. Maybe he should’ve waited a little longer, or written it down himself instead of telling Nevo to do it. If he’d done it that way, he might be sitting here now with a signed confession in his hand.
    He looked at the feed from the surveillance camera that continued to show Nevo in the interrogation room, hunched up in his chair, hardly moving a muscle. An hour had gone by since he’d walked out and left him there alone. He’d told his assistant, Ohad, to escort him to the toilet. Pain made some people even more recalcitrant. So he’d let Nevo relieve the pressure in his bladder, but it didn’t get him anywhere.
    Something had changed right before the end. Then again, maybe nothing had changed and it’d been an act from the beginning.
    Nachum got up and walked to the window. It was four thirty in the afternoon. He was exhausted. He hadn’t had a break since he got the call from Yaron Regev yesterday morning. He hadn’t made it to Friday-night dinner with his family. At least one thing he said to Nevo was the honest truth: he’d promised Omer, his fifteen-year-old, a bike ride through the Jerusalem hills. He knew how much Omer had been looking forward to it, knew he’d let him down. And he’d been looking forward to it too. But this was his job, and sometimes it had to come first.
    The first rain of the season began coming down, chasing the cluster of cops who’d gone outside for a smoke back into the building.
    He’d gotten a lot out of Nevo, but it wasn’t enough to make a case against him. His lawyers would argue that it was worthless, and someone in the DA’s Office would get cold feet and go for a plea bargain. They might even decide not to charge him at all.
    Adi’s identification wouldn’t have the slightest merit for them. They wouldn’t even consider the possibility that she was telling the truth. The whole thing would fall apart as soon as they found out it wasn’t conducted by the book. And they wouldn’t put much stock in the cap they found in Nevo’s apartment, no matter how similar it was to the one Adi described. Or the sunglasses, or the shoes, even though they were the right size and style. He could already hear the DA: “It’s a common size, it’s a popular style, lotsa people have baseball caps and sunglasses.” There was no end to it. People can talk their way out of anything. Little kids did it in school, suspects did it in the interrogation room, defendants did it in court.
    It was still raining. He stared out the window, mesmerized by the falling drops. Nevo was the rapist, there was no question in his mind, but he couldn’t figure out why he’d denied it at the very last minute, why he’d refused to confess. There could be a million reasons. Maybe he suddenly realized he was sealing his own fate and panicked, maybe he got scared when Nachum said the word “rape,” maybe he hadn’t even admitted it to himself before. Who