Shoemaker said, “Paul, this guy sounds like a lawyer. Who woulda thought that about a fine Army lad.”
Devine knew all about this because the CID had interrogated him after Hawkins’s death, tried to screw with his head, lied to him, tried to get him to confess, pounded him with everything they had. Only the body had been so torn up by animals that the forensics were of no use in assigning legal blame to Devine, and the injuries he had incurred in his fight with Hawkins were minimal and inconclusive. All soldiers had bumps and bruises and cuts. And any DNA of one man found on the other was also inconclusive, since they served in close proximity to one another. No witnesses, no other evidence, and a time of death that was all over the place allowed Devine to reasonably argue that he had an alibi for the broad time window in question. The CID had finally given up. Devine also assumed that they didn’t want to pursue it more thoroughly because doing so might open up for scrutiny the whitewash investigation they had done of Blankenship’s supposed suicide.
“You can take my prints and my DNA. I did not kill her.”
“How about a polygraph? Will you take one of those?”
Devine sat back. “Which means you found no DNA and no prints at the murder scene. Or maybe you just didn’t find any of mine. And you’re trying to railroad me into a confession so you can clear this one off your list and make your boss happy and Wall Street rest easy. Only if you did pin it on me, the killer would still be out there. But I’ll make a deal with you.”
“I don’t remember asking for a deal,” said Ekman.
“I’ll take a polygraph if you show me where Sara names me as the father and you swear in an affidavit that it’s legit and not made up to get me to confess to something I didn’t do.”
“You watch too many cop shows,” said Shoemaker. “But while we can make deceptive statements to you in an interrogation, we can’t manufacture evidence. That would be a crime.”
“Do I take that as a no-go on my offer, then?”
“Where were you between the hours of midnight and four a.m. on Friday?”
Devine grimaced impatiently. “Come on, I already told the other guy all that.”
“What other guy?” said Shoemaker sharply.
“Hancock.”
“Hancock?” parroted Ekman.
“Detective Karl Hancock with NYPD. I guess he’s working the case with you two.”
The two men exchanged a glance that Devine couldn’t really read, but didn’t like.
“When did this Hancock talk to you?” asked Ekman.
“He was waiting for me at the train station near my place in Mount Kisco, this was on Friday. And he was waiting for me at my house the next day when I got home from work.”
“And you told him where you were that night?”
“Yes, and he wrote it down.”
“Describe him,” said Shoemaker.
“Black guy, around six one, bald, athletic build, in his forties. Dressed like you guys, and he said he was driving a coffee-and-cigarette motor pool piece of crap, at least in so many words. Because NYPD hadn’t bought new cars in ten years, at least that’s what he said. He also told me he lived in Trenton, New Jersey.” He looked between the two men. “Don’t you know him? How many homicide detectives are there in the city?”
“Manhattan South Homicide, where we’re from, has ten of them, down from twenty-six in 2001. And you’re looking at two of them.”
“He had a badge that looked real. And he talked like a cop. He was the one who told me that Sara hadn’t killed herself. That she was murdered.”
“He said that?” exclaimed Ekman. “On Saturday?”
“Yeah. And he knew all about my background in the Army.”
“Exactly what about the crime did he know?” asked Ekman.
Devine told them everything, including the straight-line ligature versus the inverted. But he didn’t tell them about the similar case in the Army that he had mentioned to Hancock. “He said that proved it was a murder and not a suicide.”
Shoemaker gave his partner a nervous glance, one that showed he was no longer fully in control of the situation. His partner seemed to read this like a cue card.
“Okay, let’s move on for now. Where were you between those times?” asked Ekman.
“At home in bed until four. Then I was doing my workout at the high school next to where I live. Then I showered, dressed, and took the six twenty train just like always. Must be cameras in the station to show me coming in. Not that many people are there at that hour.”