Homicide - A Year On The Killing Streets Part 18

"Incoming ... I got it," he shouted time and again, grabbing every call on the first bleat. And then, in a mood blackened by poverty: "Edgerton, pick up line one. Sounds like your wife."

The ancient Greeks were fond of saying that the G.o.ds punish a man most by answering his prayers, and on Powder Mill Road, James was saddled with a stone whodunit. Face down at the edge of a wooded trail was a black woman in her thirties, wearing only a brown jacket with "Checker Cab" and "Karen" on either side of the chest. There was no wallet, purse, or identification, although her shoes, pants and panties lay near the body. Three hours after she was discovered, a Baltimore County unit found Checker Cab 4 in a garden apartment parking lot in Owings Mills, six to eight miles west of the city line. Abandoned with its hazard lights flas.h.i.+ng, the cab caught the attention of neighbors; when contacted, cab company officials confirmed that neither cab 4, nor its driver, Karen Renee Smith, had been seen or heard from since nine o'clock that morning. The positive ID followed soon after.

Nothing about the murder of Karen Smith resembled any of the previous Northwest killings, but to argue such subtleties in the face of a departmental mood swing is futility defined. Now, a day later, the colonel is calling in the troops, ordering special details for each of the open murders of Northwest women while trying to avoid suggesting a lack of confidence in the homicide unit. Within twenty-four hours, a dozen fresh uniforms and detectives from other CID sections will be a.s.signed to homicide-two for each of the six primary investigators in the Northwest murders. The annex office interrogation room will be converted into a cramped command post of sorts, with maps and charts, photographs of the victims, in and out boxes for the paperwork generated by the detail. Reward sheets for information on each of the murders will be printed for distribution in the neighborhoods near each crime scene.

The primary detectives are to use the extra manpower to generate new leads and run down any loose ends in the case files. They are to make the Northwest murders their first priority and, with a nod to a recent newspaper article that began the campaign by hinting at the possibility of a serial killer, they are to be especially vigilant for anything that might link these murders.

One of the six cases-the murder of Brenda Thompson, stabbed to death in the back of a Dodge in early January-runs into a conflicting priority: Latonya Wallace. Harry Edgerton is the primary detective in the Thompson murder, the secondary in the slaying of the little girl. As a result, the Thompson case is farmed out to Bertina Silver.

Edgerton and his sergeant, Roger Nolan, argue briefly with both D'Addario and the captain against the change, maintaining that it serves no purpose to change the primary detective in the middle of an investigation for the sake of creating some immediate activity. Edgerton knows the case file and the players, and most important, he has spent hours creating a working relations.h.i.+p with his best suspect, a young street dealer who sold for Brenda Thompson and owed her money. The kid has already been willing to subject himself to a couple of long interrogations. Edgerton argues that the Thompson murder is already two months old, and anything the special detail may do now can just as easily be done two or three or four weeks down the road, after the Latonya Wallace case has resolved itself.

Edgerton has on his side the prevailing wisdom and tradition of the homicide unit, both of which argue that no one can know a murder as well as the detective who handles the scene and its aftermath. The bosses, however, are adamant. A police department is a reactive beast, and with the newspapers and television both crowing about the possibility of multiple murders in the Northwest, tradition and wisdom are both being sold off at bas.e.m.e.nt prices. The Thompson case goes to Bert Silver.

In happier times, Edgerton might have appealed personally to D'Addario, but now that the lieutenant has problems of his own, that appeal would be pointless. Latonya Wallace, the subterranean clearance rate, the Northwest murders-any and all are reason enough for D'Addario to feel vulnerable. Already there has been one meeting with the colonel and Deputy Mullen on the Latonya Wallace detail, an hour-long summary in which Jay Landsman outlined the efforts undertaken by the detectives and then fielded questions until the bosses seemed mollified. The meeting was a seamless piece of departmental politics, but D'Addario has to know that unless the solve rate rises, Landsman's performance is no more than a temporary reprieve.

If D'Addario had stayed tight with the captain, the threat wouldn't be so severe. Lately, however, a conflict that had been percolating for months has suddenly come to full boil. Simply put, the captain doesn't want D'Addario as one of his s.h.i.+ft lieutenants; to D'Addario, the decision to bypa.s.s him on the Monroe Street probe said as much. And now, with his solve rate so low, the captain has leverage with which he can press the point-unless D'Addario can, like a cat with a canary locked in its jaw, go to the colonel with a fresh victory in one of the major cases, or at least a hint that the solve rate is turning around. It matters not at all that D'Addario has done the job for eight years; the consciousness of the command staff rarely strays beyond the latest red ball and as a result, the departmental hierarchy often expresses itself in that timeless query of practical politics: What have you done for me lately?

If the rate is good, if the red b.a.l.l.s fall, it doesn't matter how D'Addario runs his s.h.i.+ft. You say your detectives and sergeants are told to follow their own judgment on cases? Obviously, a fine example of a leader emphasizing confidence and responsibility. You say you leave it to the sergeants to train and discipline their men? Obviously, a man who knows the value of delegated responsibility. You say your overtime is running 90 percent over budget? That's fine, you've got to break some eggs for that omelette. Court time, too? Well, that just proves that more of these murders are going to trial. But let the rate slip and the lieutenant's image is suddenly transformed into that of a man incapable of directing and disciplining his men, a commander who leaves too much in the hands of his subordinates, a manager who can't control his budget.

On the midnight s.h.i.+ft just before the colonel's brief oratory, five or six detectives were adrift in the admin office, floating on a sea of paperwork from the fresh spate of open murders. Eddie Brown, James, Fahlteich, Kincaid, Nolan-a fair cross section, a gathering of veterans who had all seen both good times and bad in the homicide unit. Inevitably, the talk turned to whether this year would really turn out any worse. Some argued that it always evened out, that for every stretch of stone whodunits there was a supply of dunkers waiting to take up the slack. Others pointed out that the rate would be higher if the s.h.i.+ft had bothered to save a few December clearances to pump up the current year's stats. But for all of their talk, none of the detectives could remember a rate as low as 36 percent.

"And I'll tell you something," said Fahlteich, "I have a feeling it's only going to get worse."

"Oh, it's going to get a h.e.l.luva lot worse," Nolan agreed. "We've been coasting around here for a long time and now it's catching up to us."

Suddenly no one in the room was typing or collating anymore as voices competed with one another in a recitation of longstanding grievances. They complained about the equipment, about cars without radios and about a major urban department that still doesn't provide a polygraph examiner suitable for criminal investigations, requiring detectives to use the state police facilities. They complained about the cutbacks in overtime, about the department's reluctance to pay for pretrial preparation so that good cases wouldn't come unglued in the months between arrest and trial. They complained about the lack of money to pay informants and, consequently, the lack of informants. They complained about the inability of the trace and ballistics labs to keep up with the violence, about how the state's attorney's office no longer charged anyone with perjury when they lied to a grand jury, about how too many prosecutors allowed witnesses to back up on their grand jury testimony. They complained about the growing number of drug-related murders, about how the days of the domestic dunker and 90-plus clearance rates were long gone. They complained that the phone didn't ring the way it used to after a murder, that fewer people were willing to drop a dime and risk becoming a witness to an act of violence.

As a b.i.t.c.h-and-moan session, it was entirely satisfying. After a good forty minutes, the group was still thumping on dead horseflesh: "Look at Was.h.i.+ngton," said Brown. "That ain't but thirty miles away from us."

For a police detective, a detail with the District of Columbia's homicide unit had suddenly become synonymous with being a.s.signed to h.e.l.l itself. Was.h.i.+ngton was well on the way to becoming the U.S. murder capital in 1988; only two years earlier, the capital and Baltimore had posted similar rates and fought for whatever distinction comes with being the nation's tenth deadliest city. Now, in the wake of a cocaine epidemic and a series of Jamaican drug wars in the capital's Northeast and Southeast quadrants, the District's police department was contending with an incidence of homicide double that of Baltimore. As a result, Was.h.i.+ngton's homicide squad-once one of the best-trained investigative units in the nation-was now posting a clearance rate in the low 40s. Awash in a deluge of violence, there was no time for follow-up investigation, no time for pretrial preparation, no time for anything but picking up bodies. From what the Baltimore detectives gathered in pa.s.sing encounters, morale in the D.C. unit was nonexistent.

"The same thing's going to happen here and n.o.body's doing a d.a.m.n thing about it," said Brown. "Wait until we start seeing some of that crack up here. We already got the Jamaican problem up in the Northwest, but does anyone give a d.a.m.n about that? h.e.l.l, no. This town's gonna break wide open and this department isn't even gonna know what hit it."

Fahlteich pointed out that in some ways the homicide unit was its own worst enemy: "Every year we give them a clearance rate above the average, so every year they figure we can make do with what we have."

"That's it exactly," said Nolan.

"So," Fahlteich continued, "when we come back and ask for more detectives, or better cars or radios or training or whatever, the bosses can look at the rate and say, 's.h.i.+t on that, they don't need anything more than they got last year.'"

"We've done with so little for so long that now it's coming back to haunt us," Nolan said. "I'll tell you, if we get two more nights like this last one, we'll never climb out of the hole."

"We might not climb out anyway," said Fahlteich. "We'll be lucky to get above sixty percent from where we are now."

"Hey, if we don't," said Ed Brown, "it won't just stop with the lieutenant. They'll go and have themselves a housecleaning, and a lot of people up here are gonna be out the d.a.m.n door."

"No s.h.i.+t," agreed Fahlteich.

Then Nolan brought the room to silence. "I think this just might be the year," he said with the barest of smiles, "when the wheels fall off the cart."

You are a citizen of a free nation, having lived your adult life in a land of guaranteed civil liberties, and you commit a crime of violence, whereupon you are jacked up, hauled down to a police station and deposited in a claustrophobic anteroom with three chairs, a table and no windows. There you sit for a half hour or so until a police detective-a man you have never met before, a man who can in no way be mistaken for a friend-enters the room with a thin stack of lined notepaper and a ballpoint pen.

The detective offers a cigarette, not your brand, and begins an uninterrupted monologue that wanders back and forth for a half hour more, eventually coming to rest in a familiar place: "You have the absolute right to remain silent to remain silent."

Of course you do. You're a criminal. Criminals always have the right to remain silent. At least once in your miserable life, you spent an hour in front of a television set, listening to this book-'em-Danno routine. You think Joe Friday was lying to you? You think Kojak was making this horses.h.i.+t up? No way, bunk, we're talking sacred freedoms here, notably your Fifth f.u.c.king Amendment protection against self-incrimination, and hey, it was good enough for Ollie North, so who are you to go incriminating yourself at the first opportunity? Get it straight: A police detective, a man who gets paid government money to put you in prison, is explaining your absolute right to shut up before you say something stupid.

"Anything you say or write may be used against you in a court of law."

Yo, bunky, wake the f.u.c.k up. You're now being told that talking to a police detective in an interrogation room can only hurt you. If it could help you, they would probably be pretty quick to say that, wouldn't they? They'd stand up and say you have the right not to worry because what you say or write in this G.o.dforsaken cubicle is gonna be used to your benefit in a court of law. No, your best bet is to shut up. Shut up now.

"You have the right to talk with a lawyer at any time-before any questioning, before answering any questions, or during any questions before answering any questions, or during any questions."

Talk about helpful. Now the man who wants to arrest you for violating the peace and dignity of the state is saying you can talk to a trained professional, an attorney who has read the relevant portions of the Maryland Annotated Code or can at least get his hands on some Cliff's Notes. And let's face it, pal, you just carved up a drunk in a Dundalk Avenue bar, but that don't make you a neurosurgeon. Take whatever help you can get.

"If you want a lawyer and cannot afford to hire one, you will not be asked any questions, and the court will be requested to appoint a lawyer for you any questions, and the court will be requested to appoint a lawyer for you."

Translation: You're a derelict. No charge for derelicts.

At this point, if all lobes are working, you ought to have seen enough of this Double Jeopardy category to know that it ain't where you want to be. How about a little something from Criminal Lawyers and Their Clients for $50, Alex?

Whoa, bunk, not so fast.

"Before we get started, lemme just get through the paperwork," says the detective, who now produces an Explanation of Rights sheet, BPD Form 69, and pa.s.ses it across the table.

"EXPLANATION OF RIGHTS," declares the top line in bold block letters. The detective asks you to fill in your name, address, age, and education, then the date and time. That much accomplished, he asks you to read the next section. It begins, "YOU ARE HEREBY ADVISED THAT:" Read number one, the detective says. Do you understand number one?

"You have the absolute right to remain silent."

Yeah, you understand. We did this already.

"Then write your initials next to number one. Now read number two."

And so forth, until you have initialed each component of the Miranda warning. That done, the detective tells you to write your signature on the next line, the one just below the sentence that says, "I HAVE READ THE ABOVE EXPLANATION OF MY RIGHTS AND FULLY UNDERSTAND IT."

You sign your name and the monologue resumes. The detective a.s.sures you that he has informed you of these rights because he wants you to be protected, because there is nothing that concerns him more than giving you every possible a.s.sistance in this very confusing and stressful moment in your life. If you don't want to talk, he tells you, that's fine. And if you want a lawyer, that's fine, too, because first of all, he's no relation to the guy you cut up, and second, he's gonna get six hours overtime no matter what you do. But he wants you to know-and he's been doing this a lot longer than you, so take his word for it-that your rights to remain silent and obtain qualified counsel aren't all they're cracked up to be.

Look at it this way, he says, leaning back in his chair. Once you up and call for that lawyer, son, we can't do a d.a.m.n thing for you. No sir, your friends in the city homicide unit are going to have to leave you locked in this room all alone and the next authority figure to scan your case will be a tie-wearing, three-piece bloodsucker-a no-nonsense prosecutor from the Violent Crimes Unit with the official t.i.tle of a.s.sistant state's attorney for the city of Baltimore. And G.o.d help you then, son, because a ruthless f.u.c.ker like that will have an O'Donnell Heights motorhead like yourself halfway to the gas chamber before you get three words out. Now's the time to speak up, right now when I got my pen and paper here on the table, because once I walk out of this room any chance you have of telling your side of the story is gone and I gotta write it up the way it looks. And the way it looks right now is first-f.u.c.king-degree murder. Felony murder, mister, which when shoved up a man's a.s.shole is a h.e.l.luva lot more painful than second-degree or maybe even manslaughter. What you say right here and now could make the difference, bunk. Did I mention that Maryland has a gas chamber? Big, ugly sumb.i.t.c.h at the penitentiary on Eager Street, not twenty blocks from here. You don't wanna get too close to that bad boy, lemme tell you.

A small, wavering sound of protest pa.s.ses your lips and the detective leans back in his chair, shaking his head sadly.

What the h.e.l.l is wrong with you, son? You think I'm f.u.c.king with you? Hey, I don't even need to bother with your weak s.h.i.+t. I got three witnesses in three other rooms who say you're my man. I got a knife from the scene that's going downstairs to the lab for latent prints. I got blood spatter on them Air Jordans we took off you ten minutes ago. Why the f.u.c.k do you think we took 'em? Do I look like I wear high-top tennis? f.u.c.k no. You got spatter all over 'em, and I think we both know whose blood type it's gonna be. Hey, bunk, I'm only in here to make sure that there ain't nothing you can say for yourself before I write it all up.

You hesitate.

Oh, says the detective. You want to think about it. Hey, you think about it all you want, pal. My captain's right outside in the hallway, and he already told me to charge your a.s.s in the first f.u.c.kin' degree. For once in your bes.h.i.+tted little life someone is giving you a chance and you're too f.u.c.king dumb to take it. What the f.u.c.k, you go ahead and think about it and I'll tell my captain to cool his heels for ten minutes. I can do that much for you. How 'bout some coffee? Another cigarette?

The detective leaves you alone in that cramped, windowless room. Just you and the blank notepaper and the Form 69 and ... first-degree murder. First-degree murder with witnesses and fingerprints and blood on your Air Jordans. Christ, you didn't even notice the blood on your own f.u.c.king shoes. Felony murder, mister. First-f.u.c.king-degree. How many years, you begin to wonder, how many years do I get for involuntary manslaughter?

Whereupon the man who wants to put you in prison, the man who is not your friend, comes back in the room, asking if the coffee's okay.

Yeah, you say, the coffee's fine, but what happens if I want a lawyer?

The detective shrugs. Then we get you a lawyer, he says. And I walk out of the room and type up the charging doc.u.ments for first-degree murder and you can't say a f.u.c.king thing about it. Look, bunk, I'm giving you a chance. He came at you, right? You were scared. It was self-defense.

Your mouth opens to speak.

He came at you, didn't he?

"Yeah," you venture cautiously, "he came at me."

Whoa, says the detective, holding up his hands. Wait a minute. If we're gonna do this, I gotta find your rights form. Where's the f.u.c.king form? d.a.m.n things are like cops, never around when you need 'em. Here it is, he says, pus.h.i.+ng the explanation-of-rights sheet across the table and pointing to the bottom. Read that, he says.

"I am willing to answer questions and I do not want any attorney at this time. My decision to answer questions without having an attorney present is time. My decision to answer questions without having an attorney present is free and voluntary on my part free and voluntary on my part."

As you read, he leaves the room and returns a moment later with a second detective as a witness. You sign the bottom of the form, as do both detectives.

The first detective looks up from the form, his eyes soaked with innocence. "He came at you, huh?"

"Yeah, he came at me."

Get used to small rooms, bunk, because you are about to be drop-kicked into the lost land of pretrial detention. Because it's one thing to be a murdering little a.s.shole from Southeast Baltimore, and it's another to be stupid about it, and with five little words you have just elevated yourself to the ranks of the truly witless.

End of the road, pal. It's over. It's history. And if that police detective wasn't so busy committing your weak bulls.h.i.+t to paper, he'd probably look you in the eye and tell you so. He'd give you another cigarette and say, son, you are ignorance personified and you just put yourself in for the fatal stabbing of a human being. He might even tell you that the other witnesses in the other rooms are too drunk to identify their own reflections, much less the kid who had the knife, or that it's always a long shot for the lab to pull a latent off a knife hilt, or that your $95 sneakers are as clean as the day you bought them. If he was feeling particularly expansive, he might tell you that everyone who leaves the homicide unit in handcuffs does so charged with first-degree murder, that it's for the lawyers to decide what kind of deal will be cut. He might go on to say that even after all these years working homicides, there is still a small part of him that finds it completely mystifying that anyone ever utters a single word in a police interrogation. To ill.u.s.trate the point, he could hold up your Form 69, on which you waived away every last one of your rights, and say, "Lookit here, pistonhead, I told you twice that you were deep in the s.h.i.+t and that whatever you said could put you in deeper." And if his message was still somehow beyond your understanding, he could drag your carca.s.s back down the sixth-floor hallway, back toward the sign that says Homicide Unit in white block letters, the sign you saw when you walked off the elevator.

Now think hard: Who lives in a homicide unit? Yeah, right. And what do homicide detectives do for a living? Yeah, you got it, bunk. And what did you do tonight? You murdered someone.

So when you opened that mouth of yours, what the f.u.c.k were you thinking?

Homicide detectives in Baltimore like to imagine a small, open window at the top of the long wall in the large interrogation room. More to the point, they like to imagine their suspects imagining a small, open window at the top of the long wall. The open window is the escape hatch, the Out. It is the perfect representation of what every suspect believes when he opens his mouth during an interrogation. Every last one envisions himself parrying questions with the right combination of alibi and excuse; every last one sees himself coming up with the right words, then crawling out the window to go home and sleep in his own bed. More often than not, a guilty man is looking for the Out from his first moments in the interrogation room; in that sense, the window is as much the suspect's fantasy as the detective's mirage.

The effect of the illusion is profound, distorting as it does the natural hostility between hunter and hunted, transforming it until it resembles a relations.h.i.+p more symbiotic than adversarial. That is the lie, and when the roles are perfectly performed, deceit surpa.s.ses itself, becoming manipulation on a grand scale and ultimately an act of betrayal. Because what occurs in an interrogation room is indeed little more than a carefully staged drama, a ch.o.r.eographed performance that allows a detective and his suspect to find common ground where none exists. There, in a carefully controlled purgatory, the guilty proclaim their malefactions, though rarely in any form that allows for contrition or resembles an unequivocal admission.

In truth, catharsis in the interrogation room occurs for only a few rare suspects, usually those in domestic murders or child abuse cases wherein the leaden ma.s.s of genuine remorse can crush anyone who is not hardened to his crime. But the greater share of men and women brought downtown take no interest in absolution. Ralph Waldo Emerson rightly noted that for those responsible, the act of murder "is no such ruinous thought as poets and romancers will have it; it does not unsettle him, or frighten him from his ordinary notice of trifles." And while West Baltimore is a universe or two from Emerson's nineteenth-century Ma.s.sachusetts hamlet, the observation is still useful. Murder often doesn't unsettle a man. In Baltimore, it usually doesn't even ruin his day.

As a result, the majority of those who acknowledge their complicity in a killing must be baited by detectives with something more tempting than penitence. They must be made to believe that their crime is not really murder, that their excuse is both accepted and unique, that they will, with the help of the detective, be judged less evil than they truly are.

Some are brought to that unreasoned conclusion by the suggestion that they acted in self-defense or were provoked to violence. Others fall prey to the notion that they are less culpable than their colleagues-I only drove the car or backed up the robbery, I wasn't the triggerman; or yeah, I raped her, but I stayed out of it when them other guys started strangling her-unaware that Maryland law allows every member of the conspiracy to be charged as a princ.i.p.al. Still others succ.u.mb to the belief that they will get a better shake by cooperating with detectives and acknowledging a limited amount of guilt. And many of those who cannot be lured over the precipice of self-incrimination can still be manipulated into providing alibis, denials and explanations-statements that can be checked and rechecked until a suspect's lies are the greatest evidentiary threat to his freedom.

For that reason, the professionals say nothing. No alibis. No explanations. No expressions of polite dismay or blanket denials. In the late 1970s, when men by the names of Dennis Wise and Vernon Collins were matching each other body for body as Baltimore's premier contract killers and no witness could be found to testify against either, things got to the point where both the detectives and their suspects knew the drill: Enter room.

Miranda.

Anything to say this time, Dennis?

No, sir. Just want to call my lawyer.

Fine, Dennis.

Exit room.

For anyone with experience in the criminal justice machine, the point is driven home by every lawyer worth his fee. Repet.i.tion and familiarity with the process soon place the professionals beyond the reach of a police interrogation. Yet more than two decades after the landmark Escobedo and Miranda decisions, the rest of the world remains strangely willing to place itself at risk. As a result, the same law enforcement community that once regarded the 1966 Miranda decision as a death blow to criminal investigation has now come to see the explanation of rights as a routine part of the process-simply a piece of station house furniture, if not a civilizing influence on police work itself.

In an era when beatings and physical intimidation were common tools of an interrogation, the Escobedo and Miranda decisions were sent down by the nation's highest court to ensure that criminal confessions and statements were purely voluntary. The resulting Miranda warning was "a protective device to dispel the compelling atmosphere of the interrogation," as Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote in the majority opinion. Investigators would be required to a.s.sure citizens of their rights to silence and counsel, not only at the moment of arrest, but at the moment that they could reasonably be considered suspects under interrogation.

In answer to Miranda, the nation's police officials responded with a veritable jeremiad, wailing in unison that the required warnings would virtually a.s.sure that confessions would be impossible to obtain and conviction rates would plummet. Yet the prediction was soon proved false for the simple reason that those law enforcement leaders-and, for that matter, the Supreme Court itself-underestimated a police detective's ingenuity.

Miranda is, on paper, a n.o.ble gesture which declares that const.i.tutional rights extend not only to the public forum of the courts, but to the private confines of the police station as well. Miranda and its accompanying decisions established a uniform concept of a criminal defendant's rights and effectively ended the use of violence and the most blatant kind of physical intimidation in interrogations. That, of course, was a blessing. But if the further intent of the Miranda decision was, in fact, an attempt to "dispel the compelling atmosphere" of an interrogation, then it failed miserably.

And thank G.o.d. Because by any standards of human discourse, a criminal confession can never truly be called voluntary. With rare exception, a confession is compelled, provoked and manipulated from a suspect by a detective who has been trained in a genuinely deceitful art. That is the essence of interrogation, and those who believe that a straightforward conversation between a cop and a criminal-devoid of any treachery-is going to solve a crime are somewhere beyond naive. If the interrogation process is, from a moral standpoint, contemptible, it is nonetheless essential. Deprived of the ability to question and confront suspects and witnesses, a detective is left with physical evidence and in many cases, precious little of that. Without a chance for a detective to manipulate a suspect's mind, a lot of bad people would simply go free.

Yet every defense attorney knows that there can be no good reason for a guilty man to say anything whatsoever to a police officer, and any suspect who calls an attorney will be told as much, bringing the interrogation to an end. A court opinion that therefore requires a detective-the same detective working hard to dupe a suspect-to stop abruptly and guarantee the man his right to end the process can only be called an act of inst.i.tutional schizophrenia. The Miranda warning is a little like a referee introducing a barroom brawl: The stern warnings to hit above the waist and take no cheap shots have nothing to do with the mayhem that follows.

Yet how could it be otherwise? It would be easy enough for our judiciary to ensure that no criminal suspect relinquished his rights inside a police station: The court could simply require the presence of a lawyer at all times. But such a blanket guarantee of individual rights would effectively end the use of interrogation as an investigative weapon, leaving many more crimes unsolved and many more guilty men and women unpunished. Instead, the ideals have been carefully compromised at little cost other than to the integrity of the police investigator.

After all, it's the lawyers, the Great Compromisers of our age, who have struck this bargain, who still manage to keep cuffs clean in the public courts, where rights and process are wors.h.i.+ped faithfully. It is left for the detective to fire this warning shot across a suspect's bow, granting rights to a man who will then be tricked into relinquis.h.i.+ng them. In that sense, Miranda is a symbol and little more, a salve for a collective conscience that cannot reconcile libertarian ideals with what must necessarily occur in a police interrogation room. Our judges, our courts, our society as a whole, demand in the same breath that rights be maintained even as crimes are punished. And all of us are bent and determined to preserve the illusion that both can be achieved in the same small room. It's mournful to think that this hypocrisy is the necessary creation of our best legal minds, who seem to view the interrogation process as the rest of us look upon breakfast sausage: We want it on a plate with eggs and toast; we don't want to know too much about how it comes to be.

Trapped in that contradiction, a detective does his job in the only possible way. He follows the requirements of the law to the letter-or close enough so as not to jeopardize his case. Just as carefully, he ignores that law's spirit and intent. He becomes a salesman, a huckster as thieving and silver-tongued as any man who ever moved used cars or aluminum siding-more so, in fact, when you consider that he's selling long prison terms to customers who have no genuine need for the product.

The fraud that claims it is somehow in a suspect's interest to talk with police will forever be the catalyst in any criminal interrogation. It is a fiction propped up against the greater weight of logic itself, sustained for hours on end through nothing more or less than a detective's ability to control the interrogation room.

A good interrogator controls the physical environment, from the moment a suspect or reluctant witness is dumped in the small cubicle, left alone to stew in soundproof isolation. The law says that a man can't be held against his will unless he's to be charged with a crime, yet the men and women tossed into the interrogation room rarely ponder their legal status. They light cigarettes and wait, staring abstractedly at four yellow cinderblock walls, a dirty tin ashtray on a plain table, a small mirrored window and a series of stained acoustic tiles on the ceiling. Those few with heart enough to ask whether they are under arrest are often answered with a question: "Why? Do you want to be?"

"No."

"Then sit the f.u.c.k down."

Control is the reason a suspect is seated farthest from the interrogation room door, and the reason the room's light switch can only be operated with a key that remains in possession of the detectives. Every time a suspect has to ask for or be offered a cigarette, water, coffee or a trip to the bathroom, he's being reminded that he's lost control.

When the detective arrives with pen and notepaper and begins the initial monologue to which a potential suspect or witness is invariably subjected, he has two goals in mind: first, to emphasize his complete control of the process; second, to stop the suspect from opening his mouth. Because if a suspect or witness manages to blurt out his desire for a lawyer-if he asks for counsel definitively and declines to answer questions until he gets one-it's over.

To prevent that, a detective allows no interruption of his soliloquy. Typically, the speech begins with the detective identifying himself and confiding that this is some serious s.h.i.+t that the two of you have to sort out. In your favor, however, is the fact that he, the detective, is a fair and reasonable man. A great guy, in fact-just ask anyone he works with.

If, at this moment, you try to speak, the detective will cut you off, saying your chance will come in a little while. Right now, he will invariably say, you need to know where I'm coming from. Then he'll inform you that he happens to be very good at what he does, that he's had very few open cases in his long, storied career, and a whole busload of people who lied to him in this very room are now on Death Row.

Control. To keep it, you say whatever you have to. Then you say it over and over until it's safe to stop, because if your suspect thinks for one moment that he can influence events, he may just demand an attorney.

As a result, the Miranda warning becomes a psychological hurdle, a pregnant moment that must be slipped carefully into the back-and-forth of the interrogation. For witnesses, the warning is not required and a detective can question those knowledgeable about a crime for hours without ever advising them of their rights. But should a witness suddenly say something that indicates involvement in a criminal act, he becomes-by the Supreme Court's definition-a suspect, at which point he must be advised of his rights. In practice, the line between a potential suspect and a suspect can be thin, and a common sight in any American homicide unit is a handful of detectives standing outside an interrogation room, debating whether or not a Miranda warning is yet necessary.

The Baltimore department, like many others, uses a written form to confirm a suspect's acknowledgment of Miranda. In a city where nine out of ten suspects would otherwise claim they were never informed of their rights, the forms have proven essential. Moreover, the detectives have found that rather than drawing attention to the Miranda, the written form diffuses the impact of the warning. Even as it alerts a suspect to the dangers of an interrogation, the form co-opts the suspect, making him part of the process. It is the suspect who wields the pen, initialing each component of the warning and then signing the form; it is the suspect who is being asked to help with the paperwork. With witnesses, the detectives achieve the same effect with an information sheet that asks three dozen questions in rapid-fire succession. Not only does the form include information of value to the investigators-name, nickname, height, weight, complexion, employer, description of clothing at time of interview, relatives living in Baltimore, names of parents, spouse, boyfriend or girlfriend-but it acclimates the witness to the idea of answering questions before the direct interview begins.

Even if a suspect does indeed ask for a lawyer, he must-at least according to the most aggressive interpretation of Miranda-ask definitively: "I want to talk to a lawyer and I don't want to answer questions until I do."

Anything less leaves room for a good detective to maneuver. The distinctions are subtle and semantic: "Maybe I should get a lawyer."

"Maybe you should. But why would you need a lawyer if you don't have anything to do with this?"

Or: "I think I should talk to a lawyer."

"You better be sure. Because if you want a lawyer then I'm not going to be able to do anything for you."