Touch Of The White Tiger

He nodded patronizingly as he dropped his load of files on the table. “I’ve heard that before, Miss Baker. And I suppose you’re going to tell me that you’re—”

“Innocent. Damned straight.”

He looked up, startled, I presume, by my lack of remorse for the crime he clearly thought I’d committed. “Innocent,” he repeated, clearly speculating on the credibility of my reply, adding doubtfully, “Okay.”

“What’s your name?”

“Terrence Murray.”

“Don’t be an asshole, Mr. Murray. I’ve already got one, and I don’t need another.”

His eyes rounded and he pursed his wet lips. “Look here, Miss Baker, you’re lucky to have me. This is a busy place, as you may have noticed. Most people have to wait days for a chance to meet with a public defender.”

“Lucky me.”

He shook his head and opened the top file, muttering, “You’re awfully confident for someone who has caught the interest of Q.E.D.”

“What do you mean?”

He looked up from his papers. “Q.E.D. is the police department’s latest effort to reestablish law and order and polish its tarnished image. If the members of this elite force were willing to go under the knife just to increase their odds of nailing criminals, they won’t back down easily in a case involving a CRS. You’re the competition.”

“But I’m innocent.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Why are you here?”

“To represent you during your interrogation with Lieutenant Townsend.”

I shook my head. “I don’t want to talk to that inhuman son of a bitch. I’m going to face the Diva.”

Murray’s nondescript, pale features formed into a nebulous look of confusion. “Are you crazy? You’re better off with Townsend than with the Diva. If she finds fault with your story, you’ll be facing the maximum charges with no chance of a plea bargain. You’ll be stuck in the system for years.”

“I’ll take my chances.”

“Let me put it to you another way, Miss Baker. I know of serial killers who are walking the streets because there was no DNA evidence to keep them locked up for more than two years, in spite of solid convictions. If they’d faced the Diva when they were first brought up on charges, she would have detected their guilt. With no chance of bail, they would have spent longer in jail just waiting for a trial than the time they ended up serving for murder.”

I just looked at him for a long moment. “That’s pathetic.”

“That’s the system. That’s why you can’t face the Diva.”

“I know you think you know what’s best for me, but I have a little girl waiting for me at home. If I don’t go back to her soon, she’ll think…” Why was I telling him this? He wouldn’t understand. “I have to go home. When I tell the Diva I’m innocent, they’ll let me go.”

The lawyer’s agitation turned to disdain. “Very well, Miss Baker, but he’s not going to like this one bit.”

“Who?”

He looked down at me with a superior smirk. “Detective Marco. Why he’d bother with someone as ungrateful as you, I have no clue.”

“So he sent you to me?”

“How else do you think you were lucky enough to see an attorney so quickly? Didn’t you see the gallery of rogues rotting away in glass booths waiting for a chance at representation? And people like you have the audacity to be ungrateful.”

The thought of Marco throwing me this bone was too much to bear. “Did Detective Marco, by any chance, tell you that he and I are involved?”

“Not in so many words. But I assumed so. Why else would he bother to call in a marker for this?” He looked at me smugly. “Do you think your relationship with Detective Marco will matter? It will buy you no mercy, Miss Baker.”

“Doesn’t it strike you as a conflict of interest that one of the arresting detectives has been my lover?”

“Yes. But it won’t matter to the judge if he’s low on convictions this month. But, of course, that’s why we have an appeals system.”

“And that lame response is why we have retribution specialists,” I snapped, standing up. “This system is so fucked up it’s beyond repair.”

“That’s why you need a lawyer.”

I shook my head. “No. I want to see the Diva. The truth has to count for something in this shithole.”

He shrugged. “Have it your way.”

As he headed for the door, I suddenly remembered something Roy had said. “Before Roy Leibman died,” I called out, “he said ‘they’ had left. Someone was at the crime scene before I got there.”

“Tell it to the Diva,” he said flippantly, adding with some modicum of sincerity, “Good luck, Miss Baker. You’re going to need it. But, as they say, it ain’t over until the fat lady sings.”

After he shut the door, I muttered, “Let’s hope she’s got laryngitis tonight.”

The Diva is a nickname for the Detection and Interrogation Visual Application System. Big words for a simple and beautifully administered lie detector test.

The suspect sits strapped in a dentist-style chair and talks to a hologram. Behind the hologram projection there’s a camera that records the dilations and retractions of the suspect’s corneas. Based on eye movements, D.I.V.A.S. analysts, watching the interrogation and programming the Divas’s questions from behind a two-way mirror, claim they can distinguish between fact and fiction.

The Diva looked like an oversized opera singer. The program’s designer thought it would be clever if “the Diva” looked liked Brunhilde. So she wore a winged Visigoth helmet and fully loaded breast plates. She was a “fat” lady, as the public defender had put it. I use the word advisedly because it’s against the law to call anyone fat. According to the Self Esteem Act of 2010, I should call her full-bodied, but I didn’t plan on discussing her weight. I was in enough trouble as it was.

I felt confident that a session with the Diva would exonerate me. I began to have second thoughts, however, when I entered the interrogation chamber and caught a glimpse of Lieutenant Townsend behind the two-way mirror. He saw me and turned out the light in the observation booth, leaving me to stare at my own reflection.

“It’s just you and me, kid,” I whispered to myself, as I had so many times before. Lord knows I’d gotten myself out of worse scrapes with nothing more than moxie and determination. And now I had the added advantage of my recently discovered psychic abilities. But I hadn’t yet learned to use them on cue. At least, not in a tense situation like this.

The lights slowly dimmed, except for a white beam that encircled my chair. As I climbed into the hot seat, I silently reassured myself I’d made the right decision. Suspects who volunteer for a session with the Diva are generally given credit for believing in their own innocence, and that sits well with judges. However, if a D.I.V.A.S. session goes badly, the suspect is immediately charged for the crime in question, and no amount of fancy footwork by an attorney can get the charges dismissed after the fact. The case has to work its way through the courts.

Suddenly the Diva appeared. Her long blond hair hung in braids. Red lipstick brightened a smile so welcoming that I found myself resisting the urge to smile back. I suspected the program had been designed to relax and disarm. That was doubtless another reason the programmer had used the image of a woman. I would have to stay on my guard.

“Hello, Angel,” she said in a rich, melodic voice.

“Hello.” I tightened my grip on the arms of the cushioned metal chair.

“I want you to get comfortable,” she said, and my chair tilted back a few inches via a remote-controlled hydraulic system. “Straps will hold you in place, but they shouldn’t be too tight. Are you comfy?”

“I guess so.”

“Good. The constraints are simply there to keep you in the correct position. Now, Angel, what were you doing at the Cloisters?”