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soul and left greasy stains behind.
His whole life might be coming apart.
Mike lit a cigar, his sallow skin glowing briefly in the lighter
flame. From time to time he glanced in
Jonathan's direction. Pain seemed to ooze from Mike's sweat-gleaming brow,
from his hunched shoulders, his betrayed face.
His faith in me had finally been shaken a little.
Cold crept into Jonathan's bones. The dawn hour was a time when one's body
seemed to hold less tightly to life. He huddled into his thin jacket.
The 112th precinct house was a modern building, all gray tile and glass.
Jonathan had never been inside.
Mike's work-places indeed his habits, even his friends were mostly
kept from his stepson. Despite
Mike's occasional suggestion that Jonathan become a cop, he kept his
police associations separate.
"Hardasses," he would say. "You wouldn't go for 'em."
Mike pulled the car into a no-parking zone in front of the
station. One thing New York City police officials do not have is parking
problems. As soon as the car stopped Jonathan got out.
"Hold it. Just wait a minute." Mike took his stepson's arm. "Look, you
aren't any kind of a suspect or anything like that. Nobody even
knows you're gonna be on the poly, and nothin's goin' in the
record unless "
He stopped.
"Come on, Dad. Let's get it over with."
He followed Mike through an empty waiting room, past a desk
sergeant with permanently raised eyebrows, and into a steel-clad elevator
that whined horribly when it started moving.
On the third floor there were offices, the largest among them Mike Banion's.
When they went inside, a tall, cadaver-ous man rose to his feet. " 'Morning,
Blake," Mike mut-tered. "Sorry to bring you down here at this hour."
"No problem, Inspector. Glad to do it." He glanced at Jonathan. "This the
suspect?"
"Not a suspect."
Blake regarded Jonathan with neutrality so complete it was chilling. "Got the
booking papers?"
"This is a voluntary. Off the goddamn record, see?"
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"How do I record the polygraph use, then? It's gotta be on the record,
especially with this portable unit. If we were down at the Police Academy with
the fixed installation it'd be easier. A lot of uses on that thing.
But this nobody ever takes it out."
"Then say you were testing it. Making sure it still Works." He paused a
moment. "Look, Blake, you're gonna find out when you work up the questions,
so I'm telling you now that this is my stepson, Jonathan. He had the
misfortune to be the last respectable person to be seen with a very nice young
lady named Patricia
Murray who was raped after he left her. So we're down here clearing him."
The polygraph operator's face closed down tight. He was already in
the middle of this. He obviously thought he ought to keep as low a
profile as possible.
They left Mike's pin-perfect office with its gleaming oak desk and wall of
citations and awards, and went down the hall to a small inner room
that smelled of stale cigarette smoke and was dominated by an
electronic apparatus on a table beside an old-fashioned office chair.
A young policeman had appeared in the hall behind them. He followed
them into the room and began
going through a file cabinet.
"Out, patrolman," Mike snapped.
"But, sir, I've got to "
"Get the hell out! This is private!"
The young cop hurried to the door. Jonathan looked around at the police
equipment. He recognized the elec-trodes and wires of a skin galvanometer.
He understood the principle of the polygraph; the devices he worked with in
his own lab were far more sophisticated versions of the same system.
As soon as he saw how primitive the police machine really was he began to
doubt the effectiveness of this session. Perhaps this was all just a waste of
time and emotional energy.
Mike was staring at the door. "Who was that guy, Blake, a rookie?"
"Musta been. Never saw him before."
"Got his uniform all screwed up. Notice that?"
"No, sir."
"Yeah. Some damn screwed-up rookie." Mike looked through his bifocals at
Jonathan. "Let's get on with it."
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