“Yeah, well, I don’t believe either one of you.”
I wasn’t getting anywhere.
I went quiet for a moment, thinking of another way I could get through to him. Maybe I needed to go back to the beginning, to his original statement, see how he’d react when I questioned him about what he’d said to the police.
“I had a chance to look over your original statement this morning,” I said. “I wanted to review it so I knew what questions to ask you today.”
“Yeah, so? What about it?”
“On the day of the murders, you said you were at your place, working on a wooden chair to sell at your booth at the farmers’ market the following weekend.”
“As far as I recall, yes.”
“In the notes it says Harvey, who would have introduced himself to you as Detective Harvey Kennison, went to the farmer’s market the next weekend to see if you were there. You weren’t. In fact, you’d shut down your booth and didn’t return to it for over a year. Why?”
“If you think about it, it’s obvious. I was shaken by what happened.”
“Shaken by the deaths of teenagers you’d never met before? Shutting down your booth for as long as you did seems like a strong reaction, if you ask me. As you’d said, the crime had nothing to do with you.”
“I didn’t need to meet them to be affected by it. The fact it happened so close to my place was hard for me to take.”
“So hard you moved out of the cabin you were renting and in with your sister for a while.”
“My brother moved in with me because he was struggling to pay the rent,” Dorothy added. “And as for the booth, he wasn’t selling enough furniture to keep it going, so he took a break. Got a job that paid the bills.”
Danny frowned at Dorothy. “I don’t need you stepping in, Sis. I can answer questions myself.”
“I’m just trying to help.”
“You’re not helping,” Danny said.
Dorothy dropped her chin into her hand and looked away, muttering something about never being appreciated.
“You should treat your sister with more respect,” Giovanni said. “The way I see it, she’s trying to help.”
He was right.
Still …
“Let’s try and stay on track,” I said. “Had you ever seen or met any of the teenagers before they were murdered?”
Danny tapped a finger to the chair, averting eye contact as he said, “I … no.”
“I need you to look at me,” I said. “Look me in the eye and tell me you never saw or spoke to the teenagers that day.”
“I don’t know what you’re getting at.”
It was about to be made clear.
“There are several tells people give when they’re lying. One of them is avoiding eye contact. With some of my questions, you’ve looked at me. With others, you looked away. You’ve also been hedging your statements.”
“Hedging my … what now?”
“When a person is hiding something, to avoid being upfront or truthful, they’ll hedge their statements. In this instance, you began your answer to one question by saying ‘as far as I recall,’ and then the next question I asked, you answered with, ‘if you think about it,’ both signs you’re avoiding whatever it is you’d rather not say.”
Danny began tapping the arm of the chair again, but for the first time, his demeanor wasn’t a defensive one, which told me I was spot-on.
He was about to crack.