“‘Mister,’” Foster muttered.

The Latino’s eyes narrowed as he looked her over carefully. “Good to meet you.” There was nothing nervous about his expression or posture, Overby noted.

She sat across from him.

“Appreciate your coming in.”

A nod of his head. Agreeable.

“Now, please understand, you’re not under investigation. I want to make that clear. We’re talking to dozens of people, maybe hundreds. We’re looking into gang-related crimes here on the Peninsula. And hope you can help us.”

“So, I no need a lawyer.”

She smiled. “No, no. And you can leave anytime you want. Or choose not to answer.”

“But then I look kind of suspicious, don’t I?”

“I could ask how you liked your wife’s roast last night. You might not want to answer that one.”

Allerton laughed. Foster looked impatient.

“I couldn’t answer that anyway.”

“You don’t have a wife?”

“No, but even if I did I’d do the cooking. I pretty good in the kitchen.” Then a frown. “But I want to help. Terrible, some of the things that happen, the gangs.” He closed his eyes momentarily. “Disgusting.”

“You’ve lived in the area for a while?”

“Ten years.”

“You’re not married. But you have family here?”

“No, they in Bakersfield.”

Foster: “Shouldn’t she have looked all this up?”

Overby said, “Oh, she knows it. She knows everything about him. Well, what she could learn in the past eight hours since she got his name.”

He’d observed plenty of Dance’s interrogations and listened to her lecture on the topic; he was able to give the task force a brief overview of her specialty. “Kinesics is all about looking for stress indicators. When people lie they feel stress, can’t help it. Some suspects can cover it up well so it’s hard to see. But most of us give away indications that we’re stressed. What Kathryn’s doing is talking to Serrano for a while, nothing about gang activity, nothing about crime—the weather, growing up, restaurants, life on the Peninsula. She gets his baseline body language.”

“Baseline.” Foster, paying half attention.

“That’s the key. It tells her how he behaves when he’s answering truthfully. When I said earlier that kinesics doesn’t work that way? I meant it doesn’t work in a vacuum. It’s almost impossible to meet somebody and instantly read them. You have to do what Kathryn’s doing—getting that baseline. After that she’ll start asking about gang activities he might’ve heard of, then about Guzman.”

Allerton said, “So she compares his behavior then to his baseline, when she knows he’s telling the truth.”

“That’s it,” Overby replied. “If there’s any variation it’ll be because he’s feeling stress.”

“And that’s because he’s lying,” Foster said.

“Possibly. Of course, there’s lying because you just machine-gunned somebody to death. And there’s lying because you don’t want to get machine-gunned. His deception’ll be because there’s a point past which he won’t want to cooperate. Kathryn’ll have to make sure he does.”

“Cooperation,” Foster said. The word seemed to take on extra syllables as it trickled from a cynical mouth.