“This girl isn’t Cameron, Anna. She’s a runner who’s been screwing up her life for a long time. And you heard what her mother said. Shannan doesn’t want anyone looking for her. End of story.”

“How can you even say that, Will? You’re a parent.”

“What does that mean?”

“We’re responsible for this girl.”

“Why? Why are we?”

“Because everyone wants to be looked for, whether they realize it or not.”

—

It’s a long time before either of us speaks again. The impasse is like a physical object between us, taking up space and air. Finally he notices the copy of Jane Eyre, his eyebrows lifting in curiosity.

“What happened with Steve Gonzales?”

“I liked him. He seems like a decent guy and a good teacher, and he obviously cares about Cameron. I don’t think he’s involved in this at all, but you can polygraph him to rule him out.” Wait. My words catch up to me and seem to clang. In the cruiser, before the call about Shannan hijacked our day, Will had started to tell me something important. “Emily’s polygraph,” I remind him. “How did she fail?”

(twenty-four)

When I was first trained to interview suspects, I learned the Reid Technique of interrogation like pretty much everyone in law enforcement then. John Reid was a Chicago cop who came up with the method when in the 1940s and 1950s the Supreme Court outlawed beating, bullying, and threatening out confessions. Reid liked science. He was a polygraph expert and thought cops could be taught to detect lies, too, through a suspect’s unconscious tics and gestures, repetitive speech patterns, stress responses. Through a series of escalating questions and steps, the interviewer was supposed to take more and more control while the polygraph did its work to register minute changes in heart rate, blood pressure, body temperature, and respiration.

Like Will, I’ve always carried healthy skepticism about the polygraph, considering it a tool, yes, but nothing to hang your hat on, let alone a conviction. An increase in heart rate might suggest guilty feelings or behavior, sure. But in a case like Cameron’s, with a child’s life at stake, a subject’s emotions might only be hot and chaotic and bewildering. Unreliable. Also, in my experience, guilty people have no trouble passing polygraphs. Narcissists, psychopaths. People without a conscience.

“What happened, Will? What tripped her up?”

It’s obvious from his look that he wants to drop this conversation, but finally he relents. “The question was ‘Have you ever done harm to your daughter?’ Emily’s answer was no, and you’re familiar with how this works. The question comes up a few more times, differently worded. Each time Emily says no, and each time, her heart rate spikes.”

“That seems significant. Do you disagree?”