Madigan made a few mistakes, though. One was that he directed Edwin to sit across from him at the table. Better would have been to sit facing each other without any furniture between them. Tables, other chairs, any prop gives the suspect a sense of security.

He made a clumsy show of offering the suspect water. Dance noted that Madigan pointed at the Clear Spring, rather than simply picking up a bottle and handing it to Edwin. It was probably an attempt to lift Edwin’s friction ridge prints—fingerprints—from the bottle and it seemed that Edwin deduced this; he didn’t touch it. The problem was that Madigan’s offer gave away something of the interviewer’s strategy and intelligence.

But the big mistake, in Dance’s opinion, came next:

“Can I ask what this is all about, Pike?”

“Robert Prescott.”

Wouldn’t’ve done that, she thought.

“Oh, Kayleigh’s road manager,” Edwin said, nodding and rubbing his prominent eyebrow.

“Where were you last night at the time he died.”

Oh, no.

Dance realized she must have said this aloud because Harutyun tilted his head her way.

“What? No, he’s dead?” Edwin looked alarmed.

“And you didn’t know that?”

“No, no. That’s terrible. He and Kayleigh were real close. What happened?”

“Got himself burned up. So, you’re telling me you weren’t at the convention center last night?” He now leaned toward Edwin ominously.

Dance understood Madigan’s approach. It was referred to as a blunt-force attack—a term borrowed from hackers who used massive supercomputers to run through all possible passwords to break encrypted messages. With blunt force, officers would inundate suspects with information about them and about the case, suggesting knowledge they didn’t actually possess and connections that were tenuous at best. When delivered with confidence, as Madigan clearly had, the details sometimes got suspects to confess quickly.

Yes, blunt force could be effective. But if it didn’t work right away, you ended up with a subject who stonewalled; any chance of getting helpful information would be ruined. Accordingly, Dance herself never used this technique. Her belief was that information was the most valuable thing an interrogator has. It could be a steel trap, it could be a weapon but to be effective it had to be fed out slowly to lure the suspect into revealing details that could later be used to trip him up. Madigan had just given away the most important key facts—that Bobby was dead, where the crime occurred and how it happened. Had she been conducting the interview, she would have kept those details secret for the time being.

Edwin looked over the deputy somberly. “Well, I’m very sorry to hear that about Bobby. That’s sad for Kayleigh.”

Madigan didn’t respond. He said quickly, “Could you tell me where you were when Prescott died? Midnight last night?”

“Well, I’m sure you know I don’t have to tell you anything but I’m a little surprised at this. Really, Detective. You clearly think I hurt Bobby. Why on earth would I do that? I’d never hurt anybody close to Kayleigh. But the answer to your question is, I was home in my rental.”