Toxic Love by Tomás Guillén

Author:Tomás Guillén
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2019-09-19T13:18:25+00:00

Fifteen

Emboldened by the witchcraft letter, Lieutenant Foster Burchard decided to go after Steve Harper: corner him and sweat him into divulging what he knew of the poisoning.

First, the lieutenant needed to probe Steve’s mind. What were his fears? His weaknesses? Was he streetwise? What would make him cough up the truth? Should police lean on him? Give him the good-guy-bad-guy routine? Or should they jolt his brain with crude photographs of Chad Shelton’s autopsy?

To find out, Lieutenant Burchard ordered Detective Miller to deliver all the prison reports and the police file on the shooting to Omaha psychiatrist Emmet Kenney. He’d helped police in these mind games before. The lieutenant was interested in one thing: the best way to induce Steve to talk once he was in handcuffs.

After reviewing the material, Kenney surmised that Steve appeared to be a paranoid schizophrenic who held Sandy and Duane responsible for all his misfortunes. After allowing her to get emotionally close to him, he felt Sandy had betrayed him in marrying Duane, something Steve could not stand. As to Duane, Steve hated him outright for stealing Sandy. Kenny’s conclusions mirrored the results of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory test given to Steve in Oklahoma, but the test’s existence was still unknown to police. Sadly, Steve would have discovered his own mental instability if he had continued seeing the hypnotist in Oklahoma. Sandy and her charms appeared to be the impetus for his violent anger, but his mental problems grew out of a psychological weevil that promised to erode his mind.

Bullying Steve would not work, Kenney told Lieutenant Burchard. Neither would the good-guy-bad-guy routine. The psychiatrist suggested Steve be interviewed by a single person with a disarming personality, someone Steve might feel he could trust.

That cut Detective Miller out: the object was to get Steve to talk, not scare him to death. As the lead sniffer, he would have liked to be the first to confront Steve, but he was seasoned enough to know he needed to step aside.

The psychiatrist also offered two caveats:

• The interrogator should not wear dark glasses. Trust hinged heavily on eye contact.

• The door to the interrogation room should be left open to avoid giving Steve the feeling he was psychologically locked in.

Only one homicide detective truly fit the criteria: Greg Thompson. He could put a slug to sleep. His laid-back personality misled killers into believing they could take advantage of him. They were wrong. His puffy but smiling eyes noted every nervous twitch and inconsistency. Thompson turned out to be quite a serendipitous selection. He’d gotten the East Omahan to open up after his arrest for the 1975 shooting.

Lieutenant Burchard wanted to arrest Steve at once but lacked the evidence to obtain an arrest warrant. He mused over his options and decided to request a search warrant for Steve’s house. Judges were more likely to issue search warrants than arrest warrants. When the warrant was served, the lieutenant hoped, his creatively diligent men would entice Steve to “visit” police headquarters.

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