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insisted on paying for a honeymoon trip to Europe for the couple, and the Walshes and the Monahans had remained friends ever since.
    It was a captivating story, but it was the sort of thing that Matthews encouraged for other reasons. “You get someone talking about emotional things they haven’t thought about in ten or twenty years, you establish a good baseline,” he says. “When you finally get around to asking about some crime they may or may not have been involved in just the other day, you can judge any little changes in body language, in rate of speech or eagerness to respond and so on, and know you may be onto something.”
    As for the polygraph instrument itself, Matthews says, “It’s not infallible. It’s just a tool that helps validate the information that is gathered during the interview. The polygraph can indicate deception, but only a confession establishes guilt.”
    At the end of his time with Walsh, and following the administration of the polygraph exam itself, Matthews felt he had his unequivocal answer, however. “It is the examiner’s opinion that Mr. Walsh was not criminally involved nor has he guilty knowledge as to who is responsible for the abduction of his son Adam.”
    On the other hand, Matthews did come across one item of interest during his interview, one that would affect the investigation irrevocably. As they talked, Walsh brought up a name that had surfaced nowhere else in the course of the investigation: it was that of Jimmy Campbell, a man Walsh identified as Adam’s godfather.
    Campbell was a younger man whom Walsh had gotten to know at the Diplomat Hotel in his lifeguarding days. Campbell was a pool boy, a decent, hardworking kid who’d never had much of a home life or any chance for a college education, and Walsh had always liked him and felt sorry for him—“Dudley Do-Right,” he nicknamed him. When the Walshes started to move up in the world and he and Revé bought a house, Walsh and his wife invited Campbell to live in one of the spare rooms. He was to help out around the place and get himself into the community college. As long as he stayed in school, he could stay with the Walshes, but if Campbell quit school or flunked out, he’d have to leave. That was the deal. Unfortunately, Jimmy had dropped out of school a few months ago, Walsh told Matthews during their interview. And Walsh had been true to his word.
    “So where is this Jimmy Campbell now?” Matthews asked, casually enough, after their exam had ended.
    “Dudley?” Walsh shrugged, clearly still disappointed with his former ward. “He’s out there helping with the search.”
    Matthews took another look at Hoffman’s list of subjects to be examined, which Hynds had passed along. No Jimmy Campbell among them. A guy living in the Walsh house until a few months ago, intimately connected to the family, and he’s not on the list? He glanced back at Walsh.
    “You got this Campbell’s phone number?”
    Walsh was puzzled, but he was already reaching into his pocket for his address book. Matthews jotted down the information, and by 9:00 p.m. that evening, Jimmy Campbell was in the examining room at Hollywood PD, and Joe Matthews was hard at work on his next subject.
    Hollywood, Florida—August 8, 1981
    I n the wee hours of Saturday morning Matthews finished his work with Jimmy Campbell. He was tired, and what he had learned during his interview with Campbell had wearied him even more. He completed his notes on the examination and took a walk down the hall to Detective Hoffman’s desk.
    “Yeah?” Hoffman asked in his normal surly fashion when Matthews approached.
    “I finished with John Walsh,” Matthews said.
    “It took you long enough,” Hoffman said, with a glance at his watch. “So what’s the story?”
    Matthews shook his head. “He’s clean. No involvement, no guilty knowledge.”
    Hoffman said nothing, but he seemed anything but pleased. “So who’s next?”
    “I already did ‘next.’ A guy