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clip. Everything was in soft shades of white and gray, blue and green, from the cubicles the detectives occupied to the neat offices of the watch commanders. Even the interrogation room he was escorted to was neat, with a gray metal desk and a few comfortable office chairs. Soft, overhead fluorescence provided the lighting.
    Carol Giles took the seat closest to the door. Sometimes, cops liked to place the suspect on the far side of the table, near the wall. That was a subtle psychological ploy, intended to make the suspect feel closed in. But Shanlian, who sat opposite her, sensed that Giles would be more talkative if she felt she could leave at any time.
    Someone offered to get them drinks. Carol wanted a coffee, but Shanlian never touched the stuff. He preferred the pure caffeinated, sugary jolt of Mountain Dew.
    After Carol received her coffee and an ashtray—Shanlian figuring that like many smokers she would do it under stress—the detective got down to business.
    “Look, Mrs. Giles, I want to remind you that you’re not a suspect and you’re not under arrest,” Shanlian began.
    “I understand,” Carol replied, sipping at her coffee.
    The point of the warning was to make it clear that she could walk away anytime she wanted, that she was not under duress. The reason Shanlian didn’t read her her rights, even though she was already a suspect in his mind, was that had he done so, she probably would have clammed up. He was trying to engender her trust. If he could get that, she’d open up and tell him what happened. Then he’d read her her rights; she’d write down her statement; he’d clear the case quickly; and everybody would go home happy. But he had a long way to go.
    From previous interviews—cop speak for interrogations—Shanlian knew that 90 percent of what he and the suspect said in the interrogation room wouldn’t even go into his report. It wasn’t that he was hiding anything, far from it. Contrary to TV stereotypes, cops gain statements and confessions from suspects not by violence but by trust. So Shanlian let Carol talk.
    She kept going back to her kids and how much she loved them. He lent a sympathetic ear. She relaxed. When Shanlian sensed that she was getting comfortable with him, he asked her a straight question.
    “How can I find Tim Collier?”
    “You take 1-75 [north] to 1-475, get off on the Carpenter Road exit. Then you cross the railroad tracks and drive on some side streets across from a church. He’s staying someplace over there.”
    Right, “over there,” very specific, he thought.
    “Okay, what kind of car was he driving?”
    “My car. A rose colored ’88 Caddy DeVille.”
    “Plate number?”
    “BPE, or maybe FMW-10.”
    She wasn’t sure, but that was okay. He’d tap into the state’s motor vehicle database and get that information. Once he had it, he could put out a bulletin to law enforcement agencies requesting Collier’s apprehension.
    “Mrs. Giles, you mentioned before that your husband had died. I’m sorry for your loss.”
    “Thank you.”
    “Could you tell me what he died from?”
    “He had had a stroke about a year ago and he’d been in ill health ever since.”
    “Ill health or bad health?”
    Both, it seemed. The guy was a diabetic with a heart condition. He weighed almost 500 pounds.
    “I think my husband knew he was dying, because he asked me to go shopping. When I returned, he was dead.”
    He didn’t want her to be there when death took his body.
    “How long were you married?” Shanlian asked solicitously.
    “Eleven years. We were together since I was fifteen.”
    As the conversation wore on, she got friendlier. From the way she answered questions, she sounded like a people pleaser. Shanlian sensed that someplace down the line, back in her past, Giles had been abused. Psychologically, physically, it did not matter. It made you anxious to please another human being so you wouldn’t be abused further.
    “Jessie, that’s my husband, he