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supervision.
    Then he went home and caught a two-hour nap before showering and dressing for the press conference.
     
    The press conference killed the story stone dead. A story needs the guy to be still out there. A story needs the guy roaming, sullen, hidden, shadowy, dangerous. It needs fear. It needs to make everyday chores exposed and hazardous, like pumping gas or visiting the mall or walking to church. So to hear that the guy was found and arrested even before the start of the second news cycle was a disaster for Ann Yanni. Immediately she knew what the network offices were going to think. No legs, over and done with, history. Yesterday's news, literally. Probably wasn't much of anything anyway. Just some inbred heartland weirdo too dumb to stay free through the night. Probably sleeps with his cousin and drinks Colt 45. Nothing sinister there. She would get one more network breaking-news spot to recap the crime and report the arrest, and that would be it. Back to obscurity.
    So Yanni was disappointed, but she hid it well. She asked questions and made her tone admiring. About halfway through she started putting together a new theme. A new narrative. People would have to admit the police work had been pretty impressive. And this perp wasn't a weirdo. Not necessarily. So a serious bad guy had been caught by an even more serious police department.
    Right out there in the heartland. Something that had taken considerable time on the coasts in previous famous cases. Could she sell it? She started drafting titles in the back of her mind. America's Fastest? Like a play on Finest?
    The Chief yielded the floor to Emerson after about ten minutes. Emerson filled in full details on the perp's identity and his history. He kept it dry. Just the facts, ma'am. He outlined the investigation. He answered questions. He didn't boast. Ann Yanni thought that he felt the cops had been lucky. That they had been given much more to go on than they usually got.
    Then Rodin stepped up. He made it sound like the PD
    had been involved in some early minor skirmishing and that the real work was about to begin. His office would review
    everything
    and
    make
    the
    necessary
    determinations. And yes, Ms Yanni, because he thought the circumstances warranted it, certainly he would seek the death penalty for James Barr.
    James Barr woke up in his cell with a chemical hangover at nine o'clock, Saturday morning. He was immediately fingerprinted and re-Mirandized once, and then twice. The right to remain silent, the right to a lawyer. He chose to remain silent. Not many people do.
    Not many people can. The urge to talk is usually overwhelming. But James Barr beat it. He just clamped his mouth shut and kept it that way. Plenty of people tried to talk to him, but he didn't answer. Not once. Not a word. Emerson was relaxed about it. Truth was, Emerson didn't really want Barr to say anything. He preferred to line up all the evidence, scrutinize it, test it, polish it, and to get to a point where he could anticipate a conviction without a confession. Confessions were so vulnerable to defence accusations of coercion or confusion that he had learned to run away from them.
    They were icing on the cake. Literally the last thing he wanted to hear, not the first. Not like on the TV cop shows, where relentless interrogation was a kind of performance art. So he just stayed out of the loop and let his forensics people complete their slow, patient work.
    James Barr's sister was younger than him and unmarried and living in a rented downtown condo. Her name was Rosemary. Like the rest of the city's population, she was sick and shocked and stunned.
    She had seen the news Friday night. And she caught it again Saturday morning. She heard a police detective say her brother's name. At first she thought it was a mistake. That she had misheard.
    But the guy kept on saying it. James Barr, James Barr, James Barr. She burst into tears. First tears of confusion, then tears of horror, then