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ride, alone with his thoughts, reviewing the procedures that lay ahead. Yet he supposed a personal briefing now would save time later. And time was always a factor with interrogations.
    “Your reputation precedes you,” Sarah Downes said. “I’ve read your transcripts and listened to your tapes. They’ve helped my own interrogations.” She hesitated, as if she wanted to say more, then decided not to.
    “Thank you,” Trent said, settling back as the limo moved smoothly forward, the tinted windows sealing them off from the rest of the world. The driver was a dark shadow at the wheel behind a glass partition.
    “Braxton said to tell you that they’re all set to carry out the scenario. The suspect is being taken to police headquarters along with four other neighborhood boys. Under the pretext, of course, that they’re helping the investigation. The suspect will be isolated for you. All of this timed with your arrival.”
    Something in her voice, a tone, an inflection, that he could not immediately pin down, caused him to glance at her. Devoid of makeup, except for a faint pink lipstick, wearing a gray career suit, white blouse. Everything about her understated and elegant. Thirty years old, give or take a year or two. Attractive in a subdued unflamboyant way.
    Trent felt old beside her. Her freshness and crispness in contrast to his own—what? Not only age, although he was maybe ten or fifteen years older. All the confessions, all those terrible acts he had listened to, that had somehow become a part of him, that separated them more than the years. Entire worlds separated them.
    “Give me some background,” Trent said.
    “You read the fax. Braxton is very thorough.”
    “I’d like to hear it from you. Tell me about the suspect.”
    “His name, as you know, is Jason Dorrant. He’s twelve years old. Shy, somewhat introverted. No previous arrests. But he attacked a classmate last year in the school cafeteria. Apparently unprovoked. He knew the victim, lived on the same street, was one of the last people—if not the last—to see her alive. Braxton is convinced that he’s the perpetrator.”
    That tone of voice again, the hint of doubt. Trent’s instincts were seldom wrong—that was why he had scored so many successes. And he allowed his instincts to lead him now as he asked, “And you?”
    She looked at him in surprise. “Me?”
    “Yes, are you convinced the boy’s the perpetrator?”
    “What I think doesn’t matter,” she said.
    “Yes, it does,” Trent replied. “Everything matters. And I have to know everything that’s possible to know before I proceed.”
    She shrugged. “All right, I admit that I’m somewhat doubtful. There is absolutely no physical evidence. Nothing to link the boy to the crime scene. And I wonder whether Braxton is yielding to pressure. The town, the senator. Acting too quickly . . .”
    “Any other suspects?”
    “Not really. Family members are always questioned, of course. But the father, mother and brother all can account for their time and movements. Father at the office, mother shopping with a friend. The brother, a boy named Brad, thirteen years old, was with two friends the entire afternoon. No other leads. That leaves us with Jason Dorrant.” A wisp of hair had loosened, falling across her forehead. She swept it back. “I’m uneasy about the situation, about this boy, Jason.”
    “You’re overlooking one thing, Ms. Downes.”
    “What’s that?”
    “The interrogation.”
    Her face tightened, her cheeks becoming taut.
    “Don’t you think the interrogation will bring out the truth?” Trent asked.
    She sighed, turning to him. “It should.” Then that shrug again. “But . . .”
    “But what?”
    As if she’d made a sudden decision, she turned and looked at him directly. “You’re in the business of obtaining confessions,” she said. “That’s why you’re being brought in. That’s what bothers me.”
    “Don’t you think I’m also looking