Cop: Let’s make one thing clear. We’re pros. If you lie to us, we’ll know. If you tell us the truth, we’ll know. It’s that simple.
Suspect: Okay, let me make one thing clear. This is a lopsided conversation. Because I know one thing for sure that you can never know for sure.
Cop: What’s that?
Suspect: I didn’t do it.
Cop: We’ll see about that.
Suspect: No you won’t. You literally will never know for sure because it is your job to suspect. You are not here to protect my rights. You are not even here to find the real killer. You are here to get rid of a problem. A problem that very well may have flown the coop by now. But you have to catch someone, so you caught me. And only I know for sure that you are barking up the wrong tree.
Cop: Where were you at the night of the murder?
Suspect: Like I said. At home, alone, reading a book.
Cop: So you have no alibi.
Suspect: No.
Cop: You have a motive.
Suspect: I don’t think so.
Cop: He was sleeping with your wife.
Suspect: Ex-wife. She was sleeping with a lot of people. Only one of them ended up dead.
Cop: Maybe you were out to kill your ex and missed. Shot him instead.
Suspect: So she was with him at the time?
Cop: That’s not for you to know.
Suspect: Well, you don’t believe I went to kill my ex.
Cop: Why not?
Suspect: I just won the divorce case. I proved she was sleeping around. She gets nothing.
Cop: Nothing?
Suspect: She keeps her handbags.
Cop: You got a better deal than most.
Suspect: No reason to shoot her now.
Cop: If not her, you still had a motive to shoot her lover.
Suspect: I barely knew the guy. He was just one of many people screwing my ex.
Cop: Nobody else has a motive.
Suspect: It could have been a random burglary gone wrong.
Cop: It was a safe neighborhood, with no recent burglaries.
Suspect: Not any more.
Cop: I can get more aggressive with you. You know that.
Suspect: I can lawyer up and stop talking.
Cop: Tell us what you really know.
Suspect: All I know is that some rich guy that I barely ever met died in his home in Orange County and, from what you say, it sounds like my ex was there with him when it happened.
Cop: Is that how it sounds?
Suspect: It sounds like that to me.
Suspect: It sounds like that to me.
Cop: Then how come you haven’t asked whether she was alright?
Suspect: What?
Cop: I never told you the specifics of the murder scene. How do you know no one else was shot?
Suspect: I didn’t know…
Cop: She was your wife.
Suspect: Yes, but…
Cop: You believed she was at the scene of a murder and you didn’t ask if she was hurt.
Suspect: Oh… I see. She wasn’t there, was she?
Cop: That’s not the point.
Suspect: You planted that idea in my head to see how I would respond. To see if I worried about my wife.
Cop: Oh, now it’s your wife, is it? I thought she was your ex.
Suspect: I think I’ll call my lawyer now.
Cop: You’ve already told us enough.
Suspect: You had your mind made up from the beginning. You weren’t investigating. You were just accusing.
Cop: We’ll see about that.
Suspect: There’s nothing to see.
Samurai Novelist 