Bringing Adam Home - Les Standiford [12]
While Matthews sat at a vacant desk, poring over the files that were rather grudgingly parceled out to him, the phones at other desks were ringing constantly. While some of the detectives seemed organized, others assigned to the case would answer incoming calls randomly, jot information given by tipsters on scraps of paper or napkins or whatever might be handy, then hurry out on unrelated assignments without bothering to log their calls.
Desks were shared, files piled and unpiled, scraps of paper sent fluttering, napkins balled and tossed and swept. To Matthews, it seemed impossibly chaotic. It wasn’t that the detectives seemed incompetent or unconcerned—there simply seemed to be no one in charge.
In his own department, all calls pertaining to a specific investigation went through one central logging station, and each lead, however lunatic or promising on the face of it, was assigned to someone for follow-up. After the leads were checked, reports were filed, and someone with authority over the case regularly reviewed the status of each and every inquiry, no matter how unimportant it might appear. Such organization seemed to Matthews the first principle of effective investigation technique, but when he mentioned the seeming disarray to Hoffman, he got only a raised eyebrow in return. If Hoffman had anything to say about it, Matthews wouldn’t be there to begin with, he was reminded.
Matthews was hardly surprised at Hoffman’s response, but he couldn’t have stopped himself from making his point. Ten days gone by and not a scrap of worthwhile information turned up, how could he keep his mouth shut? He even walked down the hallway to repeat his concerns to Lieutenant Hynds. Hynds gave him a look obviously meant to remind Matthews who was in charge. “I’ll look into it,” he told Matthews.
Matthew got the picture. He’d stick to what he could do, he thought, what he’d been authorized to do. And he would begin with the father of the missing boy.
Matthews had formed no impression as to any involvement that John Walsh might have had in the crime that he’d been called to help investigate. Impressions only got in the way. What Matthews relied upon was his technique.
Before conducting a polygraph exam, any competent expert performs something of a pre-exam interview with a subject, but in Matthews’s case those interviews were anything but perfunctory. Though he has thought about the matter, he is not exactly certain where his ability to connect with people comes from, though he does recall that as a child growing up in a devout Catholic household, he’d thought he was going to become a priest. “When it got closer to the time to go away to the seminary, though, I wasn’t so sure. My mother knew I was upset and sat me down one day to tell me it was okay if I didn’t want to go. I didn’t have to be a priest just to please her, she told me.” He shrugs. “It was a big relief to me at the time. But sometimes I think being a cop is almost the same thing.”
In any event, when his subject on the day of August 7, 1981, sat down in the examining room, Matthews started by asking, “Tell me a little about yourself, John.” When Walsh began by telling Matthews where he’d gone to college and what his major had been, Matthews held up a hand. “No, I mean, tell me about how you grew up. About your mother and father. Like if I asked you to rate them on a scale of one to ten, with ten being tops, and why. That kind of thing.”
On that day, “that kind of thing” went on for almost seven hours. Prompted by Matthews, Walsh said that if ten were tops, then his father, a hardworking war hero he had idolized, was probably a twelve in his eyes. Walsh and his mother had what he considered a normal relationship. There were typical mother-son issues