Rawhide Down_ The Near Assassination of Ronald Reagan - Del Quentin Wilber [61]
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THREE FLOORS ABOVE the station’s cell block, the D.C. homicide office was eerily empty. As soon as they’d received word of the shooting, supervisors had dispatched every available detective to the Hilton, to GW Hospital, and to Washington Hospital Center. Only one detective had remained behind: Eddie Myers, a thirteen-year department veteran. It was Myers’s job to formally take the suspect into custody and bring him upstairs for questioning.
Myers, his silver badge clipped to the lapel of his beige suit, went down to the cell block and found the gunman sitting on a bench. From a distance, the suspect was good-looking. A thatch of sandy hair covered most of his ears, and thick bangs dipped down to his eyebrows. He was obviously careful about his clothing and appearance: his blue-striped shirt was open at the collar, and he was as calm and nonchalant as a man waiting for an appointment with his doctor. With his bright blue eyes, he looked a bit like a musician in a boy band. But seen up close, his face was flat and empty of emotion.
“You have the right to remain silent,” Myers told Hinckley. “I don’t want to discuss anything about what happened down here. I’m going to take you upstairs to my office, where we can talk.”
“Watch out for my wrist,” Hinckley said. “I think they broke it.”
“We’ll be careful with your wrists,” Myers said, handcuffing Hinckley behind his back and then taking him up a rear elevator to the third floor. With Dennis McCarthy trailing, Myers led Hinckley through the empty homicide office and into a small, white, windowless room used by detectives to interrogate murder suspects. Myers sat Hinckley down on one of the room’s three chairs and cuffed his left hand to the small metal table, freeing his right hand to fill out forms. Sitting across from Hinckley, Myers pulled out a form that advised the suspect of his right to remain silent and to consult an attorney. Hinckley said he understood his rights.
“Do you wish to answer any questions?” Myers asked.
“I’m not sure. I think I ought to talk to Joe Bates.”
“Who is Joe Bates?”
“He’s an attorney, in Dallas, Texas.”
Myers left the room to find someone who could track down the lawyer. He soon returned; with any luck, he could get Hinckley to decide an attorney was not necessary.
“I simply want to hear your side of the story,” Myers said. Then, trying to get his suspect to loosen up, he said, “You must be a Democrat.”
Hinckley chuckled.
“Whatever you tell me I am going to tell the court,” Myers said, adding, “We don’t have to talk about the shooting.”
“I don’t know anything about any shooting,” Hinckley replied.
Despite this denial, Hinckley expressed concern about his own safety. Myers assured him that the police would protect him.
At the moment, the urgent need was not to prove Hinckley’s guilt but to find out if coconspirators were about to strike other targets. The best way to discover whether Hinckley was part of a larger plot was to get him to tell them, so Myers was eager to keep Hinckley talking. With Dennis McCarthy looking on, the detective rolled an arrest report into the room’s typewriter. Saying he needed to take care of some paperwork, Myers began asking Hinckley questions about his background.
As Myers slowly pecked away at the typewriter, using his two index fingers, Hinckley provided his correct name, date of birth, and social security number. Among other things, he told Myers that he had recently arrived in D.C. on a bus from California and had been staying at the Park Central Hotel. Myers’s low-key approach seemed to be working: Hinckley even mentioned his arrest in Nashville.
Myers left the room again for a minute or