Resident Evil_ Extinction - Keith R. A. DeCandido [38]
And yet Jill always saw perps brought in, or witnesses, or whatever, and they always passed on having an expert in the law whose purpose in life was to protect them when they were in a room with cops who had absolutely no interest in doing so.
Every cop knew that an interrogation was all but finished as soon as the perp lawyered up, so they did everything possible to discourage it. And when cops themselves were brought in, you couldn’t get the union lawyer into the room fast enough.
So when Jill Valentine was taken into custody in Idaho by federal agents and did not ask for a lawyer, she knew that the agents in question found this behavior odd.
What they didn’t realize, of course, was that she wanted the interrogation to go on for a long time. For one thing, the more she had their attention, the fewer people they had looking for Carlos, Alice, Angie, and L.J. For another, she wanted to cooperate completely with them. Protecting her rights was of comparatively little interest just at the moment—it was protecting the lives of millions of people who’d be exposed, not to mention speaking for the millions who had already died.
They flew her in a helicopter to the Boise field office, and then—before anybody could talk to her—they remanded her to the main office in Washington.
On the one hand, Jill was glad to be getting the attention of the big boys. On the other, it meant the locals would still keep looking for the others.
But she knew the job was dangerous when she took it.
When the jet landed in D.C., they put her, still handcuffed, as she’d been from the moment they busted into the room at the It’ll Do Motel in Idaho, in a bland interrogation room. That was almost a redundancy—there was no such thing as an interesting interrogation room. You didn’t want any distractions, after all. Nor did you want, say, a window or anything else that indicated a way out. Back in Raccoon, there was one local district house that had windows in every room, but they’d put bars on them.
It wasn’t a jail cell, but it had all the right aspects of one. Once they got you in here, you were trapped.
However, that was precisely what Jill wanted.
They’d kept her sitting for about an hour—another standard tactic but one that generally worked. Let the perp sit and stew with her own thoughts for a while. If nothing else, it served to frustrate and annoy the perp.
Unless, of course, the perp in question was expecting it, as Jill was. So she sat quietly, occasionally picking at a fingernail, and waited for her interrogators to make their presence known.
The one difference between this room and the typical RCPD one was the table at which Jill currently sat. It was a pristine metal table. Back home, they were partial to Formica, and it was battered within an inch of its life, covered in nicks, cuts, and scrawls of various perps who would spend their time alone in the room doodling, if the cops bothered to leave a pen.
Television also had taught everyone what was on the other side of mirrors in interrogation rooms, and as a result, many places had done away with them. This room had nothing, but there was a video camera in one ceiling corner that was no doubt recording everything in the room for potential future evidence. The video made everyone’s life easier, especially since nobody was really surprised that people other than those in the room were watching and listening.
Finally, two men walked in. One was the very model of a modern federal agent: tall white guy in his thirties, very short dark hair, with the beginnings of male-pattern baldness. The other was an African-American man who looked barely old enough to shave. Both men wore dark suits with white shirts and dark ties. All they needed were trenchcoats and Ray-Bans to complete the stereotype. They sat in the two chairs that faced Jill.
“Ms. Valentine,” the white guy started, “or, rather,