The Second Confesion

He kept after me, with Archer cutting in a few times, for over an hour. In the middle of it a colleague brought sandwiches and coffee in to us, and we went ahead between bites. Dykes did as well as he could, and he was an old hand at it, but even if he had been one of the best, which he wasn't, there was only one direction he could get at me from, and from there he always found me looking straight at him. He was committed to one simple concrete fact: that going down the drive on my way to Chappaqua I had killed Rony, and I matched it with the simple concrete fact that I hadn't. That didn't allow much leeway for a fancy grilling, and the only thing that prolonged it to over an hour was their earnest desire to wrap it up quick and cart it away from Stony Acres.

Archer looked at his wrist watch for the tenth time. A glance at mine showed me 1.20.

“The only thing to do,” he said, “is get a warrant. Ben, you'd better phone-no, one of the men can ride down with me and bring it back.” “I'll go,” Noonan offered.

“We've plenty of men,” Dykes said pointedly, “since it looks like we're through here.” Archer had got up. “You leave us no other course, Goodwin,” he told me. “If you try to leave the county before the warrant conies you'll be stopped.” “I've got his car key,” Dykes said.

“This is so damned unnecessary!” Archer complained, exasperated. He sat down again and leaned forward at me. “For God's sake, haven't I made it plain enough?

There's no possibility of jeopardy for a major crime, and very little of any jeopardy at all. It was night. You didn't see him until you were on top of him.