76 The Cross Road (2/2)
”Absolutely not!” Richard answered immediately.
”Okay...” the detective replied dispassionately.
”It would be very boring...” The words were mumbled but I could hear it as clear as day.
”Excuse me?” the detective asked.
”I said, that would be boring.” There was a little reassurance in his voice, unfounded and hopefully soon to be broken down again.
”You seem like a very intelligent person and I know you can see that there are some alarm bells in the investigation...” The suspect nodded. ”The next thing we need to ask… given the types of crimes we are investigating… do you watch any crime shows?”
”I have watched a little.”
”So you have an idea of the forensic capabilities out there. What would you be willing to give me today to help me move past you in this investigation?”
”What do you need?” Richard stammered.
”Do you want to supply fingerprints, blood samples?” The fact that the detective was letting the suspect decide gave the suspect a sense of power, a choice that he has to make for himself to either prove his innocence or to re-evaluate how he can dupe the system into thinking he was innocent.
”Sure.”
”Wait, this actually worked? Shouldn't a man in the military know more about this and know that he can deny taking a test under many pretexts that doesn't look suspicious?” I asked, clearly confused.
”Though he is in the military, the information out there that is true about the forensic procedure is little. People don't know that there are other ways. But Richard wants everyone to believe he is innocent so he will concede to everything.” Sebastian explained.
”This is known both in psychology and philosophy as a cross-road, a moment in your life when a single instantaneous choice will take you to multiple exceedingly different outcomes. The only two pieces of evidence acquired at the time were the tire-track and footprints. The DNA found on the body was not admissible as the body was highly decomposed at the time and genetic analysis was not possible because the outcomes could be wildly different from the truth. Remember that this was before the advent of the new DNA testing method known as next-generation sequencing.”