Hands Through Stone. James A. Ardaiz

time writing NCF, no charges filed, across their request for a complaint; he would just use a stamp instead of wasting the ink in his pen.

      First things first. They had to be able to convince their captain, Bud Lauter, and, more importantly, their sergeant, Art Tabler, that there was something here that would take them somewhere at the end. Even serious cases have to be prioritized. You can give cases so much time and then you have to move on, because there is always another body, there is always another case.

      Both detectives wanted this case. They wanted to close the book hard on Clarence Ray Allen, but from the beginning they knew they had to approach every step carefully and build their case slowly. They had to put a case together before they started to make arrests and interrogate suspects.

      When you sit down to interrogate a person for any crime, but especially for murder, there are unwritten rules as to what can be a very intricate dance. Very seldom do people crack just because they are sitting in front of you. You have to measure them and you have to bring them in slowly. To do that, you have to know the facts, because when suspects lie—and they almost always lie—you have to know it. A good interrogator gets into the head of the person in front of him. It’s a matter of knowing when to push forward and when to pull back. Unfortunately, right now, Blade and Lean had nothing that would shake anybody.

      After sifting through their options, Lean asked his more seasoned partner, “So, Blade, what do we tell Tabler? We both know that this case is going to take hundreds of hours and we may end up nowhere.”