Confess!

"Come with us,” two burly men in gray suits said, grabbing me by the arm and handcuffing me. “You know what you did.” I had no idea. I was coming out of the cinema with a friend and all I could say was, “You’re mistaken. I’ve done nothing.”

One of the men pushed over my head and forced me in an unmarked car. Maybe they weren’t even the police. They could as well kidnap me and ask for ransom later. I am not an important person, but my family has means. They would pay anything to get me back.

My friend didn’t move a muscle. He watched them taking me away.

I poked my head out of the car’s door and shouted, “Alex, you’re going to let them take me. Just like that?”

He finally raised his voice, “Do you even have a police badge? Where are you taking him? I will report you.” He brandished his phone in front of their faces and the other burly man crashed the phone between his hands like it was a chocolate bar and his hands could melt it.

“Call the police, Alex told someone.”

The thugs pushed him away and didn’t answer that.

I wriggled, trying to escape the back seat where I shouldn’t have let them thrust me. I kicked with my legs and shoved the man back with my shoulder. He pulled a knife on me and told me to shut up.

Alex yelled, “You have no right.”

Instead, the men said, “If you follow, we’ll fire at you.” That was enough to stun him. He raised his hand above his head and shut his mouth. So much for friendship.

But what could we do or say? Once you’re in the box, there is no telling what people will do with you and I was ready to be brutally murdered. At least. My dreams passed before my eyes, unfulfilled. Too late for regret.

In the car, the man next to me started bullying me. No prelude. No introductions. “So, low life, what do you have to say for your defense?”

I gasped. I had done nothing. “I’m innocent. You’ve got the wrong man.”

“Really?”

“I’m a detective. Pull my badge from my jacket pocket. You’ll see.”

“Oh, we know who you are.”

“Then you know you’re in over your head.” Intimidation always made an impact in my line of work.

“You’re not threatening me, now are you?”

“Why did you kidnap me?”

“I’ll tell you, riffraff. There are 59 false confessions extracted this year in your office. Do you deny it?”

“What are you saying? I’ve done my job. I’m a good cop.”

“59 false confessions. 59 people admitting they have committed a crime when they didn’t commit. How did you pull that out? Even more important, why did you do it?”

“I…I… It’s police procedural. Its what we do. We ask suspect questions, then we ask the questions again and again to see if there are inconsistencies.”

The man next to me put the knife to my head. “You know what that'd do to someone?”

“It works! Men, don’t be idiots. It’s been around forever. You’re kidding me, are you? That’s a joke. You guys are pranking me. I got it now.” I laughed.

The man pinches his lips together and pressed the knife to my temple. “Do you know, funny guy, that confessions can trump other evidence?”

“What?”

“Worse, confession can corrupt it as well.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Alibis are recanted. Witnesses retell stories differently. Police ignore evidence and forensic scientists reinterpret the evidence.”

“I’m not responsible for what happens in a judge courtroom. I’m at the base, man. I only interrogate.”

I had nothing to be ashamed of. I had no clue where the man was headed for. I was innocent. I was doing my job, and pretty darn week if you asked me, better than most.

The man blew his foil breath into my face.

“What do you think of that? A scum has been seen driving a victim’s car but the son of the victim is arrested because he confessed. The problem is he didn’t do it. No one thought of asking any questions to the man who stole the car, but the son who was partying outside was caught and interrogated. After 24 hours of interrogation, he signed a confession. You made him sign the confession.”

I passed a finger into my collar. The man was making me feel uncomfortable. “So what? He confessed. If someone confesses, that means they did it.”

“That’s the problem. You think that if someone says he has done it then he has done it. Right? Buzz. False. You’re wrong.”

“How can I be wrong?”

The man stared me in the eye, his brows furrowed, and he leaned toward me.

I was going to lose my shit.

“How did you do it anyway? Are you a magician? Are you an alien?”

I shrugged. “What? You’re kidding. I’m not. My blood is red like yours.”

“How should I know? Maybe we should check that out.” The man placed his knife under my chin and pressed. Hard, Breaking the skin.

“Enough,” the other man said while stopping the car in an abandoned parking lot. “I’ll gut him myself if that was going to get Lennie back. But no. It ain’t.”

Anger surged in my gut, burning like gun powder. “I swear I’ll do anything you want.”

The man in the front smiled with one side of his mouth. “You would do that, huh? I can tell if you are lying. You’re twitching.”

“You’re wrong. I’m twitching because I’m nervous.”

“Lie.”

The man next to me backed up. “That’s what you told the other inspector. You said Lennie was twitching and that proved he was lying.”

I shivered. True, I had said that, but that’s what I had been taught. That’s what I thought could help me figure out if someone was lying. I was wrong. It was all wrong. Our formation. The research on human behavior. All wrong.

The man in the front studied me. He cleared his throat and said, “You can be persuaded of a crime. Anyone can.”

“What’s that you’re saying?” I said with less confidence.

“When you’re worn down by hours of interrogation, you believe what anyone tells you. You flip.”

“Impossible.”

“You go into a fugue.”

“That has never happened to me.”

The man next to me slapped me. “Have you ever been interrogated.”

I put my hands up to protect my face. “No. I haven’t.”

“So how do you know?”

“I know nothing,” I blurted out. “Yet, I thought I knew.”

“I did,” said the man next to me, running his fingers across his brow. “I was interrogated. And you know what? People start believing their own guilt when you work on them as much as you do. Maybe they have even dreamed of killing someone. Maybe they were close to. But they stopped themselves. You, with your mojo, you make them believe they really did it.”

“I would never dream of coercing an innocent into confessing to something they haven’t done.”

“But you did. You piece of rubbish.”

The man in the front towered over me. “People doubt their own memory, especially young people, addicts, old people.” He grabbed my collar and pulled me close. “You put 59 people in prison for nothing.”

I quivered. “I did?”

“You made them pay for someone else’s crime.”

“I don’t remember.”

“You should be thrown in prison yourself.”

I felt so cold. My insides were freezing. Did I really do that to other people? How was this possible? “I’m sorry,” I finally said. “I thought I was doing my job.”

“And now, you’re going to sign a confession. “

“I’m sorry. What?” I was lost. What was he talking about?

The man next to me put a pen in my hand. “Sign.”

I signed. I didn’t know what I had just signed. I didn’t care. I was too stunned. I felt too guilty. I felt so confused, so disgusted at myself, so tired. The evidence they had given me matched. How could I have been so blind? But then, I searched for some written evidence. I opened my eyes in horror. There was no paper in the car. I couldn’t see any tablet or device with evidence on them. Did I imagine them showing me that evidence?

“Where is the evidence?” I asked.

The man in the front made a rictus.

I asked again, “You showed me a video, didn’t you?”

The man shook his head. “It is all in your head.”

“There’s no evidence. Blast! I didn’t do anything. You forced me to sign a confession. Why?”

The man next to me laughed. “Relax, dude.”

“Why should I relax? I’m going to prison for that.”

“No, you’re not,” the man in the front said. “We thought you needed a taste of your own medicine. We were just messing with you.”

The man next to me uncuffed me and said, “For a good cause, of course.”

He opened the door of the car and threw me out. I landed on my back. He pinned the paper I had signed on my shirt. “Frame it, dude. Never forget what happened today.”

He climbed back into the car. The car lifted off the ground and disappear into the night.

I was covered in dust and weeping. I was quitting my job. “Don’t you quit,” a voice resounded in my head. “If you do, the next 49 guys have no chance, no chance at all.”

“I got you,” I said. “I got you all.”

I stood and brushed myself. I was in front of a prison. I was going to ask them. All of them. I was going to make sure they told me the truth this time. I would damn well make sure of it.