Sarah Koenig

Even after that conversation where your dad was there, you didn't think like, uh-oh?

Very early in the morning on February 28th, after they've spoken to Jay, after Jay has shown them where Hay's car was parked off Edgewood Road, the detectives come into Adnan's bedroom and wake him up, tell him to put some clothes on, it's time to go.

He dresses, sees his mother is watching, his older brother, his little brother Yusuf is crying.

Then they drive Adnan into the city, to an interrogation room and homicide, and handcuff him to what he describes as a little hook in the wall.

This, by the way, is what Jim Traynham calls offering a theme.

You give the suspect an explanation, one that minimizes the crime as a starting point.

Okay.

He says he was thinking of Matlock.

He says the detectives stopped questioning him.

They got ready to leave the room again.

Keep in mind, Adnan was 17 years old.

He had an annotated bibliography due in his English class, he said.

Bill Ritz tried to make a non-situation plain to him.

And did you get it?

You didn't think he meant you're never going home.

Often when Adnan tells stories about this time, he zeroes in on some small moment when someone was kind to him.

That's it.

That's the whole story.

But he's mentioned this guy to me multiple times.

Also, the white lady who was driving the cruiser that took him downtown.