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Being Questioned at a Murder Scene
Orikaeshigitae
Registered User, ClubPA regular
Registered User, ClubPA regular
I'm writing, and my protagonist stumbles upon a fresh corpse after hearing gunshots. He calls 911. What would the first arriving officer and detectives ask him, respectively?
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Followed by asking whether the witness is injured. If he saw the guys face or his car they might take him to the precinct and have him look through the photo books. The detective would at one point offer his contact card, and may even allude to psychiatric services being available.
They will probably tell him to stay available for any further questions even if they don't take him in.
Mystery with urban fantasy elements.
When writing, if you hit snags like this just keep going. Come back to this stuff later.
Advice from Mr. Neil Gaiman right there.
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You know, they are just going to arrest him if he's black.
Please tell me I am not the only one to laugh out loud at this...
He asked me the typical questions, but when I told him why I was there he stopped writing and looked up from his notebook.
"Can you repeat that, please?"
Might be more interesting to the reader, unless the details of the procedure are important to the story.
But seriously, I think that might be a good place to start. Although typically you'd see detectives, not a first-responder. But then, first responders would probably only gather the basic details and hold the person for a detective.
Edit: The Bone Collector book series by Jeffery Deaver has a lot of good scenes of crime scene investigation and cop interaction, if you want to do any reading related to the subject.
There are important things you need to address. What kind of character is the first officer on the scene? What kind of character is the investigating detective? Are these characters elementary or ancillary? How important is the murder to the story? How about the detectives? Will your protagonist become a suspect? Will he assist in the investigation?
Basically this is how it happens, because that's what happens on the page.
If someone says, that's not how it would go down, well fuck them it is too.
The Gaiman thing is true, write past it and go back to it. Also I tell my students when and if you hit roadblocks like this the solution is to read more, or ingest more fiction.
Some good scenes to watch or read:
The first teaser from the first episode of the wire, the Snotboogie scene.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmIvu1yg3bU&feature=related
The first chapter of the Yiddish Policeman's union. Viewable at amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/reader/0007149824?_encoding=UTF8&ref_=sib_dp_pt#reader_0007149824
A few episodes of any procedural (Castle, Law and Order, Homicide).
The Dresden files books are filled with varying encounters.
Look at this interrogation scene from Friedkin's Cruising if you don't believe you can make up anything you want and have it play out on the page or on screen: (POTENTIALLY NSFW LANGUAGE AND IMAGERY)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QH_6TIr-sO8
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Nope, that's just how cops be. However, the B'more slang is city specific and changes yearly, so avoid that.
Have you seen the French Connection? It, like the Wire, had the policemen who inspired the story on set every day even cast in some acting roles. Popeye Doyle (Gene Hackman) famously asks suspects off the wall questions like, "Did you ever pick your feet in Poughkipsie?!" he did this because the detective he was based on used this technique rather than good cop bad cop. One cop would ask questions germane to the case, and the other would ask questions the suspect could not possibly answer, to the point that the suspect would inevitably answer the questions he could.
Also most cop slang we know from Television, including response codes, comes from the LA PD, because that is where most TV writers work.
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The worst your local PD can do is say no, but you could potentially get some excellent firsthand information. I'd wager you're local dicks are going to be somewhere between extremely irritated that you would want to waste their time to flattered that you asked them for information (likely depending on how large your city and their respective caseload is).
Are you writing a a short story, a novella, or a full novel? You might be able to talk a dick into answering your questions on a regular basis in exchange for some meals and a consultation credit. This way you could have time to run dialogue with them as well.
This too is a good Idea. My friend Doug Dorst wrote a novel about a rookie cop (who sees dead people, OOOooooOOooo). Doug was able to go on several ride alongs, and had pretty good access to the dept. He enjoyed the experience.
His book is called Alive in Necropolis check it out.
And you don't have to give any kind of "consultation credit." Just thank them in the aknowledgements, and if you use a story they give you, let them know you intend to use the story with creative liscense, there will be no payment for said story use, and give them additional thanks for it in the aknowledgements.
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