[Princeton Police Department — October 2, 2005, 10:00 AM]
The interview room was smaller than the one at PPTH.
Concrete block walls painted institutional gray. A metal table bolted to the floor. Two chairs — one on each side, both uncomfortable, the seating designed to produce physical discomfort that would lower psychological resistance. A camera in the upper corner, red light blinking, recording everything. The room was cold — deliberately cold, the thermostat set low enough that Isaac's hands wanted to curl for warmth, which would look like nervousness on camera.
Isaac kept his hands flat on the table. Palms down. Visible. The body language of cooperation, presented with the conscious control of a man who'd spent eleven months performing composure under scrutiny.
Tritter entered with a folder. Not the legal pad from the PPTH interview — a proper folder, manila, the kind that accumulated in police filing systems alongside evidence photos and witness statements. The folder was thick. Thicker than Isaac's personnel file, which meant Tritter had been adding material from sources beyond the hospital's records.
"Dr. Burke." Tritter sat. Set the folder on the table between them. The placement was deliberate — the folder as territory marker, the physical evidence of investigation made tangible. "Thank you for coming."
"I was invited by subpoena. 'Thank you' seems generous."
Tritter's expression didn't change. Social Deduction read the micro-response: mild amusement, professional satisfaction at Isaac's composure confirming his suspicions. He expected me to be calm. He expected the calm to be evidence.
"I'll be direct." Tritter opened the folder. The first page was a printout — Isaac's medical license, highlighted in yellow along the issuance date. "Your medical license was issued on August 14, 2004. The standard processing time for a New Jersey medical license, from application submission to issuance, is twelve to sixteen weeks. Your application was submitted on June 28, 2004. Your license was issued forty-seven days later."
Isaac had never counted the days. Forty-seven. The original Burke had applied immediately after residency completion and received the license in six and a half weeks. Fast, but within the range of normal variation — expedited processing existed for candidates with complete documentation and no red flags.
"Expedited processing is available for—"
"Expedited processing is available for candidates who submit complete applications with no deficiencies. Your application was complete." Tritter turned to the next page. "What's unusual is that your application was processed during the busiest filing period of the year — June through August, when every new residency graduate in the state submits simultaneously. Average processing time during this period is eighteen weeks. Yours was seven."
"I submitted a clean application."
"You submitted a perfect application." Tritter's emphasis on perfect carried the same weight Vogler had placed on extraordinary — admiration disguised as suspicion, the specific linguistic technique of making a compliment sound like an accusation. "Perfect applications in a system that averages a twenty percent deficiency rate raise questions."
The folder produced more pages. Isaac's undergraduate transcript — Rutgers, class of 2000, the GPA and course listings he'd memorized from the apartment search on his first night. Tritter had highlighted several entries.
"Your transcript shows a biology major with a chemistry minor. Standard pre-med track. But your course registration records—" Tritter pulled a separate printout, "—show gaps. Fall 1998, you registered for four courses and dropped one within the add/drop period. Spring 1999, you registered for five courses and completed four. The dropped courses were electives — art history and introductory psychology."
"Students drop courses."
"Students drop courses. Students who are later described as having 'eidetic memory' and 'extraordinary recall' don't typically struggle with introductory psychology." Tritter closed the folder. Leaned back. The posture mirrored the relaxed interrogation technique from the first interview — openness projecting, warmth simulating, the surface of a man who wanted you to feel comfortable while he dismantled your life. "Your childhood records are sparse. No yearbook photos in the Princeton public school system — the district went digital in 2001 and archived previous years. Your name appears on enrollment rosters but not in any extracurricular activity, sports team, or club membership."
Isaac's chest was tight. The tightness wasn't visible — he'd spent eleven months training his body to contain the physical symptoms of distress — but it was present, a compression behind the sternum that felt like the building's concrete walls were leaning inward.
"Some people are quiet."
"Some people are invisible." Tritter picked up the folder. Held it. The gesture was casual — a man holding papers — but the weight of the folder was the weight of Isaac's entire borrowed identity, reduced to anomalies and gaps and the specific thinness that both Vogler and House had identified and that Tritter was now dissecting with the methodical patience of a man who broke people for a living. "I don't think you're a fraud, Dr. Burke. Fraud requires deception, and your medical skills are demonstrably real. What I think is that you're someone whose past doesn't match their present. The person you are today — the diagnostic savant, the team player, the doctor who remembers everything — doesn't connect to the person who existed before PPTH."
"People change."
"People evolve. They don't spontaneously generate." Tritter stood. The interview's formal phase was over. What followed was the deal — the transactional portion of the encounter that everything else had been building toward. "I'm going to make you an offer. The same offer I've made to everyone on House's team, adjusted for your specific situation."
Isaac waited. His hands were still flat on the table. The metal was cold enough to numb his fingertips, which was almost welcome — the numbness replacing the trembling that wanted to happen.
"Testify about House's prescribing patterns. Provide specific testimony about instances where Dr. House appeared impaired during clinical duties. Do this, and your background discrepancies become irrelevant. My investigation focuses on House's Vicodin use, not your enrollment records."
"And if I decline?"
"If you decline, I make your career my next project." Tritter's voice was calm. Conversational. The calm of a man who'd delivered this threat a hundred times and knew exactly how it landed. "I can't prove you're a fraud, but I can make everyone ask the question. The medical board. The DEA. Your colleagues. Your patients. How long do you think the 'diagnostic savant' reputation survives when a police detective is publicly questioning whether you're qualified to practice?"
The threat was specific, professional, and devastating. Tritter wasn't bluffing — his investigation had produced enough anomalies to justify continued scrutiny, and continued scrutiny would produce continued questions, and continued questions would erode the institutional trust that was Isaac's only protection.
"I need time to consider."
"Forty-eight hours." Tritter walked to the door. Opened it. The interview room's cold air rushed toward the warmer hallway, the temperature differential creating a brief current that carried the smell of industrial cleaner and the distant sound of a precinct operating at its midday rhythm. "I'm not your enemy, Dr. Burke. I'm an officer investigating a physician who assaulted me. You're a witness with relevant information. The fact that your background has gaps doesn't make you guilty of anything — it makes you interesting. And I'd rather you be interesting as a cooperating witness than as a subject of my next investigation."
Isaac stood. His legs were steady. His hands were steady. Everything that Tritter could see was steady, and everything Tritter couldn't see was shaking.
"Forty-eight hours," Isaac said.
He walked out of the interview room, down the precinct hallway, past the front desk where a duty officer was eating a sandwich and watching a small television mounted on the wall. The parking lot was bright — October sun, the kind of Princeton autumn light that made everything look crisp and defined, the visual opposite of the gray concrete box Isaac had just left.
The Civic was in the visitor lot. Isaac got in. Closed the door. Put both hands on the steering wheel and gripped until the shaking transferred from his muscles to the steering column, the car absorbing the vibration the way the building absorbed every other human crisis that occurred within its walls.
Forty-eight hours. Two days to find an alternative to testifying against House, an alternative to having his background dissected by a detective with subpoena power, an alternative to the binary choice Tritter had constructed: betray House or be destroyed.
Isaac started the car. The engine caught on the first try — the new battery, the one reliable piece of machinery in his life. He pulled out of the lot and drove toward Princeton, and the route took him past the coffee shop on Witherspoon Street where he'd been buying his morning coffee for nine months, past the CVS where he'd bought the power notebook, past the corner where he'd first learned the traffic patterns of this city that had become his city.
Forty-eight hours. The clock had started.
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