Central District Police Station is where a threatened and shaken V. I. Warshawski is brought to take part in a police lineup. Its labyrinthine old building houses an investigation that offers her little certainty: the police have suspects, but she cannot confidently identify the attacker. The station also frames a later, more prolonged encounter with investigators after she catches Steve Dresberg, showing both the reach of police procedure and Warshawski’s uneasy position within it.

The Station and Its Investigators

The station first enters the investigation as a place Warshawski cannot readily reach for information. After men are taken away from her apartment, she tries calling Bobby at the Central District, but he has disappeared or does not want to take her call. Officers she does not know refuse to tell her anything about the men in custody, leaving her to wait until morning.

When Warshawski is brought in, Officer Neely guides her through the old building’s labyrinth of corridors, exchanging unsmiling greetings with fellow officers. She takes Warshawski to an observation room, where Bobby is waiting with Sergeant McGonnigal and Detective Finchley. The controlled, procedural setting contrasts with Warshawski’s fear: she is being asked to look at men connected to an attack that has left her badly spooked.

The Lineup and Uncertain Identification

Bobby explains that the police have arrested two men, identified as Joe Jones and Fred Smith, and requested a fingerprint check. The available charges—loitering in a private building and carrying concealed, unregistered weapons—may not keep them in custody beyond Monday without evidence of attempted murder. The lineup therefore has immediate practical stakes, but the police need Warshawski to distinguish the men from the attackers.

Before the lineup, Warshawski reflects on the limits of eyewitness evidence. Stress can distort a person’s memory of broad physical characteristics, she notes, while a particular gesture or birthmark may remain vivid. Her experience as a public defender has made mistaken identification familiar to her, so she treats recognition as something to test rather than assume.

From behind a one-way observation window, she watches six men who appear to her much alike: white, burly, and around forty. She asks that they repeat words used during the attack, hoping that hearing them will help her recall the men who had bundled her into a blanket. The man she watches, second from the left, has a secretive smile that recalls the attacker’s calculating manner. But his voice does not match the cold, emotionless tones she remembers; it sounds husky and has a South Side twang. Warshawski names him as a possibility while explicitly withholding certainty. Bobby acknowledges her answer, and Finchley orders the lineup dismissed; the scene leaves the identification unresolved rather than turning resemblance into proof.

Police Authority and Warshawski’s Independence

The station is also associated with the friction between Warshawski and the police. The men in the lineup may soon be released if the evidence cannot support a stronger charge, and the process depends on her memory even as she recognizes its weaknesses. Her careful qualification matters: she contributes a lead without pretending that the lineup has established guilt.

In a later downtown encounter, Bobby keeps Warshawski for four hours after she catches Steve Dresberg, whose ability to evade Chicago police has made her success a blow to Bobby’s pride. Bobby questions her himself, Officer Neely takes notes, and investigators arrive in sequence from the Organized Crime Division, the Special Functions Unit, and the federal authorities. Exhausted, Warshawski repeatedly falls asleep and finds it increasingly difficult to keep track of what she has disclosed and what she has chosen to withhold. The station’s investigative machinery thus appears both as a means of pursuing suspects and as an institution capable of subjecting Warshawski to sustained scrutiny.

Narrative Significance

The Central District Police Station concentrates the book’s tension between evidence and certainty. Its lineup offers the appearance of a formal answer, but Warshawski’s account emphasizes how stress, resemblance, and mismatched voice cues complicate recognition. Rather than resolve the attack through a decisive identification, the episode keeps uncertainty visible and makes the limits of the procedure part of the investigation.

The station’s two functions—processing a possible attacker and questioning Warshawski after her own investigative success—also place her at once inside and at odds with official law enforcement. She needs the police to act on the threats against her, yet she remains alert to what they cannot establish and what they may demand from her. The old building’s corridors and observation room give that uneasy partnership a concrete setting.