Warshawski identifies an apartment ambush suspect in a police lineup

The police lineup is a test of recognition under pressure, not a conclusive identification of the person who attacked V. I. Warshawski. Still shaken by being bundled into a blanket and abandoned in the marsh, she tentatively selects a man arrested outside her apartment the previous night. Her uncertainty about his voice, and her failure to pick out the attacker from a second lineup, leave the investigation with a lead rather than proof.

Background and Stakes

Warshawski enters the observation room already on edge. The men who had taken her away had frightened her enough that she fled her apartment the night before; now she must face a police procedure while aware that her possible assailants may be nearby. She feels her palms sweat and her heart beat faster. She keeps her voice cool, trying to sound arrogant, and later puts her hands in her pockets to conceal their trembling.

Bobby Mallory, Sergeant McGonnigal, and Detective Finchley are waiting in the room. Bobby tells her that the two men arrested outside her front door are called Joe Jones and Fred Smith. The police have requested a fingerprint check, but Bobby explains that the available charges—loitering in a private building and carrying concealed, unregistered weapons—may not keep them in custody for long. To hold them on an attempted-murder case, the police need evidence connecting them to the attack. He asks Warshawski to say whether the men are the people who sent her into the water.

The stakes are therefore immediate but specific: the lineup may help the police connect an assault to the men they have arrested, while a weak or mistaken identification may not support the more serious charge. Warshawski understands that recognition is not a simple act of looking. Her past work as a public defender has made her familiar with cases in which witnesses confidently misidentify people, especially when stress distorts what they remember.

The First Lineup

Detective Finchley gives instructions to officers beyond a door, and Sergeant McGonnigal darkens the observation room so that the lineup appears through a one-way window. Bobby tells Warshawski there will be two sets and that she can take her time or ask a man to turn around. The first group consists of six white, burly men, all appearing to be around forty. To Warshawski, they initially seem alike. Their self-conscious, combative manner also calls up the image of the attackers in her nightmare, who had worn black hoods.

Rather than rely on appearance alone, she asks the men to speak. She requests the phrases she remembers hearing during the attack, including instructions to tell her the time and to leave her at a particular spot. The officers relay the request, and the men repeat the lines one by one. Warshawski watches the second man from the left. His guarded smile suggests to her that he expects the police to have difficulty making a serious case, but a suggestive expression is not the same as a remembered identity.

She tries to compare his eyes with those of the man who approached her by the lagoon: eyes she recalls as cold and calculating. But when the man speaks, his husky voice and South Side twang do not match the emotionless voice she remembers. She nevertheless tells Bobby that she thinks the second man from the left is the one, while making clear that she does not recognize the voice and cannot be absolutely certain.

A Qualified Identification

Bobby responds with only a fractional nod, and Finchley orders the first lineup dismissed. When Warshawski asks whether the man is the one, Bobby says that the selection matches a man they picked up outside her front door the previous night. He had considered that result a long shot, and he does not claim that her identification is strong enough for the state’s attorney. Instead, he suggests that it may help the police discover who will put up the man’s bond.

That distinction defines what the lineup establishes. Warshawski has selected someone whom the police already detained near her home, but her own account remains qualified: she thinks he may be the man and does not recognize his voice. The police connection supplies a useful investigative possibility, not independent confirmation that he was one of the people who attacked her. The scene keeps her recollection, her uncertainty, and the officers’ knowledge of the arrest separate rather than turning them into one settled conclusion.

The Second Lineup and Its Limits

The police then bring in a second group, this time a parade of Black men. Warshawski had seen only one of her attackers at close range. Although she presumes that Troy is among the men before her, she cannot pick him out, even when the lineup includes a voice check. The contrast is important: she has made a tentative selection in the first group, but the second presentation produces no identification of the attacker she believes may be there.

Afterward, Bobby is in good humor about her selection from the first lineup. He takes her through the paperwork, and Officer Neely drives her home. Bobby promises to tell her when the first court date will be. The procedure thus ends with a possible link to the man arrested outside her apartment, no identification of Troy, and no guarantee that the tentative result will sustain an attempted-murder charge. Its significance lies as much in those limits as in the selection itself: the police gain a lead, while Warshawski’s divided impressions keep the attack from being conclusively assigned to either lineup.