CPAC

CPAC is the Massachusetts State Police unit assigned to the District Attorney’s Office for complex, long-term, and high-profile investigations, with responsibility for county homicide cases. In Ben Rifkin’s murder investigation, it supplies specialized detectives while navigating local authority, political sensitivities, and the limits of incomplete evidence; its work also shows how an investigative narrative can shape what officers see.

Role and Organization

The initials stand for Crime Prevention and Control, a title the narrator describes as essentially meaningless and little understood. In practice, CPAC detectives serve as the District Attorney’s investigators. They handle cases requiring sustained or specialized attention and, most importantly, all murders in the county.

The unit works with local police rather than simply replacing them. Homicides outside Boston are rare, especially in smaller towns, and local departments may lack the experience to investigate them routinely. Yet a state unit arriving to take over a local case can create political friction. CPAC’s effectiveness therefore depends not only on investigative skill but also on tact toward the agencies and communities affected by its presence.

Detectives and Working Relationships

Lieutenant Detective Paul Duffy, a state trooper assigned to the District Attorney’s Office, leads CPAC. A third-generation police officer and son of a former Boston police homicide chief, Duffy is described as soft-spoken and fine-featured rather than outwardly imposing. His manner suits the unit’s need to coordinate carefully with local constituencies.

The narrator, Andrew Barber, is the District Attorney’s top lawyer and Duffy’s close friend and frequent investigative partner. Their families know one another, and Duffy has named Andrew godfather to one of his three sons. Their personal trust sits alongside their professional division of labor: Andrew handles the legal side, while Duffy leads the police investigation. The murder case puts pressure on their work when Andrew’s own son attends McCormick School, raising questions about whether Andrew should remain involved.

The McCormick Interviews

After Ben’s murder, CPAC detectives join the effort to interview students. Access to the school is delayed as the principal, school board, and mayor press for safeguards. Investigators are permitted to speak with students on school grounds only under restrictions: students outside Ben’s homeroom are generally off limits without a specific reason, and any student may have a parent or lawyer present and may stop an interview at any time. The negotiations consume time, but they establish the conditions under which the investigators can proceed.

At two o’clock, Andrew and Duffy take over the principal’s office and begin interviewing high-priority witnesses: Ben’s close friends, students who walked through Cold Spring Park, and students who asked to speak with investigators. Two dozen interviews are scheduled for them, while other CPAC detectives conduct interviews at the same time. The process is initially conceived as a broad search for leads, but the investigators soon notice that some students appear to be coordinating their silence. Rather than merely denying knowledge of the murder, several deny knowing Ben at all, despite his having had friends and acquaintances. The interviews thus reveal not only the limits of the evidence but the social resistance investigators must work through.

Investigative Narratives and Limits

Andrew later describes how detectives facing incomplete data can form a theory and then search for evidence that supports it, overlooking leads pointing elsewhere. When Neal Logiudice names Leonard Patz as an example, Andrew agrees. This reflection makes CPAC’s investigative role more complicated than collecting clues: its officers must also guard against confirmation bias, especially when a case has no clear pattern or immediate answer.

The same tension appears in the defense’s effort to offer an alternative account of the crime. Andrew believes jurors want a coherent story explaining who committed the murder if Jacob did not, and he regards Patz as the alternative suspect. He acknowledges that this conviction is entangled with his role as Jacob’s father. The book’s distinction between evidence and the stories built around it therefore bears directly on how investigators, lawyers, and jurors interpret a case.

At trial, Andrew also explains the delay in interviewing classmates by recounting the dispute over school access, student representation, and what investigators could do on school property. The account places CPAC’s methods within a larger boundary between police authority and community protections: the unit can investigate, but it cannot treat a school full of children as an unrestricted crime scene.

Narrative Function

CPAC is presented through Andrew’s retrospective account and through formal proceedings, including grand-jury and trial questioning. These different forms make the organization visible both as an operating unit and as an object of later scrutiny. The investigative work is concrete—coordinating with local police, arranging interviews, and assessing leads—but its meaning remains shaped by testimony, memory, and competing narratives.

The unit’s central significance is this double responsibility. It must pursue evidence across institutional boundaries while recognizing that its own theories can narrow the search. In the case of Ben Rifkin’s murder, CPAC’s interviews expose a collective silence, while Andrew’s later analysis exposes the interpretive risk behind any investigation that decides too soon what the evidence must mean.