Is any place anywhere as stressful, as confining, as exhausting, as a police interview room at 4 o'clock in the morning?

Filmmaker Mark Pitchell had been in that little room for five hours, patiently answering Detective

Bill Clark's questions about this guy, Johnny Altinger,

who'd been missing for more than a week.

Now, during a break, a decidedly drooping Twitchell pulled out a cell phone and punched

in his wife's phone number.

My problem is that I'm so tired and it's so hard to remember things.

Of course, he wasn't exactly alone.

At that moment, he shared the space with a microphone and a camera

so that outside the room, Detective Bill Clark could watch and listen.

But all Mark Twitchell did was complain to his wife.

It's so hard to remember, like, these minute specific details about these days that I just didn't ever bother to think about or remember because who the hell does that, you know?

Detective Clark was asking so many detailed questions because...

I know I'm not getting the truth. I know he's lying to me. No doubt in my mind. I know he's involved up to his neck. I still don't know what he's done. If anything, that is, because really all Clark had was just a feeling that Mark Twitchell had been handing him a whole load of nonsense, fully expecting Clark to believe it.

He didn't, but he'd been letting things develop, organic-like, if you will, patiently, like he bought it all.

I agreed with everything he said.

Like I didn't, this wasn't the time of the interview to start pushing him on it.

Sure.

It wasn't the time to start confronting him.

That would come later on.

So, the 4 a.m. intermission in this cat and mouse play was a time for Clark to dream up an act two.

Almost like he and Twitchell were going through some weird inverse improv routine.

...