Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It

know we were on to him. I said, “There’s a vehicle out here,
and it’s registered to a Chris Watts.”
He said, “Okay.” Not letting anything on.
I said, “Is he there? Is this you? Are you Chris Watts?”
It was a stupid question, on my part. A mistake. For a
mirror to be effective, you’ve got to let it sit there and do its
work. It needs a bit of silence. I stepped all over my mirror.
As soon as I said it, I wanted to take it back.
“Are you Chris Watts?”
What the hell could this guy say to that? Of course, he
replied, “No.”
I’d made a bone-headed move and given Chris Watts a
way to dodge this confrontation, but he was nevertheless
rattled. Up until this moment, he’d thought he was
anonymous. Whatever fantasy he had running through his
head, there was a way out for him, a do-over button. Now
he knew different. I composed myself, slowed it down a
little, and this time shut my mouth after the mirror—I said,
“No? You said ‘okay.’”
Now I had him, I thought. His voice went way up. He
ended up blurting a few things out, vomiting more
information, and became so flustered he stopped talking to
me. Suddenly his accomplice, who we later learned was
Bobby Goodwin, came onto the phone.
We hadn’t heard from this second hostage-taker, until
now. We’d known all along that Chris Watts wasn’t acting
alone, but we hadn’t gotten a good read on how many
people he had working with him on this, and now here was