Mistress

Chapter 50

One of my favorite interrogation scenes in a movie is in L.A. Confidential, when that detective had two different suspects in different rooms and he could play the audio from one room into the next with the flip of a switch, so whenever one of them said something incriminating, the other would hear it. The best one is The Usual Suspects, which was one gigantic interrogation scene. Those are two of my favorite Kevin Spacey flicks, but you have to include American Beauty and Seven in any serious discussion of his work.

“You seem nervous, Ben,” says Larkin. “Like you got a lot of thoughts rolling around in your head.”

You don’t know the half of it.

“I can’t blame you,” she says. “I mean, you have Diana Hotchkiss, a death that looks like a suicide. Then Jonathan Liu, a death that looks like a suicide. And then…”

I look away while she delivers the punch line.

“Then we have your own mother,” Larkin says. “A murder that looked like a suicide. You learned that trick at a young age, didn’t you? That’s what we call a modus operandi, Benjamin. You skated on a murder charge as a boy, but you never forgot that little trick, did you? You saved it up in case you needed it again-”

“You don’t know anything about my life,” I say.

“Oh, I know all about your life.” She picks up a file from the table. “Your father was some distinguished history scholar at American U who specialized in American presidents. You apparently have come to learn quite a bit of presidential trivia yourself, which I guess is your way of, what, bonding with Daddy?”

“Don’t talk about my father.”

“Your mother, she was killed when you were eight. You walked on the charge because the juvenile court judge said he couldn’t rule out suicide. But they found your fingerprints on the gun, which was conveniently placed in your mother’s hand afterwards. You killed her and made it look like a suicide, Ben.”

“No.”

“Then you were basically homebound the next ten years. You had fancy private tutors and a lot of therapy. Then Daddy let you out of the house long enough to get a journalism degree from American U, where he could keep an eye on you. And now, even though you have enough money to never work a day in your life, you run some shitty Internet newspaper that nobody reads, which would be out of business if it weren’t for you subsidizing it with your personal fortune.”

“We get ten thousand hits a day,” I protest.

Larkin drops her hands on the table again, shaking the whole table in the process. “You’re going to get ten thousand and one hits today if you don’t stop interrupting me.” She reviews the file again. “Coworkers and friends describe you as nice and friendly on the surface, but nobody really knows you. Insular is the word that keeps coming up. You live in a world of your own. Never a really close friend, never a girlfriend that lasted more than a fling. You’re fucked up, Benjamin. You spent the first eighteen years of your life looking out a window, and now that you’re outside, you don’t have a clue how to operate.”

“No.”

“But then along comes Diana Hotchkiss. You fall for her. Big-time. She understands you like nobody else ever did, she’s easy on the eyes, she fucks you like you’ve never been fucked-the whole nine yards. Your dream has come true. But then that dream is shattered. You discover she has another guy in her life. A rich lobbyist type. Jonathan Liu. So you have Diana killed. You don’t do the dirty work yourself. In fact, you make sure that some people at the street level are chatting with you, so they can remember you later. A good alibi. But you make sure you’re there, right? You’re a sick fuck who wants to see her body splatter on the sidewalk. But then you get the hell out of there before the police come. You drive away so fast that a patrolman tickets you for erratic driving on Constitution Avenue.”

I knew that ticket was going to come back to haunt me.

“You try to create a story with this bullshit about your airplane being sabotaged, you shoot up your own cottage-and then, once you’ve created this story, you kill Jonathan Liu, too. You do it just like you did with Mommy. Gunshot, staged as a suicide.”

“No.”

“Then you run to Ellis Burk and tell him your sob story, and to make it look real, you even have your friends shoot at you in Ellis’s presence so he can corroborate your story. I mean, you have more money than God, Ben. You can hire whoever you want for whatever you want.”

She walks over to me. “The problem is, you killed Detective Burk in the process. And I’m not letting you walk away from that.”

“I didn’t kill anybody.”

“Sure you did, Ben. And you killed Jonathan Liu, too.”

“No.”

She looks at me like she knows something I don’t. I have a feeling I know what that is.

Larkin says, “Why did we find your fingerprint on the computer mouse in Jonathan Liu’s bedroom?”

I place my hands flat on the table as the room begins to spin. I should have seen this coming.

We interrupt this program to bring you a breaking report. Benjamin Casper has been set up!

They knew I’d be at Diana’s place when they killed her. They knew I’d go looking for Jonathan Liu, so they made sure I found him dead. And they killed him the same way as my mother was killed.

And then I made it easier for them. I made myself visible at Diana’s. And I rooted around Jonathan Liu’s bedroom and left a print on his computer mouse, of all things.

I’ve been playing into their hands all along. And I don’t even know who “they” are.

Liz Larkin moves in on me, a predator approaching its wounded prey. “It’s just a matter of time before I can prove all this,” she says to me. “And then I’m going to hand you over to the feds, who’ll hit you with a federal murder charge and stick a paralyzing agent through your veins. Your days are numbered, my friend.”

Her words echo in a room that shrinks by the second. Whoever they are, they’re doing their utmost to kill me. And now, even if I survive, it will just prove that I’m guilty.

They’ve got me either way.