Calm down and focus, you idiot. This cop is trying to corner you.
“The first question, Ben: Were you in Diana Hotchkiss’s apartment around the time she was murdered?”
That one stops me. I show a sudden interest in my fingernails.
“Ah, cat’s got your tongue on that one. Okay, Ben, then question number two: Were you in Jonathan Liu’s town house in the last forty-eight hours?”
I look away. I can almost feel the walls closing in on me.
“See, I’ve got a different theory, Benjamin Casper. And it doesn’t involve cover-ups and dark alleys and conspiracies. Wanna hear my theory, Ben?”
I need a lawyer. This is exactly what I was afraid of the moment I saw Jonathan Liu dead in his bedroom.
“I’m all ears,” I say.
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.”