Chapter Fifty-Eight
RAMIREZ FOLLOWS THEM out of the interview room.
He watches Ted take his wife’s arm in the waiting room and they whisper to each other.
Ted throws one last, cold look over his shoulder at Ramirez.
Then Ramirez watches them exit into an explosion of camera flashes and shouting reporters jostling to get at them while their attorneys try to shelter them from the crush.
Those damn lawyers earned their money today, Ramirez thinks bitterly.
It went the way he expected it to. They gave away nothing. They had their expensive attorneys beside them and had clearly been coached on what to do. They killed a man, and they’ve got away with it.
They can deny it all they want, but the media has got their teeth into it now and everyone will know what they’ve done. The public will feast on it for weeks. Still, the Westcotts have their blood money, their tens of millions.
Ramirez is glad to know the truth, but sickened that they’ll get away with it.
He’s not even surprised. That’s what happens, he thinks.
The rich and powerful behave despicably, more despicably all the time, but nothing sticks to them.
It rolls off them like they’re made of Teflon.
Perhaps eventually Ted will go into politics and be a big success. That wouldn’t surprise him either.
But perhaps all is not lost. They need to talk to Lara Donleavy, as soon as possible. She’s already waiting in the next room.
When Ted and Jill return home from the police station, they are both badly rattled.
Ted grills Jill about her police interview as soon as they’re inside, but she insists she told them nothing.
It was ‘no comment’ to everything. But she doesn’t seem to want to meet his eyes.
The fear of what Lara might do hangs heavily over them.
‘There must still be a camera in the front room that we missed,’ Jill whispers to him angrily, as if it’s his fault.
He knows. It’s alarming. Not just that there’s still a camera in their house, but Lara. If she talks, they’re screwed. She could give evidence that the man who killed her husband was looking for those tapes that everyone is now watching. He and Jill could go to prison.
He tackles the front room again while Jill watches, pulling things apart, using the device to search for the camera. But he can’t find it.
‘You said that thing worked!’ she says accusingly.
In frustration, he throws the useless device across the room.
After that, she seems to want to avoid him.
Ted goes out to the back garden. Impulsively, he calls Min’s number. She doesn’t pick up, so he leaves a terse message on her answering machine. ‘Are you happy now?’
He doesn’t expect her to reply. But it gives him some satisfaction that at least Min isn’t going to get any money from them.
She can go to hell, Ted thinks.
Lara sits in a stale-smelling interview room at an NYPD police station. She is heavily pregnant, due any day, and the smell bothers her more than it would otherwise. She is terrified. She has brought an attorney with her.
Soon two people enter the room. One of them she recognizes – Special Agent Ramirez. The other introduces himself as NYPD Detective Charlie Cousins.
‘We’d like to talk to you again about what happened at your home the night your husband was killed,’ the detective begins. Ramirez isn’t saying anything; he just watches.
She knows now that she was recorded too, at the Westcotts’ house the morning after Ben died. When she’d seen that on her phone, she’d thrown up in the kitchen sink. She runs her hand nervously over her taut, very pregnant, belly and glances anxiously at her attorney.
‘We’ve been made aware of some recordings taken from within the Westcotts’ home. I think you know what I’m referring to,’ Detective Cousins says, ‘since it’s all over the internet.’ He waits, looking at her.
She nods reluctantly. ‘Yes.’
‘You accused the Westcotts of causing your husband’s death, the morning after it happened. We can play that for you.’
She feels like she has turned to stone. The detective waits for her response. But she cannot find her voice.
He says, ‘Ted and Jill Westcott discussed their suspicion that it was you who planted the cameras in their house, shortly before the home invasion that cost your husband his life.’
Lara feels dizzy. Part of her wants to cry out, Yes! Yes – they sent that monster to our house to get those files. But we never planted those cameras! And now Ben is dead. And it’s all their fault! But she remains silent.
Cousins moves to play the recording.
‘We don’t have to see it,’ her attorney says.
‘I want to see it,’ she says, her voice hoarse.
The detective starts the recording, and she turns her eyes to the monitor, filled with dread. She watches, her heart pounding, reliving that awful morning after Ben’s death. It’s terrible to watch.
[Lara] Who else would send someone to get those files? And why the hell would I believe you? You’re murderers!
[Jill] No, Lara, we’re not! We didn’t hurt Greg – it was an accident!
[Lara] I don’t believe you.
[Ted] What did you tell the police?
[Lara] Oh yes, it’s still all about you, isn’t it? I protected you. I didn’t tell them what he was really after. I told them he wanted to terrorize us and rob us. That he wanted money. I didn’t tell them about the digital files.
[Jill] Thank you.
[Lara] I’m going to talk to them again, this afternoon. I may change my story. I might tell them what really happened.
[Ted] Why would you do that?
[Lara] Because he fucking killed my husband!
[Ted] We didn’t send him, whoever he was. There are other … players involved. And we don’t know who they are.
[Lara] I know you murdered Greg for his money.
I know there’s evidence of that out there somewhere …
Ben never believed you could have harmed Greg – he simply couldn’t imagine it.
I suspected, but I only ever wanted to support you, to protect you.
But now I feel differently. I don’t care about you any more. And you owe me.
[Ted] What do you want?
[Lara] Five million.
She lowers her head in shame, tears welling.
It’s all there on the tape; she threatened to go to the police with the truth unless Ted and Jill paid her $5 million.
She’s a blackmailer. She doesn’t want to go to prison; she’s about to be a new mother.
Ben, the only truly good person she ever knew, is dead. And her reputation is destroyed.
She wants nothing more to do with any of this.
The two men across the table are staring at her.
She remembers what her attorney, sitting beside her, told her – that none of those recordings are admissible in a court of law, that without those recordings, the police have nothing – against the Westcotts, or against her.
He also told her that if she wanted to, she could give evidence against them, and that would be admissible.
That he might be able to help her cut a deal, if that’s what she wanted to do.
Detective Cousins says, ‘So tell us what really happened that night.’
Lara doesn’t want to put herself through it. She just wants to be a mother. She clears her throat and says, ‘No comment.’
She looks up, catches Ramirez’s eyes. He gets up and abruptly leaves the room.