Chapter 17
When they let me into the interview room, I saw an open can of Coke and a flattened SunChips bag, Benjamin’s hand scraping for the last crumbs as he mumbled in a low monotone.
“Hey,” I said, even before the door closed behind me, waving my hands. “Stop talking. Benj. Hey!”
“Whoa there,” Hernández said, brow furrowed. “You can’t be here if you’re agitated.”
“I’m his mother. I have a right to be here, agitated or not.”
“Not necessarily. You have a right to be advised we are questioning your son—”
“You didn’t say anything about ‘questioning.’ This was not the impression I got from your call, Detective.”
The sweet chubby-cheeked detective who had interviewed me briefly the day after Sidney’s death looked like someone else, now. Thick eyebrowed, scowling. No dimple. Good cop and bad cop in one person.
“I asked you to bring Benjamin in,” he said. “And you did. Which was smart. It always looks better that way.”
I shifted my attention to Benjamin. “Did they explain what they’re doing? Did they offer you a lawyer?”
“Mom.”
“This is not the time for ‘Mom.’”
The detective pointed to a stackable plastic-molded chair several feet away from the interview table.
When I tried to pull it closer to Benjamin, Hernández held his palm out.
“Give us a little space, just until you’re settled.
Please. I’m warning you a second time. Any erratic behavior, and you’re out of here.
We can’t proceed this way if you’re under the influence of anything. ”
“I’m not under any influence and you know that, Detective. God damn it.”
Benjamin’s shoulders were shrugged up, his chin tucked into his chest. Even in profile, I could see the shame overwhelming him. He knew I took a prescription legally, but it was still embarrassing to see your mother pass out and make a scene.
“Your son has given us permission to do a cheek swab.”
“But I don’t give permission. We came here voluntarily. That means we can leave anytime.”
“Not . . . quite,” Hernández said. “That was true ten minutes ago. It’s not the case now.”
“What did he say?” I started to rise out of my chair, then forced myself to sit down again. “Benjamin, what did you say?”
I didn’t know the lingo. Witness, suspect, person of interest. Everything was going too fast. “We need a lawyer.”
“Your son was willing to talk without one.”
I leaned forward, elbows planted on my knees, face as close as I could get to Benjamin’s. “Hey. Hey. You shouldn’t say anything without a lawyer present.”
His eyes were fixed on the can of pop. He was mad at me. Mad, hurt, and embarrassed. A dangerous combination.
“It’s not your fault if you’ve said too much already,” I told him. “This is what the police do. They’re trying to manipulate you.”
Detective Hernández leaned back in his chair. “Your mom is a little worked up. Don’t let that be a distraction. You said you want to help, and I appreciate that. When someone’s innocent, it’s best just to get all the info out on the table—”
“He’s not old enough to understand, and you know that. If he asks for a lawyer, you have to give him a lawyer.”
“If he asks, yes.”
I looked to Benjamin. “Ask, Benjamin.”
He turned his head toward me, slowly. “They already know I took the diary. They already know what it says. They already know Izzy and I saw each other at the pool. We hung out sometimes.”
“At the pool,” I said, hoping he’d confirm. School and the pool, only. Nowhere else.
“Mom, they need to know the situation so they can go and talk to the people who did it.”
“People?” Hernández asked. “You think it was more than one?”
“Person,” Benjamin corrected himself. “An older guy, like I said. The one she met up with in Wisconsin, or close. Wadsworth. Whatever. The motel.”
“So you know about the motel?” Hernández asked. “That’s not public knowledge.”
“Everyone knows.”
“Who’s everyone?”
“Kids in our class. When it came out that she died, everyone was talking about it, that morning. Even before we got to school.”
“We’ve talked to nearly everyone in your class, Benjamin. No one has mentioned a motel.”
Benjamin stared straight ahead. Hernández glanced toward me, as if he wanted to make sure I had registered the point he’d just scored, then back at Benjamin again. “Now, let’s go back to this car you saw. If you can describe it, that will help.”
“I didn’t see it.”
“You didn’t see it? But you were there, waiting for her ride to pull up on Saturday, the day she died.”
I hadn’t heard anything about a ride, or a car.
“No,” he said. “It wasn’t Saturday. I mean, I did see her Saturday, too. At the pool. But I was talking about a different Saturday, two weeks earlier, which was when the car thing happened. That’s when she gave me her underwear, and I got on my bike, and I took off.”
This part of the story was new to me, too.
Hernández said, “We’ll be checking all those dates, just so you know.”
I thought of the pool sign-in sheet. The page I had taken and pushed down into my bag.
Benjamin said, “Two weeks ago is when I knew she was being picked up by some guy who wasn’t her boyfriend. I knew that for a fact because Manny was out of town visiting some college. You can check that, I bet.”
“Okay, clarified. The underwear story was great, by the way. It establishes that you weren’t just . . . for example . . . stalking a girl who didn’t like you. I mean, if she gave you her underwear.”
The skepticism in Hernández’s voice was plain.
“We’ll want the underwear,” he added. “Just in case.”
Benjamin didn’t look at me or the detective. His gaze was fixed on the far wall, over Hernández’s shoulder. “Ask my mom. She took them.”
My face felt odd, my skin too tight. Like I’d applied one of those face masks and it had dried all shiny and flaky, and like my eyebrows were sitting too high on my face.
“Ms. Rosso?”
“Yes?”
“The underwear?”
“Yes?”
“That belonged to Isabella Scarlatti?”
“Yes?”
“We’ll need to get that, as evidence.”
“Yes. I threw them away.”
I kept my eyes on Benjamin. His expression didn’t change.
“You threw them away?” Hernández asked.
“Yes. I didn’t tell my son I found them. We didn’t talk about it. I threw them into the trash. Almost two weeks ago, just after he got them, I guess. We were moving apartments that day, so yes. A Sunday.”
Hernández chuckled to himself. Silly people. Hiding underwear. Throwing away underwear. Making up stories about underwear.
“Funny thing—a kid willing to do a cheek swab. A mom who won’t let him. A kid who’s willing to hand over underwear. A mom who already got rid of it. You got a reason to be more paranoid than your own son?”
I’m an adult, I thought. But that wasn’t the only reason.
I knew how much cops overlooked—the most obvious questions they neglected to ask, the tunnel vision that made them mistake innocence for guilt and vice versa.
And I also knew a person could be sent away even when cops only knew a fraction of the truth.
Hernández shook his head. “The underwear would have been nice to have. But let’s be clear. We don’t need it to get Benjamin’s DNA. We can get that with a warrant.”
Benjamin made a disgusted face. I did, too, but then I realized. Hernández was only thinking what I’d thought, when I first found the underwear. That it was a souvenir from a sexual encounter. That it might contain traces.
Or then again, maybe Hernández didn’t believe in the underwear. Maybe he didn’t believe in the car. But if there was an older man she was spending time with, who finally met her at a motel, it made sense. A car.
The door opened and another detective popped his head into the room.
Hernández said, “Joe, can you bring in the binder? The one with all of Isabella Scarlatti’s text messages and social media posts?”
Hernández said to Benjamin: “Did you know we can get even the deleted messages off a phone? Amazing.”
I said nothing. I was looking at Benjamin, trying to see if he was surprised. Teens could be equally brilliant and na?ve about technology.
“Wait, Joe. Can you bring a bottle of water for Ms. Rosso? Unless—you want a coffee instead? It’s pretty good stuff—one of those machines with the pods.”
“Keurig,” Joe said.
“No, in the break room. That new machine. The one with the little pods.”
“Keurig.”
“No, the little pods, the shiny kind. The ones that look like chocolates.”
“Nespresso.”
Hernández gave me a look—Can you believe this place?
He’d already told me, the very first time we talked, that he’d worked in Waukegan around the time we lived there.
When he mentioned pining for the tacos from a particular Washington Street restaurant, I’d sighed and closed my eyes.
Even then, I’d gotten the sense that the detective was trying to bond with me over our shared outsider status here in Pleasant Park. But now it all felt like a ruse.
“Never mind,” Hernández said. “Coffee will keep you up. Water’s better. Two waters, Joe, cold if possible. Not from the case under Tina’s desk. From the break room fridge. Please.”
After the door closed, Hernández said, “We’ve got texts, we’ve got posts, we’ve got pictures, we’ve got cell phone data. Full toxicology will take a while but we may not even need it. Benjamin is just helping us tie up loose ends.”
If I was rich and if I had a private lawyer, he would have been here already.
I would have texted him even before I entered the room and now he’d be pulling up a chair next to Benjamin and no one would stop him.
But a public defender? I didn’t know what kind of hours they kept or how fast they came running.
“We can get a lawyer, Benjamin,” I told him. “It doesn’t mean you’re not innocent—”
“But it does take longer,” Hernández said, leaning back in his chair, eyes flicking toward the institutionally bland clock on the wall. “A lot longer. And like I said, every one of your classmates has already talked to us.”
“But my son’s the only one sitting at the police station.”
“You offered to come in.”
“And if we hadn’t?”
Hernández stretched his arms and started what looked like a fake yawn, all show.
It turned into a real one, followed by a second.
He didn’t bother to cover his mouth with his hand.
I tried my hardest to stifle my own yawn, but it was catchy.
Hernández chuckled as he saw the sleepy contagion he’d triggered.
I was mid-yawn, eyes watering, when I glanced to Benjamin. He wasn’t yawning. He’d never caught a yawn from me.
My eyes darted to Hernández, wondering if he’d noticed. He had.
“Some people are just like that,” the detective said.
“Interesting, isn’t it? What does that say about a person?
Must be nice in some ways, like there’s a barrier between you and the world.
Do you feel that way sometimes, Benjamin?
Like you can’t read people? Or you can, but you don’t want to?
Stuff just rolls off your back? Other people’s needs don’t concern you?
Yawns don’t make you yawn? Your mom freaking out doesn’t make you freak out? And even a girl asking you to stop—”
“Don’t answer that,” I said to my son.
Robert had said that no sex seemed involved in Izzy’s death.
And no one had pressed Benjamin on whether he’d had a relationship with Sidney.
Yet the cases seemed to be linked. Izzy, Saturday.
Sidney, Sunday. Someone had left a dying or dead girl in a motel and decided, the next day, to pay a visit to her closest friend and have sex with her, then somehow convince her to overdose.
Or pills first, sex after. I was starting to see how that would make more sense, especially if the girl was unwilling.
“Here’s a bit of trivia that knocks me out,” Hernández said. “Do you know that psychopaths, when they go to prison, don’t even mind it very much? It’s ’cause they live in the present. They don’t ruminate. That means, ‘thinking stuff over, regretting the past.’”
In a low voice, Benjamin said, “I know what ruminate means.”
“You take the SATs yet?”
“Yeah.”
“How’d you do?”
Benjamin shrugged.
Above average: 640 math and 680 verbal, but he could do better. He’d retake it next year, if he got that chance.
I looked at Hernández, smirking. He was figuring it out—how to reach my son. Don’t tell him he seems guilty. Question his intelligence. Benjamin thought too highly of himself to let people think he’s stupid. Arrogance. Grandiosity.
The detective said, “Psychopaths are like genius monks in a way, right? Maybe we’re the ones who are f . . . sorry, who are messed up. Right? What do you think about that, Benjamin?”
“Don’t answer,” I said.
Benjamin answered without delay. “I think that’s really interesting, actually.”
Hernández grinned. “There you go. Nut doesn’t fall far from the tree.”
I felt rage bubbling at the base of my throat. “What do you mean by that?”
Hernández screwed up his face, like he couldn’t imagine why I was taking offense. How much did he know about my brother? How much did he know about my entire family?
He said, “I just meant that Benjamin might end up becoming a psychologist. Like his mom.”