Chapter 18
When I thought about a younger Benjamin I didn’t remember one boy, I remembered flickering images, silly and happy and sad moments.
I remembered being curled up next to him on a couch when he was two and a half, with an earache, and how his bright red feverish cheek felt against the back of my hand.
I remembered listening to his breathing slow and feeling the deepest possible sense of peace looking at his relaxed, sleeping face, once the pain and fever had passed.
This was another fever. We’d get through it.
Joe came back with two bottles of water and a five-inch binder.
It didn’t have a label on the cover and there was nothing on the spine, either, plus the sheets inside didn’t seem to take up much space.
Hernández left it sitting closed on the table, his glance flicking toward the dark one-way mirror at the back of the room.
I wondered how many people were watching and listening.
“I bet there’s nothing in it,” I said.
“Is that what your boyfriend told you, that we bring in empty binders to manipulate people we’re interviewing?” He chuckled once. “Go ahead, Mom. Open it.”
With invisible eyes possibly watching, I flipped open the binder.
“Oh, that’s a good page.” Hernández nodded. “Read that top text aloud for both of us.”
I squinted at the small font, reading BITCH and CUNT. So, the binder wasn’t empty.
“That’s one to Isabella Scarlatti from your very own son.”
I kept reading silently. Hateful words, the kind you’d never want your son to say or text to anyone. Threatening, violence-filled words that appalled me.
“We’ve also heard from a few classmates that people call your son ‘scary.’ I guess he gives girls the creeps. Which isn’t illegal. I’m just saying.”
I tried to speak but my mouth was dry. It was cold in the room, even colder than the hallway and reception area. Hernández was wearing a suit. Benjamin was wearing a T-shirt. I was wearing a tank and in the last minute I’d started to shiver.
I said, “He’ll need to eat some dinner, and it’s friggin’ cold in here.”
“We can get him a second bag of chips, if that’s what he needs.
” Hernández flapped the bottom of his tie, straightening it.
“Benjamin, if you’re anything like me, you can’t sleep in a hard chair.
Believe me, this is not a pleasant place to spend the night.
You’ve done a fantastic job so far. Let’s get this all finished before bedtime. ”
The wall clock read a quarter to six. Hernández was already talking about bedtime, like there were hours and hours of questions left. Benjamin gave me a pleading look, which I took at first to mean he wanted me to find a way to extract him and end the interview. I was wrong.
“Okay,” Benjamin said. “Just ask me whatever you want to ask me. I’m tired of this taking so long. I want to go home.”
Hernández smiled big enough that his dimple flashed.
“Smart kid. Let’s start over with the person who was picking up Isabella—a couple of weeks ago, you said. You said you never saw the car. When I asked you for a color, the plate, anything, you said—”
“I didn’t see it. I heard it, making a bunch of noises before it died. Then it started up again and I could hear it coming around the side of the building. Super noisy.”
“Like, screeching when it turned?”
“I wouldn’t know if it was turning because I couldn’t see it. But no, it wasn’t a screech, or a scrape. Not like a muffler hanging down or something. I don’t think.”
“I’ll note the description in your interview,” Hernández said without bothering to pick up his pen. “Squeaky car. Well, my car makes noises, too, but more so in the winter, when it’s not warmed up. And this wasn’t a cold day, was it, Benjamin?”
“Not squeaky,” Benjamin said. “Ticking, more like.”
“Like a bomb.”
“No, like an old typewriter maybe.”
I tried to imagine the sound he was describing. It came to me, the thing Benjamin had often said about why he preferred to bike to the pool rather than being dropped off. My janky car embarrassed him. The only other person with a crap car who visits the pool . . .
A jolt of adrenaline cut through my mental fog. “The janitor. There aren’t many older cars in that part of town—especially not at the Dartmoor. Our car is a 2002 Mazda. It’s in bad shape. There’s another car, maybe one owned by the pool janitor. That’s what you’re saying, right Benjamin?”
“I’m not saying it was the janitor’s car.
I’m just saying it had trouble starting and even after it got going, it was still noisy, and Izzy went off with that person.
So maybe that’s a place to start. Figure out who she’s been spending time with and see what kinds of cars they have.
But it’s not Manny. He drives a Tesla and that thing is silent, and anyway, he was out of town. But if she was dating another guy—”
Hernández interrupted. “We already know the other guy Izzy was dating, Benjamin. That person was you. Or was you at some point, based on the underwear story. From the diary, it’s muddier. She called you the Shrimp. She made fun of you. You’re aware of that?”
He nodded with the barest movement of his chin.
“Let the record show that Benjamin knows he was called ‘the Shrimp,’ the same one Izzy talked about in her diary. An object of scorn.”
Benjamin muttered something.
“Sorry?” Hernández asked.
Benjamin cleared his throat. “Sometimes, she was nicer.”
“Girls are like that, right? Fickle. Secretive. Manipulative.” Hernández smiled. “Let the record show that Benjamin has been nodding his head. Okay. Let’s finish up with the car business. If we had a color, or any other detail—”
“I told you I didn’t see it.”
“Even though you were just starting to bicycle away just as it was coming up to that half-circle drive under the—what did you call it?—the portico. Do you think, with time, you might remember?”
When Benjamin shrugged, Hernández looked to me. “Hypnosis works for things like that, doesn’t it?”
It was the first time he’d asked me something without using a snide or sarcastic tone.
“Maybe,” I said. “I’ve never hypnotized clients. That’s not something you do in a high school counseling office, obviously. But yes, it’s done in private therapeutic settings.”
He nodded, interested. Maybe flattering me. Maybe honestly asking. The longer I talked, the less Benjamin would have to say.
“I’m assuming,” I added, “that something said in a hypnotized state can’t be used as evidence in court. You’d have to independently verify anything that comes up, because people under hypnosis still get things wrong. But as a way to generate leads? I don’t see why not.”
I didn’t mention learning in a grad school forensic psychology unit that there can be problems introducing a witness if that person has already been hypnotized in pursuit of information.
I didn’t care if Benjamin was discounted as a future witness.
My focus was on eliminating him as a suspect.
Let Hernández continue to screw up his case. He’d been doing it from the start.
The detective said to Benjamin, “If you were willing to try hypnosis, it would demonstrate cooperation. And who knows, maybe you’d remember some other interesting things about the last time you saw Izzy.”
Benjamin pulled a face. “I don’t want to let someone mess with my head.”
Hernández smiled. “No, I wouldn’t want that, either. Because you never know what you’ll find in there, right Ms. Rosso?”
I looked away, working hard to contain my rage.
“Let’s move on to Sidney,” the detective said. “You ever have sex with her, Benjamin, or touch her, even just a little?”
“No.”
“You ever go to her house or anywhere near her house?”
“No.”
“But you did call her on Sunday morning. Maybe four or five hours before cameras caught someone in a hoodie entering and leaving the Mayfields’ house.”
Benjamin blurted, “I called her because Izzy wasn’t answering my texts.
She was having a party, Saturday night. The whole school knew it.
Her parents were out of town. But I saw posts from other kids saying she wasn’t at her own house even at nine, ten o’clock.
I called Sidney on Sunday morning to ask her. ”
“And what’d Sidney say?”
“That she and Izzy had been fighting, but she was still worried that Izzy wasn’t answering texts.”
“So you went over to Sidney’s house to make her feel better.”
“No,” Benjamin said, more calmly than I felt.
“But you did go to Izzy’s house.”
“Yes.”
He did? I tried my best not to look alarmed.
“Saturday, the day she died,” Hernández confirmed.
“Yes.”
“The house of the girl who called you ‘Shrimp’ and made fun of your appearance in her diary. The one you called the b word and the c word.”
“Yes.”
“And why did you do that?”
“I was hoping to have sex with her.”
My mouth fell open. Hernández reached for his pen.
Benjamin gestured to the binder. “I called her names because I was mad at her. It didn’t mean anything.”
“You were mad before you went to her house? After?”
“After. We had a disagreement.”
Hernández turned several slick binder pages until he came to the right one.
“I hope you suffer. I hope you pick up a nasty disease. Serves you right for being a whore.” He closed the binder.
“For two schoolmates who supposedly were friends—at times—you didn’t text her very often.
But that afternoon and evening, you texted her nonstop. ”
“Because I was trying to stop her from doing something stupid. Usually her boyfriend Manny was looking over her shoulder. He’d even ask to see her phone and open up her apps.”
“The controlling type.”
“Yeah. So me—and the older guy, she never told me his name—we didn’t text her, or not often. I don’t think you’re going to find him that way.”
“When was the last time you saw Isabella Scarlatti, Benjamin?”
“That was the first thing you asked me.”
“I’m asking again.”
“Saturday, around two. At her house.”
“Last time you said it was at the pool.”