Chapter 18 #2
“I did see her at the pool. But then we went to her house, after swim practice. I went hoping we’d hook up, like I said.”
“Wait a minute,” I interrupted. “I saw my son directly after his pool practice. He came home.”
Hernández looked disappointed, like he was quietly fishing and I’d just roared past him on a jet ski, scaring away all the fish.
“True?” he asked Benjamin.
“Yeah, I stopped home first. But then I went to Izzy’s. Like, five minutes later.”
“Why’d you stop at home?”
“I wanted to drop my bike. I didn’t want to leave it outside Izzy’s house.”
“You were worried about theft outside Izzy’s house? She lives on a pretty posh block. And I’m sure they would have had room in their four-car—six-car?—garage.”
“I didn’t say I was worried about theft. I just didn’t want to be the asshole pulling up on a bike.”
“Fair,” Hernández said.
I was still doubting, though. Why would I have stopped home at his age if someone cute had just asked me over? Probably to change into better clothes, fix my hair. Take a shower. But he was just at the pool. He already took a shower. Body spray? A fresh shave?
“So you go to Izzy’s house,” Hernández reminded him, “hoping to hook up.”
Benjamin nodded. “We started making out, but she kept stopping to check her texts—a bunch from friends who already knew about her party and were coming that night, but she had somewhere to go first. She was going to meet the older guy at the motel.”
“In the middle of the afternoon.”
“Yeah. So?”
“Then what?” Hernández said.
“Then we started talking some more about the guy, and I made a crack about sexual diseases, and how if she and I were ever going to have sex, better now than later, because I didn’t want to sleep with someone after she slept with lots of guys, but especially some older pervert.”
“Go on.”
“She said, ‘He hasn’t had sex in years, I know it for a fact. I’d be his first since he got out.
’ And I really thought she was pulling my leg.
Got out? As in, prison? The whole thing was a joke.
I said, ‘First, I don’t think you’re going.
Second, if you did, even your friends would think you were a skank.
Sidney will never talk to you again.’ And she said, ‘Sid’s the one who introduced us.
’ But I could tell I hit a nerve, that Sid didn’t like him. Not that way.”
“You’re saying the person who met with Isabella Scarlatti also knew Sidney Mayfield.”
“Yes!” Benjamin said, and now he was angry, his face flushed.
“And you think Izzy was willing to have sex with him but Sid wasn’t.”
“Yes.”
“But you’ve got it backward, my friend,” Hernández said. “If the ‘older’ guy even exists. Because someone did have sex with Sidney just before she died.”
Benjamin twitched in surprise. He didn’t know what I knew about Sidney—what Robert had already told me.
“No,” he said.
“No?”
“No,” Benjamin said again. “That’s not what Sidney’s like. She wouldn’t just have sex with some random guy.”
“Medical examiner differs on that point.”
“Then he must have talked her into it, or made her do it.”
For the first time, he looked shaken.
Hernández said, “So, back to you and Izzy in her house. She says she’s not interested in you at this point in your conversation. Or she never was. And then what?”
“I went home.”
“Did you ever wonder why she invited you to her house if she didn’t really want to have sex with you?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Did you ever wonder why she’d want to talk so openly about her sex life with multiple other . . . men?”
“She seemed nervous about the guy, now that it was getting real. Like she was having second thoughts. If she knew what she really wanted, she wouldn’t have been talking at all, she would have just gone and done it.”
“So she was treating you like a girlfriend,” Hernández said. “Talking at you. Making you listen before she rewarded you with something better than ‘making out.’ Was she painting your toenails this whole time, too?”
I exhaled noisily. “Are you telling my son that spending time listening to a girl is not an acceptable thing for a boy to do?”
Hernández smirked. “All right, Benjamin, so what did you finally say?”
“I told her what I thought. Which she didn’t like. Obviously.”
“Are you popular with the girls?”
“Not really.”
“Why not?”
“I just said. Because I tell them what I think.”
“Have you ever wanted to hurt a girl?”
Benjamin glowered. “I’ve wanted a girl to shut up. Does that count?” He brought both hands to his head and pushed hard, on the tops and the sides. It was getting to him, finally. “No, I’ve never hurt a girl. I’ve told you everything I know.”
Hernández said, “I’m going to ask you again, Benjamin. Why did you stop at home?”
“No reason.”
“I think you stopped home to get something specific,” Hernández said. “Condoms?”
I’d already mentioned birth control to Izzy, as soon as she mentioned multiple partners. She smirked when I asked her if she needed any condoms, perfectly happy to tell me she had a drawerful at home.
“Did you show her something? Threaten her with something?”
Benjamin stared straight ahead. “If you’re talking blackmail, trust me. Izzy couldn’t be blackmailed. Ask anyone. She did what she wanted to do.”
“That’s what you liked about her.”
“Yeah. And no. Not when she was about to do something fucked-up.”
I released my fists, which I’d been squeezing on my lap. It felt like we were almost done.
Hernández silently reread the statement he’d filled out, rustling the pages. Three of them. He seemed to have accepted the nonanswer about stopping at home. I hadn’t.
Ewan was impulsive. Ewan bragged, because he thought the world was his oyster and if he could take something then it was always meant to be his.
Benjamin wasn’t like that. He made good choices, usually. He kept quiet. Usually. The quiet worried me, but it proved something, too. He wasn’t a raging narcissist.
But I was thinking too much. My job wasn’t to think at this moment. It was to avoid thinking—to pray, even if I wasn’t someone who prayed.
“Anything else?” Hernández asked when he was finished. “Nothing else.”
“You’re sure? Take your time.”
There was a knock at the door. Detective Wood entered. Hernández stood up, giving him his chair, as if it was an elegant exchange they’d prearranged.
“Hi, Benjamin. One other question,” Wood said. “So, after Isabella Scarlatti turned you down, what happened when you saw her next, at the motel?”
Benjamin laughed. Not scoffed. Laughed.
“That’s the way you get people to make a confession?”
He looked at Wood. He looked at Hernández. He looked at the one-way mirror at the back of the room.
“Fucking amazing. No, I didn’t go to any motel.
Not that afternoon, not any night, not ever.
I don’t know which motel she went to, but you do, because you found the body.
So, you know that the guy you should be looking for recently ‘got out’ and you know he drove a noisy car and you should probably be able to figure out who checked them in to the motel or even if she used a fake ID, someone probably saw them together, right? ”
Benjamin nodded. Finished. Confident. Triumphant. Not quiet this time. Not quiet at all.
“Okay!” Wood said a moment later, dotting a period at the end of the sentence he was writing. “Well. That was all very helpful.”
Hernández, standing with his back up against the far wall, said, “Good job, Benjamin. We appreciate it.”
I still felt stuck to my chair. “Can we go now?”
“You can, Ms. Rosso. But we’re placing your son under arrest.”
He began to read Benjamin his Miranda rights. I watched as Benjamin’s look of triumph was replaced by disbelief.
Hernández said, “Ms. Rosso, I recommend you go home, get a night’s sleep, then come back in the morning. Your son isn’t going home tonight.”