Who Killed Jenny Schecter? Ch. 09

"Oh," Shane said. "Right."

Carmen and Lauren went back to reading, and Shane found something important in her e-mails, all three of them thinking about the sex that first Carmen and then Shane had had with Jenny. It was the 600-pound gorilla in the room, and they avoided it studiously. Not only had Carmen been Jenny's lover twice as long as Shane had been, Carmen's style of lovemaking, of intimacy in general, had been much deeper than Shane's. Carmen would have found the scars on Jenny's body, every scar, every blemish, every mole and freckle, no matter where they were, and would have asked, during foreplay or afterglow, what they were from. Shane, who didn't miss much but couldn't process fast enough, might have seen them but been distracted, wouldn't have asked. Never tell your story, never let them tell you theirs. There were scars; so what?

"All right, now we're getting to it," Carmen said. "Water in her lungs, matches the water in the pool, and the official cause of death, drowning. I don't claim to understand some of this but am I right, it just means she had a crack in her skull and a bump on the back of her head? A fractured skull? And a broken left wrist. And some abrasions."

"Yes," Lauren said, turning her head slightly and indicating the spot, high on the top of the head about two inches above and behind the left ear. "What all this says is that we think somebody pushed her, she went through the tape backwards and as she fell to the patio she was upside down and the first thing that hit was the back of her head. That's the bump, and the fracture under it. She would have been unconscious instantly. Very bad concussion. If she cried out when she was pushed, it wasn't loud enough to be heard. She wouldn't have screamed when she hit. And that's when she broke her wrist and got the abrasions, landing on the cement. The pavement area where she landed isn't very wide, but they found the spot where her head hit, and as the report says, there was a little blood and a few strands of her hair. They no way she could have rolled into the pool. Someone walked down the stairs and rolled her into it. That person would have seen clearly she was unconscious. He -- or she -- might even have suspected she was dead, and she might have been close to it. But in any case it's clear she was rolled or placed into the pool, and she was still alive but unconscious. Then she drowned. So it's not a freak accident, it's not bad luck, it's not manslaughter. It's flat-out homicide. The push up on the deck may not have been intended to kill, it may have just been an unfortunate shoving match or something. But then the killer walked downstairs and put her in the pool. That's the murder part, for sure."

They glanced at Shane, whose eyes were filled with tears. She had trouble talking, but dropped the autopsy report and managed to say, "What else?"

"Forensics findings," Lauren said, holding up another report. "The techs dusted for fingerprints, collected hundreds of them. The report didn't come back for a week, but by then Alice had confessed and the report sat in the file. But before you get your hopes up, there's nothing in it. There were prints all over the place, including the railing on the stairwell, but why shouldn't there be? You were all up and down the steps. They found prints from all of you, plus a couple that turned out to be from the two women carpenters who built the deck and stairs. No prints that couldn't be explained, no prints from anyone who didn't belong there."

"Does that mean the person who pushed Jenny had to be one of the group?" Carmen asked.

"No," Lauren said. "It only means that whoever pushed her didn't touch anything else, or if he or she did, the prints got smeared or overprinted. Lots of prints weren't identifiable only because they were over top of each other. When people climb stairs they tend to put their hands in the same places. Basically the prints mean nothing."

"Did they fingerprint our house?" Carmen asked.

"No. Why?"

Carmen shrugged. "I was thinking about the pull-down ladder in the closet. And the film canisters."

"They did print the canisters. Shane prints, Tina's prints, and a couple of film tech people from the studio, whose prints belong there."

"Shane and Tina's prints?" Carmen asked.

Quietly Shane said, "When I saw them, I picked one up and then a second one, to figure out what they were. Then when I got Tina, she picked up one."

"Means nothing," Lauren said. "Dead end."

"Okay, I was just maybe hoping ..."

"I know," Lauren said.

"Jenny's fingerprints weren't on them?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"I don't think she knew the negs were up there," Shane said. "My jacket was lying on top of them, but when she tossed it up there, she probably never even turned the light on. She probably just pulled down the steps, went halfway up, tossed the jacket, and came back down."

"If she had seen the canisters, everything probably would have been different," Lauren said.

"How?" Carmen asked.

"Think about it. Jenny discovers the negs up there. What would she do? Shane?"

Shane frowned.

"What?" Carmen asked.

"She'd think I put them there," Shane said. "She'd think I was the one who stole them."

"And then what?" Lauren asked.

"Shitstorm," Carmen said.

"Shitstorm," Shane nodded.

"Okay, but why?" Lauren pressed.

"Because I stole her movie," Shane said.

There was silence for a moment.

"No, wait a minute," Carmen said. "We're wrong. Or partly wrong. Shane, I don't think Jenny would think you did it. You'd have absolutely no motive, and you were sleeping with her, you were her lover, and you are also about the last person on earth who could have stolen the movie, hid it in the attic, and said nothing, done nothing and showed nothing for weeks. Also, Jenny would have known you had no access to them. How would you have stolen them? Did you have any idea what the camera people did with the negatives, where they stored them?"

Shane shook her head no.

"See? Jenny wouldn't believe you'd done it, not even in that first instant if she'd found them. No."

"Yeah," Shane said. "I think I agree. But so what would she think?"

"That she was being set up," Carmen said.

"Which she was," Lauren said. "Resulting in ...? "

"Shitstorm," Carmen and Shane said, together.

"Right. But no shitstorm. So she didn't know."

"Couldn't have," Carmen said.

"My brain hurts," Shane said. "Where does all this leave us?"

"She was pushed off the deck, landed on her head, and was pushed or rolled into the pool, still alive. She didn't know the negs were in the attic. We have nothing else," Lauren said.

"So back to Square One," Carmen said.

"Square One," Lauren confirmed.

"Fuck," Shane muttered.