Who Killed Jenny Schecter? Ch. 22

Chapter 22 Interrogation

Niki Stevens brought three of them. At first Lauren thought of them as Suit No. 1, Suit No. 2, and Suit No. 3, but changed her mind. They were Granddad, The Bitch, and The Briefcase Carrier. Between them they wore $10,000 worth of clothes. Between them, Shane, Carmen, Lauren and Marybeth wore less than $900 worth of clothes.

Suit No. 1, Granddad, was a named partner of his firm, Grant, Calloway, Meadows and Greenberg. There was no doubt in Lauren's mind that as lawyers go he was a great white shark, but his role was to be friendly, jolly, affable, familiar, reasonable, cooperative, open, forthcoming. Highly dangerous, in other words. He had white, grandfatherly hair, a tanned face and monogrammed cuff links in the French cuffs of his shirt. "Call me Cal," he said. Not in a million years, Lauren thought. You're going to remain Mr. Calloway.

Suit No. 2 was, of course, a woman, and she was The Bitch. The Cold-Eyed Killer. Steely Fran. Do not fuck with me. A legal gunslinger. Carmen immediately recognized her as a cross between Jack Palance in Shane, the Alien who slobbered on Sigourney Weaver, and Grendel's mother, wearing Dolce & Gabbana. In court in front of a jury she'd dress down, but today she was dressed to make every other woman in the room feel bad. She was Lauren's age, trim, good-looking, dark blond, asexual. Shane's gaydar chirped once, crashed, showed the Blue Screen of Death, rebooted. "Bobbi Beckwith," she said, introducing herself. She and Calloway would try to turn the tables and play Good Cop, Bad Cop with Lauren and Marybeth. Good luck with that.

Suit No. 3 was a younger man about 30 years old. Recent Stanford grad, although maybe Yale or Chicago if he was a West Coast diversity hire, trim, handsome, well-dressed, somebody's well-educated, slick preppy offspring who would one day have his name on the door. Right now, though, his job was to bill 80 hours a week and carry Calloway's briefcase. "Hi, Elliott Haynesworth Cartwright, Junior," he said, smiling. Of course you are, Lauren thought.

Niki Stevens had spent nearly an hour in her clothes closet with her besties, trying to determine the optimal outfit to suit the role of ex-rehab murder suspect. Gamin? Shabby chic? Ingénue? Dyke, boi or lipstick? Power actress? Girl next door? Waif? Corporate exec? Gal pal? Malibu Barbie? Either of the Hepburns, and if so, which one? On a movie set, her clothes were determined by the costume designer, and except for the brief period of time she was fucking the director of Lez Girls, costume designers neither wanted nor heeded her input. One of the besties suggested calling some movie costume people for advice, which Niki thought was a great idea. She called three; two of them hung up on her because they could, and the third suggested Dorothy Wizard of Oz Innocent. Niki couldn't tell if the advice was serious or not. In the end, Niki chose jeans and a man's white oxford dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up and Velcro-closing running shoes in case they wanted to take her shoelaces away. Minimal make-up, just a little foundation, no jewelry.

"Hey, Shane," she said softly, crossing the conference room to give a startled Shane cheek-to-cheek air hugs. It was the start of a Charm Offensive. "You must be Carmen," she said, shaking hands. "I feel like I know you, I've heard so much about you. It's so nicely to finally meet you after all these years." (Translation: Feel free to do me any time. Here, now, later on, in Malibu, in Maui, in the vestibule of Wal-Mart, on this table, any time, place and way you want.) Niki was trying her best to be friends with the only other woman who had fucked both Jenny and Shane, and who she'd been told was three times better at it than she or they would ever be. The truth was she'd heard nothing whatsoever about Carmen from Shane, who was always discreet. It was Jenny who had told her about Carmen, saying she was better at carpet-munching than even the spooky, icy Marina whom Niki only knew from the actress playing her in the movie. Carmen was the all-time best fuck Jenny had ever had. While Carmen would never become the widely known Urban Legend Lesbian that Shane or the equally infamous Papi Torres had become, her skills were known to a select few, and now unfortunately Niki was in on the secret. Jenny had told Niki how supernaturally talented a lez Carmen was not because it was true -- which it was -- but only to make Niki feel like shit.

"Lieutenant Duffy, congratulations on your promotion," Niki said, offering her hand to Marybeth.

"Thank you," Marybeth said, using as neutral a tone as she could muster. "Everyone, please be seated." She had picked Lauren's conference room because it would hold all eight of them. Marybeth's own office was too small, and she and Lauren would have preferred to sweat Niki in a standard interrogation room, which was pre-rigged with all the recording equipment and one-way mirrors anyone could desire. Marybeth and Lauren had discussed whether to erase all their data and timelines on the whiteboards and remove all the photos and other things they'd pinned to bulletin boards around the room. They decided to leave everything up, and in fact went out of their way to pin up crime scene photos of Jenny and Max's corpses. They had left the evidence boxes out on the table, with various working documents here and there. The messages were clear: This is a full-scale murder investigation. We're not fucking around like last time, so don't mess with us. Look at the photos: Those are dead people. We're pissed, so sit down and shut up.

Marybeth sat at the head of the table, so Granddad sat opposite her at the far end. Lauren flanked Marybeth, and The Bitch flanked Granddad, with Niki next to her. Carmen sat next to Niki, so that left Lauren, Shane and The Briefcase Carrier facing them.

"Before we begin, Lieutenant, I'd like to know if you consider my client a suspect," Calloway said.

"I understand," Marybeth said, "but first things first. I want everything videotaped and on the record, so I'm going to start that right now." She had a tape recorder on the table and punched its start button. The red light on a video recorder set up in a corner of the room also came on.

"My name is Lt. Marybeth Duffy of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, and this conversation is being recorded and videotaped." She gave the date, location and the names of everyone in the room, and the case number of Jenny's murder. "Now Mr. Calloway, I believe you had a preliminary question?"

"Yes, thank you, Lieutenant Duffy. I wanted to begin by asking whether you consider my client to be an active suspect in this new investigation. I would also like it noted for the record that we are hereby formally requesting copies of this tape recording and videotaping in as timely a manner as possible."

"Yes, you'll get copies of all recordings and tapings as soon as we can, probably the end of the day. I'll have them dropped off at your office by this evening. Now, to your other question. At this time we consider Ms. Stevens to be a material witness to our homicide investigation but she is not a suspect. Therefore we have not advised of her of her Miranda rights, which in any case I'm sure you've taken care of. I'm certain that with three skilled and capable attorneys in the room she is more than fully advised and protected. I would add that while she is not under oath, we do expect her to be truthful in all her answers, and while she is not subject to charges of perjury in the event she might tell a lie, we would very strongly consider any lies or evasions or deliberate mis-truths to constitute obstruction of justice and interference with a police investigation, and would consider pressing charges on that basis. And of course she always has the option of declining to answer or invoking her Fifth Amendment rights and other protections she has. That said, if she admits or we subsequently discover that she did in fact murder Jennifer Schecter, we will in fact so charge her. Basically, if she didn't kill Jenny or have anything to do with it, she's fine. If she did, she's toast. I will add one other thing. In her previous interrogation we conducted right after Jenny Schecter's murder, Ms. Stevens made some statements that may be characterized and construed as inaccurate, misleading or worse. We want to fully state here and now that nothing Ms. Stevens said in that previous interrogation will be used against her. We're going to forget that interview ever happened, and she now has the opportunity to start over with a nice, brand new, shiny clean slate. Having said all that legal boilerplate, we do wish to have Ms. Stevens' full and frank and willing cooperation in the investigation of these two homicides."

"Two homicides?" Calloway asked, clearly surprised. He and The Bitch looked at each other. From the look on her face, Niki didn't seem to know what Marybeth was talking about, either.

Go, Marybeth! Lauren thought to herself. That's a gotcha. First blood to our team.

Ohhhhhh, nice move! Carmen thought.

"Yes, that's the next thing I have to inform you about. Jenny wasn't the only one murdered who was there that night. There's been a second homicide that we only recently became aware of. I'll be happy to fill you in."

"Please do," Calloway said.

For twenty minutes Marybeth told them about the hit-and-run murder of Max Sweeney outside of Bakersfield. She also told them about Max's baby and its adoption and death from SIDS. She was crisp and to-the-point, dispassionate. She occasionally stood up to point out something on the photo board or the timeline on the white boards as The Bitch and The Briefcase Carrier jotted notes on legal pads. She did it all from memory, and Shane and Carmen were impressed.

"At this time," Marybeth concluded, "we have no reason to believe Ms. Stevens has any connection with that homicide in Bakersfield, and from her appearance and aspect she clearly appears not to have known about it. That said, the possibility exists that with hindsight she may or may not have information that might help with the Sweeney hit-and-run case, and we'd like to explore that in due course. Before we get to that, there are at least three other areas we want to explore."

"Okay," Calloway said. "And they are?"

"First, we need to go into great detail about Niki's theft of the Lez Girls negatives and how they were planted in Jenny's attic. I notice you don't like the word 'theft' that I used, and you probably won't like 'steal' and 'stole' either, but that's what she did. We are aware the studio has declined to press charges, and we reluctantly have decided to go along with that, although it's not legally required that we do. We can press charges with or without the studio, as I'm sure you're aware. So to put your mind at rest, we are not going to pursue any criminal charges. You can call it by some euphemism such as 'took' or 'misappropriated' or 'repurposed' or 'diverted,' but to keep things in focus I'm just going to call it theft and stealing. But she stole those negatives and planted them in Jenny's attic. We need to know every single detail about what she did, because one possibility is it may play a very strong role in the homicide. I'm not going to waste time and effort prosecuting the theft of negatives when the studio won't even press charges. We're investigating two murders, and we'll be happy to give you whatever waivers and grant of immunity regarding the stolen negatives you may need."

"I'll get that started right away," The Bitch said.

"Well, now, Bobbi," Calloway said calmly, putting his hand on her arm, "I don't think that's necessary at this time. Let's wait and see. I take Lt. Duffy's offer on good faith, and after all, we're here to cooperate any way we can. Besides, we have the offer on tape and video, and I think that will be sufficient if anything pops up down the road."

Bad cop, good cop.

Calloway continued. "Lieutenant, you said there were two other areas you wanted to talk about."

"Yes. Item number two is the blackmail."

Calloway smiled. "We know about the blackmail, and we're prepared to discuss it. What else?"

Niki had not looked up from her hands since Marybeth had finished describing Max's murder, and she didn't make eye contact now. She just sighed and braced herself. Calloway and The Bitch had drummed into her to keep her mouth shut unless told to talk, and by God she was following orders.

"The third thing is somebody we call The Creep. It's a man who appears to be some kind of stalker. We think he may have even been in the area on the night of Jenny's murder. We need to know if Niki knows anything about him or is even aware of him."

That finally got Niki's attention. She looked up, glanced at Shane and Carmen, then at Calloway. She opened her mouth, then quickly closed it. Everyone in the room knew Marybeth had touched a nerve.

"I think we need to speak privately with our client," The Bitch said.

"Niki," Calloway asked quietly, "are we okay? Anything we need to discuss before we go further?"

Bad cop, good cop.

"No, it's all right," Niki said. She turned to Marybeth. "You said you think somebody was watching us?"

"We think so, yes. What do you think?"

Niki nodded. "It's ... I don't know how to say this. I don't know anything. Nothing specific. But ... ."

"Yes?"

"Sometimes I had this weird feeling. What did you call him? The Creep? The minute you said it ... ." She let it die off.

"Are you talking about the night of the murder?" Marybeth asked.

"No. The other times," Niki said.

"What other times?" Marybeth asked quietly. Carmen thought she'd never been in a room so silent. The old cliché, you could hear a pin drop.

"The night I put the negatives in the attic. And ... other times."

"What other times," Marybeth repeated, again quietly.

"At Jenny's house. One time at my house. One time, well, we went out to Santa Barbara. You know, romantic get-away dinner, walk on the beach, fuck in the surf. We kind of thought ... somebody was watching. Following us." She looked at Marybeth. "We were right, weren't we?"

"By 'we' you mean you and Jenny?"

"Yes. At first she made fun of me, she said I was imagining things, because I was a movie star and all. You know, vain. Everybody's looking at me. And then for a while we thought it was Adele. I mean, Adele, that woman is bat-shit crazy, and she'd do it, follow us around and videotape us. She stole the tape Jenny made of us at the Subaru weekend. And then the blackmail thing started. And then one night we saw him, and then we knew it wasn't Adele."

"You saw him?" Marybeth asked.

"Yes. I mean, not so we could tell who he was. But one time we were in La Jolla, on the beach in the cove where the sea lions are? We weren't really doing anything, you know, just fooling around. Maybe a little kissing, that's all. Nothing serious. But I looked up, and on top of the cliff there was this man staring down at us. I think he had a videotape camera in his hand. Jenny said I was imagining it. Maybe I was, I'm still not sure."

"Niki, you never mentioned this to us," Granddad Calloway said.

Niki shrugged. "Tell you what? That I had creepy feelings somebody was stalking me? I'm an actress. Of course people are stalking me. Paparazzi stalk me everywhere I go. Some guy on a cliff? That's nothing. I've had people follow me into the ladies room when I want to take a piss. I climb out of a limo at a nightclub, somebody's trying to get a shot up my dress. I get creepy feelings I'm being watched five times a day."

"Okay," Calloway said. "Go on."

"Anyway, this guy on the cliff, he could have been filming the sea lions for all I know."

"You said it was night," Marybeth said.

"Oh. Yeah. Yes, that's true. It was."

"About what time? Was it full dark?"

"Yes."

"But you saw this man videotaping you?"

"Well, I thought he was. He was up on the cliff and we were down on the beach. He was backlit. There's this souvenir place up there, and some restaurants. And there were car headlights from the parking lot. He was just this silhouette, standing there by himself. He lit a cigarette, I could see that."

"Okay," Marybeth said. "Tell us about the blackmail."

"How do you guys know about it?" Niki looked at Shane. "Did Jenny tell you? She swore she wasn't going to. I guess the bitch lied."

"She didn't lie," Shane said quietly. "Not about that, anyway. She never said a word to me about it."

"We found out just this week from the bank records," Lauren said. "You both made cash withdrawals on the same dates, of $9,950 each. We made the assumption it was for blackmail payments, and you've just confirmed it, as did Mr. Calloway a few minutes ago. So please tell us the details."

They watched while Niki fished a stick of Nicorette gum out of her purse and popped the stick in her mouth. Her fingers fiddled with the wrapper. "I'm trying to quit smoking," she said. "Okay, the fucking blackmail. It started a few weeks after the Subaru Ride weekend, when Jenny made the sex tape of us. The thing is, the blackmail wasn't about that sex tape at all."

"What was it about?" Lauren asked.

Niki fiddled with the gum wrapper.

"We're waiting."

"The other ones," Niki said.

"What other ones? Other what?"

"The other sex tapes. The porn site."

Lauren, Shane and Carmen all looked at each other, puzzled. "There were other tapes?" Lauren asked. "What porn site?"

Niki didn't exactly nod, but she moved her head this way and that. It was an alternative "Yes."

"They were different," Niki finally said.

"Different how?"

"Jenny was the one who made the sex tape of her and me at the Subaru thing, and Adele stole it and showed it to the studio."

"We know that. How were these tapes different?"

"Jenny didn't make them. Somebody else did. And we didn't know about it, not at the time. Somebody else was videotaping us. And recording sound, too. Tapes of us ... you know ... talking. And stuff. No photos."

"But having sex."

"Yes."

"Where?"

Niki shrugged. "Jenny's house. My house. On the beach, one time. In Jenny's car. In this motel we used to go to in Santa Barbara. Once in La Jolla. One time when we skinny-dipped in Bette and Tina's pool when they weren't home."

"On the studio lot?"

Niki shook her head no.

"But you had sex there?"

Niki nodded.

"It just never got videotaped or recorded there?"

"No, not that I know of."

Lauren didn't want to ask the next question, but had no choice. "Just the two of you in the videos and recordings?"

Niki fiddled with the wrapper, rolled it into a ball. "One time ... it was a party."

"So how many in the video?"

"Five of us. Me and Jenny, and three girls from my posse. They don't know about the video, or the blackmail. I never told them, so they still don't know."

"Do you have any idea how the videotaping was done?"

"Through the windows. You could tell from the videos. It wasn't done from inside. The one time in Jenny's car, it was from distance away. You couldn't tell too much from the video. But there was some kind of bug inside the car. You could hear us. You could hear some of the other ones, too."

"You mentioned a porn site."

"Yes, it was on the thumb drive. It wasn't a porn site that was up, it was a mock-up of one. What it would look like if it was posted. It was called Lez Girls Starfuckers. It was pretty simple. The letter said this was what would be posted on the Internet. People would pay to join and watch the videos of us."

There was silence around the room as everyone thought about this information. As far as Carmen and Shane went, their first thoughts were the same: Jesus, Jenny, how could you be so fucking careless after what happened to us with Mark videotaping us that time he rented the garage studio. Carmen had an additional thought: She knew Jenny sometimes liked a little light bondage. Marina had been the one to first teach her about it, and even though it wasn't especially Carmen's thing, light bondage was one of menu items on Carmen's long list of skills. Carmen took up teaching Jenny where Marina had left off. She also knew that when Jenny was shacking up with Claude, the French travel writer she'd met up in Whistler during the wedding fiasco, Max had walked in on them having sex. Jenny had been lightly tied to the headboard while Claude, wearing a black bustier and nothing else, straddled her and played with her with a riding crop. Carmen knew about it because Jenny had told her, years later, laughing about the horrified look on Max's face.