Who Killed Jenny Schecter? Ch. 24

Chapter 24 Confessional

Carmen entered the conference room; Lauren was the only one there, reviewing her notes, sipping a soda, and eating a Nutter-Butter from the vending machine down the hall. "Cookie?" she said, pushing the pack toward Carmen, who sat down beside her.

"You smooth talker, you," Carmen said, taking the last one.

"So, how is she?" Lauren asked quietly.

"Not good," Carmen said.

"Oh?"

"We, uh, had words. Or rather, I had words."

"I see," Lauren said. "Did we use our indoor voice? Did we use our grown-up words?"

"I kinda ripped her a new one."

Lauren sucked in the last of her soda, the straw making that funny rattling sound when the cup is finally empty. She waited. "You're gonna make me pull it out of you, aren't you? Remember, I'm carrying a loaded weapon."

"Sorry," Carmen said. She sighed. "I kind of ... lost it. Not loud and angry, or anything. But I told her ... ." Another hesitation.

"Yes?"

"I told her she was a coward. That she ran away from problems. That she ran away like a coward that night up in Whistler. That she let Jenny push her around."

"I'm guessing that was a long time building up."

"Only four years, more or less."

"Do I need to send out a search party for her? EMTs? A coroner's unit? Were you the last person to see her alive? My guess is that was the big 'Go fuck yourself, Shane' speech you had festering inside you all these years."

"You must be psychic."

"Yeah," Lauren said. "Nobody could see that one coming. You feel better now?"

"You know I don't. Where are you going?"

"Get another pack of Nutter Butters out of the machine. You're in a major six-cookie funk." Lauren came back a minute later with another pack of Nutter Butters and tossed them on the table as she sat down. "Go ahead. Sugar high, it's the only cure. I've got a naloxone pen, if you OD."

"I don't need a cookie, I need a drink," Carmen said, tearing the cookie wrapper open and biting a Nutter Butter in half.

Marybeth entered the conference room, followed by the Calloway wagon train. When they were all settled, Marybeth looked around.

"Where's Shane?"

"She'll be along soon," Carmen said.

Marybeth looked doubtful, but decided not to pursue it. "Recording and videotaping equipment going back on." She pushed some buttons. "Lt. Marybeth Duffy, continuing the interrogation of Niki Stevens, following our lunch break. When we stopped, Detective Hancock was reading from a deposition from Mollie Kroll, who claimed that when she returned Shane's jacket to Jenny, Jenny had lied by saying Shane and Niki were shacked up and quote fucking unquote at the Chateau Marmot. But Shane says she was just next door at Bette and Tina's house, and later went out to an all-night restaurant. Niki, you confirmed you ran into Shane there, and that Jenny was lying when she said you and Shane were at the Chateau Marmot."

"That's right. Shane and I never went there. I only ran into her at the coffee shop."

"You said you got a text message from Jenny while you were there."

"Yes. Jenny said she wanted me to come over. I asked Shane if Jenny was sincere. Shane said she was. So I went over to Jenny's house and uh, you know. We spent the night."

"Having sex."

"Yes."

"And then in the morning she called you a brat and kicked you out."

"Yes."

"I'm sorry, I could hardly hear you," Marybeth said.

"Yes," Niki said more firmly.

The door opened and Shane walked in and sat down. She looked like shit. Carmen didn't look up.

"Shane, are you okay?" Marybeth asked.

Shane nodded. "I'm okay. Just ... you know. Please, go on."

Marybeth turned back to Niki. "I want to ask you about Tina Kinnard. She was the producer of Lez Girls, correct?"

"Yes, that's right."

"Did you ever have sex with her?"

"No! No way!"

"Just asking. So you had a strictly professional relationship with her?"

"Yes."

"Did you ever have sex with Helena Peabody, the previous head of the studio, Shaolin Productions?"

"No, of course not. She wasn't even there when I started on Lez Girls."

"Did you ever have sex with Aaron Kornbluth, who took over when Helena resigned?"

"No! You're kidding, right? Aaron? Ewww."

"We're talking about Hollywood," Marybeth said drily. "You may have heard rumors about studio executives behaving badly with women."

Everyone smiled or laughed, even Niki.

"What about William Halsey? He wasn't a studio executive, but he financed Lez Girls, correct?"

Niki took this one better. "No," she said, smiling. "I didn't fuck William Halsey. Among other things, he was Jenny's patron. She ran into him down in Mexico on a vacation."

"To your knowledge, did Jenny have sex with him?"

"You're kidding again, right? Jenny didn't do guys. And William would be at the bottom of the list of guys Jenny wouldn't sleep with, right below Aaron."

Shane was relieved; it appeared Niki had no knowledge about what had happened at the marriage of William Halsey's daughter. Jenny had prevailed on William's wife to hire Shane as the hairdresser for the bride, the bride's mother (William's wife), and the maid of honor, who was the bride's sister. Shane had had sex with all three of them, albeit separately, on the wedding day. A new personal best, by any standard. Jenny never learned about it, and Shane had never told Alice, so it never made The Chart.

"Just crossing my T's and dotting my i's," Marybeth said. "So you got the part in Lez Girls without having to have sex with anyone, is that correct?"

"Yes, that's right," Niki said.

"And how did you get along with Tina? Any problems during the shooting?"

"Problems? No, it was the most peaceful, problem-free movie shoot I've ever been on," Niki said, and again everyone laughed.

"Okay, problems," she said. "The head of the studio, Helena Peabody, goes to jail for stealing money from somebody she owed a $50,000 gambling debt to. Then we get Aaron Kornbluth, the new studio head. The first director, Kate Arden, gets fired. Jenny takes over as director. My management people want me to pretend to be straight. Then one night we all go mud wrestling and get arrested. Adele plots against Jenny and gets her kicked off the lot and takes over as director because of a sex tape Jenny made and I happened to be in. And then Aaron and his people wanted to totally change the ending of the movie, so it wasn't a lezzie dyke-flick any more, and because of that the producer and writer/one-third ex-director go ballistic. So that's three directors, two studio heads, one sex tape, two or three media scandals, and then the studio completely sells out and changes the end of the movie, which is guaranteed to piss off every LGBT, M, R, Z, Q and Y person in California. No, all in all, I'd say it was a pretty average shoot."

Everyone laughed again.

"But you were angry at Jenny, after she kicked you out of bed, everything else aside, that was your primary reason."

"Yes."

"And was that when you decided to get revenge?"

"Yes."

"How did that come about?"

"Like I said. I was angry and talking to some of my friends. Somebody said, get the negatives and destroy them. Your career will be saved. Jenny won't have her movie."

"You said you had a friend help you, he came up with the details about shipping the negatives back and forth from the lab."

"Yes."

"And as part of that interception of the negatives you faked Tina's name on the transmittal e-mail, and later e-mailed a ransom note on Tina's laptop traceable back to her. And you weren't even mad at Tina, right? Just Jenny? You framed a woman who never did you any harm with stealing four and a half million dollars' worth of movie she produced in good faith. That's four-plus million bucks that belonged to William Halsey and to Shaolin Productions."

Ah, Lauren and Carmen both thought. Here's the Marybeth we know and love, taking off the kid gloves and sticking the knife in and twisting it, working off all that anger for an investigation that had stuck in her craw for two years. Calloway and his team never batted an eyelash.

"Well ... yes," Niki said quietly. "I didn't think anyone would believe it was Tina. And I was right, nobody did, not after the first day. Anyway, I knew the studio was going to get the negatives back. They weren't going to be out the four million dollars, or however much it was."

"You yourself went into Jenny's house and hid the negatives in her attic, is that correct?"

"Yes."

"And if anyone believed the part about Tina's role, they'd just think Jenny and Tina acted together to steal them. And if they didn't, they'd think Jenny was the one who not only stole the negatives but was mean and evil enough to frame Tina, her friend and next door neighbor, for it."

"Yes. But I thought that wouldn't happen. I didn't think anybody would believe Tina was in on it. Just Jenny. And the negatives were in Jenny's house, not Tina's."

"You said the studio would eventually get the negatives back. What did you mean by that?"

Niki looked down at her hands and didn't want to answer.

"Niki," Calloway gently prodded.

"I was going to get somebody to make a phone call to the police. Anonymous. They tell the police the stolen negatives were in Jenny's attic. Then the police would go there and find them, and arrest Jenny."

"They might have arrested me, too," Shane said. They could hear the anger in her voice.

Niki looked at her. "I ... I hadn't thought about that. I'm sorry. But I never intended for it to come back on you. Please believe me. I didn't. It was just about Jenny."

Shane said nothing, just looked away.

"Tell us how you hid the negatives in Jenny's house," Marybeth said.

"Well, I had them at my house, and I already knew where I wanted to hide them, in Jenny's attic--"

"How did you know about the attic?"

"Uh. Well. See, Jenny and me, we, uh. You know. In the closet. And this one time, Jenny pulls down the attic steps and she ... uh. She told me to tie her up to them, you know? Not real tight or anything, but ... Jenny liked to be tied up sometimes. Sometimes she liked ... you know ... doing it ... standing up. And we'd play games, pretend stuff. So I tied her wrists above her head to the ladder with a scarf, not tight, and uh... is that enough? Do you need to know more?"

Lauren, Carmen and Shane all kept their eyes on the tabletop in front of them, nobody looking at anybody. Lauren wondered about Jenny having sex with Carmen back in the day, and with Shane more recently in the month before her death. Did Carmen or Shane ever tie Jenny to that ladder, too? Carmen and Shane were both experienced lesbians, but Jenny had pretty clearly learned about BDSM well before her relationship with Shane. Was Carmen Jenny's original bondage teacher, or was it someone else?

Carmen studied the Nutter Butter wrapper she played with in her hands. Her very first lesbian experience had been vertical, up against the door of her bedroom, with Lucia Torres. And then there had been vertical sex in the alley behind the church. And then, much later, with Jenny and then Shane. Carmen had been the first person to lightly tie Jenny to the attic stairs, but apparently not the last ...

Shane studied the label on the bottle of water in front of her. She'd been doing vertical sex for her entire adult life, in alleys behind bars, in those bars' bathrooms, in changing rooms, a couple of closets, damn near any place that didn't have a bed and a few that did. And then, much later, with Carmen and then Jenny. She assumed she had been the last person to lightly tie Jenny to the attic stairs, but apparently not ...

"I think that'll be enough," Marybeth said. "You already knew there was a pull-down stairs in her closet, and how it worked and where it led to. Where you ever upstairs in the attic?"

"No, not then. The only time was when I went up there to hide the negatives. Jenny said she hardly ever went up there, just whenever she needed to get some luggage or something she stored up there. She said Shane went up there even less often than she did."

"Okay, you had the negatives, and an idea where to hide them. What happened next?"

"Well, I had to figure out when nobody would be home. And I knew I didn't want to drive over there and just park right in front of their house and then go inside. I knew they kept a key in one of those fake rock things on the back patio. I'd just go in the back door using that key."

Carmen closed her eyes. That key, that fucking fake rock. She's the one who had bought it, back in the day.

"Okay, please continue," Marybeth said.

"I drove over there a couple days later, after I had the negatives. It was after dark, maybe nine o'clock. I drove around the block a couple times, to see if Jenny or Shane was home. I could usually tell by what cars were there, and what lights were on in the house. So I was driving around the block behind their house, I guess it was 15th Street, and there was this house with this white panel truck in the driveway, and the garage door was open. The garage was empty, and there was this guy coming out. I drove around the block, and the garage door was shut and the truck was gone."

Carmen, Shane, Lauren and Marybeth all had the same sphincter-tightening reaction: Had Niki seen the Creep? Had she seen Jenny's killer?

Marybeth feigned disinterest. "And then?"

"I figured the house was vacant, and the painter or carpenter had left. I realized the house backed up against Jenny and Shane's house. I parked on 15th and sat there in the dark for a while. There was no lights on in the houses next door, only one or two houses on the other sides of the street. It was a real quiet street, no car traffic, nobody out walking a dog, or anything. So I got out of my car and walked to the house, and nobody saw me, so I kept going. I walked around behind the house to the back yard."

"Then what happened?" Marybeth asked.

"I was standing at the fence, looking at the back of Jenny's house. Then a cat came up and scared the shit out of me. But it ignored me, and went back between the back of the garage and the fence, and next thing I know is it's walking through Jenny's backyard and out toward the other street. And I think, how did it do that? And I go back behind the garage in that narrow area between the garage and the fence, and you know what? There's a broken section of the fence, and if you push on it it kind of opens, sort of like a gate. It's already wide enough for a cat to get through, easy. So I'm back there and I push on it, and it moves a little, and I squeeze through, and I'm in Jenny's back yard. It's overgrown and there's this big shrub there, but I'm behind it, between it and the fence."

"You had the movie negatives with you?"

"No, I left them in the trunk of my car. But then I went back to get them, and I came back behind the garage, I went through the gap into Jenny's backyard. Then I went into her house."

"How did you do that?"

"I knew there was a key on the porch, in a fake rock. Jenny once said everybody used it. I already had used it myself a couple times. I unlocked the back door and went in."

"And then what did you do?" Marybeth asked, knowing the answer.

"I went into the bedroom and the closet, and put the negatives up in the attic."

"You already knew about the pull-down steps, is that correct?"

"Yes."

"All right. Then what?"

"Then I left."

"You put the steps back up first, correct?"

"Yes, yes, that's right. I put the steps back up and left."

"Were you wearing gloves of any kind?"

"Yes. I...I had a pair of those latex gloves. I have a chef who cooks for us from time time, and we have a box of gloves he uses. I took a pair of them with me. I think you're asking about finger prints. I was always careful about not leaving any on the film canisters."

"Would it be accurate to say you had thought about all this beforehand?"

"Yes. That's right."

"You had a plan." It was barely a question at all.

"Yes."

"And what was your intention? What did you expect to happen?"

"I don't know. A couple things. One is that nobody would find them for a long time and the studio would forget about the movie, and it would just die. Another was that somebody would find them and the police would arrest Jenny for stealing them. That would have been okay, too."

"So what exactly was your motive in stealing them? Can you say?"

"Well...to fuck Jenny, I guess. Get back at her. I was really pissed."

"What about the studio? Or Adele?"

"I don't care about them, one way or the other. I mean, I had nothing against them, if that's what you mean."

"Did you kill Jenny Schecter?"

"No."

"Do you know who did?"

"No. I thought...what's her name. Alice."

"No, she didn't do it," Marybeth said. Carmen and Shane both made note of the fact that it was the first time Marybeth had said that. Whether she actually meant it was something else entirely.

"Did you witness her being killed? Did you see it?"

"No. Like I said, I was walking around the neighborhood, and when I came back there were police cars and ambulances and stuff."

"When you went into Jenny and Shane's house with the negatives to put them in the attic, were you alone?"

"Yes."

"Did anyone see you?"

"At Jenny's house? No, not that I know of."

"Did you drive? Where did you park?"

"On 15th Street, the street behind her house."

"Did you see anyone there, or did anyone see you?"

"No, I don't think so."

"On the night of Jenny's murder, you were found hiding in the bushes. How did you get there?"

"I drove."

"Where did you park?"

"Two blocks away. There was no parking spots open on 15th Street, and I didn't want to park on their street."

"Did anyone see you, and did you see anyone?"

"No, I don't think so."

"What route did you take getting into the backyard?"

"I went alongside the house on 15th Street to the backyard, then through the gap in the fence behind the garage, same as before."

"What did you see?"

"Not much. There were a few women on the back porch of Tina's house."

"What were they doing?"

"Just sitting, talking. They were quiet, I couldn't her them. There was a little music playing. Bette came out of the house and joined them. She had a drink in her hand. I guess everybody else had a drink, too."

"Did you see Jenny?"

"No, not that I could see. But they were sitting in shadows, under the garden thing. What do you call it?"

"The pergola?"

"Yes, I guess. It had plants growing up the outside of it. Arbor, that's the word I was thinking of. They were all sitting in this arbor thing. Talking and having wine or whatever."

"Were they loud? Making noise? Any dramatics?"

"No, nothing like that."

"You saw Bette and you didn't see Jenny. Did you see Shane or Alice?"

"Not that I know of. I assume they were there, but like I said, it was dark and they were in shadow under the arbor."

"Okay. And you saw no one else around the neighborhood or at anybody else's house?"

"No."

"Okay. Now, you went back and forth around the house on 15th Street several times, the house behind Shane and Jenny's, is that right?"

"Yes. I told you that."

"I know. I'm just going over it to be clear. Now, suppose I told you that there was somebody in that house. What would you say?"

Nikki looked perplexed. "I don't know. I though it was vacant. Jenny once said the people who lived there were out of the country or something."

"But you saw a white panel truck there, and then it left, you said. When you drove back around the block it was gone."

"Oh, yeah, I guess. I didn't think it was the owners or anything. Was that who was in the house? I had no idea."

"You never saw the person driving the truck, and you never saw anyone in the house."

"No. I'd have told you. I mean, why wouldn't? No, I didn't see anybody. Was there really somebody there?"