Only one person was sitting in the interrogation room: John.
Already it was a busy day. A fifty-six-year-old man had been decapitated and dismembered in his apartment and the Covington cops held three suspects in custody. It had been a struggle to get a free room.
Will watched John sit uncomfortably. He was still handcuffed. His expressions moved through anxiety, anger, and dreaminess. This was the sweet boy with the fine singing voice, now an adult under arrest. Will shook his head.
The interrogation room door opened and Diane Henderson stepped inside. She was dressed in jeans and a peach-striped shirt, carrying a tan portfolio. She pulled up a chair across from John and sat. They could only see her back. Will imagined that Cindy was frantically trying to get a good criminal lawyer. They didn’t have much time.
Henderson started a tape recorder, gave the date, location of the interview, suspect’s name, and her name and badge number. She Mirandized John again as he stared down. He mumbled that he understood his rights. Then she slowly laid out sheets of paper like playing cards. Soon they covered the table.
“Do you recognize the photographs, John?” Her voice was calm and almost motherly. It was obvious from his face that he was surprised by the images.
He managed, “Do you know who my dad is?”
Will wanted to melt into the floor.
“I do,” she said. “How about answering my question.”
“I know what they are. Can you take off these handcuffs? They’re really uncomfortable.”
She ignored his request. “So tell me what they are?”
“They’re me and Kristen.”
“Kristen Gruber.”
He nodded.
“Is that a yes?”
“Yes.” He stared angrily at her in a face that looked alien to Will.
“Who took them?”
“She did.”
“When?”
He hesitated, then told her: last fall.
“So you knew her?”
“We were friends.”
“Some of these show you naked in her bed,” Henderson said. “Looks like you were more than friends. Why didn’t you tell me this the last time we talked?”
He stared down. She prompted him with his name.
“I was scared,” he said. “She and I had a fling.”
“Last fall?”
“Yeah, last fall.”
Will felt acid boring a hole in his stomach.
“So you picked her up? What? She was a good deal older than you, and a celebrity to boot. Why would she want a kid like you?”
He didn’t answer.
“I’m about her age,” Henderson said, her tone changing from sympathetic to mocking. “I can’t imagine a bigger turn-off than some baby barely out of his acne stage…”
“She picked me up, okay!” He wiggled in the chair, trying to find a comfortable position without success.
“I find that hard to believe.”
“That’s because you’re not Kristen, lady.”
“You can call me Detective Henderson, or detective, or officer.”
“Whatever,” he said. All his sobbing from the night at Hyde Park Square was gone. In its place sat a fuming defiance.
“So why’d she pick you up? You look pretty ordinary to me. Are you some hot lover on the prowl for cougars?”
“As if.” He gave a mordant laugh. “She wanted to deflower me. It excited her.”
Will resisted the involuntary urge to shake his head. He listened to the intonations of John’s voice; could it have been the one he heard behind him the previous night? Then there was John’s pale, short hair: someone might mistake him for bald, especially if she didn’t get a good look. He forced his jaw to unclench.
Henderson sat still for a few beats. “It must have been exciting for you.”
“I wanted somebody my own age. But the girls my age don’t like me. Kristen did. She thought I was mature. She said I had good judgment, that I acted very mature.”
“You’re not showing it so far,” Henderson said. “She’s dead. We have your admission that you were on her boat the night she was murdered and the evidence to back it up. Now we know you were her lover. It’s not looking good. I’d say when you were on the Licking River with your friends and saw her boat. It put you in a rage. While they were passed out, you unlashed the Zodiac, went back, and murdered her.”
“I didn’t kill her!” His face contorted.
“You’re slick,” she said. “You got off the Zodiac, forced her back into the cabin, handcuffed her, and then you got out your knife…”
“No!” he screamed.
“Then you went back to your friends, and you were with them when they went back downriver and saw her boat. You could claim you found her for the first time. You could have called the police, but you didn’t.”
“I already told you, I wanted to!”
“That’s not what your friend, Zack Miller, said.”
“He’s not my friend,” John said.
That was true enough, Will thought. He also knew that Henderson had interviewed the three girls on the boat individually and they all admitted that John had wanted to call the police after he found Gruber’s body. But Henderson kept that to herself, kept the pressure on John.
Leaning forward, she said quietly, You must have really hated her to do such a horrible thing…”
“I cared about her! I was grateful to her!”
The room stayed silent for a long time. The prosecutor was getting antsy. Henderson turned motherly again. “I can understand. So you started out a little reluctant with her, you wanted a girl your age. And then you fell for her. She was attractive. Did she know you cared about her? How did she react?”
“She laughed at me afterwards and never took my call again.”
“Did that make you angry?”
“It hurt.”
“And made you angry.”
“Yes.” His mouth turned down violently.
Will saw a stranger’s face. It chilled him. His right quads starting jumping. It had come to this: what if he was wrong? What if John were about to confess?
Henderson said, “You wanted to get back at her.”
“No.” The stranger’s face went away.
“These photos: you on the bed, you and her. Where were they taken?”
“In her condo.” But Will already recognized the surroundings. At least that wasn’t a lie.
“It must have really pissed you off when she dismissed you.”
“It hurt,” he said. “I didn’t understand.”
“Did you know she saw other men?”
“No.” He sounded surprised.
“You sure? She broke up with you, she was two-timing you. That would make any man really angry. Mad enough to take revenge.”
“No! Never!”
“Mad enough to kill her.”
“I didn’t kill her!” Now the tears were coming down and his hands were helpless to wipe them away.
She let him stew for several minutes. Will had a sudden sense of disorientation. For a moment, from the back with her fair hair, Henderson looked like the avenging ghost of Kristen Gruber. The ghost pointed and spoke: “How about these pictures here?”
“We went bike riding.”
“Where?”
“The trail out in Loveland, that used to be train tracks.”
Will whispered, “Goddamn.”
“It’s a nice place,” Henderson said. “Do you go there often?”
“A few times.”
“Have you been there this spring?”
He nodded.
“Speak up, John.”
“Yes,” he said. “I was out there a few weeks ago.”
“With some friends?”
“Alone.”
Henderson flipped through her portfolio and put a photo of Lauren Benish in front of him.