Tripp looked better than he had the day before, but not by much. He’d obviously gotten to take a shower and put on another nicely tailored suit, but he didn’t look like he’d gotten that much sleep. He took me by the elbow and led me to my dining table. Hanson barked instructions to the search crew.
“Why did you get a search warrant?” I asked. “I would have let you back in.”
“This is now a murder investigation,” Hanson snarled.
This was now a murder investigation. It was like a slap in the face, a slap in the face that made sense. All the pieces that hadn’t fit began to fit. Eddie didn’t deliberately pee in my bed. The bladder releases as part of the death process -- I knew that. It was the kind of thing Jeremy talked about. He’d toss out useless facts like that over dinner. Even though it always upset--
Oh my God, someone had killed Eddie in my bed. Someone had come into my house and killed him. Eddie hadn’t ordered Chinese food and then decided to kill himself. He’d ordered Chinese food, planned to have dinner with me, and instead he’d been murdered. By someone, someone he’d let into my home. Someone he knew?
I felt like an idiot. Why hadn’t I seen this before? If it was a TV show, I would have. But no one expects their own life to suddenly morph into an episode of Forensic Files. It’s real life. In real life, someone you barely know doesn’t get murdered in your bed while you’re at the gym. That happens to other people.
I looked down at the search warrant in my hand. It meant something. Something important. I tried to grasp exactly what. They’d gotten a search warrant because…they thought I might not let them in. They thought they had to have everything nice and legal to build their case. For when they arrested someone. Me? Was I the suspect?
Detective Tripp asked me to sit down. I didn’t. Then he said, in a voice smooth as silk, “Tell me again how you met Javier.”
I could tell from his face he already knew the answer. “On massageformen.com. I answered his ad.”
“You weren’t dating him. You hired him.”
“The first time I hired him. The second time was a date.” That seemed like a lie, even to me.
“People like Javier don’t date their clients.”
“Except he did.”
“Why didn’t you tell me how you met before?” He was obviously displeased with me.
“I thought his family might not know what he was doing. I thought maybe they shouldn’t find out. I was trying to be nice.” He gave me a hard look. I could tell he was trying to figure out why I was lying, even though I wasn’t. I stared right back at him and asked, “Why would I lie about things like that?”
Tripp smiled wryly. “Some people lie just to lie.”
“Tell me what’s going on. This isn’t making any sense.”
Before Tripp could answer, his partner came over and explained, “We’re searching your home, your garage, your car. We’re going to be taking your computer and your cell phone. It’s all in the warrant I handed you.”
“Why would you do that?”
Ignoring my question, Hanson set a briefcase down on my dining table and opened it. She pulled out a plastic evidence bag and held it up so I could see it. Inside was a brown belt I’d bought two years before at a discount store. “Is this yours?” she asked.
“Probably.” Well, mine wasn’t the only one in the world.
“Do you have any idea why Javier might have hung himself with your belt?” she asked.
I didn’t. All I could think to say was, “I don’t remember him wearing a belt. It must have been the only one he could find.”
“Wrong answer.”
“He was wearing a belt?” I guessed. I had the sensation of being on a surrealist game show. I wasn’t winning.
“Javier didn’t hang himself. He was strangled,” Tripp explained, earning himself a glare from Hanson.
“No…he killed himself,” I insisted.
“No. He didn’t.”
I sat down, struggling with the idea. Looking around my house, police officers seemed to be everywhere. Picking things up. Looking in drawers. Touching everything.
“You said you were at the gym?” Hanson asked.
“Yes. I got there about six or so. I left a couple hours--”
“You belong to Holiday Fitness?”
“Yes.” I wondered how she got this information. Were they that plugged in?
“They don’t have a record of your being there.”
“The scanner was down. Or the girl was being flaky.”
“Which?”
“I don’t know. I just remember she didn’t scan my card.”
“Convenient,” Hanson said under her breath.
“Did anyone see you there?” Tripp asked. “Anyone you talked to? Someone who might remember you?”
Obviously, I couldn’t tell them about masturbating in the shower with Stripes. “I’ll have to think about that. Why do you think someone killed Eddie?”
“The autopsy revealed bruises on his neck consistent with strangulation,” Tripp said.
Hanson cleared her throat in a dramatic way. “Can I talk to you a minute?” She pulled him away to the other side of my living room. They had a whispered disagreement. I wondered if they were setting up some kind of good cop/bad cop game, if this was all part of a strategy.
I heard Hanson say, “I’m primary on this. It plays out my way.” Tripp defended himself, though I didn’t hear exactly what he said. She responded with, “Don’t fuck this up for me.” Her voice sounded like an angry wife laying down the law to her husband.
It didn’t matter, though. As I listened, I relaxed. The whole thing was a misunderstanding, and they were about to figure that out.
When they came back I said, “You’ve made a mistake. You asked me about the bruises the first time you were here. Don’t you remember? Eddie...I mean, Javier...he had them already. He told me he tripped--”
“These are different bruises,” Tripp explained, and my stomach sank. “New bruises. Sometimes, after death it takes time for bruises to--”
“You have a history of violence,” Hanson accused.
“What?” I asked, completely shocked. “No, I’m not a violent--”
“You were arrested for assault last November.”
“The charges were dropped. It was a misunderstanding.”
“You beat up your boyfriend. He required stitches.”
The lowest point of my breakup with Jeremy had come just before Thanksgiving when I discovered he’d cleaned out the money market which held the funds from the second mortgage. I’d insisted he come over to discuss the problem, and after a great deal of shouting, I slapped him in the face. He slapped me back, and before I knew it we’d taken a couple swings at each other. It wouldn’t have been a big deal -- well, a big deal to anyone but us -- except that it had taken place on the front lawn and Mrs. Enders had called the police.
I tried to stare Hanson down, but didn’t do such a good job. “Jeremy fell. Hit his head.”
She smirked. “Do you have any idea how often I hear that?”
Then I realized what was happening. Yeah, I should have figured it out before. Maybe I should have even been expecting it. “You think I killed Eddie. Why? Why would I kill him? I barely knew him.”
“How long have you been into scarfing?” Hanson asked.
“I don’t know what that is,” I said truthfully.
“Yes, you do,” she insisted. The look on her face made it clear she found whatever it was disgusting.
“Erotic asphyxiation,” Tripp explained helpfully. Immediately, I flashed to what I’d done with Jeremy just the day before. I suppose I did know what it was, sort of. Was it just a coincidence that Jeremy wanted to do that? Or was there more to it?
Tripp continued, “It’s the kind of thing that sometimes gets out of hand. People
make mistakes. Did you make a mistake?”
“What a minute. Which is it? Am I violent killer? Or pervert who screwed up? Maybe the two of you need to go figure out which one you’re going for.”
Hanson gave me a mean look. “We don’t know. That’s why we’re asking you.”
“Neither. I’m neither.”
One of the officers came over and pulled Hanson and Tripp aside. The officer held a fingerprint brush in one hand. They talked for a minute or so while I waited. When they turned back to me, Tripp asked, “Do you have a maid?”
“I can’t afford it. Why? Are you going to arrest me for poor housekeeping?” I almost bit my tongue after I said it. Being a smart ass wasn’t going to convince them of my innocence. Hanson glared at me.
“Surfaces have been wiped clean,” Tripp explained.
“You don’t have to give the suspect all the information,” Hanson hissed under her breath. “Let him answer.”
I struggled not to freak out. She’d called me a suspect. I couldn’t believe…I forced myself to focus. I’d cleaned the living room. Well, apparently that was a mistake.
“I cleaned my living room. I live here. Isn’t that okay?”
“Not just the living room,” Tripp said. “We’re not finding fingerprints anywhere in your bedroom, either.”
“I only cleaned the living room.”
They stared at me. Like they expected me to confess something.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “You think I’m trying to wipe away fingerprints? That’s crazy. I live here. It’s logical my fingerprints would be here. And you know Eddie was here. I told you, he spent the night. It makes sense that his fingerprints would be here. So whose fingerprints do you think--”
Something occurred to me. I flashed on walking into my house feeling like someone had been inside. “Someone’s been in here. Yesterday. I wasn’t sure, but now I am. They must have come in to wipe everything down. To get rid of their fingerprints.”
Hanson looked at me like I’d just claimed I could make a nuclear bomb out of laundry detergent, string, and a can of baked beans.
“Or you wiped everything down so you could say dumb ass things just like that,” she said. “Some time between Wednesday night and this morning, you got nervous. Figured you need a back-up plan. Wiped everything down so it would seem like someone else had been in here.”
“Or someone else has actually been here,” I said. “Someone was here the night Eddie--”
An officer walked over holding one of the boxes from the garage. He whispered a few words to Detective Hanson and then put the box on the table. She looked inside, then began to take DVDs out of the box and spread them across my dining table. The DVDs were pornos depicting bondage, water sports, fisting.
“Those aren’t mine,” I said quickly. “They belong to my ex. He’s curious.”
Actually, Jeremy was something of a sexual dilettante. He liked to know about fetish behavior, he liked to give it a try, but he never settled on just one thing. His little performance the other morning wasn’t out of character. Not that it made it any more fun to think about. But nothing stuck with Jeremy. The little I knew about the fetish world suggested people found what they liked and stuck with it. Jeremy was a tourist.
The look on Hanson’s face made it clear that, in her opinion, kink was kink. If she could prove I liked any kind of fetish behavior, it meant that I would have enjoyed squeezing the life out of Javier Hernandez.
“Do I need a lawyer?”
“Guilty people need lawyers,” Hanson said. “Are you a guilty person?”
She had me trapped. She’d decided I’d done it, and if I asked for a lawyer that just proved it to her. I was screwed either way. They didn’t seem to be arresting me, they hadn’t read me my rights, they hadn’t offered to provide a lawyer...so, if I asked for a lawyer now it would cost me money I didn’t have.
“I don’t have to answer your questions, do I? Legally, I mean.”
Hanson and Tripp looked at each other. He answered, “That’s right. You can refuse to answer questions.”
“I refuse then.” If I really needed a lawyer, I could figure out how to get one later. In the meantime, I shouldn’t make things any worse. “I’m not saying anything else.”
“You’re not helping yourself,” Detective Hanson said.
I kept my mouth shut.
After a few moments, they walked away, leaving me alone at the table. I couldn’t believe they thought I killed Eddie. I watched an officer walk out of the house with my laptop. I looked at the search warrant that I still held in my hand. What guarantee did I have they wouldn’t fake evidence? For all I knew, they’ve been sitting in my bedroom looking up websites on “scarfing” just so they could say that I was into that.
Wow, I couldn’t tell you the number of times I’d heard stories about the police faking evidence and never once believed them. But now, it was suddenly a very real possibility that they operated exactly that way. And if they did, I was sunk. I was going to jail. My life was ruined.
Somehow, I had to protect myself, but I had no idea how. A lawyer was out of the question. I might be able to handle some of this on my own, but how would I do that without my computer? Or even my cell phone? I looked up and Tripp was staring down at me. I hadn’t noticed his footsteps as he walked over to me. His jaw was set in a very deliberate way. “Where’s your mattress?”
I couldn’t answer that. It would just me look worse.
“She thinks I killed him. What do you think?”
He gave me a hard look. A chill ran down my spine. “I think Javier was alive when he was hung. That means he was strangled into unconsciousness somewhere else, possibly the bedroom. Then he was dragged out to the garage and hung.” He left an uncomfortable pause. “When a person loses consciousness, they void their bladders. They defecate. Is that why you had to get rid of the mattress?”
“You were in here that night. Did you notice anything?”
He frowned at me, angry. Then pulled himself together. “Matt, if you made a mistake. If you and Eddie were messing around and you fucked up...you need to say that. You need to say it now. The longer you keep that quiet, the worse it will be for you.”
All I could think was how kind his eyes were, how comforting his voice was. Even though he was accusing me of murder, he remained kind. If I had made a mistake, I would have confessed it right then. But I hadn’t.
“I told you what happened.”
Chapter Eleven
The police left around eleven that morning. After shutting the door behind them, I spent an hour doing nothing but panicking. Pacing around my house, staring at the mess the police had made, thinking, “I can’t go to jail. I can’t.” I’d been a fan of On the Inside, a pay TV show about prison life, but that didn’t mean I’d be able to do it myself. Besides, no matter how bad they made it look on TV, it sounded even worse when you read about it in the newspaper. I was terrified.
I had to get a grip on myself and do something. Something constructive. Without showering or changing my clothes, I walked out of the house and got into the car. Then I drove to the Horizon Wireless Store on Sunset to get my phone replaced.
After I explained that I needed a new phone, the twenty-something, tattooed clerk looked at me, waiting to hear the story of how I lost, dropped or otherwise disposed of my last phone. I’m sure he’d heard some good ones. I, however, was in no mood to tell him the police had confiscated mine.
I could have gotten free flip phone (though it would have still cost about fifty bucks, which I thought was a lot for a free phone), but I was used to having a smart phone and I didn’t have my computer so I upgraded to an Ollea 3000. It would provide me with Internet access, and I’d be able to get my email. I’d miss my laptop, but I’d be able to function.
Horizon Wireless, AKA the Evil-Cell-Phone-Company, added a coupl
e more years to my contract and nailed me for more than two hundred bucks (the water bill would go unpaid this month). The good news was they shut off my other phone. At least the police wouldn’t be able to run up my bill calling long lost relatives all over the world.
Having made a couple decisions, I felt better. Sure they had nothing to do with keeping me out of jail, but they were decisions, right? I got into my car and read the box to figure out the phone’s features. I’d bought the car charger, so I plugged it in and turned the phone on. I wanted to call Peter. I needed to talk to a friend. But I couldn’t remember his cell number. I’d plugged it into my phone when he gave it to me and never thought about it again. Crap. I called information to see if his landline was listed. It was, so I called that. I left a message. “Okay, so something else bad happened and this time it did happen to me. I don’t have your cell number. Yes, I lost my cell phone. I’ll explain when you call. So, call. Soon.” When I hung up, I wondered if he ever checked his landline for messages.
Suddenly, I remembered Eddie’s second phone. As far as I knew, the police hadn’t found it when they searched my house. And they should have. It should have been there somewhere. Unless Eddie’s killer took it. Did his killer have the phone? Had he destroyed it? Thrown it down on a cement driveway and stomped on it, or tossed it into a sewer? But why do that?
The phone company tracked all calls. It wasn’t as though any information on the phone couldn’t be gotten from them. Well, that wasn’t completely true. There’d be an address book of some kind. Which might be backed up on Eddie’s computer. Or there could be photos. Even video. You couldn’t get those from the phone company. But anything like that would likely be on Eddie’s computer, as well.
I began to relax and walked back to my car. The police would get Eddie’s phone records soon enough, and they’d see calls from the killer. How long would that take, I wondered? On TV it was practically instant. But in the real world it would take, what? A week? Two? Six months? Of course, there would be calls from me and to me. That’s what they’d be most interested in, since they thought I did it. They might not even look at the other calls.
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