Believe Me

by JP Delaney

  “We need to be clear what we want to happen, and how we intend to control events to achieve that outcome,” she’s saying. “I’d half-hoped for a pillow-talk confession, but it seems that moment has passed.”

  “What do you suggest, Kathryn?” Frank asks.

  I tune them out and watch sunlight diffracting through a bottle of Evian on the table. A disk of light on the ceiling becomes an ellipse, then a figure-eight, then fattens once again into a disk.

  He loves me he loves me he loves me he loves me…

  “Claire? Do you agree with what Kathryn’s saying?”

  I drag my attention back to them. “Agree with what?”

  Kathryn sighs. “As you know, I had my doubts about the path we’ve gone down. Now that we’re here, though, we have to consider how best to use this clearly intense relationship that’s developing.”

  “In what way?”

  “I think we should change the narrative. If Patrick’s a killer, in part it’s because he feels he’s been betrayed by women. I suggest we have you betray him.”

  “You mean—let him catch me with somebody else?” I say incredulously.

  “Why not? If he’s as hooked on you as he appears to be, he’ll be angry. For an ordinary man, that anger might be expressed verbally. If he’s a killer, perhaps he’ll become violent.”

  “Jesus, Kathryn. It’s a high-risk strategy,” Frank says.

  She shrugs. “Do you have a better suggestion?”

  “I’m not doing it,” I say without hesitation.

  “You’re the actress,” Kathryn says. “You don’t get to write the script.”

  “If we do that to Patrick,” I begin, then stop. He’ll hate me, I want to say. He’ll never trust me again.

  But of course, that’s exactly why Kathryn’s proposing it.

  I’ve finally found a man I don’t want to mess with. And here I am, about to do just that.

  I hear Paul’s voice in my head. There’s a reason we talk about getting in touch with your feelings—the best actors have something still and calm at their center. A kind of integrity…

  I set down my glass of water and stand up. “I’m out,” I say quietly.

  “You’re what?” Frank frowns.

  “I’m not doing this anymore.”

  “Oh, for pity’s sake,” Kathryn says. “Claire, stop showing off and sit down.”

  “I mean it. It’s over. Sorry.”

  Kathryn looks at Frank. “Detective?” she says. In that instant I realize they’ve discussed this contingency, planned for it; that Frank’s now supposed to say or do something to stop me.

  But he doesn’t. He says heavily, “Well, Claire, I guess that’s your choice.”

  “Tell her, Frank,” Kathryn insists. “Or I will.”

  “Tell me what?”

  “If you pull out, you’ll be put on a plane back to the UK.”

  I stare at her.

  “You signed the contract,” she adds.

  “I didn’t read the contract. You didn’t give me time.”

  Kathryn shrugs.

  “We couldn’t take the risk of you giving up partway through,” Frank says apologetically.

  “We still can’t,” Kathryn adds. “This isn’t over until I say it’s over.” The look she gives me has no more concern or compassion than if I were a lab rat. “Now, shall we get back to work?”

  45

  “You’re quiet tonight, Claire.”

  Patrick climbs back onto the bed with a bottle of wine and two glasses. “Is everything all right?” he adds.

  “Of course.” I sit up and force a smile. “Just a little…thoughtful, that’s all.”

  He smiles back. “So tell me what you’re thinking about.”

  I sigh. “If only I could.”

  In my head, I was replaying the blazing argument I’d had with Kathryn and Frank after I’d found out what would happen if I pulled out of the operation. I’d shouted, pleaded, even wept; all to no avail.

  I’m trapped. Just a puppet, a zombie. Parroting their lines, performing their moves.

  How did it ever come to this?

  Kathryn isn’t going to stop until she’s got something she can use as evidence against Patrick, I’ve realized. However tenuous it is, however ambiguous, she’ll pounce on something he eventually says or does and then use it to get him locked up.

  Even if it’s just an orphan’s understandable rage at being betrayed by the woman he loves. The woman he thought loved him unconditionally in return.

  “I thought we were going to trust each other with the very worst things inside our heads,” Patrick says gently. “Believe me, Claire, there’s nothing you could tell me now that would change how I feel about you.”

  Wait till you discover what Kathryn’s got planned for you, I think.

  But then I think: What if I did tell him?

  The idea is so crazy, and at the same time so brilliantly simple, that I almost gasp out loud.

  What if I break character? What if I tell Patrick everything?

  If he and I are to have any chance of a future, he has to know the truth about me sometime. But once he knows, the sting’s over. I’ll be deported.

  Unless—and now my mind is racing—I tell him without Frank and Kathryn knowing. If I let Patrick in on the secret. And together, we go on fooling Frank and Kathryn until they lose interest in him.

  Instead of entrapping him, I could be the one to save him.

  “Why are you smiling, Claire?” he asks.

  “Hold that thought,” I say, jumping up. “Hold that thought and don’t go away. There’s something I need to tell you—something really shocking. Something…” I stop, aware of the enormity of what I’m about to do. “Something that’ll probably blow your mind. I’m going to take a quick shower. Then we’ll talk.”

  “I can’t wait,” Patrick says. He sounds amused.

  * * *

  —

  Pausing only to grab a robe, I go to the bathroom. I take the microphone necklace from where it was hidden in the pocket of my jeans and ram it deep into Patrick’s laundry basket, piling towels over it.

  Sorry, Kathryn. But you shouldn’t have tried to force my hand.

  I take a breath, focusing, centering myself, quickly running through the scene ahead in my mind. How I should stand, what I should say. And my tone. Serious? Excited? Apologetic? Tearful? No: calm, I decide. After all, it’ll be a lot for him to take in. And I’ll only get one shot at it. No second goes, no retakes.

  Just for a moment, it crosses my mind that Patrick might be angry with me. I remember his flash of temper in the theater, Raoul’s bleeding face.

  But this will be different. Believe me, Claire, there’s nothing you could tell me now that would change how I feel about you. I have to trust in that.

  I’m scared—terrified—but also happy. I know there’s a chance this will backfire. But there’s also a possibility, however slim, that he’ll understand the pressure I was under and forgive me. And that slim chance is all I need to make me feel giddy with joy.

  Finally, we might be able to love each other without all this deception.

  I turn on the shower and reach for the shower gel. The bottle slips through my wet fingers and rolls behind the washbasin. I crouch down to pick it up.

  And that’s when I see it—a wire, as thin as a strand of vermicelli, clinging to the back of the porcelain.

  I touch it. It’s sticky. Getting one nail underneath it, I gently pry it away. It leads up around the taps and through a tiny hole. I follow it to where it disappears behind the mirror.

  For a moment I stare at my own reflection, not believing.

  Then I pull the mirror off the wall and turn it over. Stuck to the underside, where a tiny aperture has been scratched in the silver, is an ele
ctronic chip. A miniature surveillance camera.

  I know that’s what it is because it’s the exact same type as the ones they installed in my apartment too.

  What does it mean? I can’t get my head around this. Frank always told me the reason I had to wear the necklace at all times was because they couldn’t risk bugging Patrick’s apartment. So how did this get here?

  Breathless now, I follow the wire the other way, down to the floor, pulling it away from the wall. The strand of wire lifts itself from a gap between the tiles, like a mooring rope on a beach lifting out of the sand.

  I follow it to a cupboard. Where it goes into a junction box. Nestling there like a big black spider, its legs the multitude of wires that spread in different directions.

  Not just one camera. Dozens of them, all over the apartment. And wires everywhere. So many, there’s no way Patrick can’t be aware of them.

  I rip the junction box from its hiding place.

  Believe me, Claire, there’s nothing you could tell me now that would change how I feel about you…

  “Oh, you fucker,” I say out loud. I say it in my real, British accent. Because I’ve just realized what this means. Why there’s no point in pretending anymore.

  Patrick knows these wires are here.

  He’s not the suspect.

  I am.

  46

  A series of rewrites and flashbacks, tumbling through my brain.

  FRANK

  Detective, shall we confer outside?

  INT. POLICE HEADQUARTERS—CORRIDOR—CONTINUOUS

  The two detectives speak in the corridor, their voices low.

  DETECTIVE DAVIES

  Either she’s telling the truth, or she deserves an Oscar.

  FRANK

  So where does that leave us?

  DETECTIVE DAVIES

  The husband?

  FRANK

  Or the possibility that she really is that good.

  DETECTIVE DAVIES

  Let’s dig into Claire Wright a little deeper, shall we?

  Which, presumably, they did. And unfortunately:

  DETECTIVE DAVIES

  She has a partial alibi, but the man she went home with that night was drunk and can’t remember what time she left his apartment. She could easily have gone back to Stella’s hotel.

  The scene now playing out in Detective Durban’s head has changed.

  INT. LEXINGTON HOTEL, CORRIDOR—NIGHT

  I knock on the door of Stella’s room.

  ME

  Mrs. Fogler? Stella? It’s Claire…I have something of Patrick’s.

  There’s no answer at first. Then Stella opens the door, a glass in her hand. She’s swaying.

  STELLA

  Oh, it’s you. The girl who couldn’t pick up my husband. What do you want?

  ME

  We shouldn’t do this out here.

  And then, a series of unfortunate coincidences.

  INT. POLICE INTERVIEW ROOM—DAY

  HENRY

  So according to this lawyer, Rick, Claire got into her part a little too deep. A thousand dollars’ worth of deep, to be exact.

  Followed by coincidence number two:

  INT. POLICE HEADQUARTERS OFFICE—DAY

  DETECTIVE DAVIES

  The producer is claiming she assaulted him, pulled a gun…then demanded money not to send the video to his wife. And this was the same night she went on to work for Stella. She could have had the gun on her the whole time, used it to threaten Stella…then something went wrong and a fight broke out.

  FRANK

  Jesus…Any proof he’s telling the truth?

  DETECTIVE DAVIES

  Just the security tape of her leaving his office. She signs herself out like she doesn’t have a friggin’ care in the world. But you can see the gun sticking out of her bag.

  INT. POLICE HEADQUARTERS OFFICE—DAY

  FRANK

  But if Claire was involved in Stella Fogler’s death, why the postmortem wounds to Stella’s body?

  DETECTIVE DAVIES

  She had the book of poems. Maybe that’s where she got the idea. She realized rigging the murder scene like that would divert attention from the robbery.

  FRANK

  Right down to the condom residue?

  DETECTIVE DAVIES

  Girls who have a lot of casual sex often carry their own rubbers. She could have pushed one into the wound on Stella’s thigh, hoping our forensic guys would pick up on it and we’d jump to the conclusion our perpetrator was a male. As, in fact, we did.

  FRANK

  Only a sociopath could think that coolly when they’ve just bludgeoned someone to death.

  DETECTIVE DAVIES

  Or someone who’s used to performing under pressure. On stage, for example.

  FRANK

  Okay. She’s a suspect.

  And then, many weeks later:

  INT. KATHRYN LATHAM’S OFFICE—DAY

  FRANK

  So we have almost nothing…except this actress, Claire Wright.

  KATHYRN

  Interesting. I’m wondering…What if we let her think she’s been eliminated, as a pretext for getting her in and running some psychological tests on her?

  FRANK

  Is that legal?

  KATHYRN

  It is if we get her to sign the right consent forms. We can tell her she’s helping me build a profile of the killer. She’ll like that, I think—the idea she’s managed to insinuate herself into the investigation.

  FRANK

  At what point do we tell her she’s a suspect?

  KATHYRN

  If she doesn’t eliminate herself, maybe never. We’ll cook up some melodramatic story about Patrick and the poems—something that’ll appeal to her sense of theater.

  The Wechsler. The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory. The Hare Psychopathy Checklist…

  Even at the time, I’d thought it odd they needed to test me for psychopathy.

  Luring me in with the bait they knew I’d go for. First the video camera, recording me. Putting me on show. And then the appeal to my vanity—

  INT. OBSERVATION ROOM—DAY

  DETECTIVE DURBAN’S VOICE

  Sure, we have female cops who’d do it. No disrespect to my colleagues, but have you seen them? I think Claire would stand a better chance of getting under his defenses.

  KATHRYN LATHAM’S VOICE

  Didn’t work last time.

  DETECTIVE DURBAN’S VOICE

  He gave her the book. You said yourself—for him, that’s intimacy.

  Waiting to see if I’d burst in and demand a part in their operation. To insinuate herself into the investigation.

  KATHRYN

  Very good, Claire. It’s Freudian bullshit, of course. But I am impressed with the way you took my suggestion and ran with it. And the tears are a nice touch.

  Meaning: You might just be our killer, after all.

  47

  I run into the bedroom, the junction box still in my hand, and hurl it on the bed. “What’s this?” I demand.

  Patrick looks startled. “What—”

  “You already know most of what I was about to tell you, don’t you? You know a hell of a lot, in fact.”

  He blinks at me.

  “What did they fucking tell you?” I yell.

  “They told me you might have killed my wife,” he says quietly. “They came to me after I got back from Europe and told me you could be her murderer. It seemed to explain so many of the things you’d said, the way you’d behaved…And when they told me you’d been in Stella’s suite that night, and that you’d had a gun…”
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  “Don’t you get it?” I say incredulously. “I’ve always trusted you. Not them—you. And you—you betraying, evil fucker—” I start to pummel him, my fists bouncing uselessly off his hard, lean body. “I fell in love with you,” I howl. Even now, in these unimaginably awful circumstances, it feels good to finally say those words out loud. “They told me not to, but I was too damn stupid. Patrick, don’t you understand? I love you.”

  Only when I go for his face does he finally pin my arms to my sides. “Christ, Claire, calm down—”

  Then the door crashes open and Frank Durban’s pulling me off him. I let myself be pulled. It doesn’t matter now, anyway. Nothing matters.

  “Claire Wright, I’m arresting you on suspicion of the murder of Stella Fogler—” he begins.

  With a yell of rage I shove him away. As he stumbles, I duck under his arm, the stage-fight training finally coming in useful, and run. I’ve no idea where I’m going. I only know that my whole world, my reality, has just been turned upside down.

  “Shit,” I hear Frank say as he crashes after me. “Shit.” And, into his radio, “Urgent assistance.”

  48

  Eventually, I go to Jess’s. There’s been no further sign of the cops since I gave Frank the slip and I can’t think of anywhere else.

  But Jess isn’t there and I don’t have my keys. I buy a bottle of vodka and wait but she doesn’t show.