So that’s how this maelstrom came together, like any storm system in nature, a confluence of circumstances. It’s as absurd as me running into Amy on a beach in Malibu after hunting her in Hollywood for months. How things come together in this universe, how they don’t, is unfair. I was so judicious with Amy. I let her go. I didn’t punish her. I think the justice system should see where I am now, how far I’ve come, all the good I have to lose. They should stop prodding into my past. It’s so vengeful, so middle school, the way they want to boil my entire life down into these two dead girls.
And I had no warning of the coming storm but because of Love, I was able to batten down the hatches. I have a lawyer named Edmund and he sits alongside me through every interrogation. He is my counsel. He nods when it’s okay to answer and he shakes his head when he wants me to be quiet. Edmund says to focus on the facts and reminds me that the cops have yet to produce any evidence that proves that I did anything. All they know for sure is that I like to use pseudonyms. In our first conversation, I reminded Detective Leonard Carr that lots of people use pseudonyms. “Look at authors,” I said. “Look at famous people who check into hotels.”
It’s been three days and life is never how you expect it to be. The food here isn’t bad. It isn’t good, per se, but I’m not starving. In the newspapers they call me Killer Joe and it’s disappointing, the failure of modern media, the lack of originality. Love visits me. Her father too. At night I worry. I wonder if there are other mugs of piss, if I forgot about them. I think about Charlotte & Charles. I daydream about Love. I think about the baby, running from Love to me and then back again. I dream of the baby learning to walk and I wake up ready to face my long days of cheap coffee and interrogations.
Leonard Carr is the good cop. He says I’m too smart to bother with bad cop and he says he won’t bore me with head games. But of course he’s boring me with head games. He thinks I’ll relax and accidentally admit to killing someone. He has kids. He should know better. But then, he’s human. We all are.
After lunch, he returns to the windowless room where we have our talks. He offers me water and he kicks his feet up. “So,” he says. “I’ve been thinking about Wolf of Wall Street.”
There is something springy about him and I break my rule about looking at the camera, the one focused on me all the time, all day, the glass orb hell bent on capturing me as I incriminate myself. Edmund nudges my leg, a reminder to stay calm. Detective Carr has new information. I know it. He’s excited, trying so hard not to show it that he’s showing it. But then, maybe that’s part of his strategy.
“Here’s what I like about the movie,” he says. “I like it when the guy eats the goldfish. It’s so simple. Something about it. That stayed with me. I’ve never seen anyone eat a goldfish. Have you?”
“No,” I say and I wonder what he knows. I am thirsty but I don’t drink the water.
“Not ever?” he asks.
“No,” I say. I would like to open his skull and find out what he knows so we can avoid this banter and I can get out of here and go on with my life.
He nods. “You didn’t see anything like that in Cabo?”
I look to Edmund. He nods. “No,” I say. “I didn’t see anyone eat a goldfish in Cabo.”
Fincher. What the fuck do they know about Fincher? My heart beats loud. I tell it to stop. It doesn’t listen to me. I do not control my heart. Nobody does. Detective Carr is still nodding. Torturing me. Scratching his neck. “Hey,” he says. “How’s your buddy Brian?”
Captain Fucking Dave. I swallow. “He’s fine.”
“Now, he sounds like a party animal to me, right?” He laughs. “A guy like that, I bet he would swallow a goldfish, yeah?”
“I don’t know,” I say.
Detective Carr stares at the wall. Edmund stares at me. There is a unique silence to this room and I know what happened. Captain Dave is a fearful man—Rules are rules, Joe—and when the cops asked him about our time in Cabo, he forked over every detail. He told them about my imaginary friend Brian, the one I invented when I was trying to get the boat so I could dump Fincher’s body. Now the police are going to want to talk to Brian and there are probably others on this case, cops poring over airline records, passport records, cops trying to find Brian the American who went to Cabo San Lucas. They aren’t going to find Brian. But they are going to realize that a cop named Robin Fincher flew to Cabo. They are going to see that he disappeared while I was in Cabo and I love Love, but this is America. If you kill a cop, they don’t let you go. Cops protect their own. They are the ultimate family, loyal to the end.
“How’d you meet Brian?” Detective Carr asks.
“At a party,” I say.
“Henderson’s party?”
Nice try, fucker. “No,” I say. “I didn’t meet him at Henderson’s party.”
Henderson, of course, is their favorite thing to talk about, the fact that I was there, that I was in his house, on YouTube, the night that he died. They think it’s too much coincidence. But they have no evidence.
“Sounds like you guys aren’t close,” he says.
“We aren’t,” I say. The days are long in here. I will not complain when I am free, staying up around the clock helping take care of the baby.
“Why did Love hate him so much?”
I look at him. “Huh?”
He smiles. I fucked up. Huh was the wrong thing to say. “They’re asking her right now,” he says. “Just one of those things, you know, we’re curious about you, Joe, the kind of people you run with and all.”
“I don’t know why she hated him,” I say. And this is that Newlyweds game show from before I was born, where they test your knowledge of your partner. But it’s not fair. We are not playing for a fucking vacation to Cabo. We are playing for my life, for my right to be a father to my child. My child. Love and I did not sign up for this but I have to play.
“Take a guess,” he says. He gets a text. He reads the text. He nods. “Huh,” he says. He is imitating me. He has Love’s answer and I don’t have Love’s answer and I don’t know what she would say.
“Joe, you don’t have to answer,” Edmund reminds me, but he’s wrong, I do. Detective Carr isn’t going to leave the room until I answer a question about someone who doesn’t exist or I will be one step closer toward a life without love. Milo will raise my baby. My baby will run into his arms.
My mind swirls. Brian doesn’t exist. There is no Brian. But Love answered the question. What did she say? This is like in Magnolia when the kid breaks down. I am cracking under pressure and Detective Carr knows it. He knocks his phone against the table and this is the sound of my life ending.
“Are you thirsty?” Detective Carr nudges the water toward me. “Go ahead,” he says. “Trust me, we didn’t slip anything in there.”
I look at him and I am doing it again, digging my own grave. Does he know about the cactus? Was there a camera at the house? Was there a camera in the sky? A drone? He sips his water. “When did Love meet Brian?” he asks. “Did she meet him before you left town to do the movie? Or did she meet him in Palm Springs?”
He could be lying. Love could have refused to answer the question. She might be playing the same game as I am. I try to imagine that I am Love, pregnant, in love, and there is a man asking me questions and if I say the wrong thing, the man I love so much will be gone. My heart beats faster and faster, and I wish I could carry it around in a rolling suitcase. It’s annoying, the way it’s connected to my other bodily functions, the way my little motherfucker pores allow sweat to weep upon my forehead, the way my asshole pupils shrink and expand and I can’t control them. I’m not a fucking sociopath.
Detective Carr puts his feet up on the desk again. “Joe,” he says. “What was Brian’s last name? Love can’t remember. Do you remember?”
Edmund looks at me meaningfully. “No,” I say. “I don’t remember.”
I don’t remember. The magic words, according to my attorney, according to Love. If I just keep
saying I don’t remember things, I will be out of here soon. I will not let Detective Carr break me. Love and I shouldn’t be playing the Newlywed Game. We’re not even married yet. I will my heart to take it easy and I sip the water and I can’t wait for this session to be over. I look forward to returning to my cage. I feel empowered when I’m in there, locked up.
Love is the key to happiness in life, and I have no doubt that it will set me free. Love, and Edmund, that’s all I need and I have it all, and I know that if I believe in Love and play by the rules—say nothing, remember nothing, say as little as possible, say nothing—I know I will be out of here soon, watching my child break out of Love’s vagina, my favorite place in the world.
If Love were here, in this room, she would wrap her arms around me and tell me why she hates Brian, what his last name is, share with me all the elaborate and specific details of when and where they met, how he offended her. I know it’s ludicrous to say such a thing. After all, Brian doesn’t exist. They never met. I invented him so I could get access to one of the boats. So because there is no such thing as Brian, there is nothing for Love to know. And yet I know she would know because that’s the thing about feeling so connected to someone, so entrenched, so attached. I believe she knows me better than I know myself, and hopefully I know her as well too.
“Joe,” he says.
“Yeah?”
“How did Love and Brian meet?”
I say nothing. What would Love say?
“What’s his last name?”
I say nothing. What would Love say?
“Why does she hate this guy?”
I say nothing. What would Love say? I know Love and I have to believe in myself right now. I have to walk out onto the plank and I have to jump. I stop sweating. My heart resets and my pores rest. This is it.
“First of all,” I begin. “I barely know that Brian guy. And the thing is, Love doesn’t hate him.”
He swallows and it’s an unmistakable sign that I passed the test. Love told the cops the same thing and I remember her exact words in the pool that day, talking about Sam the work bitch, our conversation in Little Compton about Forty. I don’t hate anyone, she said. When you love someone, you listen. You remember it all.
“Truthfully,” I say. “Love doesn’t really hate anybody.”
He clenches his jaw. “Yeah,” he says. “So I heard.”
Inside, I pump my fist. I knew it. I know her. I love her.
But most people in love face obstacles and here is ours, Detective Carr, back again, firing away: “But you told Captain Dave that Love hates this guy. Why?”
“I didn’t want to go here. Ray and Dottie have been through enough . . .” I work up some tears. My lawyer asks for a minute but I say no. “Look, Detective, I can’t stress this enough. I’d rather Ray and Dottie not know that Forty was involved in this, but well, fuck. Brian was Forty’s friend,” I say, and it’s the money shot, my would-have-been-brother-in-law saving me from the great beyond. “I just met him in Cabo. He and Forty got really fucked up and Forty didn’t want to just leave him out there, but he was too fucked up to deal with it himself.” I shrug. “I was just trying to do him a solid.”
“Why not let him crash at the party? La Groceria has more than a few spare bedrooms.” Detective Carr is the one sweating now, drumming his fingers on the table. And this is the beauty of reasonable doubt. He may suspect that I’m making this all up, but at the end of the day, he can’t prove that and Forty’s not around to tell him differently.
“Because it was our wrap party,” I say. “It wasn’t a free-for-all.”
“Who else met this Brian? Anyone alive, I mean?” he asks.
I shrug. “I don’t remember.”
I was worried I would sound sarcastic, like a senator’s son at a date rape trial, but I didn’t. I pulled it off. I took a leap of faith and made an educated guess on what Love said and I guessed correctly. I did it. We did it. Detective Carr is standing, irritated. He says it’s odd the way I know so many people who don’t fucking exist anymore and I let him rant. I don’t tell him that the last person who said that to me wound up dead.
I have my priorities in order: Love comes first, above all. She is patient and kind as the Corinthians say and I bring patience and kindness into this room as I watch this poor bastard pace. He’s older than me, more tired; he probably lives in Torrance, in some house full of Bud Light and expired coupons and firearms and soiled diapers. It can’t be easy, being a cop in California and he’s not very photogenic or articulate. I bet he never wanted to be an actor and I bet he wasn’t even in love with his wife when he proposed to her. I bet he was just with her and I bet she was dropping hints and I bet he was one of those guys who proposes because he’s thirty, because he figures it’s time to get married and settle down. I bet there was no love in his heart when he got down on one knee and asked the girl to marry him, not any more than usual, I mean.
“You can’t tell me anything else about this Brian?”
“I’m sorry,” I say. “For all I know, that wasn’t even his real name.”
“Don’t fuck with me.”
“I’m not fucking with you,” I say. “I met him briefly. He was Forty’s friend and Forty knew some shady people, you know. He did drugs, he got around.”
“It’s bad luck to speak ill of the dead.”
“I’m not speaking ill,” I say. “I’m trying to help you guys out.”
Detective Carr sits in his chair. In a way I think it would be terrible to live in LA devoid of aspirations. How would you do it? How would you put up with the traffic and the monotony of the sun, the way people use the word hella and lie so freely? How could you stand it here if you weren’t striving for something better? Oh that’s right; he liked The Wolf of Wall Street. He aspires to take someone down like me, a serial killer. But he chose the wrong guy. I am done with all that. And I will not let my past dictate my future.
He rubs his forehead. “You know, Joe,” he says. “We have all of our officers looking for Brian. You do know that we will find him. We’re gonna make sure he’s okay. We’re checking hotel records and we’re gonna find out all of it, who he was, what you did with him, why.”
“Okay,” I say.
“Okay,” he says, and I feel bad for him. He’s so close. And he’s going to get closer. He’ll come in here tomorrow talking about The Godfather Part III and asking me if I heard about a cop disappearing in Mexico, a guy named Fincher who also visited the set of Boots and Puppies. But the thing is, it’s all circumstantial evidence. It’s not enough to keep me here. I was very good at killing people when I needed to be.
Was. The past tense. I’m retired.
And really, when you grow up, and get over yourself, when you fuck narcissism and leave the hashtags at the door, you see what really matters in life. What matters is what you do next. I get it. And this is America. You have to prove that someone did something and they can’t prove that I did anything.
In Fast Five, Dom is in a prison bus, glum. His friends force the bus to crash so they can free him. But my team doesn’t have to do that for me. They won’t be able to convict me or get me on a bus because there is no evidence of my past actions. Well, aside from the baby growing inside of Love.
Prison isn’t that bad and I treasure the solitude. From everything I know about parenting, I expect that in a few months, I’ll be glad I got to spend some time alone before becoming a father. We all need to be with our thoughts. Angelenos like to meditate and stare at expensive statues of Buddha, and I stare at the cement. Same difference. I learn to smile at everyone and I feel the world reciprocate.
The guards are polite. And then when I’m not alone, I’m in the room. I kind of like it in there, the way Detective Carr challenges me every day. My lawyer says I’m damn good under pressure. This is all great research for my screenwriting career and I can see myself writing a movie that takes place during a trial. I use this time to learn how to become the best possible father, to figur
e out how to provide for my family. One day Love and I will be buried together or cremated, I haven’t decided yet, and Detective Carr will undoubtedly spend eternity in a plot selected by his controlling wife.
“Don’t move,” Detective Carr says. He leaves and this is the most awkward time for me, when I am the most afraid for my safety, when I know they are watching me, studying my face, trying so hard to figure me out, talking shit about me, speculating. I have no phone to play with, no TV to watch. I look into the orb that connects me to them. I wait. In my head, I recite Corinthians; Love is patient, love is kind.
This is how you get away with murder, how you get out of the interrogation room—a woman cop comes for me okay, let’s move you back—and this how you get escorted into the safety of your cell, locked up, left alone to recover from the day’s needling, to dream of what might come tomorrow or the next day. You believe in love. It really is all you need, although yes, a solid defense attorney helps too. But I do believe in love, in Love, and when it’s time, I will hold our baby. The thought soothes me and the mattress feels softer.
Life puts you in cage so that you’ll treasure your freedom, how lucky you were to be running on a beach, the way your girlfriend looked over her shoulder at you, the ring you did not fashion out of a straw. All time is good. No time is hard, not if you think of it as time to celebrate love.
I roll over into the fetal position and I think of my child, in the same position, so much younger, unconscious, gestating, serving time just like Daddy, waiting. It doesn’t fully exist yet, but Love and I created a human, a boy or a girl, we don’t know, can’t know. It’s too early. You could say the same thing about my fate. The future is a frontier we can’t fully explore until we make it there, but then we arrive, and the distant horizon has become something else, something less romantic. It’s just the present—the mattress coils in my back, the bars on my cell, Love waiting for me to come home.
You think about this stuff in jail so you don’t go crazy. You realize your intuition is stronger than science, truer than a molecule. I feel it in my caged gut. I will be free soon. I also know that we’re going to have a baby girl. I don’t have to close my eyes to see her, a little version of Love with my dark irises on her heart-shaped face. I smile. We exist. We are both on a journey and we are both in love and that’s all anyone can hope for in life.
Hidden Bodies Page 36