Possession

Chapter Forty-nine

“So you can understand why we’re curious about where you were.”

As the question came at G.B., he kept his cool, smiling at the detective who was sitting across the interrogation table from him.

First thing this morning, he’d gotten the call to come down to the Caldwell Police Department, and of course he’d complied. He wasn’t stupid.

And he’d watched enough episodes of The First 48 to know how to act.

“You’re just doing your job,” G.B. said with a casual shrug. “But I don’t have anything else to tell you.”

Detective … what was his name? de la Truz? … smiled back. “Well, you could explain why you didn’t think to mention that you and Jennifer Espie had been in a relationship.”

G.B. linked his hands in his lap and was careful to hold eye contact steadily. “That’s because we weren’t.”

“If you want to mince words, fine. But you didn’t tell us you two were sleeping together.”

“It wasn’t a regular thing, Detective. Come on, I’m so busy with work, I have no personal life. She and I have some friends in common, and yeah, sure, we hooked up a couple of times, but it wasn’t anything serious. I just didn’t think it was relevant.”

“The girl was murdered in the theater you both work in, and you didn’t consider the idea that disclosing your past relations might be a good idea?”

“What can I say. I’m a singer, not a lawyer.”

The guy flipped through his little notebook. “I hear you’re an actor, too.”

“Rent’s my first musical.”

Brown eyes lifted. “The director says you’re a natural.”

“That’s really cool of him.”

“He says you’re able to summon emotion on a dime.”

“Well, that’s part of the gig, isn’t it?”

De la Whoever smiled again. “Yeah. It is. Which brings me to another question I have. One of the promoters for that jazz concert you sang backup in … what was that singer’s name? Millicent?”

“Millicent Jayson.”

“Yeah, that’s the one. Anyway, the promoter said before you went onstage that night, he saw you and Jennifer arguing in her office. You know, the one with all the glass?”

G.B. had expected this. “She was upset with me.”

“And why was that?”

“Like I told you, we didn’t have a regular thing going. She wanted that, though. And she got all up in my face.”

“About what?”

G.B. made a show of rubbing his jaw. “I had a woman come to see me that night, someone I was actually interested in. I asked management if I could use one of the comp tickets they’d reserved for VIPs—you know, if they had any left. They did, and Jennifer was supposed to leave it at will-call for my date. She was also supposed to get me backstage clearance. When I came to get the tags for backstage, she just went off on me.”

“Cait Douglass, right?”

Okay, it was a little surprise that they had that name. “Yeah, that’s her. The woman I invited, that is.”

“She was also supposed to meet you for lunch yesterday.”

“Yeah, she and I were going to grab a quick sandwich down in the break room. Obviously, because of what happened … we didn’t, yeah, you know.”

How in the hell did—

The detective pursued the fight angle for some time, prodding, prompting, clearly trying to trip things up. But G.B. just stayed on message and on tone—calm, cool, helpful and collected.

Eventually, the guy shut that notebook. “Well, there’s only one other thing I’ve got for you, then.”

“Fire away.”

“Why were you down in the basement the night Jennifer was killed?”

G.B. frowned. “I’m sorry?”

“I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but security cameras were installed about a month ago. The crime in that part of town has been rising, and the owners of the theater became concerned about break-ins. The stairwells are all monitored now. We have tape of you coming up the back about ten p.m.”

Fuck … him.

Wait a minute.

G.B. smiled and shrugged again. “I went down to do vocal exercises.”

“Excuse me?”

“I’m assuming you’ve been down in that hall, right?”

“Yes. I have.”

Because that was where the body had been, duh. Not that G.B. let on about that—after all, one of the easiest ways to incriminate yourself was to cop to details not provided to you.

“Well, then you know that it extends forever, like, almost from one end of the theater complex to the other. Naturally, it has the best acoustics in the building. I went down there to practice scales—the echoing is incredible; you can practically do a barbershop quartet with yourself.”

The detective’s eyes narrowed. “No one has reported hearing any singing that night.”

“But that’s the point. If you close the fire door at the base of the stairs, the sound isn’t going to carry.”

“You expect me to believe that you went down there to yodel on the same night that girl was murdered, and no one saw you or heard you singing.”

“Look, straight up? This production of Rent could be my big break. Yeah, Caldwell is a regional market, but I had to beat out fifty guys my age with my vocal range for this fucking part. The director is a prick—everyone knows it—but he’s also got a national reputation. If I don’t hit those notes? He’s going to throw me out and fill the part with somebody else.” He leaned. “And you actually think I wouldn’t be practicing late at night to get it right?”

“Well. You’ve got answers for everything, haven’t you.”

“I’m just telling the truth. Do with it what you will.” G.B. checked his watch. “Listen, I’m sorry to say this, but I have to go to a job in about a half hour.”

“Where you working at?”

“It’s a funeral. Maybe you know the girl? She was murdered a little while ago—Sissy Barten?”

The detective pushed a hand through his short-cropped hair. “Yeah. I know who she is.”

“You find out who did that yet?”

“Yup.”

“Good. I’m glad to hear it.” G.B. looked down. “Her family asked me to sing. I guess they’d heard me at her graduation from high school the year before—a friend of a friend got in touch with me, and like I was going to say no? It was horrible what happened to her.”

“What happened to Jennifer Espie was pretty horrible, too.”

“How was she killed, by the way?”

“That’s another thing I’ve been thinking about. May I see your hands?”

“Sure.” G.B. stretched them out palms down, then palms up.

There was nothing on them. But then, he used that pair of workman’s gloves, the kind that were rated for handling chemicals. Thick gloves, very thick—and they’d run up his forearms.

They were in the Hudson River now.

“Do you want to take samples or something?” he asked.

“Interesting idea to bring up. You watch a lot of CSI, by any chance?”

“No,” he lied.

“Jennifer was killed in a violent way.”

Yup. He’d walked down with her and taken her all the way around to the back exit, the one that was triple-locked, had no windows anywhere near it, and was practically in the next zip code from anyplace anyone usually was. The gloves had been in his back pockets, one jammed in each side, and she hadn’t even balked at the fact that he’d had them with him. He’d turned out the light, and talked to her until she’d given in to him; then he’d pivoted her around like he was going to fuck her from behind…

And slammed her face-first into the wall. Boom! Splash! Blood everywhere. And then he’d done it again, and again, and again…

Messy, very messy.

But he’d had to get it all out. In situations like that, when he’d done things just like that before, he’d always found that the violence was a purging—and the further he went with it, the cleaner he felt afterward.

When she was no longer twitching on the floor, he’d caught his breath, and had to start thinking. Yeah, he’d remembered to bring the gloves, but kind of like a session of really good sex, he tended to be a little spacey for a while afterward.

Next move was to get the fuck out of there—and clean the fuck up. That was how he’d ended up in that workroom … where the brunette had come to him.

The sex had been awesome, actually. What he was hoping, though, was that she had headed out of town right afterward—and that Jennifer’s murder didn’t go further than the local press.

What he really didn’t need was her connecting any dots for the CPD. And finding him with no shirt on in a room full of bleach fumes the night that some chick was killed in the basement?

“Would you let me?”

“I’m sorry?” he said, refocusing.

“Take samples from under your nails?”

“Sure. Absolutely.”

The detective knocked on the table and stood up. “This won’t take long. We’ll get you out fast so you can be at that funeral.”

“Thanks—and if you need anything else, just holler.”

“Oh, I will.” At the door, the detective paused. “You’ve got quite a following here in Caldie.”

“I’m just trying to make it, like anybody else.”

The man nodded. “If you decide to go out of town, or out of state, give me a call, will you?”

G.B. forced his brows to frown. “Am I a suspect or something?”

“Just consider it a courtesy at this point, okay?”

With that, G.B. was left alone in the bald little room. As his heart rate increased, his first instinct was to jump up and pace around, but he knew better. There were cameras in the corners.

Cameras that caught everything—

“Well … what do you know,” he whispered to himself, a kind of awe coming over him.

He was going to get away with this, after all. In spite of those stairwell cameras that he hadn’t known about—and which should have been as big a problem as that brunette for him.

Fate, however, had smiled upon him, hadn’t it. When he’d been in that workroom, before the brunette had come and found him? He remembered the lights flickering—and he was willing to bet his life on the fact that there had been some data loss associated with the power surge. Because this detective with the sharp eyes would have led with any record of G.B. and Jennifer going down those stairs together.

Which they had done right before he’d killed her.

Yeah, no “courtesy” for an out-of-town trip if the cops had that kind of evidence—he’d be in fucking custody.

Something had definitely happened to that security camera in the stairwell.

And thank God.

It was without a doubt his savior in all this, he thought with a smile.