The Good Lie by A.R. Torre
CHAPTER 28
Nita watched as her husband put their Range Rover in park, the movement deliberately slow, all of them dreading this moment. She twisted to unlock her belt and glanced into the back seat, where Scott sat, his body slumped against the window, his gaze out on the police parking lot.
“I don’t want to go back in there,” he said quietly. “You know what they did to me last time.”
She closed her eyes, blocking out the memory. The medical examiner had told her that it would be quick—a DNA swab of his genitals and a rape exam kit. It had just taken fifteen minutes, and Scott hadn’t met her eyes when he’d come back to the waiting room. He’d even walked differently. She thought of college, when her roommate had gotten drunk and blacked out and Nita had taken her the following day to the women’s crisis center to see if she had been raped. Her roommate had sobbed the entire way home and said that she would have rather not known than undergone that exam.
“They’re just going to ask you questions.” Their attorney, who had gone to college with George, spoke up from behind her. “And I’ll be right there.”
“But I have to answer all their questions?”
“I’ll step in if they ask you anything that is inappropriate. But we need you to be honest with them, Scott. It’ll help with their case against Mr. Thompson.”
Scott limply pulled on the door release handle and slowly stepped out of the car. Nita met her husband’s eyes.
George gave her a reassuring smile. “It’ll be okay,” he said quietly.
But would it? How could it ever be okay again?
As they moved down the hall of the police station, the heel of Nita’s sandal caught on an uneven piece of flooring, and she stumbled forward. George caught her, helping her back upright, and she smiled at him in gratitude. She should have worn flats. After months in her pajamas and slippers, she felt off-balance in high heels. Assuming she didn’t fall flat on her face, they just needed to get through this questioning so they could get back home. They weren’t criminals, and Scott wasn’t under suspicion. While there would eventually be a trial, for now, they could knock out these inquiries, then get back in their Range Rover and go to lunch. She could sip an ice-cold mimosa and they could discuss college. Not Vanderbilt, not anymore. He should be closer to home, given everything that had happened. Pepperdine would be perfect. Small, private, and safe.
Crowding into the small viewing room, she looked through the glass at Scott, who was seated, their attorney right beside him. Juan was good, though criminal law wasn’t his specialty. Still, he’d known Scott his entire life, and this questioning, as the detectives had assured them, was mostly fact-finding. Fifteen or twenty minutes, tops.
Detective Erica Petts cleared her throat. “Scott, I need you to tell me about the place where you were kept.”
Nita shifted on her heels. Scott had already told them that he didn’t know, that he’d been blindfolded. Blindfolded for seven weeks? they had asked. Seven weeks of darkness—no wonder he couldn’t sleep. It was amazing he didn’t need a lamp left on in his room.
“I don’t know anything about it,” he mumbled. “I was blindfolded.”
Look up,Nita wanted to shout. Look into their eyes so they believe you.
“Well, you were blindfolded in the room. But then you escaped, right? So we need to know what you saw when you got your hands loose. You took off the blindfold then, right?”
“It was dark,” Scott said. “I felt my way to the door and then down the hall. I was running. I didn’t really see anything until I got outside.”
“And you didn’t have to go down or up any stairs to get outside?”
He hesitated. “No.”
“Was he in the house? Did he live there?”
“I—I don’t know.”
But they did know, didn’t they? The police had searched Randall Thompson’s house top to bottom and decided he hadn’t kept Scott there, but at some other location. And the morning that Scott had escaped, he’d been at school, teaching. Nita had learned that not from the detectives but from the news. The detectives had kept them in the dark on everything.
The pair grilled him on the neighborhood he’d run through on his way out. What he described—quiet streets with run-down homes—could have matched a hundred Los Angeles neighborhoods. What she hadn’t understood, what she still didn’t understand, was why he hadn’t stopped at one of those houses for help. Why hadn’t he flagged down a car? Why had he run for miles, all the way home?
“Let’s go back to the room where you were kept. We understand that you didn’t see anything, but let’s talk about what you could hear, what you could smell. Could you hear any activity in the house?” This was the other officer, the chubby male, who stood in the corner, one foot crossed over the other.
Scott paused. “I don’t think so.”
“When he came into the room, would he open a door? Did you hear him coming down the hall? Think about how you knew he was there.”
Scott rubbed at his forehead. “I don’t know. I guess I heard a door open. I don’t remember any stairs.”
“Take your time,” Detective Harvey urged. “In the room, was it carpet or solid floor? Could you hear his footsteps?”
“Solid floor.” He swallowed. This was ridiculous. They knew who the killer was. Why did these details matter? It wasn’t fair to make Scott relive all this.
“Okay, so you couldn’t hear any noise from other rooms? What about a TV, maybe playing nearby?”
“Uh, I don’t think so.”
“Road noise? Trucks? Horns?”
“No.”
“What about the temperature in the room?” The male detective crossed in front of the glass. “Was it hot?”
“Sometimes.”
“Was the space air-conditioned? Did you hear the air-conditioning coming on and off?”
“I don’t know.”
Nita could sense their frustration, could hear it in the way their questions were beginning to clip at the ends. Maybe they’d stop. Throw up their hands and let Scott leave.
“Okay, so no sound. What about smell?” Detective Petts leaned back in her chair. “Maybe must or mildew?”
Scott inhaled, like he was smelling it all over again. “Maybe a little like mothballs.”
“So, you picked the lock open on your handcuffs, is that right?”
The abrupt shift in questioning caught her son off guard. His gaze darted to their attorney, then he nodded. “Yeah.”
“Not an easy thing to do with a fork.” Detective Petts looked at Harvey, who nodded in agreement. Nita straightened, her hackles rising at the woman’s tone.
“Well, I didn’t really pick it,” Scott hedged. “It wasn’t locked in place right. Normally it was tight, but this time it wasn’t, so I could pull my hand out.”
This was new. Nita frowned, her gaze catching with her husband’s. They’d both heard the story a dozen times. Scott loved to talk about how he had popped open the cuffs.
“Ah, now, see—that makes more sense. Because we were beginning to wonder,” Harvey said.
There was that tone again. Like they were playing with him.
“You said you were blindfolded in the room, and you don’t know how you got in the room, right?”
“Yeah.” Scott looked miserable, and she needed to get him out of here.
“So, how do you know it was Mr. Thompson? If you couldn’t see, it could have been anyone.”
“I saw him when I was taken. He was next to my truck. He was the one who stabbed me with something.”
A sedative of some sort. That’s what they’d said. The police had long suspected the BH Killer had drugged the boys with something, but Scott had given them the confirmation—it had been a shot, not anything put in his food or drink.
“And you recognized his voice? In the room? Because he might have taken you but then passed you off to someone else.”
Scott wavered. “No,” he said finally. “It was him. He would talk to me.” He nodded, his gaze glued to the table. “Yeah. Him. He was a pervert. He told me about things he’d done. Girl students he raped.”
There was a moment of silence as the room absorbed the new information. George put his arm around Nita and squeezed her to his side.
“Any girls you know? Names you could give us?”
He shook his head and crossed his arms over his chest, and she knew a stubborn streak when it was coming. He was about to clam up. To get defiant.
“Did he tell you why he was doing this?”
Scott didn’t move, didn’t speak, didn’t acknowledge the question. Hot under George’s arm, Nita pushed free and mentally begged her son to respond.
“He just said he needed to put me in my place.” He tucked his chin against his chest, and the next words were soft, almost so soft that she couldn’t hear it.
“What was that, Scott?”
“He said it was fun. That he liked to hurt me. And he liked to watch.”
“Watch what?”
She held her breath, almost afraid to hear the answer.
Her son shrugged. “All of it.” He ran a hand through his shaggy blond hair, pulling it forward over his face, and stood. “I need a break.” He looked at his attorney. “Can I take a break?”
“Sure,” Detective Harvey said. “Take your time.”
Nita thought he’d come to her, but he didn’t. He walked out of the police station and to their SUV, where he sat for almost twenty minutes, just staring out the windshield. Motionless. Still. The boy who couldn’t go a few minutes without looking at his phone sat there, like a zombie, before finally opening the vehicle door and stepping out, his gait slow and laborious as he walked back to her and George and Juan.
When he sat back down with the detectives, it was a different version of her son. One with a straighter back and a slower, more confident voice. And this time, he told a new story.