Interrogation

It was almost an hour later before the detective returned, minus Roy. Zack had waited, patiently he might add, sitting beside Jennifer, at least initially. Then he became frustrated and began to pace the entrance foyer, glancing at the clock every few seconds. He knew that freeing Lisa wouldn’t be a quick process, but with every passing minute he wondered how long it could possibly take to listen to a simple recording. Evidently his impatience bothered the desk sergeant, who eventually enlisted a passing officer to take Zack and Jennifer off to a waiting room, out of sight. Jennifer and Zack sat again, but still no one came for the longest time, and when she did finally return, Zack was back on his feet walking the length of the new room, over and over.

“I am Detective Joan McClane,” she announced to the pair, looking at one, then the other, before settling her eyes on Zack. “You’re the one who brought in the recording?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Zack confirmed with a nod. “Is Lisa gonna be set free?”

“That’s what I’d like to talk to you about, Mr…,” she smiled brightly, a false enthusiasm meant to lower his guard. “What was your name?”

“Zack Bishop,” he stated, beginning to feel uneasy. He looked around and asked, “Um, where’s Roy McRose?”

“He’s waiting on us,” she said, as she moved to the door and held it open for him. “Come on, let’s go have a chat.”

Zack glanced at Jennifer who nodded stiffly, motioning for him to comply. Swallowing nervously, he walked out of the room, stepping to one side as the detective pulled the door tight behind her and led him down the hall to another room. She held this door open for him too, and he walked in compliantly, finding himself in a much smaller, grey room, sparsely furnished with a single shiny, metal table and a few steel chairs. Opposite, built into the wall was a large mirror, almost the size of the wall itself, and one that Zack was sure, was really a two-way mirror. The only comforting feature of the room was Chloe’s father, sitting in one of the chairs, waiting and looking quite relaxed.

The detective motioned for Zack to take the seat next to Roy as she closed the door and took her position opposite. She stared at him for a moment, as if trying to read his reaction to being in the interrogation room. She had learned that the mere presence of this room was enough to make people want to start talking. But when Zack remained silent, blinking back at her, she began the conversation.

Holding up the memory card in her hand, she asked, “Have you heard what’s on this?”

“Not the exact words, no,” Zack admitted. He had been tempted to lie, given how insignificant it was and that Ashley and Heather had both told him what had been said, but if he lied and got caught out, it would make the rest of the interrogation more difficult. “But I know it clears Lisa Rivera of any wrong doing.”

“Yes, a girl, who doesn’t identify herself on tape, takes full responsibility for planting the ****,” Det. McClane leaned back in her own chair and made a doubting face. “She fully confesses to taking Vicodin from Robert Ravers. She admits to lying to the police when questioned.”

She let that statement hang in the air, waiting for a response from Zack, who jumped to inform her who the voice belonged to. “That was Hannah Woodsen. She’s the one who framed Lisa.”

The detective nodded with a slight smile, indicating that this was information she was already aware of. “Yes, we were able to gleam that much. She refers to someone on the tape as ‘Ashley’, and mentions ‘her sister’. We checked the statements we took from the theft, and she is the only one who’s testimony fits. Though perhaps you could help us in identifying the other girl whose voice is heard on the recording?”

“Uh, that would be Heather Ravers.” Zack glanced at Roy nervously. “But I don’t see what that has to do with Hannah framing Lisa.”

“Well, the problem that we have is that, a confession like this, it sounds ****. She admits to everything so cleanly and comprehensively that, as a detective, I begin to get suspicious,” she moved to lean forward now, elbows resting on the table as she stared hard at Zack. “Hopefully you’re not stupid enough to try and trick the police with a false confession, are you Zack?”

“No, not at all,” Zack said, shaking his head adamantly. “In the interest of transparency, and because I want you to know I am being honest with you, I admit I am sort of involved with Lisa. She was my girlfriend, but we broke up, though we’d been getting on a lot better recently.”

“An on-again-off-again type of relationship,” she summarised.

“More just on and off, we didn’t make a regular thing of breaking up and getting back together. Now, I’m sure you think this gives me motive to lie to you, but honestly, I just want you to know that I care for her,” Zack insisted, matching the detective’s gaze. “I want her free, but I wouldn’t cheat to get there because if we failed, she’d be taken away from me for even longer.”

She didn’t grant him a response, instead simply moving on to her next point. “Ashley tells Hannah at one point…” she looked at her notes and quoted, “’You owe me’ and ‘You did this for me, then I deserve to be heard’. Hannah, during her confession, also states, ‘I alone framed Lisa because she hurt and embarrassed my sister’. Not ‘hurt and embarrassed you’. She talks about Ashley in the third person, almost as if she knows she’s being recorded. What did Ashley mean when she said, ‘you did this for me’?”

Zack swallowed hard, having not been prepared to be raked over the coals over every detail on the recording. He flustered initially, but composed himself and said, “Well, that goes back to me and Lisa, I’m afraid. We’re all staying in Heather’s cabin at Silver Lakes for Spring Break. While we were there, Ashley and I had started…um…’hanging out’ together. I went out one night looking for her, because I thought she’d gotten lost, and ran into Carlos Rivera. He took me back to their cabin, where Lisa was staying. When she heard we were all staying at Heather’s cabin, she decided to come back with me.”

“So, there were now two girls under the same roof carrying a flame for you,” the detective noted, then with a nod, added, “carry on.”

It was maybe more than two, Zack thought, considering Chloe, and Victoria, and how he was currently trying to impregnate the girl who might be his half-sister, but he decided to leave that bit out. “Right. And well, Ashley was hurt because we had a fight, and Lisa comforted me,” he said, playing fast and loose with the actual details, but he didn’t think the detective needed to hear how Ashley had set him up to fuck Lisa to get even for fucking Kurt and giving Gavin a hand-job, only to come back and end up in a threesome with both of them. “Hannah was visiting with Robert, who had come to check up on Heather, or so I believe. Of course, when she heard that Ashley had been wronged, she tried to push Lisa out of the picture, which, as you know, worked at little too well.”

“Too well, indeed,” Joan McClane agreed, pressing on. “If Hannah Woodsen was this ready to confess though, why not simply come down to the station as soon as it went too far?”

Zack shrugged, but it was Roy who interceded, “You can’t expect my client to know the mind of someone else.”

The detective didn’t argue, and simply changed trajectory. “What about this earlier talk that Ashley mentions? Do you know what that was about?”

“I wasn’t there, but it is my understanding that Ashley talked to Hannah earlier in the day at a cafe, which is when she found out about what Hannah had done. But I can’t speculate on what was actually said. I was at the lake with Kurt Johnson and Victoria Walker, but Jennifer White, the Park Ranger I came in with, would be able to verify my whereabouts, since she stopped to talk to us there,” Zack replied, feeling very hot, again deliberately not divulging what exactly he, Kurt and Victoria were doing down at the lake.

“Yes, I’ll want to talk to her,” Det. McClane noted, adding, “these two girls, Ashley and Heather, we’ll need to talk to them too. Where can we find them?”

“This week? At Robert’s cabin up Silver Lakes.”

“I think we’re reaching the limit of what my client can tell you about the recording,” Roy spoke up.

Joan chewed her lip for a moment, seemingly trying to think of something she could ask Zack, though she seemingly drew a blank, instead agreeing, “Yeah. Why don’t I walk you back to the waiting room?”

Chloe’s father motioned for him to get out while the going was good, so he complied, following the detective as she opened doors and led him back down the hall just as she had done on the way to the interrogation room. This time though, she stopped about half way, pausing and grabbing Zack’s arm. He looked at her, bewildered, images of detective movies flashing in his mind, and thinking of dirty cops beating a confession from a witness. But her grip wasn’t violent. Firm, but he could feel a warmth and softness too.

“Mr. Bishop…Zack…” she glanced around, checking that the coast was clear. “I understand that you want to do anything for your ex-girlfriend and you’ve been forthcoming so far, which I appreciate. It makes my job easier and it makes this whole process simpler. But if there is anything that you’re hiding that I need to know, now is the time to tell me.”

Zack looked around too, glancing at the door he just came from as he asked, “Shouldn’t Mr. McRose be here for this?”

“Lisa’s lawyer didn’t even need to be there for that. This isn’t a formal talk and you aren’t under arrest. You had no obligation to speak to me at all, but Mr. McRose insisted that he sit in with you,” Det. McClane cracked a smile. “Does he even represent you?”

“Is that what he said?” Zack asked, then shrugged. “I’m not sure. He’s a family friend, but my parents never had much trouble with the law.”

“Well, he’s representing you now,” she said, her hand leaving his arm but still standing face to face. “And since you’ve been so straightforward with me, I’m going to let you in on something too. We have tech experts authenticating the tape as we speak. Now, I’m not saying that’s going to come up with anything…”

“Because you don’t question the validity of the recording. You’re suspicious of the content,” Zack concluded, frowning.

“Smart boy,” she said with another smile. “So, like I said, if there’s anything you need to tell me…”

“No,” Zack cut in. The missing piece she was looking for was the video of Heather and her father, but that was something he could never divulge. Hannah’s gambit to save her own skin would have to remain a secret, no matter what, especially since they went to all the trouble of deleting the video. What would be the point of that, just to blab to the cops about it now? He continued, “There’s nothing going on, except an innocent girl is still stuck behind bars.”

The detective gave an amused sigh as she turned to begin walking again, expecting Zack to follow, which he did, pensively. She didn’t say another word to him, though she didn’t seem mad. She appeared to have expected that response. The rest of the walk back to the waiting room passed quickly. He was lost in his thoughts when she opened the door to the waiting room, pushing it open a little hard. Inside, Jennifer had been asleep in her chair, though the opening of the door woke her with a start.

Chuckling, Detective McClane said, “I’m kind of impressed you can sleep here.”

“Oh, this is nothing,” Jennifer said with a yawn and rubbing her eyes. “Sleeping in one of these chairs is a cake walk compared to sharing a tent with Emily, who kicks in her sleep and needs to get up to pee like five times a night, not to mention Colin and Ryan snoring in the tent beside ours. I swear I’ve heard quieter avalanches.”

Zack laughed. “I remember my dad saying something similar, that once he learned to sleep in a busy hospital, he could sleep anywhere.”

It was only once the sentence had escaped his lips that Zack realised, he had used the word ‘dad’. Gregory would always be his dad, the man who had raised and influenced him. But there was the mask he was supposed to wear as the head of Ravers Enterprises. Robert was the one he should be calling dad, at least in public. Jennifer didn’t seem to notice though, stretching her body into waking.

“Come on,” Joan said, still holding the door open and cocking her head in that direction. “It’s your turn.”

Jennifer gave Zack a soft smile as she rose and followed the detective, leaving him alone now. It was only then that he realised the detective had only offered to walk him back so she could be sure that he and Jennifer didn’t have time to straighten out any details between them. Well, that and so she could confront him in the hallway. This woman was smart, and wily, and reminded him a lot of another blonde haired, blue eyed girl he knew. And as he sat back in his chair, wishing he could be privy to the conversation happening just down the hall, he thought about Hannah’s video, and the copy that still remained out there, somewhere.