Fucking Facebook.
He recognized me and he brought the picture to the Salingers and they knew me, of course, as the delivery boy, as the guy in the bar. So then the red flags were raised. Officer Nico is no dummy, and he knew Peach’s friend Beck had also met an untimely end. I almost wish I could have been there on the day that Officer Nico visited Dr. Nicky in prison and showed him my photograph—fucking Facebook—and said, “Is this Danny Fox?”
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.