Talk (36 page)

She stood over him a moment more and, sure the eye had closed, she smiled slightly and moved away. At the door, she saw a woman standing by the nurses' station. She was a few years older than Jessica and looked in far worse shape. The woman's eyes were full of fear and

Jessica intuitively knew who this was and she walked straight over to her.

"It's okay," she murmured, holding her hand out.

"Oh, God," the woman said in a southern drawl, nearly grabbing Jessica's hand.

"I just don't know what to say."

"I bear him no ill will."

"They told me you saved my husband's life, even though he-They said you hid him and kept him alive."

"We kind of looked out for each other," Jessica said, smiling. In a moment, Mrs. Denton was sobbing on her shoulder, saying over and over, "I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry."

You don't have to do this," Will whispered to Jessica.

"We can just leave right now."

"Tell him to shut up, will you?" she asked Agent Kunsa.

"Or he's going to talk me out of it."

"Please shut up," Kunsa begged.

"Now, tell me again, what do you want me to get him to say?"

"Anything," Kunsa said.

"But he may well do exactly what he's done thus far, which is to just sit there."

"Not with me he won't," Jessica promised. She took a nervous intake of breath and let it out slowly.

"So who else will be in there?"

"We'll all be just on the other side of the glass."

"Cool, like the movies." She took another sharp breath.

"Okay, let's do it."

Agent Kunsa led her down a green corridor that smelled like Lysol.

They stopped at a heavy metal door with a window. He looked in and then opened the door, holding it open for Jessica. As they had agreed, Jessica came in with no introduction, simply breezing past Kunsa to stand in front of James Plattener, aka Leopold.

He had a bandage on his head and the green prison fatigues made him look clammier than she remembered. Otherwise he looked much the same, neat and tidy and fastidious to a fault. Upon her entrance, however, his eyes had widened and his head had kicked back in blatant surprise.

"Hi, Leopold," Jessica said in one of her more alluring tones of voice.

"It's a wig," she explained, touching her hair.

"But it's not bad, is it? Until mine grows back?"

And then Jessica smiled, for Leopold's eyes broke away from her to look at the wall behind her. And so she knew she still had a bead on him.

"I came to see how you were doing," she said, pulling out a chair and sitting down. She held up her bandaged hand.

"They say it's going to be all right. I'm having surgery again next week."

Leopold swallowed, eyes still behind her.

"I saw Hurt Guy yesterday," she continued.

"You know, the kidnapper you saved me from. I think he's going to live. They don't, but I do.

And so you won't have that murder charge to contend with. And it's not like you really kidnapped me, is it? "

His eyes came skittering back to look at the wig again, at her face briefly, before skittering back to the wall.

"I told them that you were, you know, courting me. That you saved me, and then were keeping me safe. And we were getting to know each other while I was there." She looked down to her lap and said almost shyly, "They told me you had gotten your house ready for me."

Now he looked at her.

"Is that true, Leopold?" she asked gently.

"Did you have a room ready for me if I wanted to come live with you? A room with all your mother's lovely things?"

He hesitated and then nodded, his eyes moving back to the wall.

"That was sweet, thank you," she said. She gestured conversationally.

"But I've got to tell you, though, Leopold, you've got a ton of trouble on your hands about that woman's body in the storage locker."

She looked at him.

"I told them I didn't know anything about it and I was sure you didn't, either."

Leopold looked down at the table in front of him, his hand starting to jerk.

"I said that the only time you ever hurt anybody it was because that person was hurting me and you were protecting me."

Still looking down at the table he nodded.

"You don't know who that woman is, do you? The body they found?"

He didn't answer; he didn't look up.

"Are you embarrassed because you don't want me to know that I'm not the only woman you ever loved?"

No reaction.

"I didn't really expect you to have not been with anyone else," she said.

"You know, you being an eligible bachelor and all. And you're very smart and you make a good living and you were very good to your mother and everything. I figured there had been lots of girls who liked you before I ever came along."

His eyes skittered up. And then down. And then back up.

"Y-y-y-you did?"

"They say she was very attractive, Leopold."

He shrugged, noncommittal, eyes falling back to the table again.

"Well, anyway, I just wanted to tip you off that that's going to be the problem for you, that woman's body they found. But I told them somebody else probably put it there. I didn't think you had anything to do with it."

They sat there in silence a while.

"They are still running reruns of your show," Leopold said quietly, j Jessica looked at him incredulously.

"You get to watch TV in this place?"

He nodded, daring to look at her for a moment.

"When will you be back on?"

She arched her eyebrows.

"But I'm not going back on TV, Leopold. I'm not doing the show anymore."

His eyes widened and he looked at her with a pan- I icked expression.

"Wha-wha-wha" -- f "What?" she said for him.

"What do you mean?" he sputtered.

"I mean I'm not going on television anymore."

"Bu-bu--bubu-bu" -- "But" -- "--yu-you have to!" He held his hands out, jerked back by the chains on them.

"You have to, Jessica!"

"Why?"

"Because!" He looked at her, cringing.

"How am I going to see you?"

"Mother of God," Will said through clenched teeth in the observation room.

"You've got to get her out of there."

"I know it's hard," Kunsa said, holding him by the arm.

"Let her do what's she doing. She's knows this guy better than we do."

"Well, let's see," Jessica said.

"Maybe I could come and visit you once in a while." He jumped up and did his facing-the-wall trick,

keeping his back to her.

"W-w-would you really come?"

"What the hell is he doing?" Hepplewhite wondered out loud.

"He's got a hard-on probably," Kunsa said.

"And he doesn't want her to see it. Our shrink says it has something to do with his mother."

"Come on, you guys, get her out of there," Will pleaded.

"The thing is," Jessica was saying, "they're not going to let me see you, Leopold, until you come clean with them. And we clear you with that body they found. And then there's poor Bea. You and I know how she was hurting me, but you haven't told them your side yet."

"She was a whore," he said to the wall.

Jessica leaned forward.

"Excuse me?"

"She was a whore. And she was hurting you, Jessica. She would do anything for money."

"They think you paid her ten thousand dollars to help you stalk me," Jessica said.

"I never stalked you," he said quietly.

"Right. But this is what they think, Leopold. They think you paid Bea ten thousand dollars to help you get into West End."

"She let me set some things up. Like the magnetic field in the control room so I could leave you my present."

Jessica smiled.

"That really was pretty terrific, Leopold, I've got to say. Nobody could figure that one out. Did she put the letter on the chair on my set for you? Do you remember? That letter left for me on the set?"

"I never put a letter on the set. I would never break your concentration before a show." He looked over his shoulder.

"You know what notes I wrote."

"Yes. I do. But they don't really get it yet, I'm afraid. I mean, they'd like to think someone forged your name on some of those notes, and that someone else masterminded the kidnapping, but right now, Leopold, with Hurt Guy so banged up, they don't have witnesses and they don't have any hard evidence. So right now they're going to try and hang it all on you. And that's why, if we don't sort this out, Leopold, I don't think they'll ever let me visit you again."

"They are so stupid," Leopold told the wall.

"You'd be dead if I had not saved you, Jessica."

"They think you just used Bea and then killed her," Jessica continued.

"But I don't believe that, Leopold. I believe she must have done something very bad to provoke you. Was it because Bea was selling items about me to the tabloids

Leopold wheeled around, furious.

"Look, he does have an erection," Hepplewhite said.

"Oh, this is sick, get her out of there," Will said.

"No, wait, wait, wait," Kunsa said, blocking his way.

"I paid her ten thousand dollars."

"But, Leopold, they say she threatened to turn you in, and that's why you killed her."

Leopold shouted.

"I did not kill Bea Blakely!"

Jessica blinked.

"You didn't?"

"No!"

"Well, if you didn't kill her, Leopold, who did?"

"The man posing as me. Her boyfriend."

"Her boyfriend? What boyfriend?"

"Her boyfriend. Her lover. She had one at West End. I used to hear them in your office."

"My office?"

"At night, late. They did sexual acts in your office. I told you, Jessica, she was a whore, she was bad, she was going to hurt you. I heard them!"

"Who was her boyfriend?" Jessica said.

"I don't know," Leopold insisted.

"What did he look like?"

Kunsa looked at Hepplewhite.

"A boyfriend." He said this as though the topic had been previously discussed.

Hepplewhite frowned and looked at Agent Cole.

And then the three of them turned away from the observation window.

"What are you looking at?" Will demanded.

"Nothing," Kunsa said.

"What are you worried about?"

"Nothing."

They were all just standing there, looking at him.

"Maybe we should talk for a minute or two. Will," Kunsa suggested.

"Norm," Will said warningly.

"Just for a minute," Kunsa continued.

"In the next room." He pointed.

"This way."

Will looked at Agent Cole.

"Debbie" -- "If you've done nothing. Will, you have nothing to fear."

"Certainly it will be helpful to talk to us before you leave for France," Hepplewhite added.

"How do you know what Bea was doing in my office?" Jessica was asking him. No response.

"Leopold," she said more sternly, "come away from that wall and sit down here at the table and talk to me."

Amazingly, he did as he was told, chains clinking as he moved.

"Now, tell me how you know about this boyfriend of Bea's."

Leopold was looking dejectedly down at the table

"I could listen in.

In your office. She didn't know. I put it in there one of the nights she let me into West End. " He dared a quick look at her and looked back down, turning beet red.

"The first time I thought it was you. I am so sorry, Jessica, I knew better, but for a moment I was very upset, but of course it was not you. I knew it was she, Bea Blakely, doing those things in your office."

"Who was Bea's boyfriend?"

"I did not know his voice."

"You have to tell them about this, Leopold. They're blaming you for Bea's death."

"I did not kill her," he said.

"I did not lay a hand on her," he added, a mysterious shudder running through him.

"We're going to have to think this through, Leopold," Jessica told him seriously, "or else they're never going to let you see me again."

"The microphone should still be there," Leopold said.

"In your office.

It's voice-activated. And there's a laser-disc recorder in the air vent. There must be hours and hours of recordings on it. "

"Where in my office is the microphone?"

"Inside the electrical socket near your big bookcase. I could get a radio playback from down on the West Side Highway. I just had to pull over and I could hear what was going on, or I could replay new parts from the recording disc."

"You were fantastic, Jessica," Agent Cole said when Jessica emerged from the interrogation room.

"Thanks. Where's Will?"

"He's gone with Agent Kunsa," Cole said.

"We've got a lot of new information to check out, thanks to you. They asked me to see you home and he'll call you later."

"I'm glad you've given him something to do," Jessica said, looking around.

"He's been so anxious to do something to help. Is there a drinking fountain?"

"Down here," the agent said, escorting her. She glanced over.

"You're shaking."

She held up her good hand to show the agent how, yes, obviously she was shaking.

"Casualty of the profession You sit there chatting with a murderer like he's any old interview for DBS, and then later it sinks in what you've been doing hell, yeah, I'm shaking."

She leaned over to take a long drink of water and then straightened up.

"But I've got to tell you, I don't think he killed Bea."

"We're already checking out what he said. About Bea having a boyfriend."

"Good. Where's Slim? I need to go home and lie down."

"We'll pick him up on the way out," Agent Cole told her.

Why do you need your lawyer? " Agent Kunsa asked him.

"Because you're crazy!" Will yelled.

"Am I?"

"Yes."

"Then why don't you just have a seat and relax while we wait for those tapes to be retrieved."

"Because I want to see Jessica."

"Oh, I don't think that's a very good idea at the moment do you?"