“I don’t trust her,” Detective Jack Bilson stated as he glared through the two-way mirror at Molly Stewart. The police station’s resident psychologist gave him a side-long glance, but continued to focus her attention on the young woman sitting in the interrogation room.
She was sitting perfectly straight in her chair, her hands folded neatly in her lap, and she was staring right at them. Of course she knew that they were behind the glass, every cop-fronted TV show had blown that trick. What annoyed Detective Bilson was that despite her uptight appearance, she looked calm, ready to talk. It really pissed him off when attempted murder suspects weren’t scared. The lawyer sitting next to her looked nervous, but she was ignoring him so efficiently that it almost made Detective Bilson forget he was in the room as well.
He pushed away from the window ledge he’d been leaning his considerable weight on, and started for the door.
“If she so much as breathes wrong, I want to know about it,” he told the psychologist. Again, she simply nodded, this time jotting something down on her clipboard just before the heavy door swung shut.
In his thirty years as an employee of the LAPD, he’d had plenty of perps annoy him. But this Stewart girl was different. Her ability to get under his skin before he’d even spoken to her was far beyond irritating. First of all, she’d called her lawyer long before she was picked up by the police. If that didn’t scream guilt, he didn’t know what did. Secondly, she’d packed a god damned bag like she was going to Napa Valley for the weekend.
Detective Bilson stared down the door, brushed both hands over his buzzed salt and pepper hair, and entered with as much authority as he could muster. The Stewart girl turned politely in her chair to watch him as he entered and when he seated himself across the table from her, she stuck out her hand, expecting a handshake. Ignoring her attempt at a nicety, he yanked his chair away from the table, hiked up his pants at the belt so they wouldn’t cut off his circulation once he sat down, and dropped to the plasticy cushion.
“Miss Stewart, I think it’s time for you to start explaining yourself,” was his greeting. The lawyer sat there silently. Obviously, she’d already been briefed on what was okay to say and what wasn’t.
“I know that my actions might make me look guilty, but all I was doing was protecting myself. Being a part of the Facebook group makes me look guilty enough as it is, even though it’s completely innocent,” she explained.
Detective Bilson wanted to say “Innocent? You call being a part of a group that says you wish harm on someone innocent?”, but he bit his tongue. There was time for that story. Now, he needed to know how she had met Hanson. It was completely ridiculous to him that anyone cared enough about that band to try to kill one of the members. He’d taken his daughter to a concert back when they had first come onto the music scene and he had sworn up and down that no one would care about them at all in five years. He really hated being wrong.
“If you could please start at the beginning,” he said instead, giving the edges of his folder a good crinkling squeeze before setting it on the table.
“Taylor and I met in 2001,” she said, “This Time Around had recently come out. I was a member of their fan club and won a meet and greet, and that’s how we met.”
“So, you’re a fan of their music.”
“That’s putting it lightly,” Molly said, smiling a little despite herself, “I’ve been a fan since the first time I heard MMMBop on MTV. I had dreamed for years of meeting Taylor, and when I finally did, it wasn’t anything like I’d imagined. I had always pictured this perfect human being in my mind, but he wasn’t. He smelled like cigarette smoke and beyond those beautiful blue eyes, he looked so sad.
“I’ve always been a person who accidentally blurts things out, and well, I told him that. He just looked at me for a really long time, and then he invited me into his dressing room. We were both so young, him eighteen and me seventeen, and I was so scared to go back there with him. But, I did and he was a perfect gentleman. I was so obsessed with him, I know that I would have done anything he suggested, but all he wanted to do was talk.”
“So, you talked to the guy once seven years ago and now you want him dead?” Detective Bilson asked. Of all the types of people who could have been brought in for him to interview in this case, it just had to be a fan. From the research he’d done, he knew that Hanson fans could be rabid, and the last thing he wanted to do was listen to her go on and on about his ‘beautiful blue eyes’ and how much she loved their music. Her lawyer opened his mouth to speak, but she cut him off.
“Oh no,” she said, and surprising the hell out of him, wiped a tear from the corner of her eye despite the smile she was forcing into her cheeks, “We were together from that day on. He has come here at least once a month and usually flew me to see him so we could see each other at least two times a month.
“Being with Taylor is different. The thing that really drew me to him was how vulnerable he was. In front of the public he always puts on such confident front, like nothing can touch him. But he’s just a regular guy beneath that. I knew that being with him would pose its challenges, but I made the decision to stick it out because I loved him.” She shook head and again swiped at her eyes.
“Miss Stewart, with all due respect, do you honestly expect me to believe that a huge fan of theirs was dating one of the band’s members because he was just a regular guy?”
“Of course my initial attraction to him was because I was a fan, but once I got to know him it was so much more than that. If I hadn’t been a fan, I never would have met him,” she explained. Detective Bilson gave her a long, hard look before continuing.
“So, if you two were seeing each other twice a month for the last seven years, what changed that made you join that group?”
“That went on for five years,” she explained, “Then, in 2006, things changed.”
“You two have been at odds for two years?”
“No,” she said, sounding suddenly sullen. She finally looked at her lawyer. When he nodded, she reached into the pocket of her jacket and took something out that she set carefully on the table. Lying in the middle of the table was a huge diamond ring.
“Ho-ly shit,” he drawled, unable to stop himself from gaping at the enormity of the ring’s main stone.
“Tell me about it,” she said, staring down the ring as well, “He proposed to me on Christmas Eve in front of his family. For a month or two, everything was great, but then things started to change. They were really busy, and I understood that, but there were times when he would take trips that didn’t really make sense. I’d call his brothers and they always sounded weird, like they were lying. I loved him so much I made excuses for him.”
“So, what happened?” he asked. For the first time, he almost felt sorry for her. Almost, but not quite. Anyone stupid enough to fall for a rocker deserved to get hurt a little, he thought. They weren’t exactly the most reputable people he’d heard of.
“A month ago, he told me that he was going home to see his family, but then it showed up on their website that they were going to be doing an impromtu show that night. So, I hopped a plane and headed there to confront him.”
“What about that specific night made you so suspicious?”
“His family is so close that if he was really going home to visit them, they wouldn’t be doing a show,” she said.
“So what happened when you got there?” She and her lawyer shared a long look, like they were speaking telepathically. Molly nodded ever so slightly.
“That’s when I met the others.”