Who Illed Jenny Schecter?

Chapter 33 Sprung

When one of the correctional officers escorted Alice to the office of Margaret Elder, the warden of Humboldt, she thought she was going to get yet another reprimand about in-your-face arguments with other inmates in the dining hall that had to be broken up by correctional officers before they got physical. There was one just yesterday at dinner. It was unfair, Alice told anyone who would listen, because she didn't start the arguments, she just refused to be pushed around, bullied, or intimidated. Of course, no one wanted to hear it. Come on, it's prison.

But when the guard held the door open and ushered her in, Alice was surprised to find Warden Elder standing by the window next to Marybeth Duffy, both of them looking out the window at the prison exercise yard. They turned when Alice came in. Alice paled when she saw the looks on their faces.

"What happened?" she asked quietly.

"Good news and bad news, Alice," the warden said.

"Give me the bad first. Sergeant Duffy, sorry if I didn't say hello."

"No problem," Marybeth said.

"Better sit down," the warden said gently.

Alice sat in the chair facing the warden's desk. The warden came and sat down; Marybeth stayed by the window. "So what is it?" Alice asked.

"Shane McCutcheon has been very badly hurt. She may not make it. The detective she was working with--"

"Lauren?" Alice whispered.

"Yes, Lauren Hancock. She was shot, but it looks like she's going to make it."

"Carmen?"

"Carmen is okay. She saved Lauren's life. Shane saved both Lauren and Carmen, and maybe herself, too."

A tear rolled down Alice's face. "I can't wait for the good news."

"The man who killed Jenny and Max, and two other people you probably don't even know about, has been identified and killed. Shane shot him, defending Lauren and Carmen. And you're going home."

"Home?" Alice sounded like she didn't believe it.

"Marybeth brought me the paperwork, signed by the judge and co-signed by the DA. Your record is going to be expunged, which is probably the least of your concerns at the moment. As soon as you pack your stuff and we process you, you're out of here."

Alice said nothing. She was in shock. She looked at Marybeth, who smiled grimly and nodded her head. "When you leave here, you're free to go anywhere you want. But I'd be very happy to drive you to San Francisco. I've got a lot to tell you, and I know you'll have a thousand questions. Carmen said to tell you that you can stay at her place. But I'll take you straight to the hospital, if you want. Carmen's there now."

"You said she's okay."

"She is. She's keeping vigil over Shane and Lauren."

"Can I see Shane?"

"You can look through the window. You may be able to go into her room in a few days. She's in a coma."

"Coma." Alice said. She covered her eyes with her hands and cried for a few minutes. The warden poured a glass of water and sat it on the edge of her desk in front of Alice, along with a box of tissues. Marybeth looked out the window, her arms folded. Her cell phone dinged, and she opened it, glanced at the message, and typed in a brief reply. She put her cell phone back in its holster.

Alice composed her self, wiped her eyes with a tissue, took a sip of water.

"Who was it?" she asked. "Who killed Jenny?"

"Shane's father," Marybeth said. "Gabe McCutcheon. He had been blackmailing Jenny and that actress Niki Stevens for five months. Got a hundred grand from them. The night of the farewell party for Bette and Tina, Jenny had a confrontation with him while you guys were watching the video Jenny made. He got into an argument with her, followed her or maybe chased her up the back steps to the deck, grabbed her. She turned and slapped him. He grabbed her, she broke free but went through the tape and fell to the walkway around the pool. That's what he said, anyway, but it doesn't matter. What matters is she was unconscious, and he rolled her into the pool, where she drowned. So that's what made it murder."

"She never screamed or anything. None of us heard anything."

"No. From what we can figure out and what we've learned, Jenny was keeping the blackmail quiet from all of you. She and Niki were the only two who knew about, with one exception."

Alice looked at her, mystified.

"We're just about certain Max was helping him. He was the inside person, feeding information to Gabe McCutcheon. And it gets worse. Max had great computer skills, and Gabe had no more skills than the average person. Max did a lot of the legwork getting the stuff Gabe used to blackmail Jenny. He built a fake porn web site Gabe used as part of the blackmail. Pay up or this goes on the web. Max also helped Gabe get a new identity, a new driver's license, and somehow managed to get the photo of Gabe on his Oregon license changed. Gabe couldn't have done any of that in a thousand years. Max could, and did."

"Toward the end," Alice said, "Max really hated Jenny. We all knew it, but Max didn't make a big deal about it. I mean, they fought off and on for years, but it got serious at the end. And he needed money for his operation. And Jenny kept messing up his relationship with Tom."

"Jenny kept messing with everybody's relationship with everybody," Marybeth said. "Bette and Tina--"

"Oh, Jesus, yes," Alice murmured."

"--Helena and Dylan. Shane and Mollie. I don't know, did she mess with you and Tasha?"

"No. We fucked that one up all by ourselves, thank you. You talked to Tasha?"

"A couple times. Once right after Jenny's murder. She heard the call-out on a police scanner, and came to Bette and Tina's house. We didn't let her anywhere near, of course, but she was there. I talked to her two days later, after you confessed."

"What did she say?"

"She said, and I quote, 'No fucking way. No fucking way. No fucking way.' Three times. She probably would have said it a few more times, but I cut her off and asked her some questions."

Alice nodded.

"Come on," Marybeth said. "I want to get on the road. It's a six-hour drive to San Francisco, seven if we stop for lunch and eight if we stop for dinner. You have to pack up your stuff."

"That'll take under two minutes," Alice said.

"Anybody you need to say goodbye to?"

"You're kidding, right?" Alice said.

"I'll get you started processing out," Warden Elder said.

"I don't get it," Alice said. "Why are you two giving me the VIP treatment?"

"Why?" the warden said. "I'll tell you why. You know how many innocent people have walked out of here?"

***

"It's almost noon," Marybeth said as they drove away from Humboldt State Farm and Prison for Women. "My guess is you haven't had a decent meal in a year. Your credit card is probably expired, so it's my treat."

"Why are you being so nice to me?" Alice asked. "Sorry for being blunt. But, you know, I've been in prison, and we tend to get suspicious whenever somebody does anything nice."

"Because they are going to fuck you or shank you," Marybeth said.

"Pretty much," Alice said. "Sometimes one after the other."

Marybeth let a moment go by. "Was it bad in there?"

Alice thought about being smart-ass, but decided not to. "It was ... I don't know. Sometimes terrifying. The thing was, you could never let your guard down. You were on maximum alert twenty-four seven three sixty-five. You could never just relax and chill, you know? You never knew who you could trust, who was okay, and who wasn't. And it made no difference, guards or inmates. Some were okay, some were not. It took me a while, but I finally learned how to tell the difference."

"How was that?"

"The ones who were dangerous were the ones who talked to you. Looked you in the eye. Showed some interest, even if it seemed to be okay. The ones you could trust were the ones who never looked at anybody, never wanted anything, hardly ever talked. They learned to shut down. When you became invisible, usually nobody fucked with you."

"I'm guessing you had some difficulty becoming invisible."

"You think?" Alice said. "Okay, sorry for being sarcastic."

"Old habits die hard," Marybeth said. "What do you want for lunch?"

"I would kill for a halfway decent giant, fat, juicy cheeseburger with crispy bacon and some decent steak fries," Alice said. "Lettuce and tomato that isn't four days old. A slice of onion that will contaminate your breath for two or three hours. And a beer. God, I'd love a beer."

"Coming right up," Marybeth said.

***

"Why are you being so good to me?" Alice asked, after she had ordered the house deluxe bacon cheeseburger and a Dos Equis.

Marybeth shrugged. "Like the warden said, it's not often we get to spring an innocent person from jail. You're my first."

"I'll be gentle," Alice said. "I can't remember the last time I had somebody's cherry."

The waiter brought Alice's

Dos Equis

and Marybeth's iced tea.

"Oh, God, that's so good," Alice said, taking a big swallow of beer. "This is all my fault. Everything. The murders. I fucked up your investigation. That's all I've been thinking about. Even before Shane came up to see me."

"Actually, I've been giving that a lot of thought, too," Marybeth said. "I used to blame you, too. And yes, you did fuck up my investigation, big time. But you know what would have happened if you hadn't?"

"You'd have arrested Shane."

"Damn right. Everyone thought she did it. Even you, that's why you falsely confessed. She had a ton of motive. She had opportunity, you guys wandering in and out of the video show. Could have happened the same way, too. She got into an argument with Jenny on the deck, somebody pushed somebody, somebody pushed back, Jenny goes flying off the deck, Shane walks down the steps, rolls her into the pool, goes into a kind of shock, blacks it all out, walks back into the media room, watches the rest of the goodbye video. She'd already found the negatives in her attic, along with the jacket with Mollie's note. She had a ton of anger, which she buried, because that was how she dealt with things. So yes, if you hadn't confessed I'd have arrested Shane in a heartbeat. But here's what I've since learned. The person who fucked up my investigation wasn't you, it was Niki Stevens. She's the one who never told us she and Jenny were being blackmailed. I might have had Shane sitting in a holding cell in handcuffs, but if Niki had told us the truth, we'd have tracked all that down, and eventually we'd have let Shane go. I can't tell you we'd have gotten to Gabe McCutcheon, but we'd have sooner or later let Shane go."

"Okay," Alice said, before she took a giant bite out of her terrific roadhouse bacon cheeseburger that had just arrived, "start at the beginning. Tell me everything that happened."

It took Marybeth most of the drive to San Francisco.