Good Girl, Bad Girl(100)
“What did you hear?”
“The front door. Keys on the table. The shower running.”
“Did he get up during the night?”
Felicity looks at the teabag, which is solidifying in the bottom of her mug. “We don’t sleep in the same room . . . not for . . . not since.” She shakes her head. “You can’t really believe that Bryan had sex with Jodie.”
“The DNA tests on her unborn child show she was carrying his baby.”
Felicity stares at me, as though waiting for a different punch line. Then she shakes her head from side to side, gasping. “Oh God, what will Maggie say? She’ll never forgive me.”
“It’s not your fault.”
“He’s my husband.”
*
Lenny carries a pile of printouts and folders into the interview room, putting them on the table in front of Bryan Whitaker. It’s part of the theater—a prop to unnerve the suspect. Right now he’s wondering how he could have generated so much paperwork in such a short time.
Opening a folder, Lenny turns several pages, silently reading the contents while Edgar pulls up a seat and checks the recording equipment, announcing their names, along with the time, date, and location.
“How long have you been married, Bryan?” asks Lenny.
“Twenty-two years.”
“That’s a fair innings. Do you still look into your wife’s eyes when you tell her that you love her?”
“Leave my wife out of this.”
“I’ll take that as a no,” says Lenny. “I doubt if there’s a single drop of passion left after that long, although I’m sure you can pretend. You can close your eyes. You can imagine you’re with someone else. Tell us about Bonnie Dowling?”
Understanding seems to blossom behind Whitaker’s eyes. “She made a vexatious complaint.”
“Vexatious. That’s a big word—a lawyer’s word. You took photographs of her in the showers.”
“No.”
“You walked in on her.”
“That was an accident.”
“Why would she lie?”
“Her father owed me coaching fees. Four hundred pounds. He wouldn’t pay up. I threatened to sue him. Next thing, he was accusing me of being a pervert.”
“But you ended up paying him.”
“I waived his fees. I should have sued him for slander.”
“That sounds plausible,” says Lenny, “but it seems odd that your phone was stolen just before the police could investigate the complaint. I can’t work out if that’s convenient or unfortunate.”
“There were no photographs,” says Whitaker. “It was bullshit.”
Watching him through the observation window, I can see him fortifying himself, but he’s less confident than before.
“When did you start coaching Jodie?” asks Edgar.
“I’ve always coached her.”
“When did you start grooming her?”
“That’s a lie.”
“Your fingerprints were found on condoms in her school locker,” says Lenny.
The statement rattles his composure. “I bought them for her when I discovered she was sexually active. I didn’t want her falling pregnant.”
“That’s very avuncular of you. Did Jodie’s parents know you were buying her condoms?”
“Of course not.”
“Did Jodie ask you to?”
“No.”
“How did you discover she was sexually active?”
“I guessed . . . I feared . . . I’ve had it happen before. Young skaters reach a certain age. They think they’re missing out or they go boy crazy . . .”
“You must see how it looks, Bryan. You’re her uncle—her skating coach—and you’re buying her condoms. You’re facilitating her having underage sex. Did you take her virginity?”
“Don’t be ridiculous!”
“I can see how it could happen. You’re traveling together to competitions—sharing a room to save money, separate beds to begin with. Then one night . . .”
Whitaker is breathing heavily through his nostrils, while his eyes are screwing a hole through Lenny’s forehead.
“You’re wrong!”
“You got her pregnant, Bryan.”
“No.”
“We’ve found the search history on your laptop—you were looking up abortion clinics.”
“I wanted to help her.”
“By lying to us.”
“No! I mean. Jodie came to me. She told me she was pregnant. I thought, because of her skating career and her age . . . I mean, she was too young to have a baby. Jodie couldn’t talk to her parents. Maggie is so devoutly Catholic and Dougal would have gone to war. I thought if we could do it quietly, without anyone knowing . . .”
“It was your suggestion.”
“Jodie agreed.”
“But she changed her mind.”
Whitaker doesn’t answer.
“We’ve done the DNA tests, Bryan. We know you’re the father.”
“What! No!”
“It doesn’t matter if Jodie consented. You were in a position of trust and she was a minor. In a few hours from now, technicians will have triangulated the signals from Jodie’s phone, pinpointing her movements in her last hours. They’re going to put you and Jodie together on the night she died. I think you had sex with her and afterwards you followed her. You begged her to have an abortion, but she wouldn’t listen. She threatened everything—your career, your marriage, your reputation. You hit her from behind and dumped her off the bridge. You left Jodie for dead—and that’s what happened, she died cold and alone in that clearing.”