Jennifer DuBois - Cartwheel

Eduardo pointed to the piano. “That looks like it used to be expensive.”

Sebastien turned to it with an expression of mild interest, as though being directed to remark on a minor museum piece. “Oh, appallingly so, I should think,” he said.

“Do you play?”

“Yes. I’m fabulously talented but, alas, intensely private and protective of my gift. Do you? You really ought to favor us with a number.”

“Another time, perhaps.”

“I’d offer it to you as a present if I didn’t fear it might feel a tad too snug in your car.”

Eduardo ignored this. He pointed to the picture of Sebastien and the tapir on the mantel. “He’s a beauty,” he said. “You shoot that fellow yourself?”

Sebastien turned around to look at the picture. “That? Oh, that’s not me.”

Eduardo looked again. The older man was exactly identical to the person Eduardo was currently sitting across from; the child had his every feature in miniature. “Your brother, then?” he said.

“No relation. I picked the thing up from a flea market. Why, you think you see a resemblance? How strange—I never noticed.”

At this, Eduardo made a pretend note on his pad. It was curious that Sebastien would lie so early, and for so little. Often people who knew they were planning to lie tried to establish as much credibility as possible ahead of time: They volunteered extensive and accurate information about themselves, they made disclosures, they answered the vast bulk of verifiable questions with showy and elaborate detail, they readily admitted ambiguity wherever they could spare it—as though any of this mattered in the slightest. As though the law had come to investigate their general characterological deceitfulness, not the very specific issue at hand—what they saw, where they were, what they did, on a very particular day or night. Given this widespread tendency, Eduardo normally commenced interviews with a series of straightforward questions to which he already knew the answers and to which most people were more than willing to truthfully respond—name, age, occupation, various other publicly available contours of their lives—in order to establish a pattern and a rapport and, sometimes, to allow the person to relax. An interviewee’s relaxation tended to work in Eduardo’s favor, though few people understood this. A person who was terrified throughout an entire lie detector test—for the true statements as well as the lies—would be impossible to read; it was the relative relaxation that provided the gauge, which was why Eduardo usually tried to create it in his interviews.

But the usual approach, Eduardo saw, would not work with Sebastien LeCompte, and would only bore them both. He feigned another note on his pad. “You knew Lily Hayes how long?” he said, not looking up.

Eduardo could hear Sebastien drumming his fingers softly on the muslin. “I already gave a statement to the police.”

“Jog my memory,” said Eduardo, looking up. “We’re starting over. You knew Lily Hayes how long?”

“About a month.”

“And how did you meet?”

“The Carrizos invited me over for dinner. We struck up an acquaintance.”

“And how would you characterize your relationship with her?”

“Mind-bogglingly sexual.”

On the whole, Eduardo would have preferred talking to almost any of his usual characters—a small-time drug dealer with oily facial hair, a clinical sociopath, a burbling schizophrenic—to talking to Sebastien LeCompte. It was important that Sebastien not see this. “You were close, then?” said Eduardo.

Sebastien leaned back and crossed his arms and appeared to cogitate. “Might we define our terms here?”

Eduardo folded his hands neatly in his lap. Indulging some stalling only underscored its futility.

“When we say ‘close,’ what do we mean?” said Sebastien. “I mean, in a sense, we were as close as two people can possibly be, and in another sense, we knew each other not at all.”

“Could you be more specific?”

“Probably not.”

“You were sleeping together?”

Sebastien’s jaw dropped open theatrically. “Truly, you push my chivalry to its limits. How is one to answer such questions and remain a gentleman?”

“You were having a romantic relationship with Lily?”

“I was trying to, certainly.”

“Tell me about the night Katy died.”

“I think if you’ll refer to your file, you’ll see you have the whole sordid tale right there.”

Eduardo could feel the dull blade of a headache beginning to saw against his temple; he fervently wished he could tell this child to quit wasting both of their intelligence on such small battles. “You know,” he said, wedging his voice into its most avuncular tone. “You’re really not helping Lily this way. Maybe you’re not trying to. I wouldn’t want to presume. I understand you’re a legendarily unknowable fellow. But if you want to be helping Lily, you should probably understand that you aren’t.”

Sebastien’s face was blank. A breeze blew through the window, making a faint rustling sound in the curtains.

Eduardo leaned forward. “Tell me about the night Katy Kellers died.”

“Lily and I spent the night here. As I have frequently said.”

“And what did you do?”

“We watched a movie.”

“What movie?”

“Are there no limits to your sadism? You people are really going to make me admit to this again?”

“What movie?”

“ Lost in Translation . We watched Lost in Translation . If I’d known you were going to be locking her up the next day, if I’d known I would have to tell so many strangers about it, I would have been sure it was something more obscure.”

“And you fell asleep when?”

“Probably around four.”

“And you woke up when?”

“Around eleven.”

“And Lily was with you the whole time?”

“Yes.”

“You’re sure of that?”

“Yes.”

“Might she not have stepped out while you were asleep?”

“Not possible.”

“How do you know?”

“We sleep tangled in each other’s arms. Shared lucid dreams, sex every hour on the hour. Truly a cosmic connection we have.”

“I see.” Eduardo made another note, his pen scratching dryly. “And, given that connection, how do you imagine Lily felt about your liaison with Katy Kellers?”

Sebastien made a guttural sound, the dregs of what was probably supposed to be a disbelieving laugh. “Liaison?” he said. “Is that what they’re calling such things these days?”

Eduardo gritted his teeth but was careful to keep his lips slack. “Something shorter? A onetime incident, perhaps?”

“I suppose you’d call it a zero-time incident, if you’re really interested in crunching the numbers.” Sebastien’s voice now was something well beyond flat—it was polished, it was Simonized.

“You are saying you did not sleep with Katy Kellers?” said Eduardo.

“Goodness, you’re tedious.”

“Not once? That’s your statement?”

“Not once. Never. I am fairly sure I’d remember.”

“That’s not what Lily Hayes reported.”

“On this, and on this alone, I fear Lily Hayes is mistaken.”

Eduardo’s headache was moving from the flanks of his head into its center; it was burrowing down, settling into itself, getting ready for the long haul. Eduardo would not let it bleed onto his face. “You don’t have to lie to me,” he said, because of the headache. It was his first misstep.

Sebastien scoffed. “If I had anything to lie about, I would absolutely have to lie to you,” he said. “But as it happens, I don’t. And I did not have any kind of conjugal relations with the deceased. And I’m frankly appalled you’d even ask such a vulgar question.”