“You didn’t have any contact with him after he left?”
“Absolutely not. I mean, I would have told you otherwise as soon as I saw his photo in the paper. But I honestly had no idea he was back in Chicago. You can check my phone records or whatever. I’m telling you the truth.”
“If we find out you were lying, the deal’s off,” O’Donnell pointed out.
“I know that. I didn’t have anything to do with him.”
“Let’s talk about Catherine Lamb.”
A flicker of wariness, and he glanced at Nelson again. “They can’t charge me for the sex thing, right?”
“Not unless you’re involved with the actual murder,” Nelson said.
Swenson turned back to O’Donnell. “Three months ago, Catherine and I began having sex.”
“Who initiated the relationship?”
“I’d been flirting with her for a while, just for sport, you know? But one day I jokingly said we should meet in a motel. And she said yes.”
With Swenson, everything was “jokingly.” O’Donnell knew the type all too well. Men who would say anything with a smile, but you knew they always meant every word. They could tell you that you had nice tits, and why didn’t you sit on their lap, and smile all the time, like you were in on the joke. And if you became even slightly hostile, you were the bitch who had no sense of humor. You couldn’t win.
Why had Catherine fallen for that? It had probably been gradual. It hadn’t happened in a single day. Maybe her way of dealing with Swenson’s “jokes” was convincing herself it was actually some sort of love. Or maybe she felt a need to rebel. Or maybe she was actually attracted to the little goblin. They’d probably never know for sure.
“But you didn’t always have sex in a motel.”
“No, we never actually went to a motel. It was always my home.”
“Where you took videos.”
“I only do that for fun. And it wasn’t like it was only her, you know? A lot of the women in those videos don’t mind. They find it sexy.”
Fun, sure. “Then what happened?”
“I wanted to try some other stuff with her. I mentioned the videos, and she flipped out.” Swenson’s eyes widened; his face looked hurt. “I wasn’t going to show those videos to anyone. They were just for me. I told her I could make a copy for her, but that just upset her more.” He paused.
O’Donnell didn’t prompt him again. There was the cash, and they both already knew Catherine had given it to him. She waited him out.
He sighed. “She wanted to buy those videos from me. She said she had cash. I would have said no, except . . .”
There it was; let’s hear the rationalization.
“My business was going under. I needed that money. I told her it would be a loan.”
Of course you did. Asshole. Bastard. O’Donnell suddenly wished she could chuck the whole deal away. He’d given them almost nothing. And they couldn’t even charge him for what he had given them. He was going to get away with it all.
“Did you still tell her it was a loan when she told you she had no more money? And how come you still had the videos? Wasn’t she buying them from you?”
“She never told me anything about the money, okay? I just thought she had a bunch of money from her dad or the church or something. And . . . yeah, okay, I kept a copy of the videos. I mean, it was a loan anyway, and she didn’t know I kept them. I wasn’t even going to watch them again.”
“And then what?”
“Then Patrick Carpenter called me to say she was dead. He called a lot of people that day, not just me. And yeah, I kinda freaked when I heard about it. I mean, I was sad, sure, but I was worried you guys might get the wrong idea. And when I saw the agent here at the church, looking at the photos, I remembered that I once saw Terrence take a photo of us when we were close. So I went over and told him to delete those photos. But that was it. I never had anything to do with Catherine’s murder. I swear.”
CHAPTER 64
Zoe sat in the task force room going through the interview transcript for the tenth time, hoping to spot something they’d missed. O’Donnell and Tatum were still with Swenson, grilling him. Trying to catch him at an inconsistency, at a lie. Searching for any tidbit that would