Caught up, she began to imagine the benefits.
She knew how to play an interviewee, how to stroke, add understanding, empathy. This woman, this monster, poured out her sickness, her rage, her cold and calculating belief in her right to kill because Seleena skillfully led her down that path.
One day, they’d study this video in journalism courses—and she’d make a mint on speaking fees.
For Patricia, she concluded, the three boys had been her weapons, ones that had misfired on her. Her feelings for her brother came across as a strange mixture of love and disdain. And still she justified her killing, as far as she felt the need to justify it, as payback for his death at seventeen.
By Jesus, it fascinated. And if it fascinated her, just think, just think of viewer reaction.
“You’re the best interview I’ve ever had, Patricia. I’m struggling to keep up with you! Could we take another break?”
“I’m not done!”
“No, no, just taking ten?” Seleena flashed a smile. She had a powder keg on her hands, and didn’t want to light a match.
Flattery, she reminded herself. Just pour it on.
“I need to get some thoughts organized. I want to set this up for you in segments—some of that we’ll do in editing, but I’d like to organize my next questions. I could really use something to eat, another drink to keep the energy up. Plus,” she said quickly, “I’d like you to take a breath, too, recharge for a few minutes. We want you to be fresh in each segment.”
“Fine.” Patricia shoved to her feet.
“It’s so powerful, Patricia. I need a little time to absorb.”
“Fine,” Patricia said, mollified. “I’ve got some whole wheat crackers and hummus.”
“That would be great. Give us a little pickup for the next segment. And do you think I could stretch my legs a little? You’re a runner,” she said, “I’m active, too. If I could just walk around the cabin a little.” She flashed a smile again. “I’ve gotta tell you, my ass is numb.”
“Think about your fingers, Seleena.”
Seleena laughed that off because she no longer believed it. “I’m in the middle of the mother of all exclusives. We’re talking Pulitzer, Emmys. You can believe I’m not going to do anything to mess it up.”
“You’ll be a real big fucking deal after this.” Patricia cut the restraints.
“We both will. Everyone’s going to know your story.”
And mine, Seleena thought as she walked the aches and tingles out of her legs. Just wait, just wait until she did a special report on her experience. Kidnapped, held by Patricia Hobart. And the intrepid reporter conducts a brilliant, hard-hitting on-camera interview, drawing all the details out. Motives, victims, method, movements. All of it.
“‘Pulitzer, Emmys,’” Patricia repeated. “The sky won’t be the limit for you.” She opened the box of crackers. “You got a big boost by being in the mall that night, recording what you did. That put you on the map.”
“I kept my head,” Seleena agreed. “That’s what you have to do to get ahead. Especially when you’re a woman. A smart woman, a tough woman. They say you’re pushy, bitchy, arrogant, when what you are? Is strong, ambitious.”
“You do a program about DownEast every year in July, because that’s your main claim to fame.”
“Up until now. Oh, that’s better. I can almost feel my ass again.” She rubbed her butt with both hands as she walked back and forth.
“This interview, that’s serious fame and fortune for you. You wrote that book about DownEast, but others did, too. And you’re not that good a writer.”
“I’m not bad, but you’re right, book form isn’t my strength. I’ll hire a ghost this time. The ratings for this, Pat? We’re going to have enough for a five-part series, and the ratings are just going to build and build. Fuck the Super Bowl, we’re going to blow it and everything else out of the water.”
“Because millions of people will watch.”
“They will, they will. They’ll be glued to their screens and devices. The fifteen-year-old girl planning a massacre because she hated her life, her parents, and could manipulate her brother. How she handled it when he pushed her aside to do it on his own. The years of holding her true nature inside, hiding it.”
Seleena shook her head, let out a breath. “It’s so powerful, so compelling. Your first kill? God, you were so young! Then your own mother. The calculation that went into you eroding her will, the years of gaslighting her, up to luring her into being complicit in her own murder. It’s brilliant. Just brilliant.”
“Sit down, have some food.”
“Thanks. I’m starving.” She took the paper plate, scooped up hummus with crackers. “The irony, Pat, do you see it? Of just missing with the cop—the one who saved the kid in the mall. Just missing that kill, getting shot yourself, but getting away, holding on to get back to your grandparents’. God, that’s a segment on its own. Has to be.”
“You think the cop deserves a segment,” Patricia said slowly.
“Absolutely. That moment when you realized you hadn’t finished him, and that he’d shot you—I want to talk about that a bit more. And about what you thought, felt, while rushing back to get money, weapons, IDs—and still taking the opportunity to kill your grandparents before you ran.”
“I didn’t run. I regrouped.”
“Mmm.” She scooped up more hummus. “We’ll touch on your time in Canada, but that’s not a highlight. It’s more of a bridge, so regrouping’s a good term. But the turning point came when you realized you’d failed to kill Quartermaine, and that he managed to wound you—and then you have the serendipity of the cop who killed your brother helping to save the man you tried to kill.”
“‘Serendipity.’”
“It’s great TV, just great TV. I want to focus more on that turning point next, how the mistake with Quartermaine changed your direction, forced you to regroup. Thanks,” she added when Patricia handed her another cup of Diet Coke.
“You see that as a mistake. With that fucking cop?”
Seriously hungry, and far too caught up, Seleena forgot a good interviewer let the subject do the talking. A good interviewer observed changes in tone and body language.
“A miscalculation anyway, and again a turning point we want to punch. Up to that point, you weren’t even on the radar, right?”
She drank some diet soda, went back to the crackers.
“It’s just what you said before—you let JJ take the blame.”
“Credit.”
“Credit. You were the sister of a teenage killer, the devoted granddaughter, living a quiet life. And the next minute you’re a fugitive who’d tried to kill a cop in cold blood because he’d survived the DownEast. Who did kill her elderly grandparents in cold blood before she ran to hide—and regroup—in Canada.
“You’d killed before, Pat, but that near miss with Quartermaine changed everything.”
“He got lucky.”
Seleena nodded. “He did, he got really lucky. Recognizing you just an instant before it would have been too late, then wounding you, not to mention the irony of having his police partner already heading to that house—the same woman cop who was, ironically again, just outside the theater. She killed JJ, helped save Quartermaine. Great TV.”
“You think so?”
“Believe me, I know so. Okay, I’ve got the next segment organized.”
“Your segments, your ratings, your claim to fucking fame.”
“Sorry? What?”
“It’s my story. Mine.”
“And it’s going to blow the roof off. I think we should freshen up the makeup a little before we roll again.” She shook out her shoulders, then crossed her legs.
“You don’t need it,” Patricia said, “because that’s a fucking wrap.”
Seleena glanced over, managed one choked sound before Patricia shot her, and shot her, and shot her again. Ironically, in Patricia’s mind, with Seleena’s own pink Glock.
She expelled air, and anger. Felt better. “And don’t call me ‘Pat.’”