A/N: I do not own any of the characters; they belong to their respected owners. I'm just a dreamer with too much time on their hands and a wide vocabulary. Note that Tate Langdon is more than a school shooter in this piece of fiction, he's also a serial killer. Thus we're thrust into an AU here. Enjoy.

Chapter 5 – The Interview

Lisbeth woke up much earlier than she would have liked. She shuffled into the bathroom, stripping herself of the scarce clothes on her body before stepping into the porcelain tub, letting the warm water cascade over her skin. Her eyes burned with lack of sleep, her night having been spent starring at the screen of her PowerBook, scanning over the black text of information. But she realized as she finally put her computer to rest at four am, that there was nothing new to be discovered. She felt like Armansky had sent her on a wild goose chase.

Lisbeth slipped into a pair of jeans and a tight fitting black tee-shirt that hugged her sides and accentuated the little curves she had. She ran her hands over her sides, feeling the thick cotton that clung to her skin, and examined herself in the mirror. She was so…ordinary was definitely too dull of a word, and exotic was simply too extreme to describe herself. She was…different. Shoving her feet into her worn pair of Doc Martens, Lisbeth left the Victorian home and made her way to the corner market she had been to previously.

She ended up purchasing lunchmeat, cheese, a head of lettuce, a jar of mayo, a package of Chips Ahoy, coffee, tea, sugar, and cream. She figured that she would at least be able to bribe her guest of answers using food, although she was unsure if a simple sandwich would make him spill any dirt. But it was worth a shot, and Lisbeth took her groceries back to the large house, unpacked her new purchases, put on the coffee, and played a game of online chess with an opponent from India as she awaited the arrival of Ben Harmon.

Ben paced the attic floor, wringing his hands as he went over in his head what he was going to tell Lisbeth about Tate. Vivien sat in the rocking chair with a book in her hand, her glasses perched at the tip of her nose with Violet sitting at her feet doing the same. The two women ignored Ben and his nervous pacing and as he looked at them, he noticed how similar they were and the characteristics they shared. He thoughtlessly wondered if Jonah would ever mimic any of his behaviors when he grew older, but sadly dismissed the thought when he realized that Jonah would never leave his infancy. Ben finally stopped pacing and stood in front of his wife and daughter, his hands placed at his sides in annoyance until Vivien finally looked up from her place in her book.

"What?" the woman asked, looking at her husband with a raised eyebrow. Ben threw his arms up in frustration. "Jesus, Vivien!" he exclaimed, and Violet violently shut her book and gave her father a dirty look. "I'm freaking out here! I have to meet with Lisbeth and I have no idea what I'm going to tell her."

"You shouldn't have offered to talk with her in the first place, dad," Violet sneered. She had only spoken to the living stranger downstairs once and already she disliked her. She didn't know what it was about the young Swede that made her uncomfortable, but Violet knew that her business in the house would bring nothing but trouble. Dabbling into the short life of her ex-boyfriend Tate Langdon could only cause turmoil and disaster, and that's exactly what Lisbeth Salander was about to do. Ben gave his daughter an agitated look.

"Enough, Violet," he said. "The faster we give her what she wants, the sooner she'll leave the house." Ben couldn't stand the thought of a human being preoccupying the house; he was terrified of the fate that would fall upon them if they stayed too long and fell victim to the house's evil. The thought of another lost and tortured soul trapped here with the rest of them for eternity made Ben's stomach twist into knots. "Just tell her what you know," Vivien said calmly. "She'll get what she wants for her research and go. It's simple."

"Not really, sweetheart." The Harmons jumped as they heard the sickeningly familiar voice of Hayden emerge from the shadows of the attic. Her long brown hair was tied up in a high ponytail, her brown eyes masked with black eye make-up circling them, her pink mouth curled into a twisted smile as she intruded on the family's little chat. She eyed Ben, the lover that she once had in the palm of her hand but lost due to the sudden burst of morality that overcame him, looking at the way death had settled over him. Ben's eyes grew wide as the young woman approached him and his family, and his forehead creased in frustration.

"Watch your tone with my wife, Hayden," Ben spat as Vivien sat frozen in her chair. Violet looked on at her father's old mistress with distaste. "What do you want?" Ben questioned. Hayden laughed, caressing the tips of her fingers against Ben's shoulder, making the man shiver.

"Nice little choker you've got there, Ben," she smirked, and Ben turned pale, his hand flying to his throat as his fingers traced the red rope burn that etched itself into his skin, the last mark she gave Ben that would set everything into motion. Hayden laughed and bit her bottom lip as she noticed the effect she still had on Ben after all this time. "I'm simply here to offer you my advice," she explained, studying Ben's face.

"We don't want your advice," Vivien scowled, and Hayden gave her a cold look before returning her attention back to her ex-lover. "I hear you're going to have a little chat with the girl downstairs about the monster in the basement. What's she on about?" Even though Ben hated Hayden with every ounce of his body, he knew that she was genuinely concerned and afraid about the situation at hand. Ben sighed and rubbed his temples.

"She's investigating the shooting," Ben told her. "I don't know why, but she wants to know more about Tate. I figure if I just give her the general run-down about him from the therapy session I had with him, she'll be satisfied and leave." Hayden bit her bottom lip, looking down at the attic floor while Vivien and Violet sat in silence. Ben sighed, shook his head and made way towards the exit from the attic.

"I'm going to go talk to her," he announced. "I'll be back shortly. Hayden, you should go now." Hayden scowled at Ben, but she disappeared as quickly as she had appeared. Ben smiled at his wife and daughter. "I'll tell you everything when I get back," he assured, and his wife waved him away while Violet sat twiddling her fingers in her lap.

The knock on the door startled Lisbeth, and she exited out of her game of chess and made haste for the door. Looking through the peephole, she saw the large build of Ben Harmon staring back at her, giving her a warm smile. She opened the door, gesturing for him to come inside.

"Thanks for inviting me over," Ben said, making his way into his old home. "I hope this isn't any trouble." Lisbeth shook her head, leading him into the kitchen. "No, this is perfect," she said. "I made coffee." She poured him a mug and handed it to him, and Ben shook his head. "I'm fine," he said, but Lisbeth pushed it towards him.

"It's rude to not offer your guests coffee in Sweden and even ruder to not accept it," Lisbeth explained, glaring him down. Ben swallowed and took the mug from her, watching as she sipped from her own. She started walking out of the kitchen. "There's an old study upstairs," she said. "I figure we can talk up there with a more professional setting." Lisbeth lead her guest up the old stairs, Ben following behind her back to the very office that he conducted sessions with Tate Langdon in. He wondered if he should tell her this fact, but decided that he would wait until the interview officially started.

Ben took on the role as patient, sitting on the elongated couch across from the large armchair that Lisbeth took refuge in. He thought it awkward and felt incredibly small sitting across from the strange Swede, especially with her many piercings and black hair that was pulled back in a stiff nub of a ponytail. She sat cross-legged in the armchair, her PowerBook in her lap, opening it up to a fresh Word document.

"I'm going to ask you some information about yourself first, is that okay?" she asked, her fingers positioned over the keys. Ben nodded. "What is your full name, your age, and your profession?" Ben crossed one leg over the other.

"My name is Benjamin Harmon, better known as Ben. I'm fifty years old and I'm a therapist," he answered. Lisbeth's fingers flashed across the keyboard. Her pierced eyebrow rose when he answered. "You're fifty?" she questioned, astounded by his age. Ben cracked a smile and let out a soft chuckle. "Yes, I'm fifty," he said. "Is that on the record or off?" Lisbeth turned a slight shade of pink and her eyes darted back to her screen.

"How long have you lived in this neighborhood?" she asked. Ben bit his bottom lip. "A while," he responded, and Lisbeth looked up from the screen with a scowl on her face. That was not the type of answer she was looking for. Ben sighed. "I would say about eighteen or nineteen years," he said, going on the notion that he was around when Tate was alive and living in the house. He was actually unaware of how long he had been dead; every day was one continuous today and he had to check the news to catch up with the month and sometimes even the year. Death had a funny way of messing with time.

"Do you know anything about the Langdon family and their association with this house?" Lisbeth asked, her heart beginning to beat as her questions dove into what she really wanted answered. Ben sat there quietly for a while, thinking. How was he going to answer this?

He knew the Langdons because he lived in the house, listened to Tate Langdon's psychotic thoughts, and his mother harassed his family. Tate proceeded to rape his wife, all the while seducing his daughter, and then impregnate his wife with a demon child. How could he tell her that?

"I used to hold sessions with Tate in the early nineties," Ben lied, which was still somewhat the truth. Lisbeth typed away. "Can you tell me what he was like from your sessions, or are you still bound my doctor-patient confidentiality even in his death?" Ben wanted to laugh at her question; nothing ever went away even after your death – he knew that all too well. But she didn't, and if he wanted to get her out of the house, he was going to have to break a few rules.

"I can tell you about him," he said, "mainly because you're trying to solve…what was it you're trying to find out again?" Lisbeth rolled her eyes. "Around the time that Tate Langdon shot up the school, the bodies of teenage girls that went to Westfield High School as well as the other neighboring high schools were showing up along the highway. There might be a connection to the murders and Langdon, but we're not sure. That's what I'm trying to figure out."

Ben's forehead creased into a frown. He had never heard about the murders; he would have definitely remembered there having been a mention of deaths like that, even if he wasn't really living in the state of California yet. The news would have spread across the nation. But Ben couldn't ask her to delve more into the information, because according to his story, he had lived in the neighborhood during the time of the murders, so it must have been old news.

"Oh," he simply said. "I remember that happening. It wasn't very…it wasn't mentioned much." Lisbeth nodded her head. "The police wanted to keep it under wraps because they couldn't nail down a suspect. They believed it to be Langdon, but by the time they made the connection he was already dead and according to the reports his family had moved out of the house and they couldn't gather any evidence, especially since all his items had been burned after his burial."

Ben leaned back in the chair, clasping his hands together. "I see," he whispered, the cogs in his brain whirring. "That's interesting." He believed he had the boy figured out, but apparently he was wrong; so very, very wrong. He would probably gain more out of this interview than Salander would. Lisbeth eyed the man, watching as his facial expression turned from curiosity to distress. What was he hiding? What did he know? Or maybe, she wondered, what didn't he know? Lisbeth jotted down his change of mood, and continued with her interview.

"Since you can tell me about your sessions, do so. Tell me what he was like. The reports in the papers didn't really cover much about him," she said. Ben closed his eyes, the room he was in looking exactly the same except he was in the chair Salander was in and Tate Langdon was in his position.

"What you have to understand," Ben began, opening his eyes to face the young woman. "was that this happened a long, long time ago." Lisbeth waited, her hands poised over the black keys. Ben took a breath and began.

"It was the fall of 1993, and my wife and I had just moved to California from Boston. We were getting ready to start a family here, and I was ready to settle down and start my life as a full time therapist. The Langdons were friendly people, so they seemed, and Constance Langdon, Tate's mother, enjoyed barging into our home and inviting herself in, just like her daughter, Adelaide. They liked to know every bit of our business, and when I mentioned that I was a therapist seeking a place to work, she offered me her empty study that I could conduct sessions in."

Ben opened his arms to the room. "It was this room, funny enough." He gave her a soft smile, and Lisbeth took his interjection to quickly type up the story so far. She nodded at him to continue when she was finished.

"So I took Constance's offer and set up shop here on one condition: that I see her son Tate for free. I couldn't say no since she was giving me this place to work, so I accepted her agreement. The first time I saw Tate, he was quiet. He sat picking at the hole in his jeans, and I noticed this snake ring on this thumb that looked incredibly menacing. I tried to ask him questions, but he was extremely reserved. At first, I thought he didn't like me. In fact, I knew he didn't like me. I knew it would take time for him to open up to me."

"I figured it was mommy issues; all boys have mommy issues. And when I brought up the subject of his mother, he told me all these terrible things about Constance. He told me about the loss of his father, who abandoned him and his sister, and the fact that his mother was a…well in his terms, a "cocksucker". There was an obvious gap between the mother and child, and I took that into consideration. But there was more than just the problems with his mother. There were, of course, problems at school."

"It seemed that Tate suffered from, what I deduced, as Dissociative Identity Disorder, commonly called D.I.D. He had these visions during his time at school about shooting the kids in his class, but it wasn't because he hated them. It was because he wanted to free them from the "filth of the world". I didn't understand him; he made it seem like he was some sort of savior to the people when really he longed for blood. There was obviously something wrong with him, and I knew that after he started telling me these violent thoughts that he was dangerous. I put him on medication to help with the thoughts to see how that would work out for him."

"And how did they work out for him?" Lisbeth questioned, her fingers running over the keys as she caught up with Ben's story. Ben rolled his eyes and crossed his arms. "He wouldn't take them," he said. Lisbeth frowned at him. "He was afraid that he wouldn't be able to get hard because of them," Ben explained.

Lisbeth bit her bottom lip, trying not to laugh. She wrote down Ben's note and nodded at him to continue. He couldn't tell her about his association with Violet, seeing as technically Violet was just an infant and couldn't be in a romantic relationship with Tate at the time. So he decided to leave that part out entirely.

"Really, that's as much as I can tell you. We stopped our sessions after he said he wouldn't take the medication, and if he wasn't going to follow my instructions or submit to further treatment there was no point in him seeing me to waste both our time. Constance let me keep the space for my office until I set up somewhere else. As for Tate, what happened to him can be found in your local library."

"Where did you move to?" Lisbeth questioned. Ben's eyes darted to the large window looking out over the yard. "I retired," he said. "After the birth of our daughter, I realized that I had enough money and I wanted to stay with her completely." Lisbeth raised an eyebrow at him. "You retired at 32?" she questioned. "Isn't that a little…young?"

Ben swallowed. "I didn't work for free, Lisbeth," he said. "It was close to five hundred dollars an hour to see me. I saw many prestigious people in my office that sat in this very seat." He pet the arm rest of the couch. Lisbeth typed his reply. "Can you tell me anything that stood out about him? Something he may have said or hinted at?" Lisbeth questioned. Ben studied for a moment, thinking about the sessions he had so long ago. He looked at Lisbeth.

"Something about Indians," he said, and Lisbeth cocked her head at him. "He spoke about the Indians and the way they believed that evil spirits lived in their blood, and they would cut themselves to set them free. He said…he said he enjoyed the blood." He looked up at the young Swede and saw her lips turned down in a frown. She furiously typed down Ben's reply, her fingers pounding down on the delicate keys, the harsh click-clack sound filling the room. She slammed her PowerBook shut and stood from her spot.

"Thank you, Mr. Harmon," she said, looking at the man. Ben looked at her, bewildered, and stood from his spot. "That's it?" he asked. "That was pretty quick." He tried to give her a smile, but she brushed past him and out of the study. Ben followed after her. She ran down the stairs, one at a time, and opened the front door, looking down at the ground.

"I appreciate you coming over and letting me interview you," Lisbeth said. "If I have any more questions, I'll contact you. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me." She didn't even look up to meet his eyes. Ben stood in the doorway.

"Oh, okay," he whispered. He placed a hand on her shoulder, and Lisbeth shuddered underneath the ice-cold touch of the man. Her blood burned. "I'll see you around, Lisbeth," Ben said, and he walked down the steps and made way towards the fence, the farthest he could ever go.