by Sal Bianchi
“Okay,” Bette scoffed. “So you didn’t kick down a locked door?”
I bit my lip in frustration, unsure how to respond to her loaded question. It was the morning after the arrest that Jase and I had made on Ian Brooks. I’d come into the SDCT office early to interrogate Ian. He’d been too drunk the previous night to be reliable, but when I’d arrived, Flint had informed me that Ian had lawyered up and was refusing to speak. Furthermore, his lawyer was claiming that the drugs we found as part of an illegal search, and therefore unable to be considered valid evidence. Their argument was that a door was found kicked in on the upper floor of the yacht.
“Yes, I did,” I retorted. “But there wasn’t even anything in there! The room I found the cocaine in was completely unlocked. And I had permission to be on the boat, so they can’t claim I was a trespasser.”
“Oh, just stop with the excuses!” Bette snapped. She’d barged into the break room as soon as I’d gotten here to yell at me for messing up the case. “You think you’re so clever that you can just do what you want and weasel your way out of facing any consequences. The SDCT is in deep crap because of you! Not only did you obtain evidence illegally, but now we have videos of you tackling a suspect to the ground circulating online.”
“I didn’t tackle him.” I frowned. “He was already on the ground. All I did was restrain him.”
“Which you don’t have the authority to do!” Bette screamed. “I told Flint this would happen, that you’d end up screwing all of us over.”
“Leave him alone, Owens,” Jase finally interjected. He’d been quiet the entire time she was reaming me out, probably because he was mad at me too. He’d been standoffish ever since the arrest, but I guess even he finally had enough of Bette.
“Wow,” she laughed bitterly. “So, as usual, you’re going to let him do whatever he wants and just clean up his messes for him? You aren’t kids anymore, Park. Can’t you see he’s just holding you back?”
“Why are you even here, Owens?” He sighed in exasperation. He’d dodged her question, but I still felt the sting. It was like she was echoing my exact thoughts from two nights ago.
“I’m on the case now,” she sneered.
I snapped my head up to look at her. Was Flint going to kick me off of the case for what had happened?
“This is our case,” Jase argued indignantly.
“And clearly, you can’t handle it,” Bette retorted. She glared at me venomously before turning back to look at Jase. “This is obviously bigger than we initially anticipated. We now have three murders on our hands, with potentially many more depending on how far back this pattern continues. The director is assigning Agent Duncan and me to assist on the case. Though it wouldn't surprise me if you two got kicked off entirely.”
It was jarring how quickly and dramatically her tone could change between speaking with me and anyone else. She’d been literally screaming at me just a moment ago, but she’d been perfectly calm and polite while addressing Jase. I couldn’t honestly say I didn’t deserve it after last night’s fiasco, but Bette was like this to me all the time. Honestly, it kind of hurt to have someone be that hostile toward me all the time for no reason.
“Oh, there you are,” Flint mumbled gruffly as he entered the break room. I tensed and held my breath as he looked at me, genuinely worried that he was about to kick me off of the case. “The situation isn’t ideal. The lawyer is making sure he stays tight-lipped, but since he’s now a suspect in the murder of Josie Keller, you’ll have a chance to interrogate him. The upside to all of those videos is that they also caught him screaming about being glad she was dead. The situation is tenuous, though, so tread carefully. Don’t do anything stupid to cost us this chance.”
I sighed with relief as I realized that not only was I not being booted off of the case, I was actually going to get a chance to question him.
“Are you serious?” Bette snarled. “Director, I’m sorry, but this is ridiculous. You’re really going to let him continue after he nearly tanked the entire case?”
“Agent Owens,” Flint replied seriously. “I appreciate your concern, but I’ve made my decision. Please respect that.”
For a moment, Bette just stared back at him in angry disbelief. Finally, though, she relented with a sigh.
“Of course, sir.” She nodded. “I’m going to go get back to work.”
She spun on her heel and marched out of the break room without another word. Despite how unabashedly abrasive she was toward pretty much everyone else, I’d noticed that she was always respectful of Flint. I wondered why that was. My own relationship with the SDCT director was a complex one. Maybe Bette’s was too.
“Well then, you should go conduct the interrogation,” Flint grumbled before turning and leaving the break room as well.
“So, how should we do this?” Jase sighed as we slowly left the break room and walked toward the back end of the office where the interrogation room was. “It’s going to be difficult to get a good read on him with his lawyer right there the entire time.”
“Maybe not,” I mused as I ran through several different interrogation tactics in my mind. “Ian strikes me as a coward. Did you hear how he immediately started yelling for daddy as soon as he was in cuffs? I think we can rattle him into talking.”
“You’re not planning to do anything crazy, are you?” Jase asked me warily.
“I couldn’t if I wanted to,” I frowned. “Not with a lawyer in there. It’s not illegal for law enforcement to lie, though, and I’m not even a real agent here. All I have to do is work him up enough that he sings even despite his lawyer’s warnings.”
“I’ll leave it to you, then,” Jase grumbled. "You're better at getting under people's skin than I am."
A two-way mirror bisected the interrogation room down the middle. On one side was a small viewing area, and on the other was the actual interrogation chamber. I could see Ian sitting inside, next to a gaunt, graying man with pinched cheeks and a mean-looking scowl. Ian’s eyes were puffy and red, and he was holding his head as though it hurt. Considering how drunk he was last night, he definitely had a hangover right now. I kept that in mind as I pushed open the door and stepped into the room.
Ian snapped his head up to look at us and immediately adopted what was probably supposed to be a confident glare. The red tinge around his eyes and his disheveled hair spoke to how uncertain he really was.
“Good afternoon, gentlemen,” the gaunt man greeted us flatly as Jase and I stepped inside. “My name is Richard Pence. I do hope we can settle this quickly. My client would like to go home and rest after the ordeal he’d been through.”
He stared at me pointedly as he spoke, probably alluding to the way I had supposedly “tackled” Ian the night before.
“I’m sure it couldn’t be that bad,” I replied calmly. “At least, not compared to the ordeal that Josie Keller went through, having her throat slashed and all.”
Just as I expected, Ian flinched and looked down at his lap at my words. The kid was an open book. He’d probably gotten everything he ever wanted his whole life. Spoiled brats like him never learned to lie because they didn’t have to.
“Don’t reply to that,” Pence snapped at Ian before the kid could even open his mouth. “Agent, I’d appreciate it if you would refrain from making any baseless accusations during the course of this interview.”
“Who’s making accusations?” I smiled. “I was merely stating that spending a night in the drunk tank couldn’t be nearly as bad as being brutally murdered in cold blood. I would have thought that the victim’s boyfriend would agree.”
“That’s enough, agent,” Pence growled at me. “Oh, that’s right. You’re not actually an agent, are you, Mr. DiFiore? Oh, no, you go by ‘Costa’ now, don’t you?”
The atmosphere in the room took a sudden and unexpected plunge. I felt my blood run cold as the lawyer smirked at me.
“Who are you?” Jase demanded. His voice was calm, but I could hear a thread of trepid
ation in it as he spoke.
“I told you,” the gaunt man sneered. “My name is Richard Pence, and I’m here to represent Mr. Ian Brooks. I have no other business here… currently.”
I gritted my teeth at the thinly veiled threat in his response. Of all the potential scenarios I’d run in my head before coming in here, this was something I’d never thought to account for.
“When a woman is murdered, do you know who the most common perpetrator is?” I asked Ian coldly. His eyes widened with shock, and he looked over to his lawyer. Pence opened his mouth as if to respond to my question, but I continued before he could get a word in.
“In almost all cases, it’s the boyfriend. Or an ex-boyfriend,” I turned to stare at Pence as I spoke. “Funny, isn’t it? You would think that the person you love the most would be the most likely to hurt you, but that’s the way it is.”
“I didn’t--” Ian whined before Pence could stop him.
“Quiet,” Pence hissed. “Are you going somewhere with this, Costa?”
He said my alias with a mocking inflection, and I had to focus on maintaining my cool. Somehow, this man knew me, and right now, I wasn’t sure if I should be more concerned about him or Ian. I froze as I realized that maybe that’s exactly what he wanted.
“You’re the most likely suspect right now, Ian,” I turned my head to look at the trembling young man in front of me. “I know you didn’t kill her with your own two hands. No, you made sure you had plenty of proof of that.”
“Costa, you’re walking a thin line,” Pence snapped at me, but I ignored him and barreled on.
“You probably couldn’t do it, anyway,” I jeered. “You’re too much of a coward. No, you had to get someone else to do it, didn’t you?”
“Don’t answer that,” Pence warned. Ian was clutching his head in his hands and looked like he was starting to hyperventilate.
“That’s why you panicked when you heard the name Shane Rutherford,” I accused as I slammed my fist on the table between us. Ian flinched and curled in on himself at the noise. “Shane is the one you hired to kill Josie, isn’t he? You knew that you wouldn’t be able to live your cushy life anymore with a baby. It would have caused a scandal, and you couldn’t have all your friends know that you’d gotten some girl pregnant.”
“That’s enough!” Pence yelled.
“Admit that you told Shane to kill her,” I continued in spite of the lawyer’s protests. “Admit it, or you’re the one who’s going down for murdering her!”
“No!” Ian screamed. His voice sounded anguished, like the moan of a dying animal. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for it to happen. I mean, I did, but I wanted out. But they wouldn’t let me out of it. I didn’t mean for this all to happen.”
“Shut up, Ian,” Pence snarled. He lifted his hand as if to grab or strike him, and I rushed around the table to stand between them before he could do whatever it was he intended to do.
“Step away from the suspect, Pence,” I warned. This wasn’t normal behavior from a rattled lawyer. From my perspective, Pence seemed to have more skin in this than he should.
He blinked at me in surprise as I blocked him from his own client. I turned away from him and kneeled down to get closer to Ian’s eye level.
“Who wouldn’t let you out of what?” I asked slowly.
“The guy I met on the internet,” he sniffled. “I panicked when I heard Jo was pregnant. I posted an ad looking for a hitman on this black-market website that I sometimes used to sell--”
He cut himself off before he could admit to any more than he already had.
“Don’t worry about the drugs,” I snapped. “Tell me what happened after you posted the ad.
“Ian, don’t say anything,” Pence growled from behind me. Ian’s eyes darted back and forth between the two of us, clearly unsure what he should do now.
“Look at me,” I commanded, and Ian’s gaze turned back to me in fright. “He’s not on your side. He’s only interested in protecting the people he works for.”
“You can’t be serious,” Pence chuckled. “Exactly who do you think I’m working for? Ian Brooks is my client.”
I turned back to glare at Pence. I couldn’t prove it, but I knew this guy was more involved with this than he was letting on. He knew way more about me than he should, and he’d seemed more panicked when Ian started talking about whoever “they” were than he had during any other point during the interrogation.
“You said you didn’t mean for it to get this far,” I spoke to Ian calmly. My best bet now would be to appeal to his morality. “You said you wanted to call it off. You can still do the right thing by Josie if you tell me what actually happened.”
Ian’s eyes shifted away from mine as though he wanted to peer back up at Pence, but he shut his eyes tight before he could look back up.
“Okay,” he croaked. “I put the ad up, and then someone responded.”
“Someone offered to do the hit for you?” I clarified.
“I don’t know what I was thinking,” Ian nodded tearfully. “He told me to send him the money, and I did it right away.”
“Was it Shane?” I asked.
“No,” Ian sniffed. “I never actually met Shane. I don’t know who the guy I talked to was.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, confused by his explanation.
“The guy said I had to prove I was trustworthy first,” he mumbled. My heart sank as I heard him say that. This all sounded too painfully familiar to situations that had once been commonplace in my life. “I didn’t want to kill that guy. I tried to call everything off, but he said it was too late. He said he’d send everything to the police unless I did what he said.”
“Ian,” Pence snapped. His voice was cold and threatening, and I could see that his face was red when I turned back to look at him. He glared down at me before suddenly stalking out of the interrogation room.
“Hey!” Jase called as he hurried out after him.
“Did he threaten you?” I asked once we were alone. There was no way a lawyer who had nothing to hide would just abandon their client in the middle of an interrogation.
“No,” Ian shook his head. “I don’t know who he is. I thought my dad would send his usual lawyer, but then he showed up. He knew about everything, so I thought he must be a replacement or something.”
“I see,” I replied tersely. Now I was wondering if that guy was even a lawyer at all. I looked back at Ian. The report we had on him indicated that he was only twenty years old. Without all the drunken bravado of last night, he just looked like a pathetic, scared kid. Still, I couldn’t let my pity for him cloud me from getting the answers I needed.
“Who did you kill, Ian?” I asked calmly.
He bit his lip and started crying with renewed vigor at my question.
“I don’t even know his name,” he sniffled. “All they sent me was an address and a picture of the guy. I snuck into his trailer while he was sleeping. It was so easy. He was so drunk that he didn’t even react. I checked to make sure he wasn’t breathing anymore, and then I left.”
His voice took on a robotic tone as he finished his story, and there was a blank, faraway look in his eyes.
“So after you killed him, what did you do?” I asked.
“I sent a picture to the guy,” he replied. “With my phone. Then they said okay and that Josie would be dead within the next three days.”
“Where is your phone now?” I asked. We might be able to pull information about the person he was in contact with from it.
“That lawyer took it,” he mumbled in response, and my hopes were dashed immediately.
“Great,” I scoffed sarcastically. “Do you at least remember the address of the man you killed?”
“Yeah,” Ian nodded.
“Aright,” I sighed as I reached over to the other seat where Jase had left his work bag. I dug through it until I found a notepad and a pen. “Write it down for me.”
I pushed the two items over to him and watched
as he wrote the address down with shaky fingers. I pursed my lips as I tried to digest everything that had just happened. Now we knew that there was someone out there orchestrating all of this, but thanks to the intervention of an unexpected third party, we still weren’t any closer to finding out who that was. Then there was said third party himself, that suspicious, so-called lawyer. What exactly did he have to do with all of this?
The more we dug into this case, the more and more certain I felt that the mafia was involved. And not just any mafia, but my own former Family.
24
Jase
Well, things had certainly taken a weird turn during Ian Brooks’s interrogation. Nick had noticed it first, and I’d been confused when he’d suddenly gotten in between Ian and his lawyer. It wasn’t until the lawyer, Pence, suddenly lost his temper and stormed out of the room that I realized something was up with him.
I’d hurried to follow him out, but he was fast and sneaky. It seemed as though the moment I blinked, he was out of my sight. I’d spent a few minutes looking around the office, but it was as though he’d vanished into thin air. I’d finally returned to the interrogation room just as Nick was finishing up. He’d gotten the kid to confess to killing someone, and we’d gone to Flint’s office to relay everything we’d learned to him.
Now we were waiting for Agent Stein to see what he could dig up about the newest victim. It dismayed me to learn that my fears had been correct, and we had stumbled onto yet another murder case. I groaned as I buried my head in my hands and wondered just how deep this went.
“That lawyer was shady,” Nick grumbled beside me. He had pulled a chair away from an empty desk and was currently sitting next to me. He had folded his arms across his chest, and his leg bounced anxiously. “Ian said that he didn’t recognize him and that he took Ian’s phone when they met.”
“You think he’s got something to do with the cases?” I asked.
“Yeah.” Nick nodded. “Ian said he contacted someone through an online message board, right? And the person who responded agreed to do the hit on the condition that he kill someone first to prove he was trustworthy.”
