She shrugged.
“Last night between ten and midnight.”
Her pulse quickened as anxiety started to fill her. That was around the time she had followed Ferris. She’d have no alibi.
“And why were you there in the first place? Did your being there have something to do with this?” Grafton waved Mendez over, and Mendez handed him an evidence bag with the Aleve bottle inside. Grafton dangled it in front of her. “Why were you holding this when we found you?”
She had two options: come clean as to why she was in his home, or call a lawyer. But it was the why that she wished to avoid. It would only make her look guilty. It was getting hard to breathe. Each pump of her heart seemed to be in slow motion while at the same time it was rapid-fire.
“I see it in your eyes, Agent.”
She lifted her chin, trying to act confident even as her palms were sweating. “What is it you see exactly?”
“Panic.”
“You’re not very good at reading people, then.”
“Hmm.”
She just had to keep it together. She had to get this wrapped up before her vacation was over—and with zero involvement from Jack. And preferably none from Sam. God, what would his opinion of her be when he found out his new girlfriend was suspected of murdering the same man she’d traveled all this way to confront?
“See, I think you went to Hall’s to hide evidence,” Grafton continued. “Things could have started there…”
Instinctively, she felt herself wanting to look at the Aleve bottle, but if she did, Grafton would notice.
“Did Ferris Hall rape you?”
He had no idea how close he was to the truth. Her eyes snapped to his. “That’s what he does.”
Grafton shrugged. “He served his time.”
If he was trying to make her angry, it was working.
“So I’ll ask you again: did Ferris Hall rape you?”
Tears of indignation wet her eyes.
“He did, didn’t he?” Grafton’s voice was just a tad softer, but she detected the hunter in his tone.
She just had to keep quiet for a little longer. Maybe it was time for that lawyer. He obviously wasn’t going to listen to anything she had to say without twisting it.
Grafton slapped a bunch of photographs on the table in front of her. He fanned them out and then layered them. Paige had seen countless photos of murder scenes in her life, but this was beyond grotesque.
Ferris’s body was laid out on a bed and a glimpse of the nightstand and headboard implied a cheap motel. Blood was pooled on the sheets, most of it concentrated around his thighs and genitalia. His testicles were shredded, and his penis was next to him.
She glanced away for a second. Normally her constitution was one of steel, but they thought she did this?
“He died of blood loss,” Grafton began, “a slow and agonizing way to go. Only relief he’d have was that he likely passed out pretty quickly.” He watched her for a reaction. She gave him none. “Now, see this—” Grafton set a close-up of Hall’s chest in front of her on the table. He pressed the pad of his index finger to the white pill sitting on Hall’s chest. “That is a date-rape drug, more specifically Rohypnol. But you know that already, don’t you?”
She didn’t give him any indication she’d heard a word he said. Her mind was on Ferris Hall. The way his body was laid out, how it had been mutilated, the pill on the abdomen. It smacked of the work of a serial killer, but it could also be an isolated incident. Nothing more than a woman extracting revenge. Still, if the case was the latter, with this level of violence, she was dangerous and likely to kill again.
Grafton glared at her. “You killed Ferris Hall because he drugged you, then he raped you—”
“And how could I kill him if I was drugged?” she countered quickly.
“Someone’s a smart-ass. But how much do you want to bet that if we get our hands on the rental’s tracking device, it will lead us to the motel where he was murdered? We know from the GPS on the dash that you punched his home address in last night.”
“I want a lawyer.”
Grafton leaned forward. “Somehow, I thought you would.”
-
Chapter 7
TUESDAY, AUGUST 25TH, 4:45 PM PACIFIC TIME
PAIGE DROPPED HER FACE in her hands. She was sitting on a bench in a holding cell and couldn’t stop revisiting her decision to call Brandon instead of Sam. But her relationship with Sam was too new, and the impression she’d make on him with all this wouldn’t be a good one. And how would he respond when he found out she had gone to Ferris’s the night before?
Her stomach twisted with guilt. While she was here thinking of him, he was probably trying to reach her, worrying about her. But the police had confiscated her cell phone the second they had patted her down on scene. They were no doubt sifting through it for evidence.
Against me…
She felt the silver necklace around her neck and squeezed the pendant. She wondered what Natasha would think of the lengths Paige had gone to. Not that Paige knew what happened after death, but a part of her had to believe her friend went on.
Paige’s gut compressed tighter. The detectives would find out about her motivation for coming here and the e-mails that included all Ferris’s information. It’s not like she said she wanted to kill him in any of the correspondence, but she’d look obsessed.
If only she could figure out who killed him, she could get the spotlight off her. He’d likely hurt many women over the years… But it wasn’t as if she were free to investigate.
No, all she could do was wait and think.
PAIGE WAS PACING THE CELL when Detective Mendez approached the bars and had an officer unlock the door.
“Your legal rep is here,” Mendez said.
She followed Mendez through the corridors, wishing that she had been honest with Brandon and told him she needed defense against murder charges.
Murder charges.
The thought of all this happening to her was like a nightmare. There was no way she’d kill the man. The fact that she’d taken life before was a job hazard. Killing for personal retribution was something else entirely. She didn’t even enjoy taking down unsubs with lethal force. The flashbacks would lessen over time, but ending a person’s life had a way of imprinting on the soul and haunting you forever.
But was Ferris Hall that much different from the men she hunted for a living? He might not have killed, but he stole life from the living. What she had to acknowledge was that despite the brutality of his murder, she felt no sympathy for him—not when she looked at the crime scene photos or now. Ferris deserved what had come to him, hadn’t he? Of course, she’d keep those dark thoughts to herself.
Mendez stopped outside an interrogation room. “Here you go.”
Paige rounded the corner of the doorway but came to a standstill when she saw Jack sitting at the table facing her. What was he doing here? She wanted to leave, but it was too late; he’d seen her.
“Jack? What…what are doing here?”
“Sit.” He didn’t gesture to the chair across from him, but it was plainly implied.
She glanced over her shoulder, almost preferring that the eager detective stay. Instead, Mendez shut the door, sealing her in the room with her boss.
“You better start talking,” Jack said.
Each of the six steps to the table—yes, she counted—were hard to execute. Why was Jack here? Had Brandon told on her? Did he really think Jack was who she wanted to help her? If she had wanted Jack to come, she would have called him. But then the simple answer presented itself.
“Detective Grafton called you,” she concluded.
“Sit.”
She followed his repeated directive.
“Now talk.” He blinked slowly, and ba
sed on his grimace, he was mostly up to speed.
“You obviously know that I’m a murder suspect. The victim was Ferris Hall, one of the men who essentially took my best friend’s life.” Her voice cracked. She reached to her neck and held the pendant in her hand, as if it could give her the strength to get through this.
Jack pointed to the silver chain. “Where did you get that?”
She let go of the pendant and looked down at it. When she felt confident enough to trust her voice, she spoke. “I found it in Ferris’s house. It was Natasha’s.”
“So you stole from him.”
“He stole from Natasha,” she ground out. “I’m sorry, Jack, I didn’t mean that to come out so harsh.” She met his gaze, and her voice lowered. “How am I supposed to feel sorry about what happened to him?”
“No one’s saying that you have to.”
“Jack, I didn’t mean for this to happen.”
“For what to happen, Paige? Did you kill the man?”
His question stole her breath as if she’d been punched in the gut. “You have to ask that?”
He hitched his brows.
“No. I. Did. Not. Kill. Him.” She could honestly say she had never even considered it. Not feeling sad about his murder and attributing some justification to it was far from taking action.
He remained silent, but there was something in his eyes, in his energy—maybe his somewhat laid-back demeanor—that made her think he knew more than he was letting on.
“Do you know something I don’t?” she asked.
“Talk and we’ll find out.”
“You know that they found me in Ferris Hall’s house?”
Jack nodded. “What were you doing there?”
“I went to his place with every intention of confronting him. I admit to that. Hell, my friend is—” She couldn’t bring herself to say dead. Emotion welled up in her throat, and she wasn’t sure whether to scream or cry. “There was no answer at his front door. I’d come all this way…” She paused, assessing his eyes, but they were blank. “I went into his yard, thinking I’d try the back door, but it was open.”
“It was open when you got there?”
“Yes, and I told them this.” Her eyes went to the one-way glass, but there would be no one watching or listening. With Jack serving as her legal representation, they had no right to do so.
“You went inside because there were signs of a struggle?”
She swallowed. “Not exactly. But something wasn’t right. No one responded when I called out. I had to go inside.”
“You had to go inside? Paige, why not call the police and let them handle it?”
She shrugged and bit on her lip. “I was curious, Jack, but not so much because I worried about his welfare. I started thinking about how he lived with what he does to women. Once I was inside, I wondered if I could find proof that he was still drugging women. Stupid, really. I couldn’t even use it against him if I found any. But at the time all I could think was that he…needed to pay.”
“It seems that he did.”
She took a staggered inhale. “I didn’t kill him, Jack. Besides, what punishment is there in death? Please, you tell me.” She heard the hysteria in her voice. “Wouldn’t it have been worse for him to live with the consequences of his actions? If I could have shown him what he had done to Natasha, how he had stolen her life…”
“He likely wouldn’t have cared. And you know that. You know how people like him are.”
She put a hand to her aching heart.
“Your personal history will be used against you,” Jack went on. “Now, is there anything else I should know?”
There was no way she’d expose Nadia for helping her track Ferris Hall down. Even she knew that would look like conspiracy to commit murder.
“Paige, I asked you a question.”
She looked Jack in the eye. “No, nothing else.”
“Are you certain?”
She licked her lips. He’d come all the way here to defend her. The least she owed him was honesty. “I went to Ferris’s house last night.”
“Why?” Disappointment and incredulity drenched the single word.
“I don’t know… A trial run, I guess, to get a feel for how he lived, what his neighborhood was like.”
“You could have done that on Google Earth.”
“Shit, I don’t know.” She ran her hands down her face and then back through her hair. “And I followed him.”
“You what?” Jack spat out, acid lacing his voice. “What the hell were you thinking?”
“Well, I wasn’t thinking about killing him,” she spat back.
He clenched his jaw. “Where did you follow him?”
“Down the street, but not all the way to wherever he was going.”
“To where exactly?”
“I turned around in a motel parking lot.”
“Budget Motel?” Jack sounded like he was going to be sick now, and nothing much swayed his emotions.
“Don’t tell me that that’s the same—”
He was just staring in her eyes.
“I would have been there within the time of death window. This doesn’t look good, but—”
“Damn right it doesn’t.”
“Jack, I went back to the Hyatt right after that.”
“And Sam can vouch for that?”
She hesitated a little too long.
“Paige?”
“Not exactly. He was snoring when I left, and he was still out when I got back. The time difference is only two hours for him, but the jet lag hit him pretty hard.”
Jack’s eyes glazed over, and it was as if he were looking through her. “So Ferris didn’t pull into the Budget Motel at that time?”
“No, he kept going.”
There was a brief lull of silence, which she broke. “What else do you know?” She was almost afraid to ask again.
“Not sure how far you got with the detectives, but there was a tube of lipstick left at the scene. It matches the brand they found in your purse.”
She felt her face pale. “Well, it wasn’t mine, Jack. I’ll give my DNA, whatever it takes.”
“I’m hoping we don’t even have to go there.”
-
Chapter 8
TUESDAY, AUGUST 25TH, 4:45 PM PACIFIC TIME
VALENCIA, CALIFORNIA
WE HAD PICKED UP TWO rental cars once we’d landed in Burbank. There was a local FBI field office in Los Angeles, but right now we wanted to keep this situation quiet. Jack was going straight to the sheriff’s station while Zach and I were headed for the hotel in Valencia. Both were thirty-minute drives. I was thankful for the delay, too, as I really didn’t look forward to facing my replacement and telling him that his new girlfriend was the prime suspect in a murder investigation. I hadn’t really liked the guy when I’d met him a couple of months ago. But it was possible that my perception of him was tainted because he had his sights on Paige. At the time I couldn’t have her, but it didn’t mean I wanted someone else to, no matter how selfish it sounded.
The lobby was full of guests milling about and checking in. The marble flooring and the thick round columns were impressive, but nothing when compared to the centerpiece of the space. A chandelier was suspended from a recessed panel in the ceiling, pale blue lighting making it appear as if the light fixture came out of a pool of water. We passed under it, going straight for the elevator bank.
“I can’t believe Paige is suspected of…” Zach looked around, taking into account all the people. “You know what.”
“Tell me about it. It’s as if we fell into another dimension.”
Zach raised his brows. “Sci-fi? I wouldn’t have pegged you as the type.”
We reached the elevators, and Zach
pressed the “up” button. The doors dinged immediately, then opened, and Zach and I boarded without any stragglers. I selected the third floor.
I carried on as if there’d been no pause in our conversation. “You know what I mean. It’s just so odd.” I wanted to ask him if he thought she could have killed the man but realized how traitorous I’d appear if I did. It was one thing to consider Paige killing a man in my head and quite another to verbalize it. That wasn’t even giving consideration to her mutilating his testicles and cutting off his penis. Shivers laced through me. I actually pitied the guy. No one deserved to go out that way. “Do you think Nadia’s going to find any related cases in the system?”
“It’s hard to say, but given the thought and planning, not to mention violence, of Hall’s murder, it wouldn’t surprise me.”
“Same here. I mean, obviously Jack thinks this unsub has killed before or he wouldn’t have Nadia looking into it. The killer would have had to get Hall to the motel, too. Was it by strength or manipulation or threat?”
Zach shrugged. “Well, remember a motel clerk saw a woman with Hall. If anything, I’d say manipulation.”
“Very true,” I said. “It’s unlikely that she overpowered him, anyway. Maybe she sedated him after luring him into the room. A drug was found on Hall.”
“We still don’t know if any drugs were in his system.”
“That’s true, too,” I admitted.
“We really need more information before we can make any real guesses. All we have are the basics and some crime scene photos.”
I cringed. “And no man could forget those.”
“Nope, a man’s worst nightmare.” We were quiet for a moment. Then Zach asked, “How do you think Sam’s going to take the news?”
“Guess we’ll find out.” And his reaction would tell us a lot about the man and if he deserved Paige.
We unloaded and followed the signs to room 328. I knocked. We waited. No answer. I knocked again.
“It’s Brandon Fisher,” I called out.
[Brandon Fisher FBI 05.0] Violated Page 5
