by Blake Pierce
He sat down in a plush leather easy chair that looked brand new and indicated for them to join him on the adjoining, equally unwelcoming couch. The security guard stood silently at the entrance to the room.
“Thanks for seeing us again, Mr. Bender,” Reid said, not wasting any time. “We realize this is difficult for you but getting as much information as we can early on in an investigation can be invaluable. So do you mind if we dive right in?”
“Of course not,” he said, staring back at them with clear eyes. It appeared that whatever he’d been on earlier had largely worn off.
Reid turned to Jessie. After all, she was the one who had wanted to talk to Jack Bender before revisiting Titus Poole, so it was on her to get things started.
“We’ve been speaking to a number of your friends,” she began, “notably a few of the women who were part of the wedding parties, and some of what they told us had me curious.”
“What about?” Bender asked, curious himself.
“Jax was a bridesmaid for Claire and your wife was going to return the favor. But it was clear that you weren’t going to be a groomsman for Titus. Why is that?”
Jack considered the question for a second before answering.
“No real reason. We weren’t super close. Claire and Jax were tight so we became friendly by association. But I’m not sure we would have hung out otherwise. We certainly weren’t close enough to ask the other to be groomsmen.”
His answer made perfect sense. But something about the way he shifted in his seat as he talked made Jessie dubious. It was as if he was dodging some invisible, incoming fire. She wondered what had him on edge and decided to tease it out.
“I totally get that,” she said casually, hiding her suspicion. “I remember when I got married to my ex, only one of my bridesmaids was someone I actually liked. The rest were kind of foisted upon me. But I don’t know that I would have outright rejected one of them being in the wedding party. There would have to have been some real animosity to risk rocking the boat. So I can’t help but wonder if maybe there was a little more to you not being asked to suit up for him.”
Jack Bender stared back at her and it was clear that he understood what she was getting at. It was equally clear that he had no intention of being forthcoming.
“I’m sorry you had that experience,” he said, unable to keep the condescension out of his tone. “But our situation was much more boring. We just weren’t besties, you know?”
They were at an impasse, one that might prove difficult to deftly navigate. Jessie was sure he was lying. But pushing him too hard might make him shut down completely or even bring up the idea of a lawyer. On the other hand, she might never get a chance like this again. It was highly unlikely that his mother would allow him to participate in any more unsupervised interviews. She decided to go for it.
“Well, if that’s all you’ve got, then that’s all you’ve got,” she said nonchalantly. “Of course, if you’re not able to help us, we may have to poke around a little more.”
“What does that mean?” Bender asked, sitting up straighter in his chair.
“Well, it’s just that I feel like you’re holding back, which is your prerogative,” she said without emotion. “But we’ve got a lot of unanswered questions. And we’re not just going to simply leave them unanswered. So we may have to probe the history a little more with your social circle to see if they agree about why you might have been left off Titus’s groomsmen list. We’ll probably ask him directly as well. Sometimes that leads to embarrassing revelations which could have been kept quiet if the subject of those revelations was more forthcoming to begin with. Do you get what I’m saying, Mr. Bender?”
He obviously did, as his shifting in the chair was now accompanied a grimace he couldn’t control. It took several seconds for him to find the words he was looking for.
“It would be nice if we could avoid dredging up embarrassing revelations, especially if they weren’t relevant to your larger investigation,” he finally said.
“Here’s what I can offer you: if you have some unpleasant personal information you’re willing to share, after we check it out and find that it isn’t germane to our case, we could probably bury it deep within our case file. But if you hold back, once we start asking around, what happens next is kind out of our hands.”
A long silence engulfed the room. Jessie saw the guard in the corner looking warily at them. He seemed to want to intervene but couldn’t think of a credible reason to do so. Jack sighed deeply.
“Okay, I’ll tell you,” he said.
“Perhaps we should call Mrs. Bender,” the guard blurted out, finally deciding to earn his keep.
“Zip it, sluggo!” Reid ordered, staring at the guy narrowly. “You’re not part of this chat. Insert yourself again and you’ll spend the afternoon securing bail on a charge of impeding an investigation. Got it?”
The guard nodded sullenly. Jessie and Reid returned their attention to Bender.
“Go ahead,” Jessie prodded.
He closed his eyes, as if that would make what he said next less objectionable.
“Jax and I were sleeping together,” he blurted out.
The pause between his admission and her question was brief.
“For how long?” Jessie asked quietly, not at all surprised.
“On and off for a few months now. It started as a drunken hookup at a Labor Day house party. We both agreed that it was a mistake. But then it happened again, and again. Pretty soon, it was a regular thing.”
“So was it an affair,” Reid wanted to know. “Were either of you planning to leave your significant others?”
“No,” Bender insisted vehemently. “It was nothing like that. We were just having fun. Claire can—could—be controlling at times and Titus is so buttoned-down. Plus he’s a lot older than Jax. The two of us were a little less intense, so we gravitated to each other. But we were both happy in our relationships.”
Jessie wasn’t convinced.
“But Jax and Titus postponed their wedding. Are you telling me that your hookups had nothing to do with that?”
Bender shook his head.
“I really don’t think so. I know Claire had no idea it was going on.”
Jessie didn’t say anything, but she wasn’t sure she bought that. After all, Jack Bender wasn’t a pro at hiding his emotions. She’d gotten him to crack in just a few minutes. What if Claire had done the same? If she had found out the dalliance and threatened to reveal the truth, how far would Bender go to stop her?
And yet he seemed to have an iron-clad alibi. Upon a request earlier this morning, Lisanne Bender had agreed, without a subpoena, to turn over all the security footage from the mansion for the last two days. The tech team hadn’t reviewed all of it yet. But just the offer suggested that the Benders weren’t worried about Jack’s alibi holding up.
“What about Titus?” Reid asked. “Any chance he found out?”
“No way,” Bender said confidently. “He’s a pretty jealous guy. If he suspected something, he’s not the type to hold his tongue.”
“Is he the type to get violent?” Reid pressed.
Jessie saw a flicker in Bender’s eyes and knew he was thinking that saying “yes” might take the pressure off him. But ultimately he shook his head again.
“I’ve seen him get angry, but never violent. Usually when he gets mad, he starts speaking very slowly and deliberately. I remember he once said that a black man can’t afford to get too angry in this world. It usually ends badly. I think he really took that to heart. Besides, if he did lose it, wouldn’t it make more sense that he’d go after Jax and me? Why Claire? She was being cheated on too.”
Jessie had to admit that it was a good point, although in her experience, when people reached the point of murder, logic often went out the window.
“Jax never told you why they postponed the wedding?” she asked. “Maybe a lovers’ secret while you were in bed?”
“No,” he insisted. “She sai
d it was logistical, that they fell behind in the planning. I don’t know, maybe she was lying to me. It’s possible that she felt guilty about what we were doing and needed to sort things out in her head, decide what she really wanted. But she never said that.”
Jessie wasn’t sure where else they could go with this. Jack Bender was a cheating scumbag, potentially a drug addict, and a generally squirrelly guy. But his answers made sense and his alibi was likely to hold up. Going at him any more without something definitive felt like a mistake. There was no reason to make an enemy of Lisanne Bender if they didn’t need to.
“I think that will be all for now,” she said standing up. “We’ll be in touch if we have additional questions.”
“You’re not going to say anything about what I told you, right?” he pleaded, standing up as well.
“I can’t promise anything, Mr. Bender,” she said as they began to leave. “Obviously if your infidelity turns out to be essential to the investigation, it will come out. But if we able to determine that it played no role in the crimes, we’ll do our best to minimize your exposure. That’s the best I can offer.”
“I understand,” he said as he opened the front door for them. “I appreciate any discretion you can provide.”
Before Jessie could reply, she felt her phone, which was on silent, buzz. It was a voicemail from Ryan.
“We’ll have to leave it there,” she said abruptly and started down the steps.
“Let us know if you think of anything else,” Reid said as he rushed to join her.
Jessie was about to listen to the message when Reid caught up.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“I got a voicemail from Ryan,” she said. “Usually he just texts during work. He only calls if it’s something important.”
“Go ahead then,” Reid said as they got into the car.
“Thanks,” Jessie said, reaching for her AirPods. But before she could put them in, Reid’s phone rang. It was Captain Decker. She was tempted to tell him to send the call to voicemail so she could check Ryan’s message. But she knew the captain was on edge and being put off would only exacerbate the situation. Reluctantly, she nodded and Reid answered and put him on speaker.
“What’s up, Captain?” he asked.
“Is Hunt with you?” Decker asked, sounding even more irritable than usual.
“Yes, sir,” Jessie volunteered.
“Good. Listen up, both of you. We’ve got a major problem.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Jessie steeled herself.
A major problem could mean anything from HSS having been shut down completely to another dead cop. She tried not to leap to conclusions and waited for Decker to explain.
“What is it, Captain?” Reid asked.
“This case is approaching DEFCON 1.”
“What do you mean?” Jessie demanded.
“All those fans who were mourning outside Jax Coopersmith’s house have moved. Now they’re outside police headquarters. Only instead of dozens of them, now there are hundreds. And they’re not just mourning, they’re protesting. Some of them are lying in the middle of the street, making it impossible for vehicles to get by. We’ve had multiple arrests. News helicopters are everywhere. There’s a march, complete with bullhorns and homemade signs. They’re demanding to know if we have suspects. There’s even a hashtag: #JusticeforJax. Please tell me you’ve got something because the Chief just called me, and my ears are still ringing.”
Jessie and Reid exchanged frustrated looks. Decker wasn’t going to be happy with the answer.
“Captain,” Reid said, taking the bullet, “we’re making progress, eliminating suspects. But no, we don’t yet have anyone we like.”
“No one?” Decker asked incredulously.
“We have a lot of credible suspects,” Jessie said. “But that’s the problem. Both victims had a large circle of friends and they overlapped. They were all in each other’s wedding plans.”
“Wait, did you say both victims?” Decker repeated, his voice rising. “What are you talking about?”
Jessie’s heart dropped into her stomach. Only then did she realize that in all their driving around, neither of them had thought to update the captain on the connection between the victims: that they knew each other, were bridesmaids for each other, and most importantly, that they’d been killed on consecutive nights using the same method. If Decker was upset now, he was going to lose it completely when he found out the magnitude of the situation.
“Hold on one moment,” Captain,” Reid said, muting his phone.
“What is it?” she asked.
“This is about to get ugly,” he said. “We should have kept him in the loop on this. But that’s on me. I’m the LAPD detective. You’re a consultant helping out the department. I should take the heat on this.”
Jessie shook her head.
“We’ll take the heat together,” she insisted. “It’ll be less painful if we tag-team him.”
“No,” Reid said firmly. “Call your boyfriend. I know you’re worried about your sister. Find out what’s going on. I’ll smooth this over.”
“Are you sure?”
“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “But maybe walk away from the car a bit. Decker doesn’t yell much, but when he does, it really carries.”
Before she could second-guess herself, Jessie leaned over and gave him a kiss on the cheek. Then she got out of the car. The door was just closing when she heard Reid saying “Sorry, Captain…”
She jogged over to the edge of the driveway and played Ryan’s message. The second she heard the tone of the first word, she knew something was amiss: Jessie, please call me back as soon as you get this. It’s about Hannah. I’m not sure anything is wrong, but I need to talk to you.
She called him back immediately, her mouth going dry as she waited for him to answer. He picked up on the first ring.
“Hey,” he said, launching in without waiting for a response, “so Brady seems to have lost Hannah—.”
“He what!” she interrupted, her chest tightening.
“He doesn’t think she’s in danger,” Ryan added quickly. “He followed her into a downtown office building and saw her take an elevator up to the fifth floor. She went there on her own and didn’t look under duress. But he hasn’t seen her come out. He might have missed it or she could still be up there. I know you’re trying not to be too much like Big Brother, or Big Sister, but I thought you might want to check that geo-location app you secretly installed on her phone.”
She had already opened the app before he even finished talking. By the time he was done, she saw where Hannah was.
“She’s at Tommy’s Coffee, the coffeehouse near the house.”
“Are you sure?” he asked.
“I’m sure her phone is there,” she confirmed. “If you wait for a second, I’ll find out for certain.”
She put him on hold and called the place. The woman who picked up sounded like she didn’t have a care in the world.
“Tommy’s Coffee,” she said sunnily. “How may I help you?”
“Yes, hi,” Jessie said, trying to channel her best mom vibe. “My daughter is on break from school today and said she was going to be hanging out there for a while. I’m at work and don’t want to call her to check up on her, but I worry that she may be feeding me a story so she can sneak off somewhere with her friends. Could you tell me if there’s a girl in there, looks about early twenties even though she’s a teenager; tall, skinny, beautiful, sandy blond hair just past her shoulders, green eyes, probably sitting curled up on the old, leather easy chair under the retro ‘Here you go, a cup o’ Joe’ poster, staring at her phone?”
“She’s right there,” the woman replied, “Exactly where you expected.”
“Thank you so much,” Jessie said, the relief in her voice genuine. “It’s a hard line to balance, giving freedom but being responsible.”
“I understand,” the woman said. “I’ve been through it with two bo
ys. But if I can offer a suggestion, there are ways to mark her phone so you can see where she is. It’s a little sneaky, but you might consider it.”
“I may do that,” Jessie said, feigning ignorance. “Thanks for the tip.”
She switched back over to Ryan.
“I don’t know what she was doing before but she’s at the coffeehouse now,” she said.
“Thank god,” Ryan sighed.
“This doesn’t say much for Brady,” Jessie said, trying not to get too angry. Their last conversation had ended abruptly when she learned that Ryan hadn’t checked in regularly with Brady. To get on him now, because he had checked in and come back with a disheartening status report didn’t seem fair. Brady might be a mediocre tail but that wasn’t Ryan’s fault. He’d only been trying to help by suggesting him as an alternative when she rejected Kat as an option.
“No, it doesn’t,” Ryan admitted, not making any excuses for his friend.
Appreciating his admission, she decided to move past it.
“Can you let him know where she is please? And maybe remind him not to underestimate her. Part of the problem we have now is because I didn’t consider what she was capable of.”
“I’ll reach out as soon as we hang up,” he promised, sounding like he was about to end the call.
“Hold on,” she said. “How is the Night Hunter investigation going?”
He took longer than expected to reply.
“I had to put it on pause briefly. Something came up. But we’re getting back into it now. Unfortunately, there’s nothing new to report so far.”
She could tell he was holding something back but didn’t press. There had been enough tension between them today and she didn’t want to exacerbate it.
“Okay, well let me know if I can help. Otherwise, please be safe.”
“I will,” he assured her. “You do the same. I love you.”
“I love you too,” she said and this time there was no irritation to overcome.