Deadly Impulse

by Carolyn Arnold

  Chapter 50

  THEY’D GIVEN BEN TWO CHOICES: come with them the easy way or the hard way. The latter she would’ve had no problem executing. It would’ve involved slapping cuffs on him and escorting him from the hospital in front of his colleagues. Unfortunately, he’d chosen option number one.

  She hated having to retrieve him when he shouldn’t have been released in the first place. It was all because Winston had wanted to make some sort of point. What that point was she didn’t know. What she saw was an effort to establish control. The sergeant should be more concerned about how this fiasco made the department look to the city’s residents.

  An hour had passed between picking up Ben and the three of them being back in the interrogation room.

  Madison sat at the table, and Terry leaned against the back wall. The change jingling would start any second.

  “You told us that you never went to Club 69,” Madison said. She’d play it cool. For now. There was a pleasure to derive from providing the rope for him to noose himself.

  “That’s right.” Ben leaned back in his chair, bending one leg over the other. Somewhere along the way, he’d lost all trepidation. He still hadn’t called for a lawyer, and he was being cocky.

  “How do you explain this, then?” She slid a photograph across the table. It was a still photo of him leaning on his car outside the club. The image didn’t capture any signage, just the building’s red brick.

  “So what? It’s me outside my car.” He placed his hand over the photo and looked her straight in the eye.

  This was how he wanted to play things? It was one of the oldest, most ridiculous routes for any suspect to take, playing dumb and arrogant. They must have all missed the memo about cooperation going a long way in reducing prison sentences. But that’s fine. She rather liked it when no deals needed to be extended.

  “Can you tell us where you were?” She picked up his hand by one finger to clear the photo.

  He glanced down at it. “Not sure. The mall, maybe.”

  “Try again.” Her bullshit meter was screaming.

  Ben crossed his arms. “I don’t know.”

  Madison exchanged the photo for another one from the folder and tossed it toward Ben. He stopped it from going over the edge of the table.

  The focus of this second image was the same as the first, but it hadn’t been cropped. It captured a rectangular sign with flashing lights around it that said DANCING GIRLS.

  She tossed another photo to him. This one showed Club 69’s sign.

  She leaned back in her chair, crossed her legs, crossed her arms, and waited.

  “Maybe I should get a lawyer.” His confidence was a thin veneer. He now avoided eye contact, and his voice was weak.

  “You could, or you could be honest with us.” Madison lifted her chin.

  “Fine. I went to the club.”

  “Club 69?” Madison named the establishment to provide clarity for the record. She didn’t need this case going sideways.

  “Yes.”

  “And you were on the phone talking to someone about Zoe?”

  He stared at her. “How do you know that?”

  “Let’s just say we have our ways.”

  Ben rolled his eyes. “Where did you get these pictures?”

  “The city was nice enough to share the footage with us.” She told him where the video camera was placed.

  “Shit,” he muttered.

  Change jingled. Terry circled him. “Getting it off your chest will make you feel better.”

  “You’ve already lied to us about not ever being there. What else aren’t you telling us?” Madison demanded.

  “Fine. I found out Zoe was a stripper there. I was on the phone with Elias telling him what kind of girl she was.” He still wouldn’t make eye contact.

  “Did you sleep with her before, or after, you found out what she did for work?”

  “After.”

  Terry jingled his change louder.

  “So you used her line of work to bribe her into sleeping with you?” Madison asked.

  “I might have taken advantage of the situation. She was a stripper. She took it off for a dollar. Girls like that don’t have morals.”

  “But she didn’t sleep with you until you had something to hold over her.” The insult registered in Ben’s eyes, but he was smart enough not to lash out at her.

  She stood and paced. “So you showed up at the club, saw Zoe, and called Elias. That’s all? You never confronted Zoe, yelled at her?”

  “No.”

  “Interesting. People are saying that Zoe argued with a man matching your description.” She couldn’t ask if he dyed his hair or she’d show her hand. With each step, she kept her eyes on Ben. “Think before you speak again because we’re getting sick of the lies, Ben. It doesn’t look good for you. So I’m going to ask again: did you confront Zoe at the club?”

  “No.” Ben straightened in his seat and pressed a fingertip to the table. “Eli had us both over one night, and when he stepped away to get us fresh drinks, I told her I knew what she was about. She was desperate to keep the news from him, said it would break his heart. But I think what she really meant was there goes her payday.” Hatred filled his voice and his eyes.

  “So you guaranteed your confidence if she had sex with you?” Madison asked.

  He nodded.

  “Even though you had already betrayed that trust by calling Elias?”

  He shrugged. “He didn’t believe me.”

  Disgust settled in the pit of her gut like a ball of acid. If she verbalized the way it made her feel personally, it could come back to bite her later on. A seasoned lawyer could use it to claim she was prejudiced against Ben. It was one thing to think a certain way and another to broadcast one’s opinions. Broadcasting resulted in repercussions.

  The change jingling was hitting her last nerve. She shot Terry a look to stop. He did, and then there was a knock on the door.

  Madison got up and opened it to Cynthia. She shook her head as she handed her a folder.

  Madison peeked her head back into the room. “Terry.”

  He came out and closed the door behind him.

  “Tell us, we got him,” Madison said.

  “One man had sex with Zoe before her death and Ben Dixon was that man.”

  “So much for the guy using protection. Just another lie,” Madison said.

  Cynthia continued. “His DNA wasn’t a match to anything else, though. Not to the cigarettes, not to the—”

  “What about the baby?”

  Cynthia shook her head. “He’s not the father. Now, I’m running the DNA profile through the system, but something will only come up if the father has a criminal record. There are no hits so far, but it’s still going. In regards to the fingerprints pulled from the wheelchair, Ben is not a match to those, either.”

  “So all we can prove is he had sex with Zoe,” Terry said.

  “Forensically, I’m afraid so.” Cynthia let her eyes drift from Madison to Terry, then back to Madison.

  “It still doesn’t mean he didn’t kill her.”

  “He’s not the father,” Terry began, “and his prints weren’t on the chair.”

  “I’ll leave this with you two,” Cynthia said. “Remember, though, just because his prints don’t match up doesn’t mean he’s not behind the murder of Faye Duncan. He does work at the hospital.”

  “Meaning?” Madison asked.

  “He could have worn gloves. There were a lot of smudged prints, as well.”

  “Sure, drop a bomb and run away,” Madison said.

  “Actually, I have one more thing… I also had a chance to look closer at Zoe’s phone and recover her deleted messages. The only ones of interest were ones to and from Ben Dixon, but they just confirm what you already know.” Cynthia nodded to them.
“I’ll keep you posted on what more I find out.”

  “Thanks,” Maddy said, and Cynthia walked away with a wave over her shoulder.

  “What are you thinking, Maddy?” Terry asked when they were alone again.

  She shook her head. “I’m not quite sure yet.” There was that sick feeling again. It was almost overwhelming. Maybe Ben was innocent. Was the killer someone who was closer to Zoe and Faye—Kimberly? Was she back to that theory?

  “Ben has told us a lot of lies,” Terry said.

  “I agree, and you only lie—”

  “—when you have something to hide,” Terry said, finishing her sentence.

  -

  Chapter 51

  THEY HAD NO CONCRETE PROOF that he was the killer, but Ben was definitely hiding something. What that was Madison didn’t yet know, but she hoped they could snake it out of him. She and Terry were outside the interrogation room where Ben was seated. Making suspects wait sometimes served to make them more cooperative. Of course, it could have the opposite effect.

  “Ben has motive,” she said.

  “What are you thinking?”

  “What if Zoe had enough of his manipulation and was going to confess the relationship to Elias? Also, Ben stresses quite often how Elias is a doctor. It’s like it makes Elias better than other people.”

  “He puts the man on a pedestal.”

  “Yes, like that. And it’s clear he sees Zoe as far below Elias’s league. But what if Ben felt inferior? He could be using his friendship with Elias as a measurement for success, as a bragging right.”

  “Ben’s a male nurse. That comes with a lot of stigma,” Terry said.

  “Top all this off with Zoe being pregnant.”

  “But it’s not his child.”

  “He doesn’t know that,” Madison pointed out.

  Terry bobbed his head side to side. “You really think it all ties back to this child?”

  “I do. And Ben’s alibis for all three murders cannot be verified.”

  “I hate to point out the obvious…”

  She smirked. “Since when?”

  “Hardy har,” he began, “but we can’t place him at the scenes of the murders, either.”

  She growled.

  He held his hands up. “I’m just sayin’.”

  “Yeah, I know. It’s the truth.” Madison paused. “You ever wonder why Zoe was in that alley in the first place?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Let’s see if our ‘friend’ here can shed any light on this.”

  “We’re going back in?” Terry asked.

  “What is it with you and the obvious?” She smiled at him and entered the room.

  “I swear I didn’t kill anyone.” Ben’s petitions of innocence started the second the door opened and continued until Madison closed it behind her.

  She then took her time sitting. She made eye contact. He had no way of knowing the baby wasn’t his, and that could provide another motivation altogether. “What were your thoughts on Zoe having her baby?” she asked.

  Ben’s Adam’s apple heaved. “She told me it was Eli’s. Was it mine?”

  “So you did know about the baby before we told you?”

  No response.

  “See, you acted like it was a surprise, and now, apparently, it was Eli’s. What do you think of that, Terry?”

  “I think he’s full of it,” Terry said.

  “I don’t know why I didn’t tell you all this,” Ben moaned.

  “It seems like you hold back a lot,” Madison rebuked. “And what you do say are lies.”

  “She was going to use the baby against Elias. Trust me. For God’s sake, she took her clothes off for strangers for a living.”

  Time to get him off the rant. “Was Zoe going to keep the baby?”

  “I think so.”

  “You think or you know, Ben? Because there’s a huge difference,” Madison said.

  Terry jingled his change.

  Ben ran a hand down his face. “She came to me all upset. Said she was pregnant and swore it was Elias’s. She said she had to come clean about us.”

  “That would have made you angry. You’d lose Elias’s friendship.”

  Ben looked Madison in the eye.

  “That’s right. We know how important his friendship is to you.”

  “Well, whatever, none of it will matter now.”

  “Going back to my first question about how you felt about Zoe having the baby. You were pissed, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “And Zoe was going to use the baby to extort money from Elias?”

  “I think so, yes.”

  “This has nothing to do with the fact that the baby might have been yours?”

  Red bloomed in Ben’s cheeks.

  “Can you imagine Elias finding out that his best friend slept with his fiancée?” Madison asked, shaking her head. “And, Zoe, well, she was only having sex with you because you bribed her. That had to hurt a little.”

  Ben shrugged. “Why? She was just a lay to me.”

  “I think she was more.”

  “Think what you want.”

  “She got pregnant and told you she was going to come clean to Elias. You didn’t want what you had going to come to an end,” Madison said.

  He stared blankly ahead. “Zoe told me it was Elias’s baby.”

  “But how could she know that? You said yourself that she slept with anyone.”

  “Was the baby mine?”

  “Maybe she told you why she was keeping the baby.” Madison paused, and Ben didn’t say anything. “She was keeping the baby because they were going to get married. She might have already known how Elias felt. He does seem like an open book.” Madison made eye contact with Terry. “Can you imagine Elias’s reaction when the baby comes out and looks like Ben?” Her gaze leveled back on Ben with her last few words. “But too bad for you because, in the meantime, your child grows up believing Elias is his father.”

  “Fine, I was pissed. She had no way of knowing whether that baby was mine, Eli’s, or any other guy’s she was banging. I have no doubt there were more than the two of us.”

  “Based on what?”

  “Gut feeling, lady.”

  Lady? She’d let it go. This once.

  Ben continued. “Besides, Zoe failed to realize she wasn’t in any position to call the shots. She didn’t want her job as a stripper getting out, either. Elias would have dropped her in a flash.”

  “Yet, he didn’t when you told him. That was whom you were talking to in the parking lot of Club 69. That’s what you told us before.”

  His eyes met hers now. “I don’t know why he was so caught up with her. I never got it. And as long as I’m talking… You know that woman? The older one? Zoe’s great-aunt? Well, Zoe mentioned that an abortion would devastate her and that she had to keep the baby. Her aunt held a lot of control over her.”

  First, he hadn’t known Faye Duncan, now he did. This man was an habitual liar.

  “Sounds like motive to me,” Madison said.

  “Except I didn’t kill them!”

  “This is the part we’re having a problem with, Ben. If you didn’t kill her, who did?”

  He raked a hand through his hair. “I have no idea.” He glanced at Terry and back to Madison. “Isn’t that your job to find out?” He paused. “Have you met Zoe’s mother?”

  Madison nodded. Where was he going with this?

  “She’s perfect—at least she wants the world to think so. But she sleeps around like her daughter did,” Ben said.

  Kimberly had told them her alibi for both murders was that married man she was seeing. Madison recalled that the girls at the club had mentioned Zoe’s mother’s promiscuity, too.

  “Tell us more about the mother.” It didn’t hurt t
o hear everything he had to say. She’d sift through his words later to determine which claims were true.

  “She was sleeping with a married man, you know. Ask anyone at that hospital.”

  “Do you always believe rumors?” Terry asked.

  Ben glanced over his shoulder to Terry. “When they have a basis of truth to them. I saw her kissing some guy in the parking lot.”

  Madison shrugged. “It doesn’t prove he’s married.”

  “Except I saw his wedding band. He had his hand out the window, in her hair.”

  All right. Fair enough. Kimberly Bell was seeing a married man, but this wasn’t news to them. How could that aspect factor in to three people being dead? As of yet, the pieces weren’t fitting together.

  If they ever would…

  “Tell us why this matters.” Madison’s tone was dry, and she was certain she gave no impression of being interested in what he had already told them.

  “It’s just that Zoe had a lot to measure up to, at least from an outward viewpoint. Her mom volunteered and was hot. I mean, for her age, she was a looker. She was always picking on Zoe. They never saw eye to eye, I know that. Zoe got along better with her great-aunt.”

  “What are you really saying?”

  “I’m saying, have you given any real consideration to Kimberly Bell being the killer?”

  -

  Chapter 52

  THEY HAD TO LET BEN GO, and this time it wasn’t a decision forced on them by the sarge. There was no evidence to support him killing Zoe, Faye, or Charlie.

  “What if Elias wasn’t as cool about Zoe being a stripper as Ben had let on? I mean, Elias lied to us, too. He told us he didn’t know what Zoe did for a living. But according to Ben, he did,” Terry said.

  “Assuming he was telling the truth,” she pointed out. “He hasn’t been exactly forthright so far.”

  “Do you think he lied about who he was on the phone with?”

  “It’s possible.”

  “Then who? Kimberly maybe? He has quite the opinion of her.”

  Madison shook her head. “No. Nick told us he overheard ‘She’s not who we thought she was.’ It doesn’t sound like something he’d say to her. I would think that conversation would go more like, ‘Do you want to know what your daughter really does for a living?’ The way he extorted sex from Zoe, he probably would have tried that with Kimberly in exchange for the dirt he had on her daughter.”