by Kira Graham
I joined the Army when I was seventeen, having graduated early and been at loose ends at the time. I served two years and then pulled out of the service to pursue college when Adonis made it clear that he needed me to step up. It was there that I met Heath, and he’s been a friend ever since, which is why when I needed personal security for Rosetta, he was my first call.
A first call that came with a lot of strings, because after years without contact, it came as a surprise to me when the guy confessed to being a recovering addict. War will do a lot of bad to a good man, and it was never more evident than when I heard Heath’s story. He told me everything, wanting me to know it all before I took a risk on hiring him. I respect the man like hell and trust him with my life, which is the very reason that I entrusted Rosetta’s to him.
And now this. The man is going to be crazy about failing us, and, if what Chilli says is true, he’s also going to be right back at square one with the addiction that he’s been fighting for a good decade now.
“Call Brent. I want Heath tested, and I want his apartment dusted. If this guy slipped up, and we can get one decent print—”
“Already been done. There was nothing. Nothing at Rosetta’s place, either. I hate to say this, brother, but it’s not looking good. Rosetta has no alibi and no proof to help prove her innocence, and, from what they found on her and in her apartment, it’s looking open-and-shut to the cops. Even her friend Giles isn’t looking too hot right now. He called right after Brent and tried to warn me before the story blew up,” Chilli says with a resigned shake of his head.
“Then I have to alibi her!”
“You can’t. You left at midnight—”
“According to my time sheet, I was still sitting outside Ms. Sweet’s building at one,” Joe pipes up, his eyes meeting mine in the rearview mirror. “You need me to corroborate anything, I’m there. I like Rosetta. I ain’t gonna let her rot for something she didn’t do,” he says quietly, determination filling us both until Chilli bursts our bubble.
“Lobby security has you leaving at midnight. Trust me, in the ten minutes I had before you found out, I checked it all. Doorman’s statement has you leaving at precisely twelve-oh-two, and that’s backed up by footage.”
“Then we should see who came in and out. There’s only one way up—”
“Garage access. Those cameras were down for two days before this happened. All it takes is a swipe card to get to the emergency stairs. That’s where this guy got in, I’d bet good money. This was well executed, Z, and carried out with unrivaled precision. This guy is not just good; he’s fucking perfect at what he does.”
“It matches up with the break-in at Addy’s. Cameras all down. A near perfect entrance. So perfect that Adonis himself didn’t know that someone was there. We need to face facts, Zeus. This guy is way out of our league, and nothing proves that more than this. If we can’t prove that someone else killed those men, then Rose is in trouble,” he sighs, his own voice trembling with the fear that I’m struggling to keep in.
“We tell the cops that you came down and told me to pull into the garage. I tell them that I used Miss Rose’s access card, and then you say that you went back upstairs and stayed till around four. I’ll testify to that in a court of law if need be, sir,” Joe assures me, his own eyes going hard. “And so will Mary. I got home around four-thirty after I dropped you off at home.”
“So all I’d need to do is take care of the footage at my building,” I finish, my eyes meeting Chilli’s. “You in for this?” I ask, willing to do it myself if he doesn’t want to be implicated.
“Already calling Nathan. He’ll erase the last week of tape. Yeah—hey, listen, I need you on something,” Chilli says into the phone, talking a mile a minute to the ex-Army lieutenant I hired to keep the building secure.
As with Heath, Nathaniel Bane is a friend that I made despite his Army roots. When I bought my building and had Achilles renovate it into ten separate luxury apartments, I brought him on as soon as the units sold. He’s a friend, and someone I trust with my life. I just pray that I can trust him with Rosetta’s.
“Great. Yeah, I know, man, but this is turning out to be a shit show, and we need to head it off before anything else happens. Yeah, we think it’s the same guy framing her. I don’t know, Nate, but it’s going to get ugly if we don’t catch him soon. Yeah. Okay. Thanks, man. We owe you,” Chilli tells him before ending the call and meeting my eyes. “Joseph, my man, I think you need to make that call to your wife.”
Rosetta
I’ve never been this terrified or pissed in my life, and I can say that with absolute certainty because I’m sitting in an interrogation room after being stripped, photographed, and shoved into a white paper jumpsuit that does absolutely nothing for either my hair or my ass. It’s about two sizes too big, and it spurred me to accept a white bra and panty combo when I realized that the thing isn’t thick enough to conceal my privates.
I’m cold, I’m hungry, and I need a cigarette so badly that I can almost taste the acrid smoke in my mouth. Three years. I gave up the secret habit three years ago, and I haven’t been tempted once in all that time—until now.
“We have the lab running the blood, Ms. Sweet. You know the results are going to come back positive, so why don’t you cut to the chase and just confess? You were fired yesterday, by the very men who ended up dead this morning. What happened? Did they call you and piss you off even more? Did Perez accuse you of theft again and threaten to have you arrested?” the detective asks, his sneer turning into a curse when I meet his eyes silently and refuse to answer.
Here’s what I know thus far. One, I woke up this morning when cops burst into my apartment, only to discover that I had passed out on my couch, still in my dress from last night. Which was covered in blood. My hands were crusted and sticky with blood, too, and the knife on the coffee table was a clear giveaway, as was my little gun that was next to it.
I know, without having to hear them say it, that it was fired, and I also know, before the results come back from the swabs they took of my hands, that they’ll find gunpowder residue.
I’ve been framed for three murders in my life, and, as an attorney, I know what this looks like to the cops. A clear-cut case. Open-and-shut. The kind of case that will make the ADA come in his cheap suit, while the mayor holds a press conference and tells the world that he will personally see that I am punished to the full extent of the law.
Hell, if I were to look at this case myself, I would advise my client to confess and plead down in order to avoid maximum sentencing. If I were a criminal attorney, that is, which I am not. I also shouldn’t be sitting here trying to try my own case, because the truth is, in every scenario, I am guilty. All the evidence is there. A knife that was used to gut Perez, from balls to sternum. My gun, a ballistic match to the bullet they dug out of the back of Donald’s skull. And don’t even get me started on Brad Donaldson, who was found tied to his bed with a bag duct-taped around his face.
A bag that somehow just so happens to have my fingerprints all over it.
“I’m not an idiot,” I tell detective Morrison, shaking my head when he grunts. “I didn’t do any of this, and you know it. The evidence you have is so obviously planted that it’s ridiculous. Fingerprints everywhere, the murder weapons lying out in clear view, and blood all over me? It was planted, Morrison. Even your partner thinks so,” I tell him, meeting the eyes of Detective Barnard, a Hispanic female officer, with a clear stare.
She doesn’t say anything, but I see the speculation in her eyes when they meet mine. This is too easy, especially for someone like me. I know the law, and, thanks to my career, I know what to do and what not to do when—or if, rather—I ever do something like commit murder. Hell, if nothing else, I’d at least get rid of the dress and the murder weapons, and wear the damn gloves that I have in my kit.
Shit. That stupid kit that I made with Alex months ago, more as a joke to rile up my dad than anything else. I wonder if they’ll find it
in the storage closet and see it for what it is. Ironically, the fact that nothing from it has been used should prove me innocent, but it is the one thing that would probably tip this case over the edge.
I’m in shock here, and I can hardly believe that this is happening. Donald, Perez, and Donaldson are dead, and I’ve been set up to take the fall.
I’m nearly hysterical at this point, and the only reason that I haven’t gone nuts and started screaming and crying is that I know that if I do, it’ll only make things worse. They’ve been questioning me for almost twenty minutes, but I have yet to be offered a lawyer, a cup of coffee, or anything else that I’ve seen on shows like Law & Order: SVU. If I weren’t as scared as I am, I’d find this a little funny.
“It doesn’t matter what I think, Rosetta. The evidence is there,” she answers, sharing a look with her partner.
“Evidence that was planted. Come on, guys, you’re smart people who have worked enough homicide scenes to know that this isn’t right. I may not practice criminal law, but even I know that you don’t go on a killing spree, and then go home and fall asleep with a buttload of evidence all over your body. Do you really see me pulling off three murders in the space of—what, an hour? And then getting home unseen? And then what? I went upstairs and was so tuckered out by all that killing that I thought, ‘Gee, I’ll just take a quick nap and clean up all the prosecutable evidence when I wake up’?” I scoff, shaking my head when Morrison sighs and takes a seat, his large belly scraping his mint green shirt across the lip of the table.
I’ve been uncuffed for the last ten minutes, and I expect Jackson Sweet to come storming in at any minute, a thought that would be hilarious if not for the facts that I am being forced to face here. There is a ton of evidence against me, and no amount of reasoning with these people is going to change that. They have me on prints, murder weapon, and blood evidence, and from the little hints that Morrison dropped while he cuffed me in my apartment, they have footage of a female wearing my dress, arriving at Donald’s house.
“I admit, it looks a little too cut-and-dried for my liking, but I’ve seen it all by now. In the two hours that it took us to work the scenes, we’ve gotten witness statements from people at last night’s charity event all corroborating the animosity that you exhibited towards the victims. Maggie Donaldson made a statement that you said, and I quote, ‘You will all get what’s coming to you,’” he says seriously, reading off a small black pad that looks as old and weathered as he does.
If I weren’t pissing myself right now, I’d probably make a comparison between him and Al Pacino, the older version that’s all wrinkled and tired-looking. At the moment, though, all I can do is try to keep calm and remind myself that I didn’t do this.
The problem is, I don’t know what the hell did happen. One minute, I was drinking a cup of tea in the kitchen, going over what happened between me and Zeus, and the next, I was being yelled at and attacked by cops. There’s nothing in between. I don’t remember going to the living room, beyond the slightly fuzzy images that I have of stumbling out of the kitchen. And even those images aren’t really clear. It’s all blank except for one thing: that lightheaded, instant fatigue that I felt after drinking the tea. Was I drugged? If I was, then who did it? What happened? And if I wasn’t? How am I going to explain away everything that they’ve found so far?
“I said that in reference to Donald’s almost fanatical belief in karma, not as a death threat! I’m not that stupid,” I argue, my head pounding as I drop it into my hands. “Please, just check the building’s security feed. I didn’t leave my apartment.”
“There is no footage,” Barnard mutters, her brown eyes filled with pity.
The woman obviously doesn’t like this story, and if I had to guess, I’d say that she smells more suspicion in this case than she wants to. But evidence is evidence.
“What about an alibi? We haven’t discussed that yet—”
“We haven’t discussed anything! Hell, you haven’t even asked me anything of import at all. You’ve spent the last twenty minutes glaring at me and ordering me to confess, while you list off all the evidence that you already have against me. I didn’t do any of this!” I yell, losing my temper because I just can’t keep it in check anymore.
I have no alibi. No way to prove my innocence, and absolutely no way to get out of this. Someone framed me, making sure I couldn’t shake it, and now I’m facing some serious jail time because, as things stand, they will convict me of murder. For the deaths of three men that I threatened by email yesterday, I think frantically, feeling panic filling me at the thought of what will happen when they find those emails. I sent them. I freaking sent undeniable proof that I was pissed at those men, and in Perez’s little love letter, I told him that I was going to cut his brake lines!
Christ, Rosetta! How could you be so stupid?
“Well, then, let’s get started. Where were you between the hours of two and four a.m. this morning, when the victims were being murdered?” Morrison asks me, his lips pulled tight when I glare at him and hiss.
“At home! I was at home, asleep—”
“With her lover,” a voice fills in, bringing my head sharply up to look at the door.
Hugo Hector stands in the entryway, his expression hard and filled with scorn as both Morrison and Barnard whip around to gape at him.
“You can stop your line of questioning right now, and do something that you should have done an hour ago—let my client call in her lawyer to discuss her options. But, as far as things go, I would start to rethink your case, detectives. Rosetta Sweet has not one, but two people to provide an alibi, making whatever evidence you have irrelevant. She was at home in her apartment, in bed with her lover, while the murders were being committed, and if you won’t believe Mr. Hart, then perhaps you will believe his driver, who sat in the limo for four hours waiting for Mr. Hart to come back down.”
“Security in the lobby clearly shows Mr. Hart exiting the building just after twelve,” Barnard says, though I note that her tone isn’t accusing.
It should be, I think, keeping the shock off my face at this turn of events. Zeus is alibiing me? He’s lying…
“He did exit, so that he could instruct the driver and show him where to park in the garage. Here,” he says, tossing a file on the table. “There’s an entry log clearly showing that Joseph Castelano swiped Miss Sweet’s card to get into the garage below the building, and, according to his statement, he watched Mr. Hart take the elevator up to the third floor, where her apartment is located.”
“What about—”
“Mrs. Castelano has already verified her husband’s whereabouts, going so far as to allow us to procure a copy of her cell phone records. Her husband made a call to her around ten after midnight to let her know that he wouldn’t be home. I’m sure you can verify his location, as well as the location of Mr. Hart at four this morning, since he called his driver right before going down to let him know that they were leaving,” Hector finishes smugly, giving me a supportive smile that goes a long way toward stilling the panic that I feel rising within me.
Joe and Zeus are lying for me, and they’ve somehow managed to put evidence in place that shouldn’t be there. If the detectives check, which they will, then they’ll find that Z’s phone pings near my building, and I’d bet money that both Joe’s and his wife’s phone records show a call from him to her, originating from the area of my apartment building, corroborating their story.
I don’t know how, but Zeus has made sure that I have an alibi, and Joe himself is in on it. I’d feel guilty, but right at this moment, when Hector walks in holding a cup of coffee from my favorite store and hands it to me, all I feel is relief. Even more so when I turn the cup and see the words “we’ll be okay” scrawled on the side in Z’s untidy handwriting.
Tears fill my eyes, and—shit, I’m damn close to bawling by the time the detectives exit and leave me alone with Hector to go through what the hell it is that has happened.
Ch
apter Eight
Rosetta
Real life isn’t like the movies, unfortunately, and after a truly terrifying talk with Hector, I am remanded into a holding cell until a bail hearing can be scheduled.
“You should just piss. Ain’t no sense in bein’ in pain while these pigs enjoy your suffering,” Carla drawls in her thick Texan accent from her slouch against the wall.
I’m stretched out with my head on Big Bee’s lap, clutching my stomach because my bladder is going to burst, but I’d rather go out that way than put my genitals anywhere near that disease-infested contraption they call a toilet. I don’t get a single cell like they do in SVU, and there is absolutely no privacy or even a wall around the stainless steel toilet in the corner, leading me to believe that I need to fight for the rights of these women, even if Carla has already confessed to bludgeoning her husband to death and is awaiting transport to a prison, where she’ll wait for her trial to begin.
Not that I blame her. If my husband ever beat me up, threatened my kids, and then slept with my sister, bludgeoning would be the kindest way I’d think of for killing him.
“Yeah, honey. Just go on now and use the facilities. We’ll form a wall for ya,” Bee says, her big red smile making her fat cheeks jiggle.
She’s a large woman the color of a fine, smooth dark chocolate, and she has such pretty, kind eyes that I immediately liked her when she welcomed me into the holding cell and announced that she’d keep me safe. How safe I really am is questionable, since Bee is a self-professed hooker who’s been off her anti-psychotics for a week, just long enough that when a john got his blow job and tried to cheat her out of her payment, she bit one of his balls off. I shit you not.
We laughed about that for nearly ten whole minutes, until it occurred to me that being street-smart and mean-spirited is a world away from being safe. I can fight with the meanest of them, and I wouldn’t count myself out if one of these women came at me. But I’m just one person, and if they all decided to come at the prissy little rich girl at once, I wouldn’t stand a chance. Thank God I am super smart, and also very personable. I also happen to really like these women, because the best kinds of people, to me, are those who have the hardest stories. Aside from Carla and Bee, there’s also Kaley, who got pinched on possession while carrying her boyfriend’s coke, and then right at the end of the line, cradling my feet and giving me a foot rub to die for, is Jan, a sixty-two-year-old divorcee who set her husband’s trailer on fire after he cleaned her out in the divorce and hooked up with her daughter.