by Annie Jocoby
“What do you think that it means? Malcolm murdered Jordan.”
He shook his head. “That’s insane. I’ve known him for years. I mean, he’s kind of an odd duck in a lot of ways, but I could never imagine him doing something like that.”
“Oh come on. You’re a prosecutor. You, more than anyone else, understands that one never knows just who will come out and do something like this. There’s no way to say that person A or person B is capable or incapable of crime X. Anyone is capable of anything at any given time.” I was starting to sound like Slade in saying that.
“I know that.” He looked at the computer screen, which was blank. “But Malcolm? I’ve had drinks with him. He and his wife watched my kids a couple of times.” He visibly shuddered. “I would like to think that he wouldn’t do something like that. Besides, what motive did he have to do that?”
“I don’t want to go into all that.” Charlotte was going down for the murder eventually, but I had no proof that she was behind it, and I didn’t want to complicate the issue. She was going to be next, that was for sure. It was just too soon to tell Raphael this.
“You know something,” he said, his eyes narrowing again. “You need to tell me right now what you know.”
“It will all come out in due time,” I said. “I want you to investigate this video, and, well, I don’t know what will happen next, but I can imagine.”
“You know what will happen next. If this video is authenticated, then Malcolm will be arrested. Mr. Bridgewell will have the charges against him dropped.” He shook his head and started to speak in Spanish. In English, he said “I’ve worked this job for 20 years, and I thought that nothing would shock me. But this is a different thing. This has shocked me. I guess I just never thought that I would personally know somebody who would do something like this. That sounds amazingly naïve of me to say, but, man…”
“I know,” I said. Raphael was a good, upstanding prosecutor. I didn’t always get along with him, but I knew that he was ethical. He looked like he was genuinely upset to hear that Malcolm was guilty of this murder.
As I left his office, after shaking his hand, I knew that there was no going back. Whatever was going to happen was going to happen. I couldn’t put the horse back in the barn.
It was freeing.
It was also terrifying.
Chapter 29
When I left Raphael’s office, I knew that I had to face the music. I called Slade from my car, turning on the bluetooth. He picked up on the first ring.
“Serena,” he said smoothly and calmly. “How was the Bar Exam?”
I wasn’t anticipating this kind of low-key reaction, so I was taken aback. “It went fine,” I said. “It wasn’t a big deal. I mean, it was stressful to sit there for 16 hours over two days, but it is what it is.”
There was a long, uncomfortable pause. I wasn’t sure how to interpret his reaction to my calling him. I thought that he would have jumped down my throat about not being in touch with him these last few days, but he was so casual...I shook my head. There was something going on, and I didn’t necessarily like it.
“We need to talk,” I said, feeling more than apprehensive. “As soon as possible.”
He took a deep breath. “I agree. I’ll be over in 30 minutes.”
“Make it two hours.”
At that, I got off the phone and headed down the coast towards my house to wait for him. What I did was going to change everything between us. I dreaded telling him, more than I had dreaded anything in this world. Was he going to blow up at me? Would he hate me? I doubted very seriously that he would be surprisingly happy. That would be the best outcome, of course, but I thought that wouldn’t be possible.
I wanted to get my dogs out of their pooch hotel, but I left them there for the time being. I had to get to my house before Slade got there, and there wasn’t time to stop and get them. I didn’t want to make things worse by making him wait for me to get home.
A couple of hours later, I pulled up to the house and went in, and sat down in my special place – the chair in the sun room, and drank a glass of wine. I couldn’t believe how nervous I was to see him. I almost felt like getting sick, but I held it in. It’s going to be okay. Slade will forgive you. And, even if he doesn’t, you did the right thing.
I soon heard him pull up outside my house, so I went to the living room and opened the door for him. He looked extremely intense. His eyes were penetrating, even more than usual. He was dressed casually, in a pair of jeans and a t-shirt that showed every ripple of his muscular arms. I still felt the same way I always did whenever I saw him, but I wondered if he was also going to feel the same.
I closed my eyes, trying to feel his emotional vibe. To my surprise, he didn’t seem to be just acting nonchalant. He seemed genuinely calm to me. I didn’t know what was going on, but it seemed as if he was resigned to whatever it was that was going to happen.
I invited him in, and he came into the living room and crossed his arms in front of him. The two of us just stood there, staring at one another. I wanted so badly to tell him what had happened, but it didn’t seem like the right time.
He finally spoke. “Where were you these past few days?”
I didn’t try to lie. There wasn’t a point. “I was in New York, and then I was in Sacramento for the bar.”
“New York.” That was a statement, not a question. “What was there?”
I took an enormous breath and let it out slowly. “I hired a security team. Actually, I didn’t hire them, but they worked for me. They’re on retainer with Dalilah’s father. But they…” I wanted so much to tell him. Just come out and tell him. But I was terrified.
“They what?”
I shook my head. I couldn’t bring myself to say what had happened.
“Serena, I’ve had a security breach. Why do I feel that you had something to do with that?”
“Slade, I-”
“Just stop. Stop. I know what you did.” He shook his head. “Did you think that you would be able to just get away with doing something like that without me knowing about it? I haven’t had a security breach in years. There’s good reason for that. Now, you go out of town and there’s a security breach. The video of Malcolm murdering Jordan is missing. Only it’s not really missing, of course. But it was duped.” He shook his head. “What were you thinking?”
I drew a breath. I still wasn’t quite sure if I was on solid ground with Slade, or if there was a storm that was coming. He seemed to be incredibly calm about this news, but I knew that there had to be something more. It all just seemed way too easy.
“Slade, I…”
“I know. I know what you were thinking, and, believe me, I’ve been wrestling with it. At first, I felt incredibly violated. I couldn’t believe that you would go against my wishes, and I really couldn’t believe that you would willingly open up my business to that drastic of a breach. I had to get my own security team to come to the office, in the middle of the fucking night, to fix it.”
I narrowed my eyes. I wasn’t expecting him to worry about the security breach first. I thought that the security breach would be an afterthought, and that he mainly would be concentrated on the fact that I found the video.
“I’m sorry…”
He shook his head. “Listen, Serena, there’s nothing that can be done about this. I have a feeling that you’ve already done what I expressly told you not to do.”
I hung my head and swallowed hard. He was making it easier on me to tell him, in a way. Yet, I still felt strangely guilty. “I did. I turned that video over to Raphael.”
I looked at him, and I closed my eyes. I sensed that he still had a strange calmness about him. I still didn’t sense fury, which was what I had been bracing myself for.
“Okay,” he said. “What’s done is done. Now, we have to figure out how to fix it.”
I felt on much better footing. “Charlotte…this murder isn’t her first. She killed a teacher when she was in 7th grade. Some friends of
hers helped her. She served three years in juvenile hall for it, and she was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder and antisocial personality disorder. She did it then, and she did it with Malcolm. Something tells me that there probably are other bodies that we don’t know about that she has gotten away with.”
I looked at Slade, and didn’t see surprise on his face. “I’m not surprised,” he finally said. “There was talk about that for years. I didn’t hear about that until after she and I got together, and after she started blackmailing me. I thought it was all rumors though.”
“Can we use this against her?”
He smiled. “I think we can.”
I cocked my head at him. He looked like he knew something I didn’t. “Tell me more.”
“I did something that hopefully won’t make you angry. If it does, I apologize in advance, but desperate times call for desperate measures.”
I furled my brows. “What would make me angry?”
“I took out a woman. Her name is Sarah, and she’s part of Charlotte’s publicity team. But she’s perfectly willing to sell her out to the highest bidder. The ironic thing is the story of Charlotte and the teacher was the story that I wanted to sell to her, but I have no proof of it. Do you?”
“I do. Lars, the man who hacked you, was also able to find her private records. The expunged juvenile record and the psychiatric evaluation. They’re authentic records.”
He put his hand on his chin and looked at me. A smile started to creep around his eyes. “Show me these records.”
I went into the other room and got into my leather satchel. Inside it was a manila folder that held Charlotte’s records. I went back into the living room and handed him the documents.
He took the folder from my hands, and sat down on the couch. As he read them, that smile that was creeping around his eyes started to get bigger and bigger. He rubbed his hands together as he read.
He finally looked up at me. “I think we have her.”
Chapter 30
I went over to join him on the couch. “Do you think this will do it?”
“Yes. I do. I was able to pick the brain of Sarah, and she told me how carefully Charlotte’s image is managed. There’s no way that she’ll be able to have a career if this gets out. That’s the most important thing to her right now – becoming a huge star.”
I started to feel hopeful for the first time in a long, long time. “What’s in the way here? There’s something, I know there is. It can’t be as simple as all that.”
“No, of course it’s not. It does give me leverage, though.” He looked at me a bit longer. “The problem is Malcolm, of course. He’s going to squeal like a stuck pig when this all goes down. Charlotte won’t do anything that will put her in danger of serving time.” He paused for a long time. “I don’t see this going any other way, Serena. She’s going to rub out Malcolm, and she’s going to do it quickly. I think that I need to give her a head’s up on what’s coming, but only after I negotiate with her. This bargaining chip will go a long, long way, but it’s not quite the smoking gun.”
“I don’t understand. Why give her a head’s up?”
“Because, Serena, if she’s blindsided and Malcolm gives her up, she’ll have nothing to lose. You’ll be dead before the week is out, and my mother will be arrested. She’ll make sure of that. As much as I hate to do this, I have to give her notice so that she can get to Malcolm. She either has something on him that she can use to shut him up, or she will have him killed.”
I felt a pit in my stomach. I had no love for Malcolm, of course. He was a killer, and he apparently did it for greed. The world would be a better place without people like him in it. Yet, I still felt a pang. He was a human being, after all, with a family that loved him. And, before all of this went down, I did have genuine affection for him. As much as he was a bad man, I didn’t necessarily feel that he needed to be killed. Yet, I could see that was going to happen. It was inevitable.
“I think that you need to tell me what happened with your mother. You danced around it before, but I think that it’s time for it to be all out in the open.”
Slade paced around the living room, and shook his head. “I swore myself to secrecy about this, but you’re right. You’re going to find out, sooner or later, what happened, so I might as well tell you everything.” At that, he told me the whole story – about his mother and the murder of Hugh, and how Charlotte knew everything because she was there. I then knew just how desperate things were for him, and why he was always trying to do whatever he could to keep her secret.
Now that I knew what Charlotte had over Slade, I wondered how she was going to deal with Malcolm. “Which way do you think she’s going to go? Blackmail or murder?”
“I would say she’ll have him rubbed out. Cut the brakes on his car or something of the sort to make it seem like an accident. Her family specializes in such things, after all.”
I took a deep breath. “Are you sure that’s what will happen?”
“Yes. I don’t know that she has something over him that would cause him to completely fall on his sword and not roll on her. I really don’t see that she’ll have any other choice in the matter.”
He put his arms around me, and I put my head on his chest. I felt strangely calm, yet, at the same time, it felt like it was all a bad dream. I put something in motion that would end with the death of somebody who I thought I liked.
“Hey,” he said, putting his finger under my chin. He saw that there were tears forming in my eyes. “I know how you’re feeling. Malcolm brutally murdered somebody, though. It’s not entirely a loss for this world.”
I nodded my head. “I just want all of this to be over.”
“Of course you do.” Then he kissed me. “It’ll all be over soon.”
I sighed and put my head on his chest. I couldn't believe that he wasn't angry with me, and it seemed to be the best possible outcome. Nothing was certain yet, but no matter - I was with Slade, he didn't hate me, and it seemed that he wanted to make love. I knew that I craved that as well.
"Vanilla," I said to him. "I can't handle more than that right now."
"Of course. I was thinking the same thing."
I unbuttoned his shirt and put my hands on his hard pecs. He reared back his head as I lightly sucked and licked on his nipples and bit his neck. He picked me up and carried me into the bedroom and lay me down on the bed.
He slowly but surely undressed me, and I did the same to him. I sighed as we lay there together, side by side, both of us naked. He was perfectly erect, and he entered me from behind. I felt the familiar sense of him filling me up, and I realized that I feared that I would never feel that sensation again. It was time to release all the anxiety that had built up in me during my trip to New York. He kissed me passionately as he slowly stroked in an out of me, again and again. I came to orgasm after orgasm before he did the same.
We were alone in the dark and the silence, and I wanted to drink it all in. For now, we were okay. What was going to happen tomorrow, I didn't know, but I have to savor that moment with him.
He held me close throughout the night, and I knew that nothing had ever felt like that.
I prayed that we could continue to be like we were forevermore.
Chapter 31
Slade
The next day, I went to see Charlotte. It was a necessary evil, but it had to be done. As I told Serena, if she was blindsided, she would be much more dangerous.
After driving up the Five, and interchanging on many different highways, I arrived at her house. She was waiting for me outside the door of her house. “This better be good,” she said.
“We need to talk,” I told her. “And you’re not going to like this.”
We went into her house and both of us sat down. “Would you like a drink?” she asked.
“No, but I need one,” I told her. “But I’m not taking one from you.” I was afraid that she would drug it, to be honest.
“Well, then, out with
it. Whatever you’re about to say, out with it.”
“Charlotte, I’m not pleading guilty to Jordan’s murder. Serena found the video that showed that Malcolm is the one, and she has already turned it over to the prosecutor.”
She stared at me, and I already knew what she was thinking. “You would do that. You would put your girlfriend and your mother into jeopardy.” She shook her head. “I thought that you were a better man than that. Okay then. You know what happens next. My family doesn’t mess around. When I tell them I want a hit, they do it, and they do it quickly.”
“Not so fast. I know what you did when you were a kid, and I have proof. What’s more, I have a media contact. If you want your career to end before it has even started, I suggest you back the fuck off.”
She crossed her arms and looked at me. I had her dead to right, and I think that she knew it. “I’m calling bullshit,” she finally said. “I was stupid enough to fall for that once before, when you claimed that you had my abortion records. It didn’t occur to me until recently that you were probably full of shit then. I think that you’re full of shit now. Those records are sealed. That means that nobody can get them.”
“Nobody but a professional hacker. How else do you think that I know about you murdering your teacher with the help of some of your girlfriends, and your diagnoses of borderline personality disorder and antisocial personality disorder? Listen, directors know about those disorders, too, because they come across actors and actresses who have them, all the time. They’re not going to want to work with you when they know what you’re capable of. You’ve managed to fool them this far, but if this gets out, you’re finished in this town.”
She raised an eyebrow. “A professional hacker? Oh, you’ve done it now, buddy. I’ll have you and your girlfriend in prison so fast…”
“Oh, come on. You framed me for murder. Do you really think I’m worried about going to prison for some hacking? And leave Serena out of this. She had nothing to do with it. I got that hacker myself.”