Yes, Sean had gotten a bit paranoid, but if they needed it, they wouldn’t think about that. They would know he had the foresight to protect his family.
Jesse hugged her. “Be careful. I don’t want to lose another mom.”
Jesse had never called her mom. He’d only lost his mother last year, and she didn’t expect him to embrace her as a replacement. They had a good relationship, one she respected and cultivated. But for the first time, she thought of Jesse as her son. Not Sean’s son, or her stepson, but her son.
She had to protect him with everything she had.
She didn’t know if she was doing the right thing, but the only way she could truly protect Jesse was to find out who had framed Sean.
“I love you, Jesse. We’ll get through this.”
She went downstairs. Garrett was working at the dining-room table.
She said, “I’m going to the juvenile detention facility where Elise was housed. I’d like you to stay here with Jesse, but because I don’t know exactly what’s going on out there, I thought I could use the backup if you’d like to join me.”
“I don’t think you should leave.”
“That’s not an option. Are you going to stay here or come with me? The house is secure; Jesse is safer here than anywhere.”
He closed his laptop. “Your brother would kill me if I let you go out alone, especially after what happened to Agent Donnelly.”
Chapter Thirteen
Felicity put it on the record that she was filing a complaint about how the detectives had handled this case. She laid out the fact that Sean had high government security clearance, a wife and son, that his wife and sister-in-law were federal agents.
“You didn’t have to arrest him. You have no case, only circumstantial evidence.”
Mendez gave Felicity a half smile and shook her head as if the lawyer was a fool. From the beginning, there was something about Mendez that had Sean’s instincts riled. She hated him, and it wasn’t just because she thought he’d killed a woman. There was something deeper there, and he had no idea what or why—if they had any people in common, crossed paths and he didn’t remember her.
Banner said, “Ms. Duncan, your client has the means to disappear and I am confident that I have the right man.”
“Then why even question me?” Sean said. “Convict me and be done with it.”
Felicity put her hand on his arm. He knew he shouldn’t speak, and he knew that he shouldn’t let his anger get the better of him. Now Banner knew how to get under his skin.
Felicity had told him to wait before answering any question and not to speak unless asked a question. She told him to look at her first, get her nod before answering. It didn’t matter, she said, if he knew she’d okay the answer, just that it was a way to slow things down and not say something in the heat of the moment that could be taken out of context.
They went over a bunch of preliminary questions that were irritating, but at least normal, so Sean found himself in a rhythm.
Banner asked, “Did you visit Mona Hill on Monday?”
Sean paused, forced himself to take a breath. Looked at Felicity. Now they were getting into it. “Yes,” he said.
“What time did you get to her apartment and what time did you leave?”
Again, he paused, looked at Felicity, answered. “I arrived about six thirty, take or leave a few minutes. I don’t know the exact time—I landed at five forty-five at the executive airport outside Houston.”
Felicity tapped her pen once. Dammit, he was giving information they hadn’t asked for.
“And what time did you leave her apartment?”
“It was just after eight P.M.”
“How can you be certain?”
“I’m not certain, I said it was after eight P.M.” He paused, looked at Felicity, then leaned over to whisper in her ear. “I have an Uber receipt for both trips.”
She nodded.
“I took an Uber to and from the airport, the exact times will be on my receipt.”
Banner made a note.
“Why did you visit Ms. Hill in the first place?”
Sean didn’t answer. He looked at Felicity. She motioned for him to lean in, which he did.
“Tell the truth,” she whispered. “It’s a legitimate reason.”
He didn’t want to. But they might be able to learn the truth, and any lie would be impossible to prove.
“Ms. Hill called and told me that she had been threatened by a woman we both know and she wanted my advice.”
Banner hid his surprise at Sean’s answer, but not well enough. It’s why Sean’s friends in college hated playing poker with him—everyone had a tell, and Sean was very good at identifying them.
“Who threatened Ms. Hill?”
“Elise Hunt. Also known as Elise Hansen. She was released from jail three weeks ago and Mona saw her twice over the weekend, then found an unsigned note inside her apartment that she believed was from Hunt.”
“Do you have that note?”
“No.”
“Convenient,” Mendez said.
“I told her to take it to the police,” Sean snapped.
Felicity tapped.
Banner said, “What did the note say?”
“I took a picture of it. It’s on my phone, I don’t remember it verbatim. But it was clearly a death threat and signed, ‘Your Worst Nightmare.’”
“How did you know that it was from Elise Hunt if it wasn’t signed?”
“Mona told me she saw Elise in the lobby of her apartment the day before she received the note. The tone was similar to how Elise talked. Mona had no doubt that it was from her.”
“What about you?”
“Relevance,” Felicity said. “We’ve established that my client, a licensed private investigator and computer security specialist, was called in as an expert to offer advice to Ms. Hill on how to proceed after she received a threatening note.”
Banner asked Sean, “What did you tell Ms. Hill to do?”
It was clear in how he asked that he didn’t care what the answer was, because anything Sean said was irrelevant to the murder.
Sean glanced at Felicity, who nodded, and Sean said, “I told her to go to the police.”
“Did she?”
“I don’t know. She wasn’t inclined to because she didn’t trust the police—except for one officer who used her services.”
“You’re not going to rile me, Mr. Rogan.”
“I’ll telling you what she told me.”
“Name.”
“She didn’t tell me.”
“That’s also convenient,” Banner said.
Sean didn’t smile, even though he enjoyed getting under Banner’s skin. He was in no humor, and he just wanted to go home and protect his family.
Because he’d had all day to think about what had happened on Monday, and he now fully believed that Elise Hunt was somehow behind this, which meant Lucy was in danger.
“Did she call that alleged officer?”
“Not in my presence.”
“Did you give her any other advice?”
“She informed me that she had a firearm on the property, and that she would contact a bodyguard she’d hired in the past. I suggested she contact him before I left and have him with her twenty-four seven until I could verify the threat.”
“How were you planning on verifying the threat?”
He didn’t answer.
“Relevance?” Felicity asked.
“Mr. Rogan, you have a nice, neat little story, but Ms. Hill was killed before her bodyguard arrived. Very tight window from when you left to when her bodyguard arrived. If she was so worried about this alleged threat, why didn’t you stay with her until he arrived?”
Sean didn’t answer. He didn’t look at Felicity because he knew she’d want him to answer the question, but he didn’t.
Mona had pissed him off and he’d walked out. But no fucking way was he telling the cops what she’d said, and he wasn’t going to lie.
/>
The cop stared at him for a long time. But Sean was even better at the waiting game. He wasn’t going to be bullied by an arrogant cop who thought he had all the answers. He also knew that the best way for a cop to get a suspect to talk was to remain silent. Far too many people had to fill the silence with bullshit.
Sean wasn’t one of them.
A full minute later, Felicity said, “If that’s it? You have nothing, John. And you know it.”
Mendez spoke. “How do you know Mona Hill?”
Sean didn’t answer.
Banner said, “It’s a valid question. She’s in Houston, you’re in San Antonio.”
Sean didn’t answer.
“We know that Ms. Hill lived in San Antonio for ten years before she moved to Houston, leaving town about six months after you moved there. In the six months that you and Ms. Hill both lived in San Antonio, did your paths ever cross?”
He didn’t answer.
“Why did she call you, Mr. Rogan? Out of all the people in Texas, why you?”
“I told you. She believed the threat came from Elise Hunt, who I also know.”
“But why you?”
He didn’t answer.
“What did you plan to do? When Ms. Hill gave you this information, what was your next step?”
He glanced at Felicity, but not because he wasn’t going to answer. But because he wasn’t sure he should answer. Except … if they got his phone records and talked to Nico, they could easily find out. She nodded, but he still considered how to frame his response.
He finally said, “After I left Mona, on my way back to the airport, I called a private investigator I know in Los Angeles and asked him to locate Elise Hunt and confirm that she was still in L.A.”
“Still? So you were tracking her even before Ms. Hill asked you to?” Banner made it sound like a crime.
“My wife was notified when Elise was released from juvenile detention three weeks ago. She was told that Elise was being flown to Los Angeles, where she had inherited property from her family—the only property that wasn’t confiscated under asset forfeiture laws.” That was a fact that Sean didn’t have to mention, but it was relevant to the situation and would lend credence to Mona’s fear of the teenager.
It was clear that Banner had no idea who Elise was or why this was important. He had a mostly good poker face, but Mendez didn’t—and they exchanged a look that had Sean knowing they were completely in the dark—but they didn’t care. The only reason they might care was because it was a fact they didn’t know and hadn’t considered, or that this might be connected to a federal investigation.
“What did your private investigator tell you?” Banner said.
“That’s confidential,” Sean said.
“So, you want us to believe that Ms. Hill hired you to find this Elise Hunt but you won’t give us your alibi?”
“My client is not stating that Elise or the PI can give him an alibi,” Felicity said.
“How do we know you even called the PI?”
“I can give you his name and contact information,” Sean said.
Felicity put her hand on Sean’s arm. “What else, John? You don’t have anything solid against my client. You know it, I know it. You need to release him.”
“I’m not done,” Banner said.
“We are,” Felicity said. “Unless you have solid physical evidence that my client killed Mona Hill, you arrested him without cause. Believe me, I will take it up with the court.”
“We know he was in her apartment near time of death. We know that she was murdered—shot twice, once in the chest and once in the back as she tried to run. We know that the first shot was close range—less than ten feet. The .45 we retrieved from Mr. Rogan’s plane has been recently fired, and we’re rushing ballistics but as you know, it’ll take a couple days. Mr. Rogan has the money and talent to flee the country, and I’m not giving him that opportunity.”
“I didn’t kill her,” Sean said.
“We found no ‘threatening note’ in her apartment,” Mendez said, her voice unnecessarily snide.
“I’ll show you the image on my phone.”
“You could have written it yourself,” she snapped. “You have not answered my question. How do you know Mona? Were you one of her clients in San Antonio? Is that why she called you?”
Sean noticed that Banner winced at that comment. They had clearly thought it, discussed it, but he hadn’t wanted Mendez to say anything.
He remained calm, or tried to. In a firm voice he said, “No.”
“Then how did you know her?”
He didn’t respond.
He had told Felicity about the first time he met Mona Hill, and she agreed with him that it wouldn’t look good if he admitted it.
“If you’re asked in court, under oath, you’ll need to tell the truth, but during interrogation you don’t need to answer.”
“John, all you have established is that my client was with the victim prior to her murder. You don’t have any evidence that he killed her.”
Banner asked Sean, “Our witness claimed that he heard a male voice arguing with Ms. Hill when she called him just before seven thirty. He stated that she mentioned the name Rogan. You have already indicated that you were with her at that time. Was that you and Ms. Hill arguing?”
“It may have been.”
“What did you argue about?”
“I told you.”
“Remind me.”
“I told her to call the police because of the threat. To put it on the record. We went back and forth about that for a bit, I think I convinced her. It was during that time that she called her bodyguard.”
“You’re claiming that Mona hired you to find this person yet you didn’t know she was dead? You never contacted her with an update in four days?”
“I never said Mona hired me. I said she asked for my help, and Elise Hunt is a common threat. I told Mona if she received another threat or saw Elise to call me. I reiterated that she needed to tell the police to get the threat on record, and that she needed a bodyguard.”
“You expect us to believe that you,” Mendez said, “out of the kindness of your heart were helping a prostitute?”
Mendez was angry. Bitter. The way she spat out “prostitute” … there was something there, but Sean couldn’t figure it out.
“I have nothing else to say,” Sean said.
“We have more questions,” Banner said.
Felicity motioned for Sean to lean over. “Let them ask, they don’t have anything. Don’t give them anything. Keep your cool. I’m working on this, okay?”
So Sean answered their questions—the ones that were relevant—over and over. They were asking the same thing in different ways, trying to get him to slip up, to contradict himself. But now that he realized they had shit, he didn’t give them anything extra.
Thirty minutes later, a clerk came in with a file and handed it to a very frustrated Banner. He opened it, looked inside. At first Sean thought that this was a ploy—that he’d pretend it was the ballistics report or something incriminating.
Banner looked at him and said, “A rag was found with the gun we found in your plane. That rag had what appeared to be blood. I now have that confirmed. It’s the same blood type as Mona Hill’s. This is all I need to fry you, Rogan.”
Sean had had it. “Do you think if I had killed anyone that I would keep the fucking gun and bloody rag on my property?”
Felicity put her hand on his arm. He bit back his next comment, but he could see the frame job as clear as day.
“I think,” Banner said, “that if you were angry, Mr. Rogan, you are capable of anything.”
“You idiot. I’m being set up!”
“Sean—” Felicity said.
Banner interrupted. “Every man and woman I’ve arrested has told me, in the face of hard physical evidence, that they’re being framed. That someone’s out to get them.”
He clenched his teeth. He needed to get out of here. He felt trap
ped.
“You were a client, weren’t you?” Mendez said. “Traveled all the way to Houston so your wife wouldn’t find out? And you killed her when she threatened you, threatened to tell your wife. Maybe she was blackmailing you, and you snapped.”
Sean stared at her and did not respond. That’s what they thought? That was their theory?
“I’m done,” he said.
“We’ve been in here for three hours,” Felicity said. “Give us a fifteen-minute break.”
Banner didn’t want to leave, and he was angry with Mendez. Good. He should be. He grabbed his file and walked out.
Felicity made sure the recording was off and said, “Sean, you need to pull it together.”
“That’s their theory? That I was being blackmailed by a prostitute? I’m not going to entertain that fucking idea.”
“And your anger is going to be taken as a sign of guilt.”
“You think if your husband”—he gestured to her wedding ring—“was accused of hiring a prostitute that he would just laugh it off? Or would he want to deck the accuser?”
“I understand that your reaction is normal, but you need to dial it back, okay?”
“They’re not going to let me out tonight, you and I both know it.”
“Finding Mona’s blood in your plane gives them the evidence they need.”
“They didn’t have it when they arrested me.”
“They would have. They were thinking they were in the process of getting a warrant. I agree they jumped the gun, but thinking as they were, they thought you might be able to destroy the evidence or that you might run if you heard they were searching your plane. Their gamble paid off.”
He stared at her. “You’re a defense lawyer. You have defended guilty people and innocent people. I have a lot of respect for defense lawyers because I know that the system doesn’t always work, that cops get an idea in their head and the only person on your side is the lawyer to defend your rights. I know that there are some innocent people in prison, as well as the guilty. But I’m only going to tell you this one more time, Felicity: I did not kill Mona Hill. Whoever killed her, planted the gun and the rag in my plane. Elise Hunt is behind this—whether she pulled the trigger or not. My family is in danger, which is why this is happening. My wife. My son. My brother. I don’t think you understand what the Hunt family is capable of!”
Cold as Ice Page 10