“What is the name of the research team? What department do they work under?” Roxie scribbled on her notepad.
Henry fluffed a hand at her. “It’s in the file in your hands, honey.”
“My name’s not ‘honey’. And if it was in the papers in my hands, I wouldn’t ask you for something I could already see.”
After he pressed his lips together, he glared at Roxie. “Ask the detective then. Hardly matters what the kids were studying. All I know is the ballistics in that file will correspond with specs in the coroner’s report. That gun was the one used to kill Josh. Slugs match.”
Fine. That was the gun. Ammo and weapon match. Doesn’t mean squat for tying it to Ben.
“After all this time, it pops up in the mesh trap?” Grant scoffed.
Henry grinned. “But here’s the catch, Newland, they emptied that specific trap on—”
“The day Josh was shot,” Roxie read from the file. She raised her gaze to him.
Fuck. But still…
“Thus, the gun was not in there prior to the students checking out the contents before Josh’s death.”
Grant shook his head. This was solid proof. But there was still no guaranteed path from Fact A to Fact B.
“Anyone could have put it there. Surely you’re not reaching this far.”
“Reaching?” Henry directed his attention to a gold pen he spun in lazy circles on his desktop. “Do you recall Sheree Rohn’s statement, about the day after Josh was killed?”
Narrowing his eyes at Jabba the Hut in his chair, Grant sped through the details from the detectives’ reports. Sheree was questioned the evening after the party, after Josh died. Cops had come to the Rohn household, asking where she was that morning. Ben had come home in the wee hours of the night, hungover, he’d told her. Since he was in bed that morning, she decided to accept an invitation to a cousin’s baby shower at… His breath caught. At Woodland.
“She was at a party.”
Henry laughed, like a gleeful hyena taking a bite of its prey.
“She was at the park.”
As far as coinciding time and location, yes, Sheree was there on the morning after Josh was shot. A second-grader could make that assumption, but that didn’t mean shit.
Grant eyed Henry, still smiling smugly. On the principle of timing, he still should have known about this earlier, say yesterday. Why the stall, the suspense dangling?
Sheree.
“I expect all of this delivered to me,” Grant said, taking the file from Roxie and letting it drop on the slug’s desk. By law, it wasn’t a courtesy—it was a legal obligation to share.
Henry nodded while Grant moved for the door. “Already done.”
“Let’s go,” Grant told Roxie.
Hustling out of the office, Roxie scribbled on her notepad. “We’ll need to interview the lead detective again. I say the undergrads too. To confirm this trap schedule they follow and—”
“No. The detectives are going to Sheree’s.”
“To interview her again?”
They damn well better have not questioned her without his presence. “Not on my watch. I’m heading straight there. She was at Woodland for that damn shower. It puts her in the location of being able to ditch the gun.” He shook his head as they left. “She even had photos posted of the baby shower, with the damn woods in the background. They’re going to fucking jump on this and make her an accomplice.”
“This is a disaster,” Roxie muttered.
“I’m going there now,” he said as he strode into the parking garage. “I need you to tell Ben.”
“Come again?”
“There’s no time.” He paused and rubbed at his face, groaning. “He needs to know. As protective as he is about Sheree, he’d beat the crap out of me if I didn’t tell him ASAP. I need to be there with Sheree to get her through any incriminating statements. You’ll need to go for me. Tell Ben. We were already scheduled to meet him at ten. You’ll just be the ambassador for both of us.”
Roxie sighed and nodded faintly. “Okay…”
“Please? I can’t do both.”
Her head bobbed firmer. “Sure. It’s fine. I get it. It’s just—sort of weird. He’s your buddy. Your client.” She put her hand on his back, nudging him to the car. “Go. Go help her. He’d beat the crap out of you even more if you weren’t there to assist her. I’ll take a bus to see Ben.” She winked. “I’ll catch you at the office. Good luck.”
Chapter Thirty
Here I go again. Roxie couldn’t help but hear the lyrics of Whitesnake roar in her mind as she smiled an acknowledgement at the security guard at the jail where Ben was currently biding his time. It took some finagling with first the guard, then his supervisor, to verify she was indeed a representative of Kaniz, for Grant, and that he had scheduled an appointment to speak with his client. Fifteen minutes after she entered the front doors, she was permitted access.
Following the man in the bland gray uniform, she steeled herself for the odd situation. Tell Ben, a man she hardly knew and had no familiarity with other than his career and this murder case, that they found the gun used to kill Josh. Oh, and that the DA was trying to use his wife as an accomplice by hiding said gun. Nope, no worries Benny Boy, all’s well outside these prison walls.
Would he freak out? Get enraged—shoot the messenger, so to say?
Ha. Ha. Shoot the messenger. Nice idiotic pun, Rox.
Once the guard typed in a code on a door, the same one that allowed egress into the meeting room she’d come to with Grant, she was gestured to take a seat. Plopping her butt on the stiff plastic chair, she fought the cold of too chilled air-conditioned air and snuggled into the sleeves of her jacket, letting her tote slide to the table in front of her.
A moment later, Ben approached from a different door. Light-blue clad and his face was stony and serious as ever. Bored, maybe, but not as cocky as at previous visits. Perhaps he was confused why Grant was missing.
“Where’s my lawyer?” he asked as soon as he sat down.
The guard locked Ben’s cuffs to his chair and then left the room.
Alone with Ben, Roxie cleared her throat. “Grant is, uh, well, he’s speaking with Sheree.” Roxie attempted a quick smile, maybe butter him up before she dug right into it.
He stiffened, tilted his head to the side as though shifting his brain would help him comprehend. “Why?”
Roxie whooshed out the breath she was holding. “The police found the gun. It was in some research trap at Woodland Park. Since Sheree was at Woodland the day after Josh was shot—at a party or something—they deemed it wise to question her.”
Ben said nothing. The menacing dark brown glare in his eyes encouraged her to avoid silence. “Grant is afraid they are going to press charges, or something… As an accomplice.”
In a swift thrust, Ben reached up to grab his collar and gripped it in his fist until his caramel-colored knuckles showed pink. His lips flattened and almost curved as he ground his teeth. Snorting out a breath through his flaring nostrils, he glared at her.
Roxie refused to be a whipping post for any of his rants. “He sent me here to tell you the news, this, uh, update. He would have come here himself to tell you, but—”
“No. He did right. He damn well better keep her fucking safe.”
Safe as in, avoiding arrest? Or safe as in…retaliation? “He was adamant that he be at her side for any questioning.”
Ben gave an imperceptible nod.
“Ben, what happened that night?” Roxie asked, hoping her tone brokered no room for a non-answer. It drove her crazy. All the reruns of same old reports, asking the VIP guests questions to retrace their actions that evening at Velocity, and the potential motives they could have made to end Josh’s life. Until the discovery of this gun, the case was sketchy, full of too many voids and suppositions.
Of all the timelines and lists Roxie had written and studied, she could nearly pinpoint where every server was in the club and which VIP door was opened
at what minute. But nothing on Ben. Nada.
When he didn’t reply, she refused to give in. “I understand you’ve refused to provide a statement. Pleaded the fifth as soon as the coppers showed up at your house that morning. But now, this isn’t just about you, Ben. Sheree’s involved. This investigation is a big box of question marks and possible answers, and the DA…is going to every length to screw you over.”
With Tara’s help…
“You saying Grant can’t do his job?”
She scowled. “Of course he can. But he isn’t Superman. Why not help him do his job and give him everything that can assist in a win?”
Still nothing.
The longer Ben maintained his silence, his stubbornness irritated her. Like the last question on a final exam that she knew she could answer. Like the dog or horse that refused to calm down for a physical. Challenges… She was too much of a perfectionist to admit defeat.
She tried a different tactic. “Why are you pleading the fifth?”
He wouldn’t even tell Grant the reason. And unlike her, Grant wasn’t driven to pester Ben for his alibi. Ben’s silence frustrated Grant, she was sure, but Grant surrendered to the fact he couldn’t force Ben to fess up.
“I don’t know.”
“Bullshit.”
“I’m not saying anything because that’s it. I don’t know. I have no fucking clue what happened that night.”
Roxie squinted at him, hoping a finer beam of a stare would penetrate through the thickness of his head. “You were drunk, sure.” When he was arrested for Josh’s murder and booked, the cops took blood, urine, GSR, and a variety of other bodily samples. Alcohol had shown in his blood as a faint trace.
“Not just that.”
“Then…” Goddammit this was more taxing and agonizing than any procedure she’d ever done on temperamental animals. “Come on, Ben.”
“I don’t fucking know.”
Roxie slapped her hands to the table. “Then tell me what you do know. For Sheree.” It was a low dig, and it reminded her of how Jimmy had blackmailed her to lie about Bolt’s death in exchange for keeping Lucy. But Roxie wasn’t blackmailing Ben about Sheree’s potential charge. It was eminent. The game had changed, and if Grant was content to keep on playing the rules of letting Ben stay mum, Roxie wasn’t. Benchwarmer no more, she was walking out of there with Ben’s alibi.
“I went to the party. Didn’t want to, but they sprung it on us because it was old man Warner’s birthday. I went. Had a couple beers. Talked to teammates. Said happy birthday. I wanted to leave because I didn’t feel so hot, and then that fucker made a comment about Sheree.”
Roxie stared as Ben revealed his tale, amazed he was actually speaking for so long. Maybe fear for Sheree was all it took. Ha. She’d crumpled in front of Jimmy as soon as he’d mentioned Lucy. Love was strongest.
He glanced side to side, as though he was nervous of listening ears at the prison, and lowered his voice. “Soon as I heard him badmouthing her, I told him to fuck off. Piece of shit always had something to say. Next thing I know, I was heading up the elevator.”
“With Josh?”
“Yeah. I could hardly see him I was so fucked up.”
“Drunk?” So far, his narration rang true. The video coverage of Ben and Josh in the elevator showed both of them intoxicated, not standing straight, sloppy movements even in their mini-fistfight.
Ben shook his head. “No. I know what drunk is. That wasn’t it.”
“Drugged?”
He frowned. “I had to have been. I was sick. Dazed. Like I was going to pass out. I’d only had beers, and not much. I never hit hard stuff in the middle of the season.”
Roxie frantically shuffled through her notes. “One Heineken, then half a Red Apple, and then maybe a third of another Heineken.” She slid the page closer. “All three drinks in the space of three hours, so maybe a drink an hour. You’re seven-five, roughly 230 pounds. Definitely not enough alcohol to knock you down.”
His brows raised at her recitation.
“Trust me, I’ve been memorizing the facts of that night for weeks. All your drinks were delivered by staff,” she said and replaced her attention to the notepad, searching again, “with the first drink by a brunette, the second two by a blonde.” And the waitresses had given statements accordingly to the police when interviewed.
He shrugged. “All I know, it wasn’t just beer. I was shit-faced. I don’t even know how I got in my room.”
“Were you alone?”
“Josh was in the elevator with me. No one else. I sure as fuck didn’t invite him to my suite.”
“Where was Sonny?”
Ben’s bodyguard hadn’t been gushing with cooperation when he explained to the cops he was in the club the entire time, not going up with Ben because he’d gone to the bathroom and then struck up a chat with an old friend. Why Sonny hadn’t stuck to protocol and sought out Ben was an outlier Roxy didn’t understand.
“Before Josh was killed? Fuck if I knew. I didn’t know where I was I felt so out of it.”
Roxie grimaced. How? Why? Sonny stuck to Ben as he was required to by his job. And his interview with the police the day after showed the same deal Ben put on: ‘I don’t know’, or ‘I don’t remember’. Sonny provided a flimsy explanation of chatting with an old friend in the club, which did ring true to the video footage. But why wasn’t Sonny with Ben in that elevator?
“You remember anything you said to Josh in the elevator?”
Ben shook his head.
“Go on.”
“I was in and out of it. Not sleeping, just fucked up. I knew something was wrong, and I panicked because I was numb. I was clueless. So fucking tired. Like I couldn’t make my body work.”
Drugged, then, Roxie guessed. And if nothing showed in his blood or urine, then maybe roofies.
“I was on my back on a bed and then I fell. I was on the floor somewhere.”
“Clothes on or off?”
“On. Sonny said my shirt was missing.”
Sonny? So the bodyguard came back?
“There was…”
Roxie impatiently gestured with her hand for him to continue his sentence.
“Some chick. I don’t know who the fuck she was. Never saw her before.”
Cheating? Ben was drugged and cheating on Sheree? Roxie refused to let her jaw drop and struggled to remain passive as he let it all out.
“She was touching my face,” Ben said and squinted as if trying to draw the memories forth. “Leaning over me. Talking. Slapped me, I think maybe to make me wake up or snap out of it.”
Surely if he was drugged, he wouldn’t have been able to get it up… “Pants on?”
“Hers?”
“Uh, yeah, and yours?”
“I think mine were on. I couldn’t see if she was wearing any. I couldn’t even lift my head.”
Roxie shifted to the edge of the seat, ticking off the points with her fingers. “You were fucked up. You fell off a bed. Strange woman…talking and touching you.”
“See? If I had to tell anyone this shit, who the fuck would believe me?”
“Never mind that.” How could he have sat on this? This mystery woman could prove he wasn’t with Josh! “Then what happened?”
He shook his head, squinting again. “She kept talking and moving around me. It was like a blur. Then she seemed worried.”
“How so?”
Ben sighed. “I don’t know. I could tell. Like she was spooked. Then Sonny showed up, I saw him above me. I heard him yelling, the woman talking. I kept trying to sit up to see what was happening. Sonny came back to me, propped me up, slapped me.”
“The woman was still there?”
“Sonny had tied her to the bedpost.”
“Tied? With what?”
“Her bra.”
“The woman was topless?”
Ben nodded. “Sonny took me in the shower, tried to wake me up. Made me drink water. I sobered some, but it was still a blur.”
How could Sonny not have said anything?
“He helped me to the other room, it was a bedroom, I think, and the woman was frantic, trying to get her phone. Sonny took it and smashed it, stomping on it. Busted it to pieces. I sat there, slumped on a chair while he spoke to her. Then once Sonny was done talking, he untied her and helped me out of the room.”
Roxie stared at Ben, letting his alibi sink in.
Ben glanced at the door before finishing. “He took me home. I was too out of it to know what the fuck was going on. Sheree was asleep, so Sonny took me to another room. In the morning, everything was still fuzzy. I wasn’t fucked up, but I couldn’t remember shit.”
“What did Sonny say when you asked him about it?”
Ben hesitated. “He’d been in the club when I went up. Some old friend was chatting to him and he didn’t see me go up. When he saw I wasn’t downstairs, he went up to my room to look for me. He found me on the floor, shirt off, like I was going to sleep. The woman—Amber she said that was her name—was kissing me, lying on top me. She had her phone on a selfie-stick, taping us. She told him that someone had tipped her off that I was in my room, looking for some company.”
Roxie smirked. “And to get off on an unconscious man?”
So this Amber drugged him? Taped them? For a sex tape? Looking for easy money?
“What he told me,” Ben confirmed. “Said she was trying to get a video to remember our time together. So he smashed the phone. Got her name, address, everything, for me to press charges. But I never had the chance, because Josh was shot next door.”
Too many facts swarmed in her mind. “What time did Sonny enter your room?”
This, she knew. Ben’s door was only activated once.
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I wasn’t fucking paying attention at the time.”
If Ben was so fucked up, how had he gotten into his room? Amber? Had she helped him? Because if she showed up after Ben entered, she would have had to access his room. Then Sonny’s additional entrance. Something wasn’t adding up—the door lock couldn’t lie.
Resisting Redemption Page 33