50. Hades
Hades
CHAPTER FIFTY
"Do you have somewhere I can project the content from the phone?" Remo asks, but then he adds, looking at me, "I believe you need to watch this along with the lawyers to understand the real extent of what happened that night, but it's disturbing stuff."
I think he reads a question on my face because he adds, "It’s not what you're thinking. Miss O'Neal wasn't assaulted, as far as I could ascertain. If that were the case, I would never expose her to others without talking to you first, Hades."
After pressing the button that opens the screen at the back of the room, where our meetings are projected, Zeus hands Remo the remote control.
The expert touches the phone screen through the plastic, and I can see he's searching for something among the files. When he finds it, he stops but doesn't press play yet. "This device belongs to Miss O'Neal."
"What?"
"In the room she was occupying in that house, there was a kind of secret door inside the closet. I don't have all the answers—I don't know how she found it. That can only be clarified when she fully recovers her memory, but the place served as a kind of hideout for her that night. The fact is, after watching this video, I firmly believe that if Miss O'Neal hadn't found the secret room, she would have ended up the same way as Pam Marcotte. It's not that the criminal spared her—he didn't know where she’d fled to."
"Are you telling me Kennedy only survived because she hid?"
"That's right. And beyond that, she had the presence of mind to record what was happening almost from the beginning and hide the phone with her inside that secret room. At times, you'll only hear the voices of the people present, but at others, there are recordings of the faces of Ryan Corey III and Pam Marcotte as well."
"Damn!" I feel the adrenaline rush through my veins.
"We don't have the murder itself. Miss O'Neal probably fled before it happened, but it's not hard to imagine what came after. In the end, the theory of a drug-induced frenzy that the prosecution maintains isn't far from the truth, but it wasn't Miss O'Neal who was in charge: it was Pam Marcotte and Ryan Corey III."
"Play the video," I request.
If someone had told me a few months ago that Pam had used drugs voluntarily, I would have doubted it. Of course, the autopsy revealed there was alcohol and cocaine in her system in massive doses, but I imagined she had been forced to use it.
From the moment I reunited with Kennedy, all my certainties regarding Pam began to disintegrate, and as soon as the video starts, any good memory that remained of her is destroyed because all I can hear is my wife's terrified voice on the phone recording.
"I'm recording this in case something happens to me. They don't want to let me leave. They've been using drugs for hours. They tried to give me some, and at first, when I said no, I thought it would be okay. Ryan has been here since we arrived, but I thought he wouldn't be staying."
Throughout her speech, her voice sounds shaky, anxious, and it's obvious she's very scared.
It's a struggle to keep focused because everything inside me screams to stop it, to go back in time and save her, but I know it's impossible.
"I told Pam I was leaving tomorrow morning. It was a mistake to come here. Pam is a lying bitch. I heard her when she called Hades and the lies she told. She told him on the phone that I was the one who invited Ryan here. I don't know what to do. I can't walk away at this hour—there are no houses nearby. Whoever finds this recording, if something happens to me, it was them."
Next comes a recording of Pam naked with Ryan, having sex on a couch, which I remember is on the first floor of that house. The footage is quick; I think Kennedy only recorded it to understand the context. Shortly after, we only hear her voice.
"They've been using cocaine since early today."
Another cut in the recording, and then voices.
"I'm not going downstairs, Pam. Let me go."
"It's better if you come with me, Kennedy. Ryan is fed up with being nice. If he comes up to get you, it will be worse. You know there's no way out. He wants you."
"You're crazy if you think I'll sleep with that animal."
"Of course you will, and I'll film it all. I told him he could play with you as long as he did it from good angles. Let's see if Hades will want you after watching this."
"Son of a bitch! Damn!" I stand up, unable to stay still any longer. I imagined, from Remo's warning, that it would be difficult to watch, but I had no idea of the level of depravity of those two.
"Get out, or I swear I'll hurt you," we hear Kennedy shout.
"With what? With this little statue?"
It's noticeable from Pam's voice that she's totally out of it, drugged.
"Don't touch me, Pam. Nooo, let go of me! Nooo!"
"Jesus Christ!" Zeus exclaims, also standing up, and then we hear the sound of a body falling.
"What did you do?" For the first time, a male voice is heard.
"There's the bastard," Remo says.
"You bad girl! Who would have thought that sweet Juliet could hurt someone? Did you kill her? Hmm . . . no. She still has a pulse. She'll wake up soon. Meanwhile, come here. Let's have some fun."
We hear footsteps running. Probably Kennedy fleeing, trying to hide.
When the footage continues, it's her coming down the stairs. We can only see her feet, then she recoils, moaning, horrified at whatever she saw.
"So much blood." We hear her moan of pure terror, and then the footage of this nightmare finally ends.
"She saw the murder," Ares says.
"Probably," the expert says. "Maybe that's what caused her to lose her memory. We don't have a play-by-play of that night, but I believe Miss O'Neal was assaulted. At least, that's what's in the statement she gave, that when she woke up, there was blood on her body, on the sink counter of the bathroom in the suite she occupied. If she didn't see the murder itself, she went downstairs when Pam was already dead, perhaps tried to help her. Then she forgot about it—the only memory left was when she woke up during the night. The killer had already left, but the scene . . . From what I saw in the photos, it was grotesque. That could have led Miss O'Neal to go into shock and develop amnesia."
"How long?" I ask the lawyers. "With what we have now, how long will it take for her to be cleared of the charges?"
"The prosecution will want a forensic analysis of the cell phone to make sure it belonged to your fiancée and to confirm the date this video was filmed, but we'll try to resolve the issue as quickly as possible."
"That’s not good enough," I say, completely mad. "It doesn't matter what they need to do—even if we end up owing a favor to the Pope, hurry up the process."
I vaguely see my brothers dismissing the lawyers, and then Remo approaches me.
"Thank you," I say.
He shrugs."I just looked where no one else had."
"If you hadn't found the secret room and consequently the phone with the video, people would have doubts forever about her innocence."
"Yes, but with this evidence, the prosecution has nothing. Even the blow with the statue has been proven to be self-defense. But Hades?"
"Yes?"
"When she remembers everything, she'll need psychological support. It's the kind of thing that marks someone for the rest of their life."
"I won't leave her side. I'll do whatever it takes."
After he leaves, my brothers close the door, and Ares says, "I imagined a lot of shit but nothing close to this."
"No one could have thought Pam was a demon. For God's sake, the girl was abused in childhood. How did she have the courage to plan for another woman to go through the same thing?" says Dionysus.
"I just don't understand . . . If Pam was Ryan's accomplice, what led him to kill her?" Zeus asks.
"Does that matter? Not to me. All I care about is that we have proof that Ryan was there and that Kennedy only protected herself."
I don't tell my brothers that Beau is almost certain he found the bastard. I don't think any of the three would agree with what I have in mind for Ryan.
The once untouchable heir will dream of prison when I get my hands on him.