Chapter Twenty-Eight
Crawford County Courthouse
Cal knew Bo disappearing was bad news. He wanted to believe that the prosecution had laid the necessary groundwork.
The defense might have something up their sleeves, but could it really undo everything Vanderbilt had carefully built?
Everything he and his brothers had testified to?
Just because Bo wasn’t here. Bo was … a tangent, a distraction.
The reality was murder.
Cal sat in court Monday morning and told himself that over and over as he watched as Ben was brought in to sit at the table with his lawyers. Wheeler didn’t look happy or confident. Cal wanted that to mean something.
He knew better.
They were behind Bo leaving. Had to be. The PI was gone too. Everyone back to Wisconsin. That had connected to Wheeler, which connected to Dad.
But why?
No amount of brainstorming among the brothers and Sam had yielded any plausible results. So they were in the dark. There was only wait and see.
Fuck, he hated wait and see.
The judge called the court to order, and Cal settled in for a long, painful day of listening to people try to pretend his mother was somehow not the victim in her own murder case.
Yeah, maybe he should have skipped this like Aly had suggested. But he’d been too … something to sit it out. Especially when Jill had told them Glenda planned to go. There was just no way he’d be good for anything today that wasn’t this.
Wheeler, Ben’s lawyer, stood and addressed the court. “The defense would like to call our first witness.” There was a pause. “Benjamin Bennet.”
Cal felt his entire stomach just drop. Like he’d been completely hollowed out, every last vital organ leaking out of him.
“Cal,” Landon hissed. “You said he wouldn’t testify.”
“It’s suicide,” Cal said, or thought he said. There was a ringing in his ears. “No lawyer worth their salt lets him onto the stand. It’s…” He watched as Dad was sworn in.
Chained up and stepping onto the stand.
Cal wanted to think this was a boon. A positive sign. This couldn’t possibly go well. In eight years of practicing law, he’d never once called an obviously guilty defendant to the stand. Particularly at this point in the trial.
But worry filled Cal. There was a plan here, connected to Bo. And he couldn’t fathom what the hell it would be.
Dad didn’t look smug sitting there. He looked contrite. That actor he’d been all those years to fool everyone around him.
Now he’d work to fool a jury.
“Mr. Bennet, a lot of things have been said about you over the past few weeks. How do you feel about the prosecution’s characterization of the father you’ve been?”
“I understand them,” Dad said. “I haven’t been … a perfect or even good man all of the time. I have certainly failed my sons.”
“What the fuck is this?” Landon demanded under his breath, but Cal didn’t have an answer for him.
He could only watch the proceedings, his mind desperately trying to find some rhyme or reason for what was happening. Even if the jury believed this fictional version of Benjamin Bennet, there was no evidence to support it. None.
“How would you characterize the altercation with your son Nate Bennet after your wife’s funeral?”
“A mistake. A deep, profound mistake. But…” Dad trailed off, sighed shakily.
“I don’t want to … undercut my son’s feelings, or the way he remembers it.
I understand why Nate has built it up in his head over the years.
He ran away. It was so shocking to him that he ran away and never came back.
I understand that. It was shocking to me too. I never meant…”
“Objection, Your Honor. This line of questioning is highly irregular,” Vanderbilt said. “And it’s going nowhere.”
“We got to ask the brothers their feelings on this altercation,” Wheeler responded to the judge. “Why not ask the alleged perpetrator what happened?”
The judge nodded. “Then let’s have him say what happened, not his feelings.”
The lawyer turned to Dad. “All right, Mr. Bennet. Describe the altercation with Nate as you saw it.”
Dad inhaled deeply, letting that shake. He looked absolutely contrite.
Haunted. “I snapped. I did. I can’t argue with that.
I was … grief-stricken, hollowed out.” His voice shook.
“Looking back, I know Nate was too, but in the moment, I was trying to hold it all together for my boys and he was whining about chores.” Dad shook his head.
“Looking back, I can see that for what it was, but in the moment, I was hurting so much, trying so hard, I … I did shove him. It was wrong. I know that. I apologized.” Dad looked at the jury, and it almost looked like there were tears in his eyes.
Fuck.
“There’s no apologizing for losing my temper like that. So I understand why Nate has held on to that moment. But I do think Nate … and Samantha…” He faltered there a little bit.
Cal didn’t think the jury would catch that tick in his jaw.
Dad really hated Sam. So much so he almost had a hard time hiding it.
Almost.
“In the time since it happened, they’ve built it up bigger in their heads than it was. They were teenagers. Emotional teenagers. Nate was grief stricken, and I shouldn’t have lost my temper with him, but I do not remember … the extremes to which Nate characterized our altercation.”
Cal glanced at Nate. He expected blank.
He saw fury. Sam looked like she was about to leap to her feet and maybe charge the stand, but she didn’t. They both sat there and breathed through their anger.
“Mr. Bennet, your children have portrayed Marie Bennet as a good, warm, loving mother who never hurt them or anyone else. Is this how you would characterize your late wife?”
“I’m glad that’s how they see it. I worked hard so that’d be how they looked back on her. Marie and I were just kids when we got married. We weren’t mature. We made mistakes. We both had a temper. Marie was … she wasn’t … ranch life was hard on her. She didn’t always have a clear view of things.”
Here it was. What Cal had expected. Undercut everything Mom had been. Because this was he said, she said. And she was dead.
“With every child, she got a little bit more unstable. She’d have episodes of rage. Sometimes, she’d … be violent. I tried to shield the boys from it, so I suppose it’s no surprise they think it was me. Cal’s … trauma no doubt made it difficult for him to separate truth from reality.”
“Objection, Your Honor. The experts on trauma testified that Cal Bennet would have no reason to confuse fiction with reality.”
“Sustained. Let’s stick to the facts, Mr. Bennet. Mr. Wheeler.”
Wheeler nodded. “Can you lead us through your experience the day of the murder, Mr. Bennet?”
Dad took a big, deep breath like it pained him to do this. “The morning of her murder, my wife had discovered a mistake I made. An infidelity. A pregnancy out of wedlock. It was wrong. I have no excuses for it. But…”
“Out of wedlock,” Aly whispered. “But Bo was Marie’s. What’s he talking about? Another kid?”
Cal didn’t think so. Cal figured this was just a story Dad had fabricated and convinced his lawyer to let him tell on the stand.
It was a terrible idea, but as Cal watched his father recount his fake version of events, Cal worried.
Because Ben sure painted a hell of a picture. And Bo was nowhere to be found.
“So, your wife was not pregnant in the year 2000?” Wheeler asked.
Shit. This was it. This was the point. None of them knew Mom had been pregnant, so now they’d pretend she wasn’t.
“No. Marie was not pregnant in that year.”
“Your Honor, I’d like to submit Marie Bennet’s medical records from the year mentioned as evidence. You’ll see there was no evidence of a pregnancy. Just as no one who testified for the prosecution could remember Mrs. Bennet being pregnant in that year.”
Cal couldn’t believe it. They’d brought up the truth to … make it into a lie. And now … now … Vanderbilt was stuttering out some objections about the line of questioning, but Cal could see they weren’t going to go anywhere.
Since it was a secret pregnancy, there was no proof. Dad would claim infidelity and what … Cal still couldn’t fully wrap his mind around that. Even as Wheeler began to question Dad again.
“Tell us about the night of the murder, Mr. Bennet. After your wife found out about your transgression.”
“She came at me that night. I couldn’t stop her. She was wild, raging. She might have been drinking, it’s hard to say. She hid such things from me.”
“What the fuck is this,” Landon muttered viciously.
But Cal just watched, while Benjamin Bennet did his thing. Twisted and turned. Manipulated. Changed the story until you weren’t sure what the truth was—but he seemed so certain, surely his way was the truth?
“Marie harmed … herself. The way she came at me that night, I had to defend myself. I wasn’t trying to hurt her.
She was trying to hurt herself. I didn’t kill her.
Not really. Oh, I’m sure I shoulder some emotional blame, but she came at me.
I was mostly trying to stop her from hurting herself, but she kept flinging herself at me.
She tried to use the shovel on me. I didn’t use it back, I swear I didn’t. ”
His voice shook. From Cal’s vantage point he could even see a tear fall down his father’s cheek.
He wanted to jump the partition and demand the jury see this for what it was, but all he could do was watch, morbidly fascinated by the way Benjamin’s gaze moved around each jury member, and then very slowly moved to their row.
But he wasn’t making eye contact with Cal. Cal looked down the row of his family.
He thought Ben was making eye contact with Glenda. There was something in his gaze. Something like what happened to his expression when he looked at Sam. That deep, boiling hatred. Something different than when he looked at his sons.
And what did Sam and Glenda have in common? Sure, they’d tried to stop Ben from getting away with things but so had his sons. So had the police. Dad could pretend his way around them.