Chapter 15
Ben
“Why’d you become a prosecutor?” Ben asked when they lay in the dark, listening to the absolute quiet that surrounded them.
“My father was killed when I was fifteen. He was coming to pick me up after the sophomore dance. He parked his car at the corner of the school instead of coming to the door—I’d requested he do that.
Anyway, he stepped out of the car to smoke a cigarette when he was approached by a guy.
Robert Fulgham was his name. Fulgham demanded my father’s money and his car keys.
My father gave him his wallet, but not his keys.
Fulgham got mad and shot him. Point blank range, three times straight to the chest. He died before the paramedics could arrive. ”
She stiffened slightly in his arms as she spoke, but her voice remained calm and decisive, as if she were giving an opening statement.
“You’re really good at your job. He would have been extremely proud of you,” he said, because he sensed she didn’t want his pity.
There was a resoluteness to the way she’d told the story of that night.
It was obvious she’d grieved and come to terms with what had happened in her own way.
She didn’t believe she needed his comfort after all and as much as he would’ve loved to offer it to her, accepting her hard-won strength in this moment seemed to be the better choice.
“My mother would say he was always proud of me, no matter what.” She took a deep breath, then released it slowly. “I have to believe I’m doing some good in this world or his death would’ve been in vain.”
Silence filled the space again as Ben considered her words and how they made him feel.
“I became a defense attorney because I wanted to help those that others discarded. I wanted to be the voice of those who everyone had already decided didn’t deserve to be heard.
I get up every morning and head into the office, taking drug cases and murder cases and more often than not, traffic cases.
And I try each case as if my client were being faced with the death penalty because I think each one of them deserve a zealous defense.
I don’t ask about their guilt. I make my case from the notion that they’re innocent. ”
With one hand tucked between his head and the pillow, the other running fingers up and down her arms, Ben paused and considered his next words. It would be his first time making this admission out loud. “Vega was my first mistake.”
“Because you believe he’s guilty?” she asked.
“I know he’s guilty,” was his reply.
She waited a beat and so did he.
“This is totally off the record, Ben. I would never use anything you tell me in our personal life in the courtroom.”
He believed her. He trusted her. Otherwise they wouldn’t be here.
“Three weeks before the first trial just as I was about to start working on the case, I received a call. They wouldn’t say who they were, just that they worked in the mayor’s office and had some information about my case. Naturally, I wanted to know what it was. I don’t like surprises in court.”
“Surprises are never good,” she agreed, shifting slightly so that she was now laying on her side, her cheek pressed to his bare chest, one leg tossed over his.
“Exactly. So I agreed to meet with this person. We met at my brother’s casino. Lots of witnesses for me if it turned out I needed it. He was an older guy, balding, sweating. We talked in the men’s room of all places.”
“Cozy,” she quipped and made him laugh.
Made him relax and decide that telling her was the right thing to do.
“Mayor Radcliffe is the father of Alayna Jonas’s baby.
Congressman McGlinn had an affair with her last year as well, so there was an apparent discrepancy as to who the real father was.
Alayna was in love with the Congressman, so she wanted it to be his.
She’d just left the Congressman’s house after telling him and his wife that she planned to go public with the baby scandal when Vega arrived.
The Mayor paid Vega to kill the Congressman.
Myrna McGlinn was just a casualty since she was there. ”
“Wow,” she said and let out a whoosh of breath. “Damn, Ben. How did you continue to represent him knowing all that?”
“How could I not? He was my client. Innocent until proven guilty. All I had was this sweaty bald guy’s word taken in the men’s room of a casino. Not exactly the most credible evidence and I didn’t have a lot of time to investigate its viability.”
“Why not ask for a postponement?”
“The State had requested two prior postponements,” he said.
“I vehemently argued at the last one that my client’s right to a speedy trial was being jeopardized at the State’s whimsy.
There were going to be no more postponements.
Besides, I needed Alayna to back all this up.
Either her or Mayor Radcliffe and I knew he wasn’t about to confess.
But, Alayna was gone. Which meant I didn’t have anything either way.
I tried the case I had going on my client’s account of where he’d been and what he’d been doing that night. ”
“And there was a mistrial.”
Ben sighed realizing this wasn’t what she really wanted to hear, but knowing that she needed to hear it. “Think about it, Victoria. The State has no real case against Vega. No weapon and no eyewitness.”
“Alayna signed a statement,” she argued.
“But she’s not here to be cross-examined, or to even verify that she signed that statement. Her statement means nothing. Nobody can place Vega near the crime scene nor can anybody prove that Vega and McGlinn had ever even met. I know you know all this.”
The sound of her releasing a shaky breath said she did indeed.
“So what now? I try a losing case and Vega continues to haunt you because he somehow knows what you know?”
She was very smart, there was no doubt about that.
“Yeah. I think Vega knows. I tried calling the informant from the mayor’s office on his cell but I didn’t get an answer.
The name he gave me when I asked was a fake.
Nobody by that name has ever worked at the mayor’s office.
Trent’s tracing the number but I’m not real hopeful.
It would’ve been common sense to use a disposable phone.
But I should’ve at least gotten his real name. ”
“You can’t get information that he wasn’t willing to give,” she said. “And thinking of what you should have done isn’t going to help us now.”
She was right and he’d already been down that road with himself. Especially on the night he found out Ebony was dead. But the one thing that was always true about the past was that it couldn’t be erased, no matter how badly he wanted it to be.
“Probably not,” he admitted. “But I went to see the mayor earlier today.”
“You did what?” she asked bolting up from the bed.
“I have to make this right. I still believe everyone deserves a fair trial and I believe I’m a damn good defense attorney and that’s why I declined to represent Vega again.
But he’s bringing all this right back to my door.
If he had simply walked away and let his new counsel handle his case, I would’ve been okay with that.
The information I had was hearsay, it couldn’t be corroborated.
But he couldn’t walk away. He had to show me who he really was. He killed Ebony.”
Victoria
In that moment Victoria saw something she never in a million years would’ve guessed she’d see on Ben’s face. Guilt. It weighed on him like a hundred tons of steel, in his eyes, his shoulders, even in the way he breathed as he’d said those words. This was personal for him now, very personal.
“And if that wasn’t bad enough, he started coming after you,” he continued. I can’t let him get away with that. So I have two choices, get him legally or illegally.”
“Ben,” she said placing a hand on his chest. “Think about this rationally.”
He nodded. “I have, Victoria. Believe me, I don’t want to lose all that I’ve worked for and I definitely don’t want to disgrace my family in any way. But I’m not the type of guy to sit back and quietly take a beating. I fight back. And I fight to win.”
He was about to say something else when his cell phone rang. She watched him reach across the bed to retrieve the pants he’d dropped to the floor soon after they’d made it to the bedroom. Once he had it in his hand he was taking the call.
She thought about everything he’d said and couldn’t believe it.
This was like something off a television show.
It couldn’t be real. The mayor and the congressman sharing a woman, a baby with a father who most likely would never publicly claim it and the senseless and infuriating fact that murder seemed to be the easiest answer to all of these supposed intelligent adults.
It was heartbreaking and infuriating all at the same time.
“We gotta go!” Ben’s words jolted her out of her thoughts.
“What? Who was that on the phone?”
“It was Devlin. He followed us from your place. When he figured out who was tailing us he distracted them, then circled back to come up here to keep an eye on us. One of his men just spotted Vega’s infamous Lexus heading this way.”
“How does he know that and where are we going? There’s nowhere to go out here.” A fact that wasn’t reassuring right about now.
“Which makes us sitting ducks in here. Besides, there are some back roads,” he told her as he was already off the bed and tossing her clothes to her. “And we’ll have a head start. Dev and his guys will stay between us and them.”
She talked as she dressed. “So we’re running from Vega?”
Ben shook his head. “I doubt he’d chase us himself. He’s had guys following both of us. My guess is that my little meeting with the mayor ended with him calling Vega to finish the job, so he’ll send his flunkies to collect us and bring us to him.”
Her mouth went immediately dry, her heart pounded so fast it was almost painful. “So now he’s past intimidating us. He’s going to just kill us?”