Day Six （Benny Abbott）
Benny Abbott
Day Six
They take my personal items. Make me remove my shoes.
I stand on two painted footprints and spread my legs while a male officer pats me down, checks my hair, my mouth, the bottom of my feet.
I go through a metal detector and they lock a chain with cuffs around my waist. These are less uncomfortable than the others, but my hand throbs as I sign receipts for the personal items they’ve stored in a locker.
I sit in a row of plastic seats beside several other cuffed men until they call my name and take me behind a cubicle.
For the second time in twenty-four hours, my vitals are taken.
They ask a series of questions about my medical history, and then I’m guided down the hall, where I stand on a yellow line for mug shots.
Again, I am fingerprinted, but not with black ink this time.
They do it on a glass plate, and it hurts like hell when they paw at my broken hand.
The scanner chirps when it’s satisfied with the images, and I’m taken to a holding cell.
There are more men than seats in this square chamber that reeks of urine and vomit and body odor.
I stand in the corner for an hour before someone shouts my name, at which point I’m granted my phone call.
“I asked Luna to put me in touch with a lawyer,” Sarah says. “His name is Philip Kim. She said he jumped at the chance to take you on when he learned who you were.”
I’m not sure how to feel about this. “Are they still searching my house?”
She makes a sound I take to mean yes. “It looks really bad. They searched your car too.”
I lower my head. “The dogs?”
“They’re with me.”
There are men talking on wall phones in either direction, and there’s a buzzing sound over my head. In the next room over, someone is shouting.
“Benny, I’m scared.”
She isn’t the only one. I shouldn’t have begged Keller to question Ted and Emil.
If I hadn’t, Ted might not have told her I broke his stupid, expensive camera, or spitefully mentioned my “suspicious behavior” at Joy’s house last night, and Keller might not have been granted a warrant to search my home.
And if no one had searched my home, they wouldn’t have found Joy’s computer and thus known I’ve been concealing evidence since day one.
It’s all my fault, and I’m worried they’re going to find some way to use my previous offense as an excuse to hold me.
I would let someone pound my throbbing hand into the concrete if it meant getting out of here sooner than later.
“Did the lawyer say what to expect? Will I have to stay overnight?”
“He doesn’t know yet, but he’s doing everything he can.”
We talk another minute before I’m returned to the holding cell, where I stand and then crouch until my legs are so tired I have to sit on the filthy floor. At long last, my name is called.
“Be grateful for overcrowding,” the officer says.
Mr. Philip Kim must be worth whatever he’s costing me because I don’t have to post bail. I’m released on my own recognizance on the promise I’ll appear in court for future proceedings.
“CONSIDER YOURSELF LUCKY,” Philip says. “Next time they’ll make room for you.
” He accepts my sister’s proffered coffee with a grateful nod and takes a seat beside Luna, who is ready with a notepad at the kitchen table.
She looks like she just rolled out of bed, hair flatter on one side than the other, white T-shirt wrinkled and stained at the hem.
She’s never seen this volatile, reactive side of me.
I hate that I’ve added stress to an already stressful situation.
It’s dark outside, nearing ten o’clock, and my house is a wreck despite Sarah’s best efforts to tidy up after the search team left.
We’ve probably exhausted half of Mr. Kim’s exorbitant retainer in this one day of employment, but I don’t care.
I need to know where things stand before I cave to my exhaustion.
I pinch the bridge of my nose. “There won’t be a next time.” My head aches, and my hair is wet after an awkward shower. I couldn’t scrub thoroughly enough with only one hand. I still feel dirty.
“Are they actually trying to pin this on my brother?” Sarah asks. “Do they really think Benny could have killed Xander?”
Philip adjusts his wire-frame glasses. “I think they’re under a lot of pressure to find a suspect.”
“But why me? Why are they so focused on me?”
“You were the one to report him missing. You’re in love with his wife. You attempted to transfer a million dollars of company money to your personal bank account—”
“That wasn’t me.”
“—and you were caught on tape wishing him dead. The good news is, they don’t have any evidence directly tying you to his murder.”
“Because I didn’t do it.”
Philip opens his computer and looks over the top at me, expressionless. “Right. Let’s back up. To the reason you were arrested. You were upset because your neighbor was taking photos of you as you were leaving Joy’s house last night? Is that correct?”
“Ted. And Emil, he was there too. I think they’ve been working together. I think Emil was feeding Ted info, and Ted was using it to sneak photos of Joy.”
Philip lets out a cynical hum. “I don’t know about Ted, but my aides did stumble across some information about Emil that might be useful.” Philip then proceeds to tell us an infuriating and yet believable story about Emil’s connection to Shake Awake and Xander’s side trade for company shares.
“And here I keep thinking Xander can’t possibly get any worse,” I mutter.
Xander was impossible to be around when that Shake Awake stuff went down.
I knew he was blame-shifting, but I figured it was because he was embarrassed.
For not doing the research. But there was so much more to it than that.
“I can’t believe Emil never said anything. Don’t you think that’s suspicious?”
The more I think about it, the more suspicious it gets. Could Xander and Emil have had an altercation that didn’t end well? What else is Emil hiding? I recall him skulking in the shadows, all muscles, as I argued with Ted outside Joy’s house last—
I gasp. I can’t believe I forgot.
MY BACKUP SD card reader isn’t registering the memory card. I unplug the device and try again. “No,” I breathe as nothing happens.
“Could be the card is damaged,” Philip says over my shoulder, unhelpfully. To Sarah, he says, “It was in your car all day? In this heat?”
“Yes, but—” She looks stricken. “Wait.” She slides her own computer across the table. “Try mine.”
I hold my breath as I plug in the connector, and there it is. A pop-up window showing the contents of one shady surveillance camera. Luna and Sarah inhale sharply. There are dozens of files.
With my clumsy left hand, I click on the most recent, and there I am, in grainy color, standing on the desk to unscrew the air grille.
The image is distorted by waves, and the range is limited—because of the grille’s ornate design it shows only a bird’s-eye view of Joy’s chair in the corner of the room—but it’s better than nothing.
“Likely triggered by motion,” Philip says.
“That asshole,” I mutter.
“How far back does it go?” Sarah asks.
I find the end. “Ten days.” I exchange a wide-eyed stare with Sarah.
“This could be all we need,” she says quietly.
The gravity of the situation slams into me like a hard-on-hard blow.
“Go on, then,” Philip says.
But my hands are frozen. Everything we need could be on here. Everything. I’m not sure I’m ready for this.
Sarah seems to understand. “Do you want us to do it?”
I nod. She takes my chair, and I plant myself on the floor beside the couch, where the pups are sharing the dog bed. Rubbing the silky fur beneath their floppy ears, I listen as my sister clicks through the files.
“Okay,” she says. “Six days ago would be … okay. Here we go. Wait. Shit.”
“What?” I give in, craning my neck to watch the screen.
“Error message.”
She exes out of the pop-up and tries again. Again, error.
“Try the next one,” Philip says.
The next file opens, but my relief evaporates when I realize it’s even more distorted than the first, stripes of red and green punching through the image so that only shadows of movement are visible.
“I’m sorry,” Sarah says. “I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t have left it in my car. I wasn’t thinking about the heat, I just—” She stops at the sound of Joy’s voice.
“Aren’t you going to be late?” Joy says. The words reach into my chest and squeeze like a heart attack.
“Leaving in a minute,” Xander says.
A slight movement. The audio crackles. I imagine Joy sitting in her seat at the recording desk, brown hair down around her shoulders, chin propped on her palm. “Where are you meeting for dinner?”
“Some new sushi place downtown.” Another shadow enters the picture.
He’s no more than a ghost, but I still want him gone. “Skip to the next one.”
She does. Again, an error message. My veins thrum as the next few do the same. I close my eyes, praying this wasn’t all for nothing when Joy’s voice punches through again. “Today’s episode is a departure from the norm…”
“Skip,” I say. “Skip skip skip!”
Sarah pauses the feed. The image is heavily pixelated, but I can see our silhouettes. Me, in my chair beside Joy, as she speaks into the mic.
“We don’t have to do this right now,” Luna says, reading my mind. She knows what I said to Joy that night.
Philip won’t hear of it. “We only have a few left.”
Sarah nods, and offers me a sympathetic frown. Unpausing the feed, she quickly scrubs forward. My voice says, “Do you remember the time we dressed as Waldo and Wenda for Halloween, and we spent the whole night hiding from each other?”
“Skip. Skip, skip!” I edge my sister out of the chair. I manage to grab the mouse in time to bypass the worst of it.
I press play when my pixelated form exits the frame.
Joy remains at the desk, but in this distorted bird’s-eye view I can’t see her face.
She doesn’t move for roughly thirty seconds.
I’m beginning to wonder if either she’s fallen asleep or the file is frozen when she says, “I’m leaving Xander.
You might ask why I’m doing this so publicly, and that’s because—I guess you could call it an insurance policy.
I don’t know what Xander will do to stop me.
Believe me when I say he’ll try, but there’s no turning back now. ”
Sarah rests a hand on my shoulder.
“I’m not sure what will happen to the podcast. I think it’s probably going to be ugly, so please bear with us. We’ll do our best.” Joy pauses. “What doesn’t kill you…” She leaves it at that.
The next sounds make it clear she’s editing. Blips of audio feed come through as she cuts, replays, cuts, replays. There’s another stretch of silence before she exits the screen.
It’s a struggle to speak. “She was just gonna say we were taking a break…”
I can sense the rest of them exchanging glances over my head. Luna wrings her hands beside me as I hover the pointer over the next file.
“Whenever you’re ready,” Philip says.
The following recording is from ten minutes later. The same indistinct mosaic. Joy takes a seat again. Silence. It’s impossible to say for sure, but it looks like she might be typing. Her phone rings. She picks up. “I thought you were at your dinner thing.”
Xander. I fast-forward until she ends the call. We watch her sit at her computer for another minute before she leaves the room.
There are three more from that night. The first two give error messages. I turn my head before trying the third. “Someone else do it.”
Sarah reaches over my shoulder and presses play.
“What’s happening?” I say after an extended silence.
“Can’t tell,” Sarah says. “The picture is really bad.”
I turn back to find only stripes of red and green.
“Can we make it any louder?” Philip asks.
I hold down the volume key. “This is as high as it gets.”
We all lean in.
“I’m not catching anything,” Philip says.
The recording finishes. Sarah and Luna let out synchronous exhales.
“What’s the time stamp?” Luna asks.
I double-check. “Eleven fifteen.”
No one comments on what we didn’t find, what questions remain unanswered, but the disappointment is palpable.
“I’m so sorry.” Sarah looks miserable. “I knew it was hot, but I—there was so much going on.”
“Don’t blame yourself.” I press my palms to my eyes. “The other SD card reader rejected it on the way to the ER. Could’ve already been damaged.”
“In any event, I should probably hand it over to the police,” Philip says. He promises to do so first thing tomorrow, and suggests we call it a night. “I’ll have my aides follow up on everything we just discussed, and we can pick up where we left off in the morning.”
Before he leaves, I copy the SD card onto my computer. Just in case.
Luna hugs me tight. She’s still a little shaky. “Well,” she breathes. She surveys my messy house once more, and ruffles the dogs’ heads on her way out.
“What a day,” Sarah says when we’re alone.
“You can say that again.”
Sarah fills a glass with water, hands it to me, and turns me toward my room. “Go to bed.”
My pillow is miles away, but I do as I’m told.