Temptations - The Complete Series Read online

  “I will.” I steered the boat into the slip and mom and I got out. It was 7 AM. We had time to get mom back to her apartment in Watts and for me to get home without Helen and Scott knowing that I was gone. It was a Sunday morning and I knew that they habitually slept in on Sundays. I prayed that this would be the case again. The less interrogation I got from people, the better.

  I got mom home and slipped into my own home by 8 AM. I crept up to my bedroom feeling relieved that there wasn’t anybody stirring. My adoptive sister, Alice, was away at college, so it was only Helen, Scott, and me in the home.

  I got into bed and the panic started to wash over me. What did I do? What did mom do? Was this entire thing going to blow up in my face? In our face?

  I called Charlotte, who picked up on the first ring. “Yeah?” she said to me.

  “How are you feeling?”

  “Better than you, I would imagine, but still not great. I have to cut back my drinking.”

  Good luck with that. “Listen, I need to talk to you about last night.”

  “You mean this morning? With your mother?”

  “Yes. This morning with my mother. I need to talk to you about that.”

  She was quiet for a little while. “What about it?” she finally inquired.

  “This is our secret, right?”

  More silence on the line. She finally spoke after a full minute of silence. “Listen, Slade, I don’t want to get into trouble for covering something like that up. What if somebody was watching us the whole time from behind a bush or something?”

  “There are no bushes around there.” That much was true. Mom’s neighborhood was not exactly known for its green space.

  “Okay, then hiding behind a car. What if somebody saw everything and turned you in? And they’ll tell the police about me being there too. I can’t take that chance.”

  I drew a breath. “You will take that chance, because if you don’t, I’m going to tell the world about your affair with Michael. You know that he won’t deny it if somebody asks.”

  “Oh, this is how you’re going to play it?”

  “This is how I’m going to play it.”

  “Slade, I was 16 at the time.”

  “And Michael was 20. How is that going to look to the press?”

  More silence. I knew that she thought she felt defeated. “I wasn’t of age. Michael won’t say a word if somebody asks.”

  “Maybe he won’t confirm it, but it will still be out there. It will be embarrassing for you, to say the very least.”

  “I’ll just deny it, and so will Michael, and that will be that.”

  Gut check time. I was going to take a calculated risk and hope and pray that it worked out. “You don’t think that those medical records will be used against you? In the right hands, with the right unethical reporter, your abortion records will become public. I’m quite sure that Michael was involved with that. His name was on the consent form, after all.”

  All of that was bullshit. I had no idea if that was true, although I had heard rumors that it was. I was bluffing and I held my breath waiting for her reaction to my Hail Mary.

  There was a long silence, and then, when Charlotte started talking, her voice was tiny. “How did you know about that?”

  I let out a long sigh of relief, although I hoped that it wasn’t audible. “I have my ways.”

  “Those records are private.”

  “And unethical reporters have a way of making them public.”

  More silence. “Okay,” she finally said. “You got me. I won’t say a word.”

  “Thank you.”

  We got off the phone and I stared at the ceiling. Everything was up in the air. Charlotte was right - there might have been somebody hiding who saw it all. I doubted it though. It was at an odd time in the morning – too late for most people to be up, even if they were partying, and too early for others to be awake, especially on a Sunday. That should work in our favor.

  In the days and the weeks to come though, I was going to be vigilant. Hugh was going to be missed at work. I braced myself for seeing his disappearance in the paper. There was also the chance that he was going to show up on shore. I tried to make sure that I was far enough out at sea and that he was weighted down, but would that be enough? He was liable to wash up on shore somewhere, and then the murder investigation would begin in earnest.

  Please, please, please let it be that Hugh told nobody he was going out with mom. People saw them out, of course, so if mom ever became a suspect, it would be easy to place her with Hugh on the night of his death. If she never became a suspect though, it would be difficult to place her. I would imagine that Hugh used his credit card where he and my mom went, which would mean that the investigators would start at those places to ask about him. I imagined that the waiter would say that Hugh was out with an attractive woman in her early thirties, but that woman could be anyone.

  Mom would be caught up in this if she ever came under suspicion. If her name never came up though, she should be in the clear.

  One thing was for sure, I was going to have to spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder.

  Chapter 5

  Serena – Present Day

  First thing Monday, I decided that I was going to have to get a copy of Jordan’s autopsy and find out if the killer was left or right-handed. That would be a start in proving that Slade didn’t do it. I felt ashamed that I hadn’t even looked at this report yet. It was important, but I was so preoccupied with other aspects of the case, not to mention preoccupied with Slade himself, that I just hadn’t looked at this fundamental document.

  Then again, Malcolm wasn’t forthcoming with that or anything else. He had shut me out of the case for the most part, except when he encouraged my relationship with Slade. Now that I knew his game, I was going to have to counteract it as best that I could. If Malcolm was going to withhold this file, the information in it, and the witnesses who were being called in, then I was going to have to either be more demanding in seeing it or I was going to have to look at the file without his knowledge.

  I went to his office. I found that just the sight of his face made me want to throw up. He was prepared to let an innocent man fry for what he did. Not to mention the fact that the man was pathetic, really. He killed this man to impress Charlotte. I doubted that Charlotte still wanted anything to do with him. What did he really gain for doing that for her?

  Nothing. He gained nothing.

  The man was just evil. Maybe he killed Jordan just because it was fun for him and Charlotte was just the catalyst. He didn’t even necessarily look evil though. He was a handsome guy with copper curly locks and blue eyes. He stayed fit. He simply looked like an overstressed attorney and father of three, which was what he was.

  I remember it being said that evil could take any form, and I believed that. Yes, Malcolm didn’t look like a cold-blooded killer. That was because there wasn’t a certain way that killers looked. Killers could be handsome and charming, like Malcolm and Ted Bundy. They didn’t have to necessarily look the part of the loner misfit.

  If we could only identify them more readily, life would be so many easier. We could all avoid these people.

  He was sitting at his desk, reading legal research, his finger calmly on his temple. Just as if he didn’t have a care in the world.

  I cleared my throat and he looked up. “Serena. Just the woman I wanted to see. You missed about a week of work with no word. What’s going on?”

  I didn’t know if Malcolm genuinely didn’t know what had happened to me or if he was bluffing. Surely Charlotte would have told him about my kidnapping and false imprisonment.

  Then again, maybe she didn’t tell him anything. After all, Slade was able to save me, somehow, someway. There was something that I was clearly missing, and perhaps Malcolm wasn’t in on everything that woman did.

  I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. Nevertheless, I had to lie. I couldn’t necessarily tell him that I was kidnapped by Charlotte
. It might make him suspicious that I knew about him and what he did. “I was in a car accident,” I told him. I studied his face to see if there was any hint of him not believing me, and I closed my eyes and tuned into his vibrations. I felt no sense of anxiety coming from him.

  I guessed that my initial hunch might have been correct after all. Malcolm didn’t seem to know about my kidnapping. Which was interesting, to say the very least.

  “You’re okay, though?” he asked me. He seemed genuinely interested, and I closed my eyes again. I couldn’t believe how sucked in I still was with this man. He was making me question whether or not the spiritual message was even accurate. Did I really see Jordan when I was at my lowest point, or was he nothing but an hallucination?

  “I’m fine. I wasn’t fine, of course, because I was in the hospital. But that was only because I spent three days in my car before somebody found me, so I was severely dehydrated.”

  “Why did you stay in your car? Why didn’t you try to find help? You weren’t incapacitated, were you?”

  “No. I’ve just always heard that you should never leave your car if you get stranded.”

  I was making this story up on the fly, so I hoped that Malcolm didn’t ask me specifics. I would just tell him that I was in the desert when my car went off the road and was disabled, and nobody was around. That should satisfy him, and it certainly did sound like a plausible story.

  But Malcolm apparently didn’t care that much. “Send me your hospital records, and I’ll make sure that your leave is paid. But Serena, if you’re ever in the hospital, and you’re not incapacitated, you have to call me and let me know. I was a few hours away from calling the police to try to find you. It’s not like you just to leave like that.”

  “I know, and I’m sorry.” I wrung my hands as I stood there. I was going to have to ask him questions about Slade’s case, and I didn’t know how he was going to answer me. After all, he wasn’t in it to win it at all. He was in it to make sure that Slade went down for what he did.

  “Can I do anything else for you?”

  “Yes. I need to see the Slade Bridgewell file. I need to read it from top to bottom. It’s something that I was going to do anyhow, and I really need to see if there’s anything that we aren’t seeing so far.”

  “Here,” he said, giving me three file boxes. “This is the discovery we’ve gotten from the prosecutors and from the investigators on the case. Have at it, but make sure that this isn’t the only thing that you’re working on. And don’t forget about the Bar this weekend.”

  “Thanks,” I said to him. “Don’t worry; I’ll get my other projects done.”

  I took the file boxes to my office and sighed as I realized how much I was going to have to sift through. Fortunately, the police report for the incident was right on top.

  I scanned through the report but found that it only was a perfunctory description of the incident. It talked about Slade contacting the police after having found Jordan, and about the state of Jordan’s body.

  I read the report three times, trying to see what I had missed. Unfortunately, there wasn’t anything on the report about the handedness of the killer. In fact, there wasn’t anything in this police report that I didn’t know.

  The autopsy report wasn’t much more illuminating. It concluded that Jordan died from blunt force trauma inflicted by a baseball bat. Again, I didn’t learn anything new from this.

  The rest of the discovery detailed the drugs that Jordan was working on, interviews with his co-workers, and interviews with his family. There were also medical records for Jordan. Apparently he had sought treatment for his bipolar disorder on many occasions. He had been hospitalized three times for acute manic episodes and twice for suicide attempts related to the depressive end of the bipolar spectrum.

  I tapped my pencil on my forehead as I looked through the file for something, anything that would indicate that Malcolm was involved. So far though, nothing was jumping out at me.

  Something was nagging me. It had to do with the state of the video that showed the murder. There was part of it missing of course, but was there another copy of the video elsewhere?

  Perhaps Slade would know the answer to that question.

  Perhaps. But first, I was going to follow my initial inquiry on whether or not the killer was left-handed.

  I went down the hall to Malcolm’s office and rapped lightly on the door.

  “I’m going to talk to the investigator on Slade’s case,” I told Malcolm. “I’ll be back by the end of the day.”

  Malcolm furrowed his brow. “Why do you need to talk to the investigator? The report is in the file. And you’re going to Los Angeles to talk to him? I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  Of course it’s not a good idea. Of course you’re going to say that. You don’t want me really finding out what happened here.

  “There’s something missing.” I was going to have to step lightly with this guy. The last thing that I wanted was for him to be suspicious that I was onto him.

  “What’s missing?”

  “There are just some details missing. I don’t have time to go through it right now – I already made an appointment with the lead investigator and I don’t want to keep him waiting.” That was actually a lie – I didn’t make an appointment. I was going to go to the police station and hope that I could catch Trey Hanson, who was the person that I was going to have to speak with.

  Malcolm furrowed his brow again but the phone was ringing. “I have to take this,” he said to me. “Don’t be long.”

  “I won’t be.”

  At that, with a sigh of relief, I went to my car. I then headed down to the police station to try to find out the important answers I sought.

  Chapter 6

  I got to the police station and announced who I was. The police station was in Downtown Los Angeles, a beautiful modern structure with a wall of glass and sharp angles. I walked in and there were people bustling around. I was directed to a visitor’s area and I went and gave the lady my name and who I was there to see. “Detective Hanson,” I told her. “I need to see him. My name is Serena Roberts, and I’m one of the lead attorneys on the Slade Bridgewell case.”

  She nodded her head and called on the phone. She nodded to me while she talked to Detective Hanson’s assistant, and then got off the phone. “He’ll be right with you. In the meantime, can I interest you in some water?”

  “Thank you,” I said. The lady, whose name tag said Mika Anoly, brought me a glass of water as I took a seat in the open-air lobby.

  In about five minutes’ time, a tall man who was balding came out and extended his hand. “I’m Detective Hanson,” he said. He seemed to be a very friendly sort, dressed in a blue button-down and dark blue pants. He also wore a bow-tie and suspenders. “You must be Serena Roberts.”

  I nodded and extended my own hand. “Very pleased to meet you.”

  He gestured to the end of the hall. “My office is down here. I have to admit that I’m surprised that you’re the first person from Mr. Bridgewell’s legal team to speak with me. I would have thought that I would have spoken with somebody by now.”

  I was tempted, sorely tempted, to tell this man the truth. That Malcolm, the lead attorney on the case, was the actual perpetrator so of course he didn’t want to do too much independent investigation.

  Then again, until I could prove something like that, I would be committing slander. I was going to have tread lightly, because this was a dangerous game I was playing. If I didn’t play it just right, I was going to be the one who was going to pay, not Malcolm.

  “Well, the discovery process is just getting going. The trial isn’t for almost a year, so we’ve been engrossed in hearings, discovery and interviews. We haven’t even started depositions on the case yet.”

  I followed Detective Hanson to his office, which had a beautiful view of the city. “Okay, come on in,” he told me. “Have a seat.”

  I sat down and he also took a seat, behind his desk.
He lifted a paper cup of coffee to his lips as he looked at me. “What can I do you for?”

  “I reviewed the reports regarding Jordan’s murder,” I told him. “But I couldn’t find out one fundamental aspect. What was the handedness of the killer?”

  He furrowed his brow. “That wasn’t in the report? I was sure that I wrote it in. But the killer was left-handed.”

  I felt my heart sinking as he said that. I shook my head and put my thumb and forefinger to the bridge of my nose. I fought back tears.

  Unfortunately, Detective Hanson appeared to pick up on my distress. “Yes, left-handed. Is there anything wrong? You got white as a sheet all of a sudden.”

  It’s not the end of the world. After all, Charlotte knew that Slade was a lefty. She would have told Malcolm to swing the baseball bat from the left side to mimic the way Slade would have done it. Charlotte would have been severely negligent if she would have allowed Malcolm to swing the bat right-handed.

  Still, I was hoping that somehow, someway, Malcolm would have done just that – slipped up and used his actual swing. That certainly would have gone a long way towards proving that Slade had nothing to do with Jordan’s murder.

  Of course it’s not going to be that easy. If only murder cases were that cut and dry.

  “Is that the only thing that you wanted to ask me?” Detective Hanson inquired.

  “Yes. That’s the only thing that I noticed was missing from the file. I think that I have everything else I need, but I’ll certainly call you if I think about anything else.”

  I left his office after saying goodbye, and got into my car. Well, that was a fruitless trip. Still, I was happy to have made this trip, because it gave me time to think. I always enjoyed a little drive whenever I was feeling out of sorts.

  I drove back to San Diego by way of the Pacific Coast Highway. The vast ocean was on my right and I hit a few quaint towns on the way back. They were typical coastal small towns, with restaurants and boutique shops lining the streets. The houses around these towns weren’t the stereotypical homes that people might associate with Southern California, but were vast colonial-style homes.