Temptations - The Complete Series Page 33
I was quiet, wanting him to keep telling me his story. He continued.
“Long story short, something happened. I still can’t tell you what that something is, because it would clearly implicate somebody who I care very much about. I can never take the chance that you or anybody else knows about this. But suffice to say, Charlotte knows about this incident. And she and I had an understanding for a long time that Charlotte wouldn’t say anything to anyone about this incident, because I had something on her as well. That’s the best way to get somebody to keep a secret – you find something to blackmail them with. I’m not proud of doing that, of course, but with Charlotte, I needed an insurance policy. If it was just me whose ass was on the line, I probably wouldn’t care as much. But it wasn’t just my ass, it was….”
I knew who he was protecting. It was his mother. He didn’t have to tell me that. What she did, I had no idea. But it was pretty clear that his mom was the only person in Slade’s life who he would go to the bat for. And, apparently, me.
“Things were going fine until, well, Michael Garancino was killed. After that happened, Charlotte started making noises about going to the authorities about the incident.”
I was holding my breath. The puzzle pieces were about to fit together and I was excited to know, yet dreading it all at the same time. Okay, Michael has something to do with this. I had to admit that I still felt completely in the dark, but I knew that Slade would clear up everything to the best of his ability.
“Okay. Well, here’s where it all gets complicated. Charlotte decided that she really wanted me to pay for not being what she wanted, which was a husband. She has always wanted to marry me, and I haven’t been interested in her romantically for quite awhile. So, she had Jordan killed and framed me. But I had the ace in the hole – I have the video portion where the killer attacked Jordan, and it clearly shows somebody who is not me. In fact, you can see this person’s face on the video.”
I blinked my eyes. This was HUGE. I started to feel excited when Slade was talking to me.
“Oh my god. I could kill you for not telling me about this videotape, but that’s the best piece of news I have ever heard. You can clearly get out of the murder charge now, and the right person is going to go down for it.”
I couldn’t contain my joy when he told me about the videotape.
He breathed in. “No. I told Charlotte that I would take the blame for Jordan’s murder, because she told me that if I didn’t…” He shook his head. “Okay, let me just tell you that this whole sorry affair has to do with my mother. And me, but mainly her. Charlotte told me that if I didn’t take the blame for Jordan’s murder that she would turn in my mother. And, quite frankly, I couldn’t see that happen. Charlotte had my balls in a jar, and she has for all these years because I was stupid and brought Charlotte along to see my mother when I knew that my mother was in trouble. Charlotte knows about what I did, but more importantly, she knows what my mother did.”
My head was starting to hurt. I had heard of people who were selfless, but I had never heard of something quite like this. He was willing to go to prison to protect his mother? He was really an amazing guy.
“Anyhow, when my mother was diagnosed, I thought that she didn’t have much time left. At that time, I went to work another deal with Charlotte. I was going to confess to my role in the incident with my mother, which would take Charlotte’s chip off the table. Then I would have been able to go take that videotape of Jordan's murder to the authorities and my name would be cleared.”
Things were getting closer and I found myself breathing harder and harder as I waited for the end of the story.
He hung his head. “I play Charlotte’s game well, but not well enough. If I could, I would have done everything differently. Mainly, I wouldn’t tell her what I was going to do. I just would have done it. Anyhow, after I told Charlotte what I was going to do, she kidnapped you. When I finally got to you, I knew that it was a matter of time before you couldn’t hang on any longer. People can’t go for days and days without water and it was really hot that week, so I knew that you probably were near death in that hole.”
Ah, finally it was all becoming clear. “You told Charlotte that you would confess to this murder if she let me go, didn’t you?”
He nodded imperceptibly. “Yes. And, as it turns out, I wouldn’t have been able to go to the authorities about the incident with my mother, because, as you probably know, she’s not actually dying. She was misdiagnosed. So, her recovering put the kibosh on my ever telling the authorities what I did, so Charlotte has me by the balls in two different ways. If I don’t confess to this murder, she’ll have you killed. She told me this, and I’m not fucking with her. Plus, she’ll possibly go to the authorities about what my mother did ten years ago.”
I closed my eyes.
I suddenly knew exactly what to do.
“Slade, I love you for doing this to protect me, but you have to know that I can’t allow you to do this.”
His eyes flashed with anger. “You have to let me do this. I don’t know what you have up your sleeve, but I’m warning you to back off. Back off, or else.”
I opened my mouth to protest, but, just then, there was a knock on the door. “Hey, you two. I’m just about ready to pop off for lunch, so you, Mr. Bridgewell, not to put too fine a point on it, but you gotta shit or get off the pot here.”
Slade started to leave, but I clutched his sleeve. I gripped him hard, because I refused to give up on this. “Slade, don’t. Please don’t.”
He just jerked his arm away from me and followed Detective Branson to his office.
Chapter 15
Slade – Present Day
I followed Detective Branson into his office. Serena was right behind me. There were tears in her eyes, and I felt awful. Truth be told, leaving her was killing me. It was killing me more than anything else. Yes, I was going to spend the rest of my life in prison. Because I was pleading guilty, the death penalty would be off the table. Malcolm assured me of this. So, that was the silver lining.
As I sat across from the detective, I looked over at Serena. She wasn’t looking at me, but I could see in her eyes that she was a fighter. She wasn’t going to let this whole thing go down peacefully. I tried to give her a warning look, but I couldn’t catch her eye.
I loved her. I loved her from the first time I saw her. That was why I had to try to stop her from doing whatever she could to get me out of this. It was a battle of wills with her, always. That was part of why I was in love with her. She wasn’t a shrinking violet, and she wasn’t somebody who was going to be ordered around. She also had a very strong ethical compass, and she knew how unjust this all was.
I just hoped that she didn’t have something up her sleeve. Knowing her though, she did. She was formulating a plan to make sure none of this happened the way that I needed it to.
“Okay, let’s begin,” Detective Hanson said. “Tell me in your own words what happened to Jordan Harris the night of May 10 of this year.”
Serena gripped my hand and I was able to make eye contact with her. She looked haunted and pale. She seemed as if she had given up, but I knew better. “Mr. Bridgewell, I want to be on record here. I want to be on record that you are doing this against legal counsel,” she said.
I nodded my head. “I understand. Well, Detective Hanson, on that night, Jordan and I had words. Jordan had been erratic all that week – he stayed up 24 hours a day and he seemed to be very much in the throes of a manic episode. I have some experience with that, so I know what signs to look for. He might have also been doing drugs during this period, as Jordan was known to have a problem with substance abuse.”
Detective Hanson took a donut out of a cardboard box and poured himself a glass of milk while he listened to us. He offered both of us a donut but we both turned it down. I knew that I couldn’t possibly think about eating at that point and I doubted that Serena could either.
“Okay, so you went to the lab that evening. Did you
have the baseball bat with you?”
“No. We kept the baseball bat in the lab, just in case somebody broke in. We also keep a firearm in that lab, but the reason why we have a baseball bat is to protect us and our inventions without resorting to lethal force.”
Detective Hanson was busy scribbling words down on a pad of paper and he looked up at me. “Go on. You got to the lab, there was already a baseball bat there, and you had words with Jordan. What kind of words?”
“Heated words. I was trying to talk some sense into him because the Board of Directors had been breathing down my neck to rein him in. They all knew how brilliant Jordan was, but they also knew that he was dangerous in many ways.”
So far, I thought that Slade was speaking the truth. It had to have been so difficult to see his friend going through all of that.
“Can you be more specific about your words to him?”
Slade looked down at the desk and I closed my eyes and felt the guilt and the sadness pour out of him. “Um, I don’t want to bring these memories up. You know how people get when they’re really angry. They start to say things that they don’t mean. Things that never should be said. I’m sure you’ve been there.”
Detective Hanson nodded his head. “We’ve all been there.”
Slade took a deep breath. “I told him that he was a waste of space and breath. That the world would be a better place if he weren’t in it.” He shook his head. “I was unbelievably angry. My patience with him and his issues had long since run out, and all that I could feel for him was contempt at that point. I’m not proud of how I spoke with him of course, but it is what it is.”
Detective Hanson was looking at Slade with keen interest. “So, you told Jordan that he would be better off dead, and that the world would be as well?”
“Yes. That’s what I told him. He gave it back to me as good as he got though. Of course he did – he was high as a kite that evening. And…”
Slade looked at me with sorrow. I could tell that he was going to come out with something that he had previously lied about.
I wasn’t disappointed. “Jordan was developing a testosterone pill. It would be something that athletes and body builders could take that would replace typical steroids. Jordan was perfecting it, and it was almost ready to come to market. He said that it would revolutionize the world, not just because it was good for athletic performance, but also because it would do amazing things for men who are going through andropause. The only problem with this pill was that Jordan tended to become belligerent when he took too much of it, and it makes him stronger than usual.”
I looked at Slade and knew that he was telling me the truth. I had specifically asked him if Jordan was developing a testosterone pill that made Slade nervous for Jordan, and Slade had told me a definitive “no.” Yet, he was now telling Detective Hanson that just such a pill was in the works.
Slade took a deep breath, and then told the lie about how Jordan was killed. “We had words, and Jordan started to charge me. I saw in his eyes that he was dangerous. You can see a look in a man’s eyes, a look that tells you that he’s outer limits and is capable of anything. So, I picked up the baseball bat when I saw him coming at me, and I swung at him.”
“You swung the bat and you hit him, correct?” Detective Hanson asked.
“Correct.”
Detective Hanson continued to jot down notes. “Okay. According to the report generated by one of the officers on the scene, Officer Petty, the victim had been bludgeoned with at least 10 blows. What happened after the first swing of the bat?”
Slade looked at the ceiling. This was horrible for him to have to talk about and I felt for him, and was angry with Charlotte at the same time. I felt tears coming to my eyes, but I vowed to do anything possible to keep him from actually entering the guilty plea on this case. Once he entered the plea of guilty, the case would end. There would be no appeals, and Slade would be stuck in prison for the rest of his life.
That wasn’t going to happen.
Slade continued. “After that first swing, he didn’t go down. It didn’t even seem to affect him. It was like a bad fifties sci-fi movie, where there’s a monster that’s charging and no bullets seem to affect it. Jordan was like that, so I kept swinging and swinging and swinging until he was finally on the ground.”
Detective Hanson was looking at something and I saw that it was the toxicology report for Jordan. “I’m listening. I was just looking at the tox report to see if Jordan had anything in his system that would create the superhuman strength. It does say that he had increased testosterone in his blood stream, along with cocaine and Oxycodone.” He made a bridge with his hands as he listened to Slade. “These drugs in his system could have caused him to act the way that you said he acted. The cocaine and enhanced testosterone could certainly cause rage, and the Oxy would cause him to have a very high pain threshold.”
Slade nodded imperceptibly. I saw on his face that he was suffering because of this. It was unavoidable. I knew that he was lying about killing Jordan, and that made me feel horrible. I reached over to pat his hand, but tried to do it discreetly. I didn’t necessarily want Detective Hanson to know how I felt about Slade. Not that he would care, because it wasn’t his business, but I still felt weird about it.
“So Jordan was in an altered state, and he was about to attack you when you got the baseball bat and starting to hit him. It certainly sounds like you have a case for self-defense.” He looked at his notes again. “Why didn’t you tell Officer Hyatt, your interrogation officer, the truth about Jordan?”
Slade looked over at me, and I looked away. I hated that he was doing this, and I wanted no part in it. None whatsoever. I wasn’t going to give him encouragement, even subtle encouragement, with my eyes. He was on his own with this.
“I didn’t tell Officer Hyatt the truth because I panicked. That’s why I destroyed that part of the video as well. I panicked.”
Detective Hanson narrowed his eyes when Slade started talking about the video. “Yes, that video. It says here in the file that a good portion of it was destroyed. There wasn’t a backup of this video?”
Yes, there is a backup, and Slade has it. I crossed my arms and raised a single eyebrow at him. I wanted to see him squirm about this question.
To my dismay though, he didn’t squirm. He answered it smoothly and clearly. “No. There was only that one videotape, and I destroyed the parts that showed me killing Jordan. So, I destroyed evidence on top of everything else.”
I wanted, more than anything, to convey to Detective Hanson the truth about all of this. But it wasn’t going to do any good. No, the only thing that was left for me to do would be to prove, once and for all, that Malcolm did this murder. But I had to somehow find a way to prove this before Slade’s court date. He was going to plead guilty, and thus far, he didn’t have a court date to do it. Hopefully, that date wouldn’t be too soon. If it were, then I wouldn’t have the chance to find the proof that I was going to need to find.
“Okay. So, you killed Jordan in self-defense, and now you want to plead guilty to his murder. Why are you doing that? Why don’t you want to take this to trial? The jury might acquit you once you tell your story. The toxicology screens show that Jordan was pumped full of drugs that night. I would think that you would want to take that chance with the jury, as opposed to pleading guilty and just shutting that door completely.”
I looked over at Slade. Yeah, Slade, what of that? Take the case to the jury and see what happens. Even that was a better idea than what Slade was proposing. It certainly would buy me more time for getting together what I needed to gather to show that Malcolm was the guilty party in this murder, not Slade.
Slade looked over at me. “You raise a good point,” is all that he said. I knew why he was hesitating – it was Charlotte. But Charlotte only wanted Slade to take the blame for this murder, so that the heat would be off of her and Malcolm. Then again, Charlotte wanted Slade to go down for the murder, because that was the whole point
in framing him. If he didn’t suffer the consequences for Charlotte’s evil plot, then I doubted that she would be satisfied.
“Okay,” Detective Hanson said. “It’s lunchtime. So, if there is anything more that you would like to tell me, speak now or forever hold your peace. Or at least hold your peace until 2 PM, which is when I get back from lunch. Right now, I have a pastrami sandwich with my name on it, and I must attend to it.”
I smiled. “You mustn’t keep a pastrami sandwich waiting.”
At that, we all got up and said our goodbyes. Slade and I made our way out of the building and to our individual cars, passing the crowds of reporters on our way out. Slade, in particular, had to push everyone off of him, as he told all of them that he had no comment to their reports that he was about to plead guilty.
“Well, I guess I was wrong,” Slade said to me, when we finally made it to our cars. “I guess Detective Hanson wasn’t going to pursue putting me in jail right this second. But the judge certainly will when I make my guilty plea.”
I crossed my arms, and when he leaned in for a kiss, I turned my face. I wasn’t having any of this. If Slade thought for one second that I would just roll over and let him ruin his life in this way, he certainly had another thing coming. “You were quite the actor in there Slade. Quite the liar.” I narrowed my eyes. “If you think for one second that this is the end of it, you can think again.”
Slade wrapped his strong arms around me. “I know you have something up your sleeve, but I’m here to tell you to stop. Just stop. You’re digging into some very dangerous territory and dealing with some seriously unhinged people. And they’re unhinged people who would stop at nothing to get what they want. Trust me, Serena. You need to back the hell off.”
I looked into his eyes, and I knew. I knew that even if I put my own life on the line, I was going to save his. Charlotte could do what she wanted with me – she could put me back in that hell hole, starve me to death, whatever she wanted to do with me – but I was going to make sure that Slade didn’t pay for what she did.