Ben
Ben obviously had a conflict of interest but that hadn’t stopped him from trying to help Alayna.
“She should have an attorney before she goes into any type of interrogation,” he spoke up when Noah and Victoria were preparing to enter the room where Alayna had been placed after they arrived at the police station.
Timothy Hall’s body had been picked up by the morgue. More cops had swarmed the motel, shutting down the parking lot and that whole string of rooms along the corridor of room 608. Homicide detectives were itching to question Trent, Dev and Ben, but when Noah arrived, he took over. He’d taken all their statements unofficially on the way to the precinct and then again officially when he was in his office. Now, it was time to see what Alayna knew for certain.
Ben suspected she knew a lot of things that could possibly incriminate herself. Hence the reason she needed legal protection.
“Come on Donovan, she’s a witness in protective custody,” Noah said with a slight frown.
“Then there’s no need for you to talk to her about anything other than her testimony,” he fired back.
“I can ask about her abduction by Hall and where she’s been all this time,” Noah countered.
Ben nodded. “And nothing else.”
He held Noah’s gaze for endless seconds, wanting to make sure his friend knew what he was trying to implicate without getting himself in anymore ethical hot water.
“He’s right,” Victoria intervened. “She should at the very least be advised that she can have an attorney present. Butnotyou,” she said pointing to Ben.
Ben agreed. “I have a colleague who can be here in fifteen minutes,” he said holding up his cell phone.
Noah cursed under his breath but Ben knew he understood they were all trying to protect both the witness and the successful prosecution of Ramone Vega.
“I’ll go advise her of her rights,” he said heading into the room.
As if he’d actually spoken the words to her, Victoria nodded. “I’ll go make sure her answer is duly recorded.”
Victoria
An hour later Victoria sat at one end of the long steel table, a legal pad and pen in front of her. To her left, Alayna sat wringing her hands but squaring her shoulders, determined to do the right thing. Reece Langley a defense attorney who Victoria had the honor of trying a few cases with and who had also gone to law school with her and Ben, sat right beside Alayna, his own legal pad and pen on the table as well.
Detective Noah Hannity, whom she’d learned was a good friend of Ben’s and a trustworthy detective with the saddest dusky blue eyes she’d ever seen, sat at the other end of the table. He pulled a small tape recorder from his shirt pocket and pushed it so that it was now closer to Alayna. With an affirmative nod from Reece he pressed the record button and asked Alayna to state her name and current address.
“Tell me what you know about the night Congressman McGill and his wife were killed,” he said to her.
Victoria had warned him he needed to get a completely new statement from her, that she was certain the previous one had been missing information. She couldn’t present anything Alayna had told her at the motel, that conversation had been off the record. But Alayna could and promised that she would.
“Larry said my daughter wasn’t his,” Alayna started her voice soft. “She wasn’t. I knew that. But I thought if that witch Myrna thought I had his child she would finally let him leave and then we could be together.” She sucked in a deep breath, releasing it on a shaky sigh. “I know it was stupid, everything I’ve ever done has been stupid. That’s why I’m trying to make it right now. I’m trying to do what’s right for my daughter. Lia’s all that matters to me now.”
Noah tried to look like he wasn’t affected by the words of this young girl, but the slight slump in his shoulders said he was. Victoria knew what he was going through because she felt it too. Alayna was too young and too immature to have to deal with two cagey politicians and one dirty cop. Those were probably the very reasons the bastards had preyed on and manipulated her. Fury boiled inside Victoria at the thought.
“What time did you leave the Congressman’s house?” Noah asked.
“Almost ten,” she said. “I drove to the café at the corner and waited there for about half an hour. Larry and I would meet there sometimes, so I just thought that maybe if he and his wife got into an argument about the baby he would come looking for me.” She shrugged. “He didn’t.”
“Did you see Ramone Vega at Congressman McGlinn’s house?”
“I was leaving the café. I stepped out onto the corner and a car stopped at the red light. It was a gray car, I could tellbecause the lights from the café were really bright. There were two people in the front seat and one in the back because none of the windows were tinted. Plus it was kind of cool so I guess they didn’t need to run the air conditioning. The back window was rolled down. Mr. Vega was in the backseat.”
Noah nodded and proceeded with the questioning. An hour and a half went by while Alayna poured out all the information she had. Victoria’s pen moved viciously across the paper, using up more than half the legal pad for notes. With Alyana on the stand, her case against Vega was ironclad. He wouldn’t get off this time.
As for Alayna, who thought she was safe in protective custody and was kidnapped by Timothy Hall, then continuously raped and beaten for the ensuing months, Victoria could only pray that the young girl would get the help she needed to process this traumatic ordeal and, to hopefully one day, find some peace in her life.
All too often, a mother’s trauma could seep into the life of a daughter and Victoria sent up another prayer that it wouldn’t happen this time. That Alayna’s experience with cruel men could remain a part of her past.
Speaking of which, even though she would never classify Ben as being cruel, Victoria did wonder at what their first encounter after all today’s events would be like. He’d looked so intense at the motel, so dangerously serene after he’d shot Timothy Hall, that she admitted—if only to herself—she was a little nervous. This thing with her and Ben had started so quickly, so dramatically she couldn’t help but remember theSpeedmovie where Keanu Reeves warned Sandra Bullock that relationships started under extreme circumstances didn’t end well. The movie then ended with a long, passionate kiss between the two, amidst the wreckage of a crashed subway train that at a madman’s whim had been traveling at a high rate of speed. The hopelessromantic buried deep inside her had often wondered how their relationship had fared after that pulse-thumping day.
