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“I’m not a cop, Wagner,” she reminded him. “And fortunately, I haven’t burned all my bridges with the guy, so there’s still a shot that I can get something out of him before his attorney arrives. Step aside.”
He shook his head.
“This isn’t your case, Hunt,” he said. “Famous or not.”
She gave the man a saccharine smile.
“You’re right, Detective Wagner,” she said. “Iamfamous. And if I were to decide to call a press conference and talk about how one of the lead detectives in the Gemma Britton murder put the potential conviction of his lead suspect at risk by letting his personal animosity toward that suspect get in the way, completely fumbling his interview, how do you think that would go over? I’m guessing not very well.”
Wagner’s expression didn’t change, but as she spoke, his eyes seemed to lose some of their fire.
“Now you can step aside, or you can find out what the hot seat feels like,” she continued. “I’m more than happy to hand it over to you. I promise, the media is always ready for a new sacrificial lamb.”
Wagner stared at her for a long time, unmoving. Only when Detective Ortega tapped him gently on the forearm did he move out of the way. Jessie opened the interrogation room door.
“He can come in,” she said, pointing at Ortega, “but you stay out.”
She walked into the room without waiting for a reply. Britton looked over at her briefly, then returned his attention to the wall he’d been staring a hole through.
"I'll keep this short, Mr. Britton," she said sitting down opposite him. Ortega and Grover joined her inside, though both men remained by the door. "Either you had your wife killed or you didn't. That's going to come out one way or another, as will any potential involvement in Isabel Shea's death. If you paid for their murders, you definitely picked a sick puppy to commit them, someone who could have used a bit of therapy himself. But if you didn't do it, I'm your best bet to get out of this mess. And right now, it's abigmess.”
Britton looked over at her, but his expression was inscrutable, and he said nothing.
"Listen, Mr. Britton," she continued. "If you did this, you're going down no matter what. But if not, you might be thinking you can just wait this out, let your lawyer handle everything and be on your way. But it's not that simple, because personally, I think this killer plans to strike again. And if I spend unnecessary time focused on you when my attention could be elsewhere, and someone else died as a result, you'll have culpability. You'll have to let it happen. So I suggest you come clean, starting by explaining the $50,000 you paid to Burnam & Associates."
Britton's mouth opened slightly before he broke out in a sudden blinking fit.
“That’s not what you think,” he said, breaking his silence. “I didn’t pay anyone to kill my ex-wife.”
“What was it for then?” she asked.
Britton shifted uncomfortably in his chair. Jessie sighed.
“I don’t have time for this,” she told him. “Anything other than hiring someone to murder your wife puts you in a better position than the one you’re in right now. So just come clean, for your own sake.”
That seemed to convince him. His jaw unclenched and he leaned forward.
“She was my mistress,” he said quietly, “Kayla Burnham. I gave her money to keep an apartment, a love nest where we could meet. I set up the LLC so it wouldn’t look suspicious to Gemma while we were married. I told her it was for photography expenses. Once she filed for divorce, there was no reason to keep making those LLC payments because I could see Kayla in public. I was having an affair, not hiring a hitman.”
Jessie wasn’t shocked at the answer and immediately texted the name Kayla Burnham to Jamil to see if the story panned out. “Why go through the charade of couples’ counseling if you had this woman on the side?”
“It wasn’t a charade at first,” he protested. “I wanted it to work it out with Gemma. I’m the one who initially suggested seeing a counselor, though she ended up picking someone other than my first choice. That’s how we ended up with Dr. Shea. She was actually good, really tried to help, but we were too far gone.”
“Having an affair doesn’t exactly eliminate you as a suspect, Mr. Britton,” Jessie pressed. “You could still have had your wife killed for the money, then gone off with Kayla.”
He shook his head.
“I would never,” he objected. “But if you want to play that game, I would have had to have that donebeforewe got divorced. After we split, I was off her life insurance policy and out of her will. Hell, if you want to get down to the cold financials of it, her death is a huge blow to me. She was paying me alimony, not the other way around. I just lost a major income stream. What advantage could I possibly get from killing her?”
“Sometimes we don’t make decisions based on logic alone, Mr. Britton,” she countered, though she was having a hard time finding holes to poke in his story. “I’ll be back in a minute.”
She got up and indicated for Grover and Ortega to meet her outside. Wagner, who had been watching from the observation room, joined them in the hall.
"You don't buy any of that crap, do you?" he asked immediately. "It's like you said, crimes of passion don't follow logical rules, and this guy strikes me as the type who would let his emotions get the better of him."
“You’d certainly know about that,” Jessie couldn’t help but say, before turning her attention to the whole group. “I don’t know whether anything he said will hold up, but I have enough doubts that I don’t think we should focus all our attention on him.”
Just then, her phone buzzed with a text from Jamil. It read:payments check out. Kayla Burnham transferred exact matching amounts from Burnam & Associates, LLC into her checking account on the day after each deposit.She showed the text to the others.
