CHAPTER THIRTEEN

When Brent left the bedroom and returned back up front, Makayla was still seated in a chair and a uniformed officer was standing over her as if she was a common criminal plotting an escape. Which caused that outrage to bubble back up inside of him and he almost lashed out at the young officer. But he had to beat back his anger because he knew the poor guy was only doing his job. Unlike his chief, he was doing what he was supposed to do.

Brent looked at Makayla. What if this was exactly what it appeared to be? What if she and Alvin had a tryst at this hotel that got out of hand? But he dismissed such outrageousness out of hand! MaKayla wasn’t capable of anything like this. She was set up. He knew it in is heart of hearts as soon as he saw her face again. But she was in trouble. Severe trouble. He knew that too.

She was slicing her hair from off of her forehead and was leaned back. She still looked anguished and distressed, but he could see a sense of sereneness too, as if she was coming to terms with the death. As if she knew Brent would work it out. As if she had no idea the level of trouble she was in. From what he saw back there, her office would undoubtedly file it as a murder one. Which meant she could be facing life in prison without the possibility of parole. It was a bad situation.

But he'd be damned if his sweet wife, who never broke the law in her life, would be the first member of a family of mobsters and killers to ever serve long, hard time. He’d be damned if that was going to happen.

But he also knew all eyes would be on him and Makayla and their duties as public servants that the citizens of Jericho voted for. Everything had to be tight and right and by the book. He had to be tight and right and by the book, even though he’d already failed that test by tampering with evidence. Major evidence. But he was damned if he did, and damned if he didn’t. He would be raked over the coals by the family if he didn’t choose MaKayla over the law, and he would be castigated by the public if he didn’t choose the law over MaKayla. But it was a brutal business when he signed up for it years ago, and that brutality didn’t stop just because a family member was involved.

That was why, when she saw him and jumped up to come to him and the officer pushed her back into that seat, he didn’t lash out.

Makayla looked at that policeman as if he’d lost his mind touching her that way, and then she looked at Brent fully expecting him to reprimand his officer. But no reprimand came. And Makayla sadly knew, in that instant, that Brent had his police chief hat on, and he wasn’t taking it off. Not even for her. It kind of broke her heart.

“Kayla, it’s time to go,” Brent said. “Go to the bathroom and freshen up.”

MaKayla didn’t give a damn about freshening up, but she did need a break from all those accusatory eyes. She went to the bathroom that was just off from the living area.

After a few moments of silence, Phil spoke up. “Poor guy,” he said. “I liked him from the moment I met him. And he was a good judge too.”

Brent didn’t want to hear that shit. His wife was being accused of killing that good judge. He couldn’t hear that. “I’m going to check on my wife,” he said and went into the bathroom with MaKayla.

It wasn’t the escape he planned to make, but he knew he had to find an excuse to get in that bathroom with her.

She was at the mirror fingering her hair. When he closed the door behind him, he reached into his pocket, pulled out her panties, and showed them to her. “Put these back on,” he said to her.

When MaKayla saw those underwear in his hand, she was shocked. And it was in that very instant that she realized she wasn’t wearing any. She’d been so traumatized by the events of that night that she didn’t even realize it earlier. “Where did you get those?” she asked him.

“In the bedroom near the body.”

She couldn’t believe it. “But I was never in that bedroom.”

“I know,” he said, even if he technically didn’t. “Put them on. We don’t have much time.”

She knew they belonged to her, mainly because they were brand new, Brent had purchased them for her, and she was not wearing them when she was wearing them when she first walked into that suite.

She also knew what it took for Brent, a law-and-order man to his core, to retrieve those underwear. “Thank you,” she said, and then quickly put them on.

But before she pulled them all the way up, he moved up to her and placed fingers deep inside her vagina. She was dry. There had been no rape. At least not from what he could tell.

“I wasn’t raped,” she made clear. “I think I would have felt something if that would have happened.”

He agreed. She finished dressing. And then they left the bathroom.

But it didn’t take long for Phil to go right back to the obvious: They had to make a decision.

“What decision?” Brent asked him. “She said she didn’t do it.”

“I understand what she said, sir. But I ask you this: If she was anybody else in this entire world, where nothing she’s saying is checking out, and with this kind of evidence before you, what would you do, Chief? Let her go, or arrest her on suspicion of murder?”

Brent frowned. “ Arrest her ? Are you out of your mind? Nobody’s arresting my wife!”

“Sir, she has to be arrested. She has to be.”

Brent knew it too. But the very thought of it was paining him.

Phil knew, in the end, it would come to this. Brent was by the book, but even he had weaknesses. And everybody knew he loved his wife. She was his weakness. He stiffened his back. “I followed protocol, sir,” he said.

Brent and Makayla both looked at him. “What protocol?”

“Whenever a direct family member of any officer of the Jericho Police Department is under suspicion of any major crime, the Maine Bureau of Investigation has to be contacted and they have to assume the investigatory lead.”

Brent was floored. “Are you telling me you’ve already contacted MBI?”

Phil hesitated, but he answered. “Yes, sir. That’s what I’m telling you.”

Brent frowned. “ Under whose authority ?” he bellowed out.

Phil swallowed hard. “Under my authority, sir, as an officer of the law. Under doing the right thing no matter who the perp is.” But Phil said it in such a sanctimonious way that before he could get another word out edgewise, that outrage overtook Brent and he punched Phil so hard that Phil fell on his ass. The officers in the room were shocked.

Now Phil’s rage was unleashed on his boss and he went for Brent like a bull going for red. He charged at him and rammed his head into Brent’s stomach, forcing him backwards and against the wall. But Brent, the stronger man, was able to push off of that wall and the fight was on. Instead of passing licks, they were struggling for dominance. To get the upper hand. To annihilate the other one.

It took MaKayla begging Brent to stop and all of the officers and half of the forensic techs to pull the two big men apart.

Brent snatched away from his employees when they separated the two. Then Brent and Phil both calmed back down.

And as MaKayla and Brent exchanged a look of inevitability that staggered them both, MaKayla knew there was no other way.

She stood up and held out her wrists. “Cuff me, frisk me, and take me downtown, Phil,” she said to the sergeant.

“That’s not necessary,” Brent said to her.

“Cuff me, frisk me, and take me downtown, Phil!” Her eyes were filled with unshed tears and it broke even Phil’s hard heart. He looked at Brent, a man he’d known for over a decade.

But Brent couldn’t allow it. “You’re not arresting her.”

“He has to, Brent,” MaKayla said, and everybody looked at her. “Don’t you understand? If MBI comes here and finds that there’s been any favoritism, they will have the authority to not only take over this investigation, but to take over the entire police department. And then the governor will have the discretion to remove you as chief, install whomsoever he wants to install, and take over permanently. The citizens of this town deserve better than that. You deserve better than that. Let Phil arrest me. We have no choice.”

It was the same sentiment Brent had when he retrieved the evidence. It was difficult for him to do it, but he knew she was right. They had no choice.

It took him several more seconds to get there, but he eventually nodded his head. And Phil, relieved that the chief was finally doing the right thing, personally cuffed Mrs. Sinatra and led her out of the hotel suite. He also purposefully did not read her Miranda rights in case they needed that technicality later.

Brent picked up his hat that had fallen to the floor in the melee, and he looked at his officers in that suite. “I apologize for my behavior,” he said, and then he hurried behind Phil and MaKayla.

When he walked out of that suite, everybody in it sighed relief. They’d never seen the chief so unhinged. But they understood it. To a man they understood it.

On the elevator, MaKayla and Phil had to convince Brent that the perp walk was necessary as a public display of no favoritism, although Brent was inwardly hotly opposed to it. Fuck the public , he wanted to scream out. But he knew they were right. He held his tongue.

They expected a reporter or two would have gotten a beforehand notice that something was going on at The Hayton, that was why squad cars were out front, and they would be hanging around to see what was up. But what none of them expected was that the entire regional press corps was outside waiting. They already knew the DA was involved. They already knew the chief of police was involved. It was a gigantic story.

They hurled questions at the threesome and flashed cameras in their faces as soon as they walked outside, and Brent angrily took over at that point. He pushed reporters aside as he shielded MaKayla from the ruckus and hurriedly placed her in the backseat of the patrol car waiting to escort her downtown. And he got in the backseat beside her. Phil got on the front passenger seat and the officer was ordered to speed away. He nearly hit several reporters, but he got them away from there.

“Hand me your key,” Brent ordered Phil.

After Phil handed him his key, Brent removed the handcuffs from his wife’s wrists. After she rubbed her wrists from the pain those cuffs had caused her, Brent attempted to hold her hand. But she resisted. She looked him in the eyes.

“I’m sorry,” she said to him.

Sorry for what ? he wanted to ask her. Don’t say you’re sorry. Only guilty people said they were sorry !

But tears welled up in her eyes, and she said it again. He pulled her into his arms.

She was in trouble.

Their marriage was in trouble.

Brent, whose poker face was legendary, was tumbling toward meltdown.