Chapter 46

Chapter Forty-Six

M othman queued up a video. They’d all gathered in the big conference room with the large screen. JT’s focus should be on the screen, but Alexandra had all his attention.

Erica had texted to give him the heads-up that they’d visited the spot by the side of the road where she’d been assaulted by Williams. This was before they’d searched Kendall’s house for clues. That she’d found her old wedding dress was a nice surprise, but the rest, he knew, had a high emotional cost.

They were once again traveling through the most painful parts of their past, but this time, it was also their present, and Kendall Gordon wasn’t holding her peace.

She was present, almost life-sized, on the big screen. A voice from the grave.

This was the Kendall he’d last seen at the office in October. She’d always been lovely. Pretty face, with a warm smile, dark hair. Their first meeting had been fraught, and he acknowledged she’d never had a chance with him.

His protectiveness of Lex, combined with his loathing of Brent Forbes, meant he’d never looked at Kendall and seen Lex’s best friend. The woman she loved, even now, when she knew they were going to learn some painful truths today.

She hadn’t given up on Kendall.

JT took Lex’s hand, cupping it between both of his.

Kendall’s first words were a wrench in the works. “Whoever is watching this, and I hope it’s you, Alex, I really need you to read my diary first. Before watching the rest.”

“The diary must be the file on the computer,” Keith said. “Lee, how are we doing with that?”

“I think we should let Alexandra read it first.”

“Do we really have time for that?” Curt’s question wasn’t unsympathetic. JT understood his urgency.

“In this instance, I think so. The diary begins sixteen years ago, but there are only a half dozen entries over the next eight years.”

Lee closed his laptop and slid it across the table to her.

Keith’s voice was kind as he said, “You can use my office. JT will show you the way.”

JT was glad for the offer. He hoped she’d allow him to read it with her.

Before they left the room, Alexandra turned to face everyone gathered around the table. “While I read this in privacy with JT, the rest of you should read it here. Lee, you have another copy?”

He nodded. “The entire drive is on a secure Raptor server.”

“Good. We can watch the videos when I get back.”

JT led her down the hall to Keith’s office. They settled on the couch side by side. “Thank you for letting me be here with you.”

“Of course. I wouldn’t want to face this alone.”

He kissed her temple, and she opened the laptop. The diary began on New Year’s Day, sixteen years ago.

A lexandra was going to be sick. Reading the horror that Kendall went through at the hands of Officer Williams… It was grotesque.

“Do you think this is what Williams was after?” she asked. “Her diary?”

“It’s possible. I’m not sure how admissible it would be in a court of law, but given that it’s on an old hard drive and the last save of the file was eight years ago, maybe?”

“But hasn’t the statute of limitations run out?”

“Maryland has no statute of limitation on felony sex crimes,” JT said. “I looked it up a few days ago, when we realized this was probably connected to Spaulding.”

“But he didn’t rape me.”

“Thank god,” JT said. “Still, I wanted to know, in case there were other women he abused around the same time.”

“Still, in Kendall’s case, obviously there’s coercion, but it was blackmail, and a defense attorney would argue she performed oral sex willingly. What an ugly mess.”

“Given the other complaints against Williams that MSP might or might not have been investigating, this could’ve been a problem for him even if it’s not felony rape. A history of using his badge to force sex. Destruction of evidence. And the fact that he was obviously lying to Kendall. He never would have been able to intercept fingerprint results. He worked in a different county, and it’s not like the results wouldn’t have been in a system with multiple backups.”

“But she was so terrified that she believed him in the moment.” Alexandra could imagine her terror. Williams had been intimidating then and now. “Later, when the evidence against Spaulding disappeared, she had to think that confirmed his claim. She was convinced her fingerprints were on the vial taken from Russ that night.”

“And they might have been, although I don’t understand why Spaulding and Forbes would have implicated her ahead of time. What was the point? You’d never believe she played a part in your rape.”

Alexandra scrolled up and reread Kendall’s confession, including Williams’s threats about the GHB. She tapped the screen. “There were enough drugs in the drink to kill me. But they couldn’t know that. Half the drink spilled.” Cold dread hit her in the gut. “What if the plan wasn’t to rape me that night, but to kill me?”

“If you turned up dead in Spaulding’s hotel room, the only person implicated would have been him.”

“But Spaulding wasn’t the only one with a hotel room. All the executives had them. He was resentful that his wasn’t being comped as promised.”

“They weren’t all being comped, just the ones for executives who worked over fifty miles away.”

“And Drake.”

“Yes, but he was one-third owner.”

“And he hated your guts but couldn’t fire you.”

“Shit,” JT said, his voice cracking as he added, “But if a woman was found dead in my hotel room…”

“Could Russ have gotten your room key?”

“I’m sure Drake could have gotten it, since our rooms were booked in the same block. Claim a mix-up with the room numbers. Easy.”

“In the audio recording, Kendall said Drake funneled Talon & Drake money to Russ Spaulding. This could be Russ’s extortion. Drake asked him to remove you from the picture. I was chosen as the victim for no other reason than I was Kendall’s roommate and could be convinced to attend. But Russ had no real interest in me. He even went off and played blackjack instead of spending time with me.”

“I’m not sure if it means he had a conscience and didn’t want to get to know you, or if he was just a cold motherfucker who had better things to do before committing murder.”

Alexandra felt the air thicken. Once upon a time, she’d thought the worst thing that would have happened to her that night was a horrific rape.

“So how does Williams play in? He was involved somehow. He responded to my 9-1-1 call, then coerced Kendall and destroyed evidence. Kendall was fully locked in at that point. Complicit in the crime Russ had tried to commit.”

“Until the GHB vial showed up again in her nightstand, forcing her to question everything. Brent could be innocent. So could Russ—they always claimed I had the cops plant the vial on Russ. And then there was another cop, with another vial.”

“But the vial in the nightstand was GHB, not X.”

JT tapped the screen. “Which Brent explained away as a mistake.”

She nodded. Kendall’s diary gave Brent’s embarrassed admission that he’d never tried X, so when he was sold GHB instead, he didn’t realize he’d been tricked.

Kendall had been so desperate to believe him, to believe she wasn’t complicit in a real crime, that she’d accepted his explanation. She’d clung to the idea that Russ really was innocent, because then it meant she hadn’t caused the charges to be dropped against a guilty man just to save herself.

The diary entries that followed over the years were written at times when she struggled with her guilt and belief in Brent. She was haunted by nightmares of Williams and terrified Russ was a monster.

She saved the diary file without a password on the desktop computer they shared, not the personal laptop she used for school most of the time.

Alexandra was convinced Kendall wanted her to find it. Wanted to confess. She probably even wanted JT investigated, because she was sure he was guilty of something. Alexandra’s uneven relationship with him didn’t help Kendall’s opinion of him.

But Alexandra had never looked at Kendall’s files. It honestly had never occurred to her.

So Kendall suffered in silence. Complicit in crimes she couldn’t begin to understand.