Deadly Cover-Up, page 15
Franklin interrupted his thoughts by starting the interrogation. “I’ve already gone over your Miranda warnings, Rich, but I’ll ask you again, do you want an attorney?”
“I don’t need an attorney,” Rich responded. “I have nothing to say to you.”
Frank shrugged. “That’s fine. You can just listen to me talk then. I want to start with when you broke into Deputy Graham’s house and tried to kill him.”
Rich stared at the wall, effectively ignoring Frank. “According to the official report, you broke the glass in his rear door window, then unlocked the dead bolts and made yourself at home. Sound about right?” Frank shifted. “Ben was able to knock the gun out of your hands, and then you ran away without it. It says here it was a Glock 19, nine-millimeter.” He put the report down on the table. “Sweet choice. What did that set you back, about six hundred bucks?” Rich still didn’t answer, so Frank pressed on, once again looking at the document. “This one was a generation five. Isn’t that the one that lets you customize your frame size with backstraps that come in two different shapes?” He still got no response. “I think that one even lets you remove the finger grooves, so it is a lot more versatile.”
Rich leaned back in his chair and studied the pattern in the ceiling, effectively ignoring him.
Frank was undaunted. “I can understand why you left that gun behind. I mean, it was the middle of the night, right? It was dark outside, dark inside. You had just lost a fight with a trained officer that left you feeling inadequate. You got scared, right? You probably didn’t know where the gun had even landed, after Graham kicked it out of your hand.”
Rich uncrossed his legs, then crossed them again.
Franklin pushed on. “Then at the river, what happened there? Did you get a bit cocky? A bit too sure of yourself?” He laughed. “I mean, the driving was incredible, I have to tell you that, but once you got that notebook, you took off your sunglasses, just to gloat. You had to know that Graham would recognize you, right? I guess you figured he would die from the fall, but you figured wrong. That was sloppy on your part. And then you left your fingerprints all over the outside of the car. Water doesn’t wash those off, Rich. Even if the car does sink to the bottom of the river. Did you think we wouldn’t check?”
Rich cocked his head to the side, but still said nothing.
“So you lived in a pretty nice house, Rich,” Franklin continued. “I say ‘lived,’ past tense, because you’re headed to prison and your days of living it up are over. But I have to admit, you had a pretty nice setup. Working for Southeastern must have paid well. So what’s the going rate for taking out a scientist? Did they pay you the same rate for Sparks and Jordan Kendrick?” he paused. “Did they promise you a bonus for taking out the deputy sheriff who was guarding her?”
Jordan moved closer to the glass. “Why isn’t he talking?” she said under her breath. Her voice was angry. “We know it was him. You identified him. We have enough evidence to prove his guilt.”
“Sometimes they never talk,” Ben responded. He could see her frustration clearly written all over her face. Even her body language showed how tightly wound up she was inside as she began to pace in front of the two-way mirrored glass. He did his best to calm her down. “Others ask for a lawyer the second they sit down, and we have to stop talking to them before we get out the first question. Frank will keep trying. He’s only just begun.”
She rounded on him. “So why don’t you go in there and get him to talk?”
“I can’t force him to cooperate, Jordan.”
She gave him an incredulous look. “You could convince him it was in his best interests.”
Ben ran his hands through his hair. He really didn’t want to explain to her why he hadn’t gone into the interrogation room, but she wasn’t giving up or giving him an out. He understood her frustration, but her behavior was making him even more unnerved. “Is that so? And how am I supposed to do that? There are no guarantees, no scientific formulas that will make him tell us what we want to know.”
“You make it worth his while. Surely, we can offer him something to get him to talk.”
Ben ran his hands through his hair and spoke before thinking. “Are you telling me how to do my job now?”
It was the wrong thing to say. He saw fire shoot from her eyes, and a muscle twitched in her jaw. She moved to leave the room, but he blocked her. “I’m sorry,” he said quickly. “Jordie? Don’t go. Please. This has been a rough day for me.”
“If you didn’t want to work on this case anymore, all you had to do was say so,” she whispered, her voice tight as she reached for the door. “It’s obvious that this case is my problem and no longer yours. That’s okay. I knew I was asking a lot when I came to you in the first place. I’m not mad. I’m just...disappointed.”
“You sure sound mad,” Ben responded. “And that’s not it at all,” he denied. Good grief, he was making a mess of things. A few minutes ago, he was trying to figure out how to tell her he loved her, and now he was in a deep hole and attempting to dig himself out of it. How could he fix this? Before he could even string another sentence together, they heard the door open behind them, and Donald Eddy strolled in, nearly bumping into Jordan as he did so.
“Hi, folks. Did I miss anything?” he asked. He had been totally unaware of the tension in the room but caught up fast. He glanced at Ben and raised an eyebrow. “Wow, I guess I did.”
Jordan looked away, but Ben answered him. “Not a thing, Eddy. Rich hasn’t said a word so far, except that he didn’t want a lawyer.”
“Right,” Eddy replied, obviously not believing him.
The door opened in the interrogation room, and their attention was drawn back to the table where Bailey had joined Frank and was standing behind him.
“Find anything good?” Frank asked her, a smile on his face.
“Why, yes I did. Thank you for asking, Deputy.” She turned her attention to the man handcuffed to the table. “Mr. Rich, part of my job is running background checks on suspects that get an interview, like you’re having right now. Would you like to know what I found when I looked into your background?” Bailey looked at the man expectantly, but although he looked up and met her eye, he still didn’t speak. She shrugged and moved a paper or two around in the file she was carrying. “I’ll take that as a yes, please, ma’am. Thank you for asking.” She raised an eyebrow. “Well, what I discovered is that as much as you like to pretend you’re all alone in this world, the cold hard truth is that’s actually not the case.”
Rich’s muscles tightened almost imperceptibly, but enough that Ben realized they had just hit a chord. He took a step closer to the speaker, his quarrel with Jordan momentarily put on hold. He didn’t want to miss a single thing the man said, and if his guess was correct, the man was about to spill it all.
Frank gave his wife an amused look. “Hmm. Not alone. Is that so?”
“Yes, it is. It seems Mr. Rich here has a baby brother. And his brother hasn’t been living large in a three-story mansion overlooking the beautiful St. Johns River. No, his baby brother has been in prison for the last three years, right here in the wonderful state of Florida. It seems he had some sticky fingers and tried to embezzle a large amount of funds from his employer. I say tried because he was caught almost immediately. It seems that Mr. Rich’s brother isn’t very good at crime.” She paused and tapped the file against the table. “He’s not so good at being a prisoner, either. He got beaten up pretty badly last week. Apparently, he doesn’t work and play well with others.”
A muscle twitched in Rich’s jaw. Ben had to give it to him. He was one cool customer. Suddenly, the suspect tossed his head back and looked down his nose at Frank, totally ignoring Bailey. “I want a deal.”
Frank leaned back. “And why would we give you a deal? We’ve got proof that you attempted to kill a law enforcement officer and a civilian on that bridge. We’ve got witnesses and fingerprints. Our state attorney can convict you with one hand tied behind his back. All the rest is just icing on the cake.”
Ben put his hands on his hips. Now things were getting interesting. He looked over at Jordan, who had also focused on the assassin’s words.
“I can tell you more than just what I’ve done. I can also tell you who paid me to do it.”
Frank raised an eyebrow. “And what’s to stop us from researching that information and finding it out by ourselves? We’ve got our top people on that very assignment as we speak. Your entire financial records for the last few years will soon be sitting on my desk, and I won’t have to give you a thing to be able to see them.”
For the first time, Rich looked somewhat less than confident. His body slumped slightly in the chair, and he shifted uncomfortably.
“Of course,” Frank continued, “if you could tell me something about their plans for the future, well now, that might actually be worth something.”
Rich paused for a moment before saying, “I can give you what you want, but I need a really good deal.”
“And what would this deal entail?” Frank asked. It was now his turn to pretend to be bored and disinterested. Ben knew that if Frank looked too eager, they wouldn’t get much from the suspect in exchange for whatever concessions they made.
“I want to be sent to the same prison where my brother is serving his time, in the same wing. Even the same cell, if you can swing it.”
Frank laughed. “Do I look like a travel agent?”
“That’s the price of my cooperation.”
“The same region is hard enough. Getting you at the same facility is nearly impossible.”
Eddy smiled at Ben, then headed toward the door. “Looks like I’m on. You two have a good afternoon.” He left and moments later, they saw him on the other side of the window in the interrogation room. He unbuttoned his jacket and took a seat across from the suspect as Bailey left the room and closed the door behind her. Frank stayed seated, unmoving.
“So you must be someone that can make a deal,” Rich said in a matter-of-fact tone.
“That would be me,” Eddy said caustically. “Donald Eddy, State Attorney’s Office. State law says the courts can’t force the Department of Corrections to place a prisoner in a specific facility.” He tossed his pen on his legal pad. “What we can do, is ask the court to make a sentencing recommendation as part of a plea agreement. Nine times out of ten, DOC will place the defendant where the court asks, but there is no guarantee.”
The suspect was quiet for a moment, and then he nodded. “That’s the right answer, Mr. Eddy,” Rich responded quietly. “I know the law, and I was just waiting to see if someone was going to come in here making promises that there was no way they could keep.” He sighed, then looked Eddy directly in the eye. His body language made it clear he had made a decision. “I want your word that you will ask the court for a sentencing recommendation to place me in the same facility as my brother.”
“You have it,” Eddy agreed.
“And I want a guarantee that I won’t get the death penalty. I don’t care how long you put me in prison, but I need to be around to protect my brother.”
“Deal.” Eddy wrote out the terms on his legal pad and signed the bottom, then moved the pad so Rich could read it and sign it as well, even with his hands cuffed. Once it was signed by both men, Eddy tore off the sheet and handed it to Rich, then reclaimed his pad and pen.
Rich nodded. “I pushed their car off the bridge. I admit it.”
“And who paid you to eliminate Jordan Kendrick?”
Ben and Jordan both took a step closer to the window, waiting impatiently for him to name the person who had tried to kill them both.
SEVENTEEN
“It’s not just one person,” Rich answered, leaning back in his chair. “There’s a group of four of them. But the head of that group is Suzanne Tammington.”
Eddy raised his left eyebrow. “The lawyer?”
“None other. She paid me $100,000 to take out Jordan Kendrick. Your deputy wasn’t included in the contract. He just got in the way.”
Jordan took a step back, unable to believe they had finally discovered who was behind the attempts on her life. But how could Tammington be the one? Tammington had been the one asking her questions when she was on the stand. She had been defending Sam Delvers and Southeastern from the federal lawsuits.
Jordan reeled with the information as Frank kept pushing. “Who are the other three?”
“Well, Sam Delvers, of course, and two other lawyers from Tammington’s firm—Fran Sanchez and Martin Simms. I make it my practice to do a little investigating before I take on any job. All four of these people have invested heavily in Southeastern. They’ll all be ruined financially if Jordan Kendrick gets the story out about Mintax. They can’t risk someone revealing the history of the drug.”
Eddy shrugged. “You’re not telling me anything I don’t already know. And there’s more than four of them that are heavily invested in the pharmaceutical company. You’re going to have to give me more.”
Rich leaned forward. “That might be the case, but there are only four that planned all of this. I’m telling you the truth. I met with Tammington and the other three in person. These four are the brains behind the operation.”
“How many times did you meet with them?”
“Twice with just Tammington, but three other times with all four of them.” He looked away, for a moment, then returned his attention to Eddy. “Trying to take out the scientist wasn’t the only job I ever did for them.”
“Let me guess,” Eddy said with a nod. “You did some traveling to China?”
Rich actually looked surprised at Eddy’s question. “How’d you know about that?”
Eddy shrugged. “We know more than you think.”
“Well, then you probably know that I didn’t go to China, but my associate did. You know, the guy that got run over when he was chasing Kendrick.”
“I know the man you mean, but we still don’t know his name. Care to enlighten us?”
Rich chewed on the inside of his cheek. “John Hansen. He was an amateur. If I’d gotten that job first, we wouldn’t be here talking today.”
Jordan sucked in her breath at the man’s comment. He might just be boasting, but a part of her did wonder if she would still be alive if Aaron Rich had gotten the contract. The thought sent a chill down her spine.
Ben reached over and squeezed her hand, and this time, she allowed the contact. She glanced up at him, thankful for his understanding. It was difficult to hear people talking about her life and death so casually like they were discussing the weather.
“So what was Southeastern doing in China? And remember, I already know a great deal.”
Rich laughed in derision. “So why do you need me to tell you?”
“To test the truth of what you’re telling me,” Eddy responded easily. “China?”
Rich shrugged. “They sold the formula for one of their drugs and are working with a lab and factory in China to make the new and improved version. Although you and I both know it’s the same pill they tried to produce before and failed. They’re already selling it through the internet and are looking at increasing advertising, production and distribution as we speak.”
Jordan quickly turned to Ben. “But the drug causes seizures. It kills people. We have to stop them. They’re already putting thousands of people in danger. We can’t let this happen.”
She hoped Ben would stick with the case long enough to stop Southeastern, now that they knew some of the company’s plans, but she wasn’t sure what Ben was going to do. He didn’t get a chance to answer her before Eddy was pushing for more.
“Tell me about the train,” Eddy prompted.
Again, Rich looked surprised, but he tried to act as if he didn’t know what Eddy was talking about. He failed at his deception. His body language made it clear that he knew more than he wanted to say. “That’s all I know,” Rich hedged. “I helped set some of the wheels in motion in China. I can testify about what I know about that, and about the Kendrick contract.”
Eddy leaned forward, apparently deciding to go in a different direction for now. “What about Jeremy and Emma Sparks? And Samantha Peretti? Did you kill them?”
Rich raised an eyebrow. “What if I say yes? Is that included in your deal?”
“Of course,” Eddy said with a nod. “As long as everything you’re telling me is the truth. I need you on the stand. You’ll have to testify to everything you’ve told me here today and go into even more detail, but there won’t be any separate charges for other bad acts we uncover along the way.” He paused. “But if you lie to me, all bets are off.”
“Then yes,” Rich said, looking Eddy directly in the eye. “I killed Jeremy and Emma Sparks, and Samantha Peretti, too.”
This time, Jordan reached out and squeezed Ben’s hand. Finally, they knew the truth. A wave of relief swept over her, so strong that it made her falter. Ben was quick to reach over and support her in an embrace. Jordan was so overwhelmed with emotion that she allowed the contact once again, even though it went against her better judgment.
“So now let’s talk about the train.”
Eddy’s question brought her right back into the here and now. She suddenly pulled away and turned to face the window once again.
“I don’t know anything about any train,” Rich insisted.
Eddy shook his head. “Remember how I just said you couldn’t lie to me? I know you know about the train. I know you’re the man that’s supposed to make that happen. If you don’t tell me about it in quite a bit of detail right now, our deal is gone. I can prove everything you’ve already said without any of your testimony. You have to give me more.”
