The Chain of Lies

CHAPTER 23



Isabel breezed back into Jerry’s room. “Knock, knock.”

Colin and Emily waited out in the hall as Isabel let the door swing silently behind her. She hoped Jerry didn’t notice the lack of sound when the door did not close all the way—Emily had stuck the toe of her pointy black boot there so they could listen.

“What the—”

“Sorry, it’s just me again, Jerry.” Isabel moved to the foot of his bed once more.

“I thought we were done. You got your confession. What else do you want?”

“There was something else I need to tell you.”

“What’s that?” he asked, rubbing his eyes.

“Like I told you before, the ballistics verified the gun that was found by the river was the one that killed David Gerard. Unfortunately, the lab says there were no usable fingerprints on it. It had been in the mud too long.”

“So you’re saying I confessed for nothing?”

“As luck would have it, there was a bullet still in the gun and the lab was able to pull a beautiful print off of it.”

“No kidding.” Jerry crossed his arms over his chest and stared at her.

Isabel wasn’t sure if he was really interested or simply being sarcastic. “Want to take a wild guess who the print belongs to?”

He pinched his lips together and waited, turning his head and staring out the window at the cloudless blue sky. Did he have an idea who it belonged to but didn’t want to say?

“The print belongs to Ricardo Vega.” For a millisecond Isabel thought she saw a look of surprise flash in his eyes before his expression went flat again.

“Delia’s late husband?”

~*~

Isabel grabbed a thumb drive from Buzz in the hospital’s parking lot. It had the video confession recorded on it. She handed it over to Colin. “The ball’s in your court now, Detective.”

Emily rode with Colin back to the police station, and Isabel followed in her own car.

“I can’t wait to question Delia,” Emily said, excitedly squirming in her seat. She rolled the window down and let the cool fall breeze whip through her hair.

“You can’t officially question her, Emily. You’re not law enforcement.”

“Can’t I at least be in the room while you interrogate her?” She sat up straight in the seat and twisted her shoulders, leaning toward Colin. “You know how important this is to me.”

“I don’t know.” He paused and shook his head. “It’s a pretty small room,” he teased.

She playfully smacked his arm and grimaced.

“Okay, since the Chief wants you on board as a consultant, I’ll let you be in the room, but you can’t ask any of the questions. I mean it.” He down-shifted the red jeep and came to a stop at the light. He looked over at her, waiting for a response.

She leaned back in her seat and looked away from him, out the open window.

“Emily…”

“I’m thinking.” She gazed back at him and grinned. “Okay, I promise I’ll be as quiet as a church mouse.”

“Where have I heard that before?” Colin rolled his eyes. That’s what she had promised him in the interrogation he had conducted in New York City on the first case they ever worked together.

He was questioning a Russian mobster about his role in Ricardo Vega’s murder, and it was more than she could do to keep her mouth shut. He chuckled to himself as he thought of it. She couldn’t keep that promise then and she likely wouldn’t keep it now. Although, he did have to admit that in the New York interrogation she had asked a pivotal question, so he had quickly forgiven her.

Yes, that was his Emily—pretty as a peach and as hot and hard to handle as a firecracker.

~*~

“Hey, Stella,” Emily greeted as she strolled through the front doors of the Paradise Valley police station with Colin.

Stella stood up behind her desk and smiled. “Hello, Emily. Good to see you, dear. We’re all so pleased Colin is back.”

“Me too.” Emily gave Colin’s hand a squeeze.

“Isabel Martínez should be coming right behind us. Send her back to the interrogation room as soon as she gets here.” Colin and Emily walked to the door leading to the back offices and he swiped his security pass to let them in. “Oh, and Delia McCall will be here soon. Have her wait out here and I’ll come and get her when you announce her.”

“Yes, sir, Detective,” Stella replied with a hand salute.

He grinned at her. “Cut the formalities, Stella. Yes, Colin, will do just fine.”

At the sound of the buzz-click, Colin pushed the door open for Emily and followed her through it. He led her back to his office and went directly to his laptop which sat open on his desk. He pushed the on button and sank down into his black-leather office chair. He waited for the programs to come alive before sticking the thumb drive in an available USB port.

Emily stood across the desk and placed her hands on the edge, craning her neck to try to get a glimpse of the screen. “Do you think we have time to watch the video before Delia shows up? All we know is that Isabel was able to get a confession, Colin. We haven’t seen any of the video ourselves yet.”

“We all agreed to the plan, so if Isabel stuck to the script, there shouldn’t be any surprises.”

“Surprises? What surprises?” Isabel asked, standing in the doorway. “We don’t want no stinkin’ surprises.”

“Very funny.” Emily spun around, crossed her arms, and sat back against the edge of the desk.

“Emily was wondering if we should watch the video before Delia shows up,” Colin said. “I stuck the thumb drive in and it’s all queued up.”

“Let me give you the short version. I told Jerry if he confessed before the prints came back from the lab, I wouldn’t have him arrested.”

“How can you promise that?” Colin asked.

Emily grinned at her girlfriend. She knew how Isabel’s mind worked. “It’s easy, Colin. She didn’t say you wouldn’t arrest him, she said the Feds wouldn’t arrest him.”

“Ahh—I get it. Evan was murdered in my jurisdiction. It’s not a Federal case. Very clever, Isabel.”

“I do have my moments. Although, he’ll probably be in the grave before it ever got to trial, so what would be the point?”

“True,” Colin had to admit.

“Now, back to the video. Jerry did confess to the murder, but when I told him Ricardo’s prints were on the bullet still in the gun, he started to backpedal.”

“Why would he confess then think he could recant?” Emily asked.

“We’ll need to figure that out,” Colin replied. “Hopefully we can squeeze something out of Delia.”

“Colin,” a female voice blared from his desk phone’s intercom speaker. “Delia McCall is here to see you.”

Colin depressed a button and spoke toward the phone. “Tell her I’ll be right out.” He released the button and rose from his chair. “It’s show time, ladies.”

~*~

Emily and Isabel were already seated at the table in the conference room when Colin escorted Delia in, dressed in her customary tailored suit and expensive jewelry. Her long dark hair floated around her shoulders in waves.

The laptop sat open in the center of the table, ready to play the video of Jerry’s confession, alongside a gun sealed in a clear plastic evidence bag.

“Have a seat, Ms. McCall.” Colin pulled a chair out for her, then he took his place at the table and set a file folder down on it.

“Thank you, Detective.” She eyed the gun and computer as she sank down onto her chair. Her gaze rose to Colin. “But you can call me Delia. It’s not like we don’t already know each other.” She set her purse on the floor and scooted her seat up to the table. “Hello, Emily, Isabel.”

“Hi, Delia,” Emily replied pleasantly.

Isabel looked at her with a deadpan expression.

“I didn’t expect all of this.” Delia gestured around the table with her open hand. “I thought you simply needed to ask me a few questions to clear something up. What’s going on?”

“I do have something I want to talk to you about, and I thought it’d be best if Isabel and Emily were here.”

“All right, I’m listening,” she replied, with a hint of hesitation in her voice.

“Several years ago, someone tried to kill Evan Parker. Did you know that?” Colin asked.

“No.” Delia shook her head. “I only knew he was murdered about a year ago.”

“From what we’ve discovered, he managed to wrestle the gun away from the perpetrator during the attempt. He hid the gun with a note saying he hoped one day he could use it to identify his attacker.”

“I don’t know anything about that, Colin.”

“Obviously, the gun has surfaced, along with the note, or we wouldn’t be talking about it,” he said.

“The FBI lab traced that gun back to your father, Jerry Banderas,” Isabel added.

“Oh, my.” Delia put a freshly manicured hand to her chest. “I had no idea. Really.”

“You had no idea?” Isabel crossed her arms and leaned forward on the table, staring into Delia’s dark eyes.

“No, none.” Delia pursed her perfectly painted lips.

“Jerry confessed that he attempted to shoot Evan that night,” Isabel said.

“He never told me—honest.”

“I videotaped his confession, Delia. He stated Evan wrestled the gun away from him and shot him in the shoulder as he escaped.” Isabel watched Delia’s expression, but she remained stone faced. “He said he called you and you came to his hotel room with everything he needed to dress the wound.”

“Uh—well, um—I didn’t know it was Evan that shot him. He just said he’d been shot. I assumed, with his work in the FBI, it had something to do with one of his cases.”

Emily sat silently, her arms crossed and her lips pressed tightly together, fighting against the urge to say something.

“I’m not sure your story is lining up with Jerry’s,” Isabel said. “Let’s play the video, shall we?” Isabel reached over and pushed the play button.

Delia watched as her pale and sickly father reclined in his hospital bed and confessed to trying to kill Evan—David Gerard—several years ago, and why he did it. He told how he had called Delia to bandage his wound after David shot him in the shoulder.

In the video, Isabel’s voice could be heard asking questions and moving the confession along to the night Evan was killed.

“Tell me what happened the night David Gerard died,” Isabel was heard to say.

“I made an appointment with him, pretended to be someone who wanted to hire him for a job. I showed up at his office that night, and we chatted for a while about this and that. We’d never worked together in Washington, so he didn’t know me—but I knew him. I knew he was the reason my Natalia was dead.”

Delia watched the computer screen as Jerry’s voice cracked and his eyes grew moist. He ran his hand across his eyes to wipe the tears then continued.

“I’d hated that man for so long, I couldn’t help myself.” His voice quivered with emotion. “I didn’t care what he was calling himself at the time, I wasn’t going to give him another opportunity to wrestle the gun out of my hand. When David went to get something from the file cabinet, I jumped on the chance to put a bullet in the back of his head.”

“Did you act alone?”

“Yes, completely alone.”

“You’re saying your daughter, Delia, knew nothing about what you had done.”

“You think I had something to do with that?” Delia shrieked, her eyes wide, shooting a questioning look at Colin.

“That’s right. She had nothing to do with it. It was all me,” Jerry replied on the video.

Isabel paused the video play.

“Is that the gun?” Delia asked, casting a glance at the bagged weapon that lay on the table.

“Yes. That’s the gun that was used to murder Evan Parker.” Colin leaned forward in his chair, studying her face. “And you just heard your father confess to doing it.”

“You aren’t going to charge him, are you?” Delia’s eyes widened as her hand slapped the table in Colin’s direction. “He’ll be dead long before he comes to trial. He’s given his life to the FBI, sacrificed his own family for this country.”

“You want us to believe you don’t know anything about this, Delia?” Emily snapped, then looked sheepishly toward her lap. “Sorry,” she whispered to Colin.

“Of course I don’t, Emily. Don’t be ridiculous!”

“I have a file here with the results from the lab.” Colin patted the folder as he said it.

Delia sucked in a gasping breath and her eyes flickered in surprise for a moment. She quickly regained her composure and calmly folded her hands on the table in front of her, meeting Colin’s gaze with a steely one of her own.

“The fingerprint results came back on the gun—because it sat in the river mud for a year and began to rust, no usable prints could be taken from it.”

Emily noticed a faint look of relief in Delia’s eyes.

“However,” Colin continued, “there was one bullet left in the gun and it had a well-defined thumbprint on it that belonged to Ricardo.”

“You think my late husband killed Evan?”

“We considered it, but no,” Colin said. “Your father insists he did it. He says he’s dying and he wants to clear his conscience. So I believe what happened is that Ricardo had loaded the bullets in the gun at some point, but who knows when that might have been. It could have been months or years before. I don’t believe he’s the one who pulled the trigger.”

“Why not?” Delia asked.

“Because Evan was investigating him,” Colin explained. “If Ricardo knew Evan was onto him and came to his office to kill him, to cover up what Evan had discovered he’d been doing, it doesn’t make sense Evan would ever have trusted him enough to turn his back on the man. No, it had to be someone he felt comfortable with. Your father said he met with Evan under the guise of hiring him to do some work for him.”

“Please don’t arrest my dad. I don’t have him for much longer. You’ve seen how sick he is—he’ll die before he even steps foot in a courthouse.” Tears began to trickle down her cheeks as she pleaded for her father’s life. “He must have been out of his mind with grief when he pulled the trigger. He didn’t know what he was doing.”

“Delia, this file has something else very interesting in it.” Colin picked up the folder and shook it at her as he said it.

She dug a packet of tissues out of her purse and carefully dabbed at her eyes. “What else?”

“The lab found a small piece of flesh stuck in the hammer of the gun. Fortunately, it did not degrade too much in the water because it was encased in the gun.”

“What does that mean?” Delia’s eyes narrowed and a small frown line formed between her perfectly plucked brows.

“When an inexperienced shooter fires a gun, they’re not used to the kickback. The gun grabs a tiny piece of skin from the wenis.”

“What’s a wenis?” Emily questioned. Just as quickly, her hand flew over her mouth as she glanced at Colin, who shot her a disapproving glance.

“Some call it a thenar space, that area between your thumb and your index finger.” Isabel held her hand up and pointed to the area.

“Why are you droning on about something I couldn’t care less about? My dad already confessed.”

“With all his years in the FBI, he wouldn’t have let that happen to him.” Colin threw the folder on the table with a smack.

Delia jumped at the sharp noise.

“But you’re not used to shooting a gun, Delia.” Emily scooted forward in her chair and rested her elbows on the table, lacing her fingers together, consciously avoiding eye contact with Colin. “What if I told you the DNA test shows those skin cells belong to you.” She knew the test wasn’t back yet, but she hoped to bluff Delia into thinking it was.

Delia bolted from her chair. “I didn’t do it!” she hollered. “My father already told you he did it. Why are you trying to pin this on me? Do I need to call a lawyer?”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Isabel said. “I forgot to show you the rest of the video.” She pushed the play button again.

On the video, Isabel could be heard explaining to Jerry that the fingerprint on the bullet belonged to Ricardo Vega.

Delia watched intently, sitting absolutely still with her gaze riveted to the computer screen.

“Ricardo? Then I take it back.” Jerry squirmed in his bed. “If the print is Ricardo’s, you know I couldn’t have done it. That no-good son-in-law of mine, so he was the one that killed David. Must’ve been because he found out the guy was investigating him. Ricardo obviously didn’t want him to spill the beans to Delia about what he was up to.”

“Yes, must’ve been, but Jerry…why did you say you did it if you knew you didn’t?” Isabel could be heard to ask.

“I only said I did it to cover for Delia—I figured she must have done it. I don’t have much time left, but she has her whole life ahead of her.”

All eyes were on Delia as she sat in frozen silence for a moment, her gaze still focused on the computer screen.

“I’m not saying another word. I want my lawyer,” Delia demanded.

“Now, I know you’re not talking about my husband, Alex,” Isabel snapped. “He defended you once, but he’s not taking this case, lady.”

“They can get you a nice public defender, if you like,” Emily offered.

“I’m fully capable of hiring my own attorney, thank you.”

“Delia, you have the right to remain silent…” Colin went on and read her Miranda rights.

“Am I under arrest?” she interrupted.

“If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for you. Do you understand your rights as I have explained them?”

“Yes, but—”

“Delia, I want some answers! You can clam up until your lawyer arrives, that’s your right. Or you can waive your right to an attorney and make a full confession,” Colin said, rising from his seat and coming to rest next to her on the edge of the table.

“Now, why would I do that?” Delia asked, looking up at him.

“Because we have you dead to rights with the DNA evidence proving you were the last person to fire that gun,” Emily pointed out.

“Emily, please, let me handle this.” Colin turned back to Delia. “You can choose to remain silent, but you need to know that we already have the ballistics matching this gun to the bullet that killed Evan. Hard evidence doesn’t lie.”

Delia sat silently staring at Colin.

“If you want to go to trial, make no mistake, the DA will also charge your father with aiding and abetting. With the proof we have, your father’s last weeks or months will be miserably spent in jail awaiting trial and you’ll be given the death penalty for sure.”

Delia dabbed at her eyes again and shook her head slowly. Her lips moved, but no words came out.

“I’ve already spoken to the District Attorney’s office about this,” Colin went on. He pushed off from the table and went back to his seat. “If you decide to plead guilty to second-degree murder, they’ll consider taking the death penalty off the table and not charging your father. He can live out his last days in peace.”

Delia looked directly at Colin for an extended moment, her face as set as stone, likely processing what he just offered to her. She glanced at Emily, then back to Colin, pulling in a deep breath.

“Yes, I did it.” Her normally strong and commanding voice was shaky. “I killed Evan Parker.”

Instantly, Colin was on his feet, stepping behind the suspect’s chair. “Delia McCall, you are under arrest for the murder of Evan Parker, also known as David Gerard. Please stand up and put your hands behind your back.”

She rose slowly, her head down, and Colin clamped the handcuffs on her delicate wrists.

“Why, Delia? Why?” Emily demanded, shooting out of her chair, which flew back from the force. Her eyes welled with tears as she stared across the table, thinking of Evan, his life—their life together—cut short by this woman.

“He deserved it for killing my little sister! Everyone keeps saying she was caught in the crossfire, but Dad found out from a CIA buddy that it was really Evan’s gun that shot her.”

Emily’s eyes widened. “Evan killed Natalia?”

Isabel stood and placed a protective hand on Emily’s shoulder, silently urging her to sit back down. “Actually, Delia, that’s not the whole story.”

Emily took a seat again at Isabel’s urging.

“I received a call a couple of days ago from one of my CIA contacts. He said the file on the official investigation says your sister had been recruited by a terrorist group in Spain and David Gerard had killed her in self-defense. Apparently, their supposedly chance meeting at a Paris café wasn’t by accident, according to one of the CIA’s in-country assets. Natalia’s assignment had been to get close to him, see if she could learn anything, and then take him out because he was working an operation to expose them.”

“That can’t be.” Delia shook her head, disbelief simmering in her dark eyes. “The CIA is just saying that to cover up what he did—that’s what they do.”

“Well, you’ll have the rest of your life to mull that theory over, Ms. McCall.” Colin grasped her upper arm to take her away.

“Wait!” Emily had one more question.

“What is it?” Colin asked.

“Delia, why did you hire me to investigate your husband? I don’t get it.”

“Remember the night you phoned me, told me you’d found my name and number on a scrap of paper in Evan’s old sweatshirt? I figured hiring you would help me discover if Evan had hidden any other information about me. Keeping you close helped me keep tabs.”

“I thought we were friends.”

“Pretending to be your friend simply made it easier.”

Colin led Delia out of the room and down the hall to booking.

Emily sat speechless, stunned by what Delia had just admitted and what Isabel had recounted. Her eyes filled with tears as visions of her husband’s murder flashed in her mind, much like the recurring nightmares she had endured. Only now she knew the identity of the dark shadowy figure that held the gun.

“I’m so sorry, Em.” Isabel pulled a chair out and sat next to Emily. “I didn’t know how to tell you.”

“But his letter said he felt responsible.” Emily wiped a few tears with her hand.

“Look at it from his point of view. He had to kill a vibrant young woman he had feelings for. My contact told me the psych evaluation in his file said that something broke in him that day—he was never the same. He blamed himself for not reading her better, not rescuing her from the ones who’d recruited her.”

“So I got the broken version of him?”

“No, Em. I’d say you got the better version. Remember, I worked with the guy. He was all about his operations and the next assignments before Natalia died. After that, he didn’t have the heart for the spy game anymore. He was on his way out of that life when he met you.”

Emily’s lips turned up into a small, grateful smile, her eyes still moist with tears.

“I recall the day he came into the office at Langley and told me about meeting you.” Isabel brushed a stray curl back from Emily’s face. “There was something different about him. He had a spark in his eyes that I hadn’t seen in a very long time.”

“I appreciate you sharing that with me, Is.” Emily put an arm around her friend’s shoulder and gave her a quick hug.

“He really did love you a lot, Em.”

She nodded slightly. “Maybe now I can finally move on without having to keep looking over my shoulder.”

“I’m sure Colin will be glad to hear that.”