why this was important. He had a mostly good poker face, but Mendez didn’t—and they exchanged a look that had Sean knowing they were completely in the dark—but they didn’t care. The only reason they might care was because it was a fact they didn’t know and hadn’t considered, or that this might be connected to a federal investigation.
“What did your private investigator tell you?” Banner said.
“That’s confidential,” Sean said.
“So, you want us to believe that Ms. Hill hired you to find this Elise Hunt but you won’t give us your alibi?”
“My client is not stating that Elise or the PI can give him an alibi,” Felicity said.
“How do we know you even called the PI?”
“I can give you his name and contact information,” Sean said.
Felicity put her hand on Sean’s arm. “What else, John? You don’t have anything solid against my client. You know it, I know it. You need to release him.”
“I’m not done,” Banner said.
“We are,” Felicity said. “Unless you have solid physical evidence that my client killed Mona Hill, you arrested him without cause. Believe me, I will take it up with the court.”
“We know he was in her apartment near time of death. We know that she was murdered—shot twice, once in the chest and once in the back as she tried to run. We know that the first shot was close range—less than ten feet. The .45 we retrieved from Mr. Rogan’s plane has been recently fired, and we’re rushing ballistics but as you know, it’ll take a couple days. Mr. Rogan has the money and talent to flee the country, and I’m not giving him that opportunity.”
“I didn’t kill her,” Sean said.
“We found no ‘threatening note’ in her apartment,” Mendez said, her voice unnecessarily snide.
“I’ll show you the image on my phone.”
“You could have written it yourself,” she snapped. “You have not answered my question. How do you know Mona? Were you one of her clients in San Antonio? Is that why she called you?”
Sean noticed that Banner winced at that comment. They had clearly thought it, discussed it, but he hadn’t wanted Mendez to say anything.
He remained calm, or tried to. In a firm voice he said, “No.”
“Then how did you know her?”
He didn’t respond.
He had told Felicity about the first time he met Mona Hill, and she agreed with him that it wouldn’t look good if he admitted it.
“If you’re asked in court, under oath, you’ll need to tell the truth, but during interrogation you don’t need to answer.”
“John, all you have established is that my client was with the victim prior to her murder. You don’t have any evidence that he killed her.”
Banner asked Sean, “Our witness claimed that he heard a male voice arguing with Ms. Hill when she called him just before seven thirty. He stated that she mentioned the name Rogan. You have already indicated that you were with her at that time. Was that you and Ms. Hill arguing?”
“It may have been.”
“What did you argue about?”
“I told you.”
“Remind me.”
“I told her to call the police because of the threat. To put it on the record. We went back and forth about that for a bit, I think I convinced her. It was during that time that she called her bodyguard.”
“You’re claiming that Mona hired you to find this person yet you didn’t know she was dead? You never contacted her with an update in four days?”
“I never said Mona hired me. I said she asked for my help, and Elise Hunt is a common threat. I told Mona if she received another threat or saw Elise to call me. I reiterated that she needed to tell the police to get the threat on record, and that she needed a bodyguard.”
“You expect us to believe that you,” Mendez said, “out of the kindness of your heart were helping a prostitute?”
Mendez was angry. Bitter. The way she spat out “prostitute” … there was something there, but Sean couldn’t figure it out.
“I have nothing else to say,” Sean said.
“We have more questions,” Banner said.
Felicity motioned for Sean to lean over. “Let them ask, they don’t have anything. Don’t give them anything. Keep your cool. I’m working on this, okay?”
So Sean answered their questions—the ones that were relevant—over and over. They were asking the same thing in different ways, trying to get him to slip up, to contradict himself. But now that he realized they had shit, he didn’t give them anything extra.