in jail. So I don’t know what I’m crying about, except that my head still hurts and my throat looks like something out of a horror movie.”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself, Red. If you were a cop and this had happened to you, you’d have got some mandatory days off and been sent in for counseling. But being the tough bookseller lady that you are, you’re trying to soldier through this on your own. What you’re suffering from is survivor PTSD.”
“Posttraumatic stress disorder? You mean, like what happens to soldiers?”
“And cops and firefighters and pretty much anyone who gets put in a life-and-death situation and manages to survive it. And a concussion on top of the mental trauma makes it twice as bad. You’ve got your nightmares, your feelings of helplessness and paranoia.”
All of which sounded uncomfortably familiar, she realized, thinking over her mental state the past few days.
He paused and gave her a keen look. “I’m not trying to tell you how to run your life, but you don’t do anything about this now, you walk away as a permanent victim. I’ll get you the names of a couple of people who know about that kind of thing. You might want to give one of them a call.”
“Thanks, I appreciate that.”
She took a deep breath and let it out. “All right, no more waterworks, at least for now. So, how’s the case going? How long before he goes to trial?”
“Depends on the court’s caseload, but it’ll probably be a good six months at a minimum. But don’t worry,” he added when she gasped a little, “no way Eisen is getting out on bail. You won’t have to see him again until you testify.”
Testify? She hadn’t thought about that, but obviously she was a prime witness in the case. “How about I send Hamlet in my place? After all, he was the witness to the original crime.”
“Yeah, about that.” Reese gave his head a resigned shake. “Jake told me that all you guys think he solved the case.”
“Well, he did. He knew it was Barry, and he told us so.”
She went on to explain in detail about the clues that centered on “murder” and “iron,” and how Hamlet’s final dictionary clued had led James to tie everything to Barry’s name. Then, not bothering to hide a small smirk, she finished, “I’m sorry that my sweet little kitty outsmarted you.”
“We would have figured it out eventually without him,” was the detective’s dry response. “But so you know, there was plenty of evidence pointing to Hilda Aguilar. I didn’t just pick her name out of a hat.”
“The pictures I gave to Jake?” Darla asked, remembering the photos that Curt had taken of Hilda, and how the woman had torn them to shreds.
He nodded, and to her relief didn’t mention the whole chain of custody thing. “That, and a series of threatening messages she left on Mr. Benedetto’s voice mail that were pretty damn incriminating. And it turns out that her relationship with her daughter wasn’t all sweetness and light. She and Tera had been fighting over the past couple of weeks. One of Tera’s friends overheard Hilda threatening to hurt her if she didn’t break it off with Curt. But the topper was that she’d bought a gun off some street guy.”
A gun? So Barry hadn’t been lying about that one thing, at least.
“You think about it,” Reese went on, “if Eisen had waited just one more day, there’s a good chance Mrs. Aguilar would have taken care of Benedetto for him.”
“Or maybe Bill the Porn Guy would have stepped in,” Darla added. “Did you ever find out why he and Curt were feuding?”
Reese nodded. “I dropped by to question him the day we located Tera’s phone in the Dumpster. Ferguson wasn’t willing to do much talking without a lawyer around, but he did manage to give me a little something. Apparently, Benedetto’s photography skills went beyond taking pictures of pretty women in parks.”
Darla held up a hand. “Don’t tell me. He was photographing all the people going into the porn shop and then blackmailing them?”
“Good try, but you’re not thinking like a true bottom-feeder. Turns out Benedetto had modified one of the video booths in the porn shop with a couple of strategic holes in the wall. That way, he could be in there pretending to watch movies, but the whole time he was secretly using his own video camera to record the action that went on in the room