“Her father is Edward, right?” I interrupt, but wanting it out there.
She nods again. “Right. Edward, Benchley, Chris, and David were all good friends. Benchley told Edward not to call the cops, and to let them handle it.” She smiles. “And they did.”
“Did they, now?”
“Yep. They got him drunk, forced him to write the note, and shot him with his own gun. Benchley pulled the trigger while Chris and David held him. Made it look like a suicide. Poor Rebecca, she had to go live at her aunt’s house in Orlando for a long time when she had that baby. Missed almost a whole year of school. They told everyone she went overseas to study. When she married John Martin, he adopted her son. The boy must have been six or seven by then.”
“How come I never heard about any of this before?” I don’t try to bullshit her too much. She’s still sharp for her age, and I’ve pushed the envelope already. She’s tired and she likes me and she likes talkingtome. She also loves Susa.
I doubt had I come right out and asked her about all of this at the beginning of our visit that she would have admitted it.
#yesImabastard
“He was a rapist,” she says with venom so fierce her words could almost dissolve flesh. “No one missed him. His ex-wife and daughter were better off without him. Wasn’t the first bastard he sired with a teenager, either, but the other girls before Rebecca were older and, somehow, he skated through. Sonofabitch probably would have gone after Susa next, if they hadn’t stopped him. The city wanted the story to go away, didn’t want people to know they had someone like that on staff, so they had their city attorney talk to the sheriff and medical examiner up where it happened to get the death certificate signed and the case closed in just a couple of days.” She mimes wiping her hands. “Nice and tidy.”
“How did Benchley know they’d get away with it?”
“Because of Susa. She used to share a tent with Rebecca on their camping trips. Benchley bought a new, bigger tent so he could put Susa in there with him. Had a divider in it, like two rooms. Susa told the deputies Benchley was in the tent with her when she heard the gunshot, and Chris and David, of course, vouched for each other, because they were sharing a tent. The new tent was David’s idea. Susa liked to sleep in her own tent, so Benchley needed a way to make sure she could vouch for him. Benchley pretended he didn’t know anything about Rebecca being pregnant, or what Morgan did, when Benchley invited him to go camping with them that weekend. Told Morgan he’d heard about a job opening up at the county, and wanted to talk about it with him that weekend.”
“So Benchley lured him there?”
She shrugs. “Call it what you will. I say it saved taxpayers the cost of a trial. Between the suicide note, Rebecca’s statement to police corroborating the facts about the rape, and Susa saying her dad was in the tent with her, police wrote it off as a suicide. Case closed. No reason to suspect otherwise.”
“When did you find out the truth?”
“Oh, I suspected for years. David finally confessed it to me after he got sick the last time and we knew he wasn’t going to make it.” She sadly smiled. “Bless his heart, he asked me if it made him a horrible person, and I told him no, he was my hero. Always had been.”
I reach for the box of tissues on her coffee table and hand it to her so she can dab her tears.
“I miss him so much,” she softly says.
“I’m sorry, Doris. Of course you do. I didn’t mean to dredge up bad memories. I’m sorry.”
“No, it’s okay.” She sighs. “He really was my hero.” She shakes her head. “Told me Benchley asked the bastard if he’d touched Susa, and the guy swore he hadn’t.”
“Did Benchley believe him?”
“Yeah. They all did. But he confessed to the other girls he’d been with, some of them not much older than Susa.” Her expression hardened. “David told me he was convinced Susa would have been in his sights if they hadn’t taken the guy out. Definitely would have been other victims. Man wassick. Guess his wife was only seventeen when he married her, and that was because she got pregnant. He was twenty-nine at the time, and her father told Morgan he would marry her, or he’d file charges against him.”
I decide to turn the mood around. “I’m shocked Benchley didn’t hire a hit man for me.”
She smiles. “He’s not fond of you, but he sees how much Susa loves you. I think that’s why you’re still alive. Still, might not want to go camping with him.”
I chuckle. “Had enough of roughing it in the Army, thanks…”
By the time I leave a short while later, I have her laughing and smiling again.
And as I sit in my car and watch the video playback on my phone of Doris telling the story of how Benchley, Chris, and David murdered Morgan, I smile.
This is my fulcrum on which to balance a lever plenty long enough to allow me to play Archimedes to Benchley’s immoveable stone that forms his loyalty to the GOP.
Chapter Thirteen
Then
Two days after my lovely little chat with Doris, I’m driving to Brandon that afternoon when Susa and Owen assume I’m still in depositions for a case.
I didn’t lie to them. I simply blocked out extra time on my calendar and didn’t tell them I wasn’t at the deposition.
