I stormed out of the interrogation room, fuming. "She didn't do it! She's protecting that son of a bitch, but we can't prove it!"
Elliot looked up from his paperwork. "Whoa, calm down. Novak's getting us a search warrant to search their place. We'll see what comes up."
We were in Robert and Alex's bedroom an hour later, searching for – well, I didn't know exactly what, but something.
"He really has quite a dungeon in his closet," observed Elliot dryly. "I know some people are into kinky stuff, but I never pegged Alex for that kind of –"
"She's not," I snapped. "He is. He forces her. I never thought she'd be one to put up with it."
Elliot sighed. "You know as well as I do that this can happen to anyone."
I sighed, too. "I know. It's just – I feel sorry for her, but I'm angry at her too, because she's going along with this story and she knows she's not fooling us."
He raised his eyebrows. "Well, looky here. This is the perfect dominant's den. Crop, whip, chains, handcuffs, clamps, ropes . . . oh, and a collar. And a leash. Wow." He shuddered. "Liv, look."
"What is it?"
He handed me a stack of pictures, and as I started to flip through them, I felt physically ill. There was Alex, naked, bruised, tied up every which way. And there she was again, a collar tight around her slim neck, a leash hooked onto it. The angry red welts on her back made me want to throw up.
"She was abused, El."
"Good luck proving that. Some people are just into this kind of stuff."
"She isn't. Look at those welts, Elliot. Do they look consensual to you?"
He sighed again. "No. But this isn't what we're here for."
"What are we here for?"
He quirked an eyebrow and handed me another stack of photos. "These."
They were of Lenia Walsh, in the same positions as Alex, except she actually looked like she was enjoying it. She was grinning in most of the photographs, while Alex looked one step away from tears.
"Okay, so that proves they were having an affair. Where's the evidence that he killed her?"
Elliot sighed. "This guy's smart. I have a feeling we're not going to find any. We need to get Alex to recant her confession."
"She's not going to," I told him. "She's firmly under his thumb. I don't know what happened to her, but this isn't the Alex we know. She's broken, and you can see why. She's terrified he'll hurt her. I mean, if she was into this whole submission BDSM thing, I might not agree with it, but I wouldn't make a huge deal out of it. But she isn't. She hates it and she's scared. We have to help her."
"Maybe she'll be safer in prison, at least," he remarked.
I wanted to smack him. "How can you even say that? She's innocent and we both know it!"
"That's not how I meant it," he said quickly. "Look, I know she's your friend. She's my friend too, and I hate this just as much as you do. I just – something about this doesn't sit right with me."
"Yeah, Durham."
"Assuming he did it, what's the motive? Alex knew he was having the affair and either she didn't care or was just too scared to say anything. He had his two perfect subs, a wife and a mistress and he liked it that way. So why would he want to get rid of one of them?"
"Maybe she said she was leaving him."
"No. In all these photos, she looks happy. Alex is the one who looks miserable. What if Alex really did kill her?"
"But what would her motive be, assuming she didn't care or was too scared to say anything about the affair?"
"Why don't we ask her?" he suggested.
"She won't tell us and you know it." I hesitated and thought for a moment. "Okay. We know he at least played an active role because she was raped and his fluids were inside her."
"It might not have been rape. Like Alex said, she liked it rough."
"Okay, fine. But at least he saw her a few hours before she died."
"Maybe they both did it, but he pulled all the strings."
I shook my head. "I still have a hard time believing Alex could ever do something like that."
"Maybe not the Alex we knew," he agreed. "But like you said, she's changed. A lot. And she's terrified of this man."
"And you can see why," I added. "Okay. Let's go talk to her."
Review for chapter five!