Run by emily_michele
“Do you always do that when you’re nervous?”
Brian kept pacing back and forth in the police station lobby. “Do I always do what?”
“Wear the floor out with your crazy shoes,” Josh answered from his hard plastic chair, his head moving back and forth as if he were watching a tennis match.
Brian frowned and looked down at the floor. “What’s wrong with my shoes?”
Josh let out a little chuckle. “I didn’t say anything was wrong with them, I just said they were crazy.” He looked down at his own gray Converse All-Stars. They paled in comparison to Brian’s loud, bright blue Nike high-tops.
“She’s been in there a long time….” Brian remarked, momentarily slowing down and putting his hands on his hips as he looked down at Annie’s brother. “Do you think she’s giving him the third degree?”
“Maybe it’s a conjugal visit.” They both smirked, but Josh quickly turned serious. “Can you stop pacing for a minute?” He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees and looked up at Brian.
Brian stopped in his tracks and gave Josh his full attention. “What’s up?”
“You know Nick, right? I mean, you really know him?”
“About as good as anybody knows him,” Brian affirmed with a little nod.
“And you really don’t think he could have done this?” Josh’s fearful eyes searched Brian’s.
Brian sat down beside him and put his hand on his Josh’s shoulder. “I really don’t think he could have done this.”
“Good,” Josh said, his eyes watering. “Because that’s my little sister back there with him.”
Brian nodded. “I know.”
“And that’s my little nephew living in his house.”
“I know. Trust me. They’re in good hands.” Brian gave Josh’s arm a little squeeze and stood back up, intending to resume pacing, but he was distracted by the sound of the hinge above the glass front door squeaking as it opened. “Kevin?”
“Hey. Is Nick here?” Kevin charged in like he owned the place, laptop bag slung over his shoulder and sleeves rolled up.
“They’re apparently holding him somewhere in the back.” Brian gestured towards the door next to the receptionist’s desk. “How’d you get here so fast?”
“I was at the airport in Lexington when you called. So, Kris and Mason went on back home, and I got a flight down here instead,” Kevin answered, as if this were the only logical possibility.
“I didn’t know you were in Kentucky,” Brian said, cocking his head to the side.
“Yeah. That’s why I wasn’t there for Nick and Howie’s chat yesterday.” He leaned forward to give his cousin a hug. “Aunt Jackie says you need to visit more often, by the way.” Kevin loved living in LA, but there was nothing like going home to the bluegrass hills of Kentucky, so he did it every chance he got. Unfortunately, that wasn’t all that often. Brian seemed to have settled more into calling Georgia “home.”
“Mom would say I needed to visit more often even if I lived next door,” Brian said with a playful eye roll.
“True.” Kevin noticed Annie’s brother sitting quietly, his head hanging down,on the row of hard plastic waiting-room style chairs. “You must be Josh. He held out his hand so that Josh could shake it. “I’m so sorry for your loss.”
Josh nodded in quiet appreciation. “Thanks.” Based on the course of the investigation, his parents’ funeral was likely still days away, but he’d already become numb to the “I’m sorry for your loss”es. Now he had an understanding of how his sister must have felt when she lost her husband a few years ago. Speaking of his sister, she was being escorted back into the lobby by a uniformed officer at that very moment.
“You Howie Dorough?” the officer asked.
“Who, me?” Kevin pointed to himself. “No. The last I talked to him, he was about 40 miles away on the interstate. But, if you’re looking to interview someone, you should talk to me.”
********************
“Please state your name, for the record.” Kendall stifled an eye roll as the man sitting across from him at the table leaned forward. Who did this guy think he was-- just barging into the station and demanding to be interviewed regarding the Donohue case?
“Kevin Richardson.”
“And what is your relationship to the suspect?”
“It’s not on paper, but I’m family.”
“Can you attest to where Nick Carter was yesterday morning at 5 AM Eastern, 2 AM Pacific time?”
“No.”
“Then what is it we’re doing here?”
“I have some questions for you.” Kevin stared at him intensely.
“You have some questions for me? I’m the detective here, Mr. Richardson,” Kendall declared, leaning forward and matching Kevin’s stance as they stared each other down.
“A detective who humiliated my little brother by leading him out of a busy hotel lobby in handcuffs. What motive could he possibly have? He’s a millionaire, detective Jones. He doesn’t need their money, and he’s already put a ring on their daughter’s finger. I know Annie well enough to say with confidence that I don’t think she would have done this, but I only just met her brother. Don’t you think he’d have more motive than Nick? Based on the fact that his parents retired in Boca Raton, I’d say he’s got a pretty hefty inheritance coming to him.”
Kendall smirked. “I’m under no obligation to share any kind of information regarding the case with you, Mr. Richardson, but since you’re asking, of course we checked out the children first. Their alibis are rock-solid. Mr. Carter’s is sketchy by default because he’s a celebrity and has several travel aliases. It’s harder to track where he was and when.”
“But you can get the official airline documents to confirm,” Kevin stated firmly.
“I can,” Kendall agreed. “But you already told me he’s a millionaire, and some of the documents on the private charters are locked up tighter than Fort Knox.”
“Well, this is a murder investigation, Detective Jones. I’m sure you can get them.”
“Rest assured. We’re working on it.” Kendall pushed his chair back, the legs squealing against the floor as he started to stand. “Now, if you don’t mind, since I’m obviously not going to get any information relevant to the case from you, I need to interview my next witness. I’m not at liberty to discuss this any further with you.”
“Just tell me one thing, Detective Jones.” Kendall started walking towards the door as Kevin kept talking. “How can you arrest an innocent man based on circumstantial evidence and erroneous conclusions?”
“I wouldn’t call DNA evidence circumstantial, would you?” As soon as he said it, he knew he’d made a rookie mistake. Sharing details about the case with the victim’s family was one thing. Sharing it with a random Backstreet Boy was quite another.
Kevin raised his eyebrows in disbelief. He hadn’t gotten to that part of the conversation with Brian, apparently. “What DNA evidence?”
********************
“Please state your full name, for the record.” Kendall sat down at the table in yet another interrogation room and pressed the record button on the tape recorder beside him.
“Howard Dwaine Dorough,” Howie answered professionally.
Detective Jones cast a glance in the direction of the lawyer sitting to Howie’s right. Jordan Keller was a music industry lawyer, dealing primarily in copyrights and contract negotiations. He’d served as a personal attorney for a number of his musical clients, including all five Backstreet Boys in the past, but if Nick Carter was guilty, this guy was completely out of his league. “Where were you at midnight Pacific time on the morning of September 27th, 2012?”
“In Los Angeles. On Nick Carter’s couch.”
“Was Nick with you?”
“Yes,” Howie answered in earnest. “He was playing World of Warcraft on his laptop. I was bored out of my skull.” He let out a nervous laugh.
“Where were you three hours later?”
“Asleep in Nick’s guest room.”
“So, you’re telling me that at the time the alleged murders took place, Nick was with you at his residence in Los Angeles?”
“Yes.”
Dorough seemed unusually fidgety. This did not bode well for the suspect or his witness. “Tell me something, Mr. Dorough.” Kendall sat up straighter and leaned forward on his hands, making himself larger, more intimidating.
“Okay…”
“How do I know you’re not an accomplice?”
Howie blinked rapidly in surprise. “I-- I’m not,” he answered clumsily.
********************
“Please state your name, for the record.” Kendall sighed and looked at the bearded, tattooed man now sitting across the table from him. Backstreet Boy #5 had been even more insistent on talking to him than Kevin Richardson.
“Listen, you’ve got the wrong guy,” AJ said hastily, barely registering what the detective had said to him.
“Please state your full name, for the record,” the detective said again, this time with a little force.
“Alexander James McLean,” AJ answered quickly. “Now, like I said, I know you’ve got the wrong guy.”
“Is that so?” Kendall raised an eyebrow in AJ’s direction. “How’s that?”
“Nick’s like--” AJ paused in search of the right word. “A big, lovable kid. Sure, he’s lived the life of misguided youth, but haven’t we all at one point or another? I know I’m the freakin’ poster child, but Nick-- Nick’s got it together now, okay?” AJ’s big, brown eyes glistened in the dim light from the old fixture dangling above their heads, basically putting a spotlight in the table between them. “Nick’s good. He’s awesome. We need more Nick Carters in the world. He loves that girl more than he loves the air he breathes. I don’t care what crazy circumstances you’re imagining or what crazy motive you might think he had. He didn’t kill her parents. He was framed. Period. Now, you and your people need to get your shit together and figure out who’s framing him.”
********************
The sun was setting over South Beach, and Annie was staring blankly down the pristine coastline as she sat in the damp sand, her knees pulled up to her chest as she took in deep breaths and let them out, one after another, in an attempt to calm her weather-worn heart. After seeing Nick at the police station, she declared that she “just needed to be alone” and told Kevin to take care of getting Josh and Brian back to the hotel. She’d driven to the public park just down the beach from her parents’ house. Then, she took her shoes off and walked the shoreline, allowing the waves, still warm from months of summer heat, to crash over her bare feet until she came to the property behind her mom and dad’s beachfront home. Yellow caution tape was still stretched out behind it, and from several yards away, she could see a CSI team still combing the backyard for evidence. She sat down in a sand dune, still wet from high tide late that afternoon, and stared out at the ocean. She could still see Nick and Drew playing on the beach from their visit to “Nana and Papa’s” back in June and longed to go back to that moment. Yet, her daydreams were cut short by one of the very few people who walked in front of her on the beach.
“How you doin’, Annie?” Kevin sank down in the sand beside her and draped his arm across her shoulders, then gave her a little half-hug.
Annie sighed and forced herself to look at Kevin. “Can I ask you a personal question?”
“Shoot.”
“Do you ever,” she paused and shuddered in the ocean breeze. “See your dad?”
Kevin gulped and looked out over the ocean for a moment, blinking back tears. He wasn’t expecting that. “All the time,” he said quietly.
“Really?”
“Yeah. I mean, every once in a while, I’ll be out-- the grocery store, a restaurant, somewhere like that, and I’ll see a man who looks like him. He might remind me of how dad looked when I was kid, or the age he was when he died, or it might even be an older man with his grandkids who looks kind of like I imagine he’d look now. It makes it hard to breathe sometimes, you know?”
Annie nodded silently and stared past Kevin towards the pier on their right. “I never saw Andrew. I could feel him sometimes. I talked to him a lot, but I never saw him . Not until yesterday. Now, I feel like I’m seeing him everywhere. See that guy?” she pointed towards a man walking towards the pier, a hundred yards or so away with his back to them, wearing a white shirt and royal blue baseball cap.
Kevin squinted and held his hand over his eyes as he looked in the direction of the sunset. “Yeah.”
“He looks like Andrew. It took everything I had in me not to talk to him when he walked by.”
Kevin nodded in understanding and pulled Annie into his shoulder. “It’s because it feels fresh again. After Hoke Dorough died, I did the same thing.” Brian sat down on the other side of her, and Howie and AJ followed, settling down on either side of Kevin and Brian.
“How did you guys know where to find me?” Annie asked aloud to none of them in particular.
“Josh told us,” Howie answered.
“He’s got you pegged, little sister,” AJ added.
“They’re supposed to have a bond hearing for Nick at 10 in the morning,” Brian told her. “What can we do for you until then?”
Annie pursed her lips thoughtfully. “If the judge lets him out on bond, it’s going to be big, isn’t it?”
“We’ll take care of it,” Howie assured her. He was haphazardly digging in the sand in front of him.
“Thanks.” Annie stared back out at the ocean, momentarily forgetting about the man walking down the coast, now practically out of sight.
The five of them sat in silence, Annie temporarily taking Nick’s place in the set of Backstreet brothers, until Howie gasped. “Oh my god!”
“What?” They all jerked their heads in Howie’s direction to find him looking down wide-eyed at a large kitchen knife in a clear plastic bag, emerging from the overturned sand, and stained with blood. Annie clamped her hand over her mouth in surprise and stifled a scream. Kevin immediately jumped to his feet and started running towards the house.
“Don’t touch it!” yelled behind him.
********************
“What do you have for me, Natalie?” Kendall Jones sauntered into the forensics lab casually, but picked up his pace when the older woman held up the piece of evidence, gripping ithe handle loosely above the stainless steel countertop with her white glove.
“I have a murder weapon, Detective Jones, and I have a fingerprint.”
“Does it matcher Carter’s?”
“Nope.” She took her gloves off and led him over to her desk, where she sat down at computer.
Just a few clicks of the mouse, and Kendall Jones was staring face-to-face with an image of his new suspect. “I’ll be damned.”
“Then, there’s this. I put a rush on it after Nick got arrested.” Natalie handed a piece of paper to the detective. It was still warm from the printer. She watched as the detective read it, then put it down on the desk gently, looked up at her, and gulped. “I told you it was preliminary, Kendall.”
********************
“Apologize,” they told him. “When you’ve falsely accused a suspect, apologize. Do everything in your power to regain his trust, because even if he’s no longer a suspect, he may be a valuable source of information.” Kendall gulped as he pushed the door to the interrogation room where he’d been holding Nick Carter. Also around the table in the center of the room were his attorney, Jordan Keller, his fiance, and her brother. Kendall had called them and asked them to come in before the bond hearing. Nick was walking animatedly, and didn’t even notice the detective come in the room.
“All I’m saying is that I don’t trust the guy. I mean, have you seen him? He can’t be any older than me, and he’s a detective? And what kind of a name is Kendall, anyway? How can he possibly know what he’s doing? A high-profile murder case is hardly the place for a local cop turned detective in a retirement town, don’t you think?”
Kendall Jones cleared his throat. “FBI, actually, Mr. Carter.” Nick’s eyes nearly bugged out of his head. “I was local cop until about five years ago, then I made detective. The FBI deal is a pretty new development, and no, I don’t do a lot of murder cases. Drug cartels and the mafia-- that’s what we’re typically investigating in Boca. But, since I’m stationed here, and because of Dr. Donohue’s political ties, I was asked to lead the case. Did you two know your father was planning to run for Senator?” Annie and Josh both nodded. “But that’s not why I called you here this morning.” He sat down at the table and placed a manila folder in front of him, opening it up and spreading the papers inside out across the table. First, he showed them a picture of the santoku knife Howie Dorough found buried on the beach. “Blood tests confirmed that this is, in fact, the murder weapon. As luck would have it, we found our first fingerprint of the investigation on the bottom of the blade near the handle. It was just a partial; looks like maybe the perpetrator busted a glove. We ran it against our database, and found a match, though.”
“That’s good, right?” Annie asked him quietly.
“It’s very good. Now, this is the final DNA analysis of the genetic material collected from underneath your mother’s fingernails.” He slid a couple pieces of paper across the table. “It’s not yours, Nick. When we’re finished here, you’re free to go.” Nick let out a long sigh of relief, a breath he felt like he’d been holding for almost 24 hours. “But I want you to understand why we thought it was an initial match.” He brought their attention to a photocopied picture. “This is the final western blot analysis of the DNA we found at the scene, comparing it to Nick’s. See how most of these bands match up?” Kendall pointed back and forth between the two images while Annie, Josh, Nick, and his lawyer studied them intently. “But here, here, and here- these don’t match. It’s close, though. Really close. Once we saw this, we knew we had to be dealing with a family member.”
Nick looked up at Kendall, his brows knit in confusion. “A family member?”
Kendall nodded affirmatively. “Our new suspect, Mr. Carter, is your father.”
Chapter End Notes:
I'm going on vacation next week, so this may be the last chance I get to update until I get back. For your patience, I've given you a chapter that's longer than most of the others and gives out some big info. I'd love to know what you think!
