Chapter 8 - Detective Patton
He woke in the trauma unit with his chest wrapped tight and a dull, deep ache under the bandages every time he breathed. A woman was sitting beside the bed in a chair, watching him surface — mid-forties, plain suit, steady eyes.
On her knee, sealed in a clear plastic evidence bag, was the phone.
“Brandon Robbins,” she said. “I’m Detective Elaine Patton, Baltimore Police. When you’re up to it, I have some things to tell you, and a lot of things to ask.”
She lifted the bag slightly. “You held onto this the whole way in. Wouldn’t let the paramedics take it. That was the smartest thing anyone’s done in this case so far.”
“Whose is it?” Brandon managed. His voice came out cracked.
“A man named Carl Henderson. Low-level muscle — the kind of person you hire when you want someone hurt and you don’t want to do it yourself. He is not careful.
This phone gave us location history that puts him at the alley, payment transfers coming in from a shell account, and a whole encrypted message thread.”
She let a beat pass. “The thread leads back to Gareth. And through Gareth, to your Mrs. Benedict.”
Brandon shut his eyes for a moment. “They said—” He stopped, made himself say it. “They said if I didn’t sign, they’d go to my sister. It was on the phone.
The message came in while I was on the ground.”
“I read it.” Patton’s voice didn’t change, but something behind it hardened. “Listen to me carefully, because this is the part that matters to you right now.
As of two hours ago there are two officers posted outside your sister’s room, around the clock, and her floor is restricted to badged staff and a family list that has exactly three names on it.
Yours, your mother’s, and hers. Nobody is getting near that girl. Do you understand me? Nobody.” She waited until he nodded. “Good. Now start at the beginning and don’t leave anything out.”
So he told her all of it, from the first evening Roderick had beckoned him closer — the confession Roderick had recorded, the will, the reading, the recording playing in the glass conference room, Gareth’s white face, Demi’s heels on the marble.
While he talked, the pieces on Patton’s side were already coming together. The coroner’s toxicology had come back that morning, and it was not ambiguous: Roderick Benedict’s tissues carried lethal, accumulated concentrations of digoxin, built up steadily over a long period.
Not a single catastrophic dose. Not a pharmacy error. Months of it, patient and deliberate.
By noon, warrants were executed at three locations — the Bethesda mansion, Gareth’s apartment, and the private gym Gareth owned. In the mansion, in a bathroom cabinet and a locked drawer of Demi’s writing desk, technicians found forged prescription pads and a handwritten journal in Demi’s own hand, dated entries logging Roderick’s decline.
On her laptop, the digital forensics team recovered a search history that read like a confession all by itself — queries about cardiac toxicity, about which symptoms mimicked natural heart failure, about probate timelines and the rights of a surviving spouse.
On Gareth’s phone were message threads laying out the plan to liquidate Roderick’s company and relocate to California, and — sent in the days after the will reading — newer ones.
That orderly stole our life, Demi had written. It’s being handled, Gareth had answered.
And there was one more thing. Patton set a printout on the tray table where Brandon could see it: a photograph, taken with a long lens, of a teenage girl in a coat coming out of a cardiology clinic.
Sierra. Two days ago.
May you like
“They weren’t just threatening,” Patton said quietly. “They were watching her. Following her.” She gathered the printout back up. “Which is why we’re not waiting.
We’re arresting them today.”
