Chapter 6 - The Confession of Richard Bennett
The federal interrogation facility in downtown Raleigh was subterranean, cold, and entirely devoid of natural light.
Behind a reinforced two-way mirror, General Hayes, Special Agent Sarah Vance-Holden, and I stood watching Richard Bennett sit at a steel table. He was dressed in an orange jumpsuit. His expensive silver haircut was unkempt, his face hollow and unshaven. Across from him sat two federal prosecutors and a court stenographer.
Gordon Sterling had officially recused himself two days earlier after the Department of Justice threatened him with aiding and abetting charges. Richard was now represented by a court-appointed public defender who looked entirely exhausted by her client’s frantic rambling.
The door to the interrogation room opened.
Richard looked up, his bloodshot eyes widening as I walked into the room, followed by Hayes.
I pulled out the metal chair across from him and sat down. My left arm remained secured in its black sling, the Purple Heart still gleaming proudly against my chest.
"Becca," Richard whispered, his voice hoarse. "You came. Thank God. Tell these people—tell them you want the charges dropped. You can do it! You're the victim, you have the right to request leniency! We can fix this, honey. We can take the money from the trust and build something new—"
"Shut up, Richard," I said.
The word was quiet, but it landed with the force of an iron door slamming shut.
Richard’s mouth snapped closed. He stared at me, blinking rapidly.
"You aren't talking to your frightened, malnourished twelve-year-old daughter anymore," I said, leaning forward across the steel table. "You're talking to Captain Rebecca Vance-Bennett. An officer who has survived ambushes, bomb blasts, and your best efforts to have me killed."
Richard swallowed hard, looking toward his public defender for help, but the attorney merely looked down at her legal pad, completely silent.
"We have the ledgers, Richard," I continued, sliding a photocopied page across the table. "We have the account numbers from Credit Suisse. We have your signature on the transfer documents from the Cayman Islands. And we have the forensic report from the Pope Airfield hangar fire in 1997."
Richard stared at the photocopies, his hands beginning to tremble so violently that his handcuffs rattled against the metal table.
"You locked her in that office, didn't you?" I asked, my voice deadly level. "Elena went to that hangar to confront you. She thought she was giving you one last chance to do the right thing. And you locked the fire doors from the outside and turned on the auxiliary fuel heaters."
Richard’s breathing turned ragged. Tears ran down the creases of his aged face. "I didn't... I didn't mean for her to die. She wouldn't listen, Becca! She was going to destroy everything! We had a future! Millions of dollars! We could have lived like kings, and she wanted to throw it away for some stupid, imaginary concept of honor!"
"It wasn't imaginary to her," Hayes spoke from the doorway, his voice like grinding granite. "And it isn't imaginary to her daughter."
"I took you in!" Richard screamed, his composure finally shattering into hysterical rage. "I raised you! I could have put you in an orphanage! I gave you a family! You ungrateful little bitch! You owe me everything!"
"You didn't give me a family," I replied, standing up from the table. "You gave me a torture chamber. You stole my mother’s life, you stole her name, and you used her money to buy pearls for a woman who beat me with metal chairs."
I reached into my pocket, withdrew a single pen, and laid it beside the legal pad in front of him.
"The federal prosecutors are offering you one deal, Richard," I said, looking down at the broken shell of a man. "A full, detailed, written confession to the murder of Major Elena Vance, the arson of Pope Airfield Hangar 4, and the theft of forty-two million dollars in federal defense assets. In exchange, the Department of Justice will take the federal death penalty off the table. You will serve life without the possibility of parole at ADX Florence."
Richard’s eyes bulged with horror. "Supermax? Florence? I’ll die there!"
"Yes," I said softly. "You will. But you will die an old, forgotten man, stripped of every cent you ever stole, while the world remembers Major Elena Vance as a hero."
Richard looked at the pen. He looked at the federal prosecutors waiting with recording equipment. He looked at General Hayes, whose iron gaze offered no quarter.
May you like
Slowly, weeping like a broken child, Richard reached out his cuffed hands, picked up the pen, and began to write.
***
