Page 19 of The Guilty Trial

“The resident wasn’t paying close attention, but he heard Bennett raise his voice. Something about ‘you can’t do this to me’ and ‘I did my time.’” Schmidt frowned. “He used the house landline. We’ve got one in the common room for residents who don’t have cells. Most of the guys here can’t afford phones right away.”

“Can you pull the call log?”

Schmidt gestured back toward his office. “Give me a minute. We have to keep records for billing disputes.”

Allie followed him inside the cramped office. Schmidt sat at a cluttered desk and logged into the phone provider’s account, scrolling through recent calls. His finger traced down the screen. “Here. Last Tuesday, 2:47 p.m. Call lasted eight minutes.”

Eight minutes was long enough for an argument. Definitely long enough for things to escalate.

He read off the number. Allie ran it through her phone’s reverse lookup. The result came back immediately—Serrano Bail Bonds, Tacoma.

Allie dialed, listening to it ring several times before a rough voice answered. “Serrano.”

“This is Special Agent Bishop with the FBI. I’m calling about Aris Bennett.”

A pause, then a heavy sigh came through. “What’d he do now?”

“I need to know about your recent contact with him.”

Serrano cursed under his breath. “He’s called me five, maybe six times since he got out. Kept asking for a loan. The lunatic wanted five grand.”

“For what?”

“Claimed he had a sure thing coming up. Some parlay that couldn’t miss.” Serrano’s tone turned sharp, irritation bleeding through. “I told him to get his life together. The guy doesn’t even have a car—he’s taking buses and cabs everywhere. And he thinks I’m gonna front him five thousand dollars? For gambling?”

Allie kept her voice level. “When was the last time he called?”

“Last week sometime. Tuesday, I think. Got pissed when I turned him down again and called me a few names I won't repeat to a federal agent.” Serrano clicked his tongue. “Look, I run a bail bonds business. I’ve seen guys like Bennett before. They get out, think they can turn everything around with one big score. It never works out the way they think.”

Schmidt was watching her from behind the desk when she hung up. “He get into trouble?”

“He’s missing,” Allie said, avoiding the question. “And I’m trying to understand why.”

She left Schmidt’s office and walked back to her car, the evidence bag with the notebook tucked under her arm. The wind had picked up, rattling the bare branches of a tree near the parking lot. She slid into the driver’s seat and placed the notebook on the passenger seat beside her. She sat there for a moment with her hands resting on the steering wheel, trying to piece it together.

Bennett was gambling again. That much was clear. And he was desperate for money—borrowing from co-workers, begging for loans from a bail bondsman, chasing long-shot bets that never paid off. The pattern was textbook. Addiction didn’t care about consequences, about probation, about starting over. It just wanted more.

But it was the bitterness that stuck with her. The pages of complaints about corrupt prosecutors, about a system that had cheated him. The anger simmered beneath every word. Bennett was broke and desperate, and he was also furious. At the world, at the people who put him away, at the life he’d been left with.

And then there was the burner phone he purchased the day before he disappeared and two days before Sterling, the prosecutor who put him away, was murdered.

Bennett was a man with grudges and debts, desperation and rage. A man who felt like the system had destroyed his life and who might be looking to settle that score.

And he was somewhere out there, still moving. Still planning. Still angry.

Allie pulled out of the lot, heading back toward the field office. She had more questions now than when she arrived. But at least now, she knew what kind of man she was looking for.

Chapter Ten

Darla Bennett’s Residence

Puyallup, Washington

Allie pulled up to the Bennett house just as the garage door was rolling down. She glimpsed a silver Honda and heard it ticking as its engine cooled. The house was a well-kept split-level ranch with trim flower beds and a pair of carved pumpkins flanking the front steps. Paper bats hung from the porch eaves, swaying gently in the evening breeze.

She approached the front door and rang the bell. A moment later, a woman answered, her posture wary until Allie held up her badge.

“Mrs. Bennett? I’m Allie Bishop. I called earlier about your ex-husband.”