Josie said, “How do you know that? Wasn’t Vera the one supplying them with the drugs?”
His eyes widened as he realized he had said too much yet again. “Shit,” he repeated.
Gretchen said, “You met these women? Vera’s clients?”
“Listen,” he said. “I didn’t do anything wrong. These women, you gotta understand, they were bored. Bored rich bitches.”
“Vera invited you to their parties?” Josie asked.
“Not at first, but then one night they were partying, and they needed more so Vera called me up. I went over to one of their fancy-ass houses, and they wouldn’t let me leave.”
“Wouldn’t let you leave?” Gretchen echoed.
“They were all over me. Their husbands were rich assholes, out traveling and playing golf or whatever rich assholes do. Everything that happened—they wanted it. They asked for it.”
“It was consensual?” Josie said.
“Yeah, consensual.”
“What exactly was consensual, Silas?” Gretchen said.
“Oh come on. You gonna make me say it? You know what. The sex, okay?”
“You had an affair with one of them?” Josie asked.
He laughed. “An affair? No. It wasn’t like that. They just wanted a boy-toy.”
“They?” Josie prompted. “How many women were there, Silas? Did you sleep with them all?”
“Sort of.”
Josie said, “You ‘sort of’ had sexual relationships with all of them?”
“A couple of them flirted with me but then when things started to get… heated, they backed out.”
“Do you remember the names of the women you actually had encounters with?” Gretchen asked.
“That was a long time ago, okay?”
“What about Vera?” Josie asked. “Did you ever have sex with her?”
“That was a huge mistake,” he said. “I should have known. She was always hung up on me, you know? We were together a couple of times, and then I had to put a stop to it. She was getting clingy and jealous. I had to stay away from that. She wanted a relationship and shit. She wanted to get married. I wasn’t into it.”
“But you got married eventually, didn’t you?” Gretchen asked. “In 2000?”
He rolled his eyes. “That was a mistake, okay? Lasted a coupla years and then I kicked that bitch to the curb.”
“You got divorced?”
“Yeah, she took care of it. All I had to do was sign some papers.”
Josie said, “We understand there were four women who were regularly at these parties with Vera and her wealthy friends. Do you remember their names?”
“Like I said, I don’t remember no names. That was like, thirty years ago.”
“But you remember four women?” Gretchen asked.
“Yeah. Four.”
“Of those four, you slept with how many? Two?” Josie said.
“I guess, yeah. I mean, not at the same time. They didn’t know about each other. I don’t think. Unless they talked to each other behind my back.”
Was this what Mayor Charleston was hiding? Josie wondered. A thirty-year-old tryst with a local drug dealer while she was married? “You know that one of those women became the Mayor of Denton?” Josie said.
“I thought that was her, yeah,” he replied.
“Did you sleep with her?”
Color crept into his cheeks. “I don’t want to say,” he told them. “I don’t actually remember. We got hot and heavy this one night, but I don’t remember what happened. I was pretty drunk at most of those things.”
Josie said, “Did you ever try to use this information against the Mayor in any way?”
He raised a brow. “Like what way? Like blackmail? It’s not like I have proof. I’m not even sure what happened. It would just be my word against hers and she’s the Mayor.”
But Josie knew that wasn’t the way Tara Charleston handled things. Silas Murphy was a loose end, and Tara would have tied him up one way or another.
“She never came to you? Offered to help you in some way in exchange for you pretending that you’d never met her? Never partied with her? That you definitely never hooked up with her?”
He said nothing.
Josie looked at Gretchen. “You have his rap sheet on your phone, by any chance?”
“Sure thing, boss,” Gretchen said. She took a moment to pull it up. Silas stared at them in confusion. For a moment, thoughts of Lisette and Sawyer Hayes crowded Josie’s mind, but she pushed them away. Finally, Gretchen handed her the phone.
Josie scrolled down the list. “Silas, you’ve got a lot of charges here that were nolle prossed.”
“So I got charges dropped, so what?” he said.
“Not dropped,” Josie told him. “Nolle prossed. That means the prosecutor chose not to prosecute you. It doesn’t mean they were dropped. You could still be tried for them.”
“Wait, what? No, no. They were dropped. That’s what she said. They’d be dropped. Gone.”
“She?” Josie asked, handing Gretchen’s phone back. “So the Mayor has helped you?”
“Oh come on, man,” Silas complained, groaning. “Why are you doing this to me? So what? The Mayor put in a good word for me now and then with the prosecutor. I agreed that nothing ever happened between us and that it was unnecessary for me to ever bring it up. I don’t even know why you care. You know, it wasn’t like we were doing terrible things. Me, Vera, the Mayor, their friends? We were all just having a good time. We were all young—like in our early twenties—and high and drunk. We’d party together. People party when they’re young like that. Sometimes I’d end up in a bedroom with one of them. Things happened. It wasn’t a big deal.”
“For how long?” Gretchen asked. “How long did things happen?”
“I don’t know. Till one of them had to go into rehab. I was at a couple more parties after that and that was it. Vera stopped doing it. The cocaine lady, I saw her for a while longer. She stopped going through Vera and came to me directly. That lasted a lotta years but then she died.”
“We’re aware of that,” Josie said. “So you were providing drugs for these ‘parties’ that your friend Vera was having for a select number of her salon clients. You attended those parties and eventually ended up engaging in a sexual relationship with some of these women. Then one of them went into rehab and the parties stopped happening. But you maintained your relationship with Vera.”
“Well, yeah. We were friends. I didn’t really see her after the parties stopped. Then she got pregnant. I hardly saw her at all after that.”
Josie thought of the photo that Beverly had taken. “Never again?”
“It was a long time, okay? Her kid was like, grown up and shit by the time she started coming around again. She hurt her back and she needed stuff, so I helped her.”
“You helped her by getting her painkillers.”
“I helped her with her pain,” he corrected.
“Were there other things you helped her with?” Gretchen asked.
“Like what?”
“You tell us,” Josie said.