1 A Small Case of Murder Read online

  “Did Vicki ever threaten you in person?” Joshua asked, “Face-to-face?”

  “She pulled that gun in the church.”

  Joshua dismissed his reminder with a shake of his head. “She was higher than a kite when she did that. I’m not saying that she wasn’t fixated on you. I wonder if someone else was taking advantage of her obsession.”

  Tad paused before asking, “What makes you so certain that Vicki didn’t send these e-mails?”

  “Satan considers sin a good thing. Yet, in these e-mails, Vicki refers to your lust and says how she is going to stop your sinning. Why stop lust if it is good?” Seeing that he had finished redressing his wounds, Joshua put his shirt back on. “Can I have some of your DNA?”

  If Tad was startled by the question, he covered it well with a grin. “Why do you want my DNA?”

  Joshua was relieved by his lack of offense. “Right now, I only have your word for it that Vicki and Maggie aren’t your biological daughters.” He held up a handful of the e-mails. “Clearly, someone was of the belief that you were Vicki’s father.”

  “Do you think I wanted to tell you that Maggie wasn’t mine?”

  “You yourself have told me that alcoholics are the world’s best liars.” Joshua softened. “Tad, I’d trust you with my life. But I’m not going to bust my butt to find Beth’s killer only to have him or her get off because some defense attorney uses your reputation and known relationship with Cindy to convince a jury that there’s reasonable doubt about you being Vicki’s and Maggie’s father, and me using my position to cover it up. Anyone who knows the two of us could testify that there is too much history between us for me to be objective when it comes to you.”

  Joshua held his breath while Tad considered the request.

  Tad reached into his medical bag. He removed a cotton swab and an evidence envelope. He swiped the swab around the inside of his mouth before dropping it into the envelope, sealing it, and handing it to Joshua. “I don’t want whoever killed Maggie’s mom to go free, either.”

  Joshua took the envelope containing the swab. “Even so, it would be better if you go to the state lab and have one of the forensics techs take it. Make sure there’s another witness in the room when he does. I don’t want even the appearance of a cover-up.

  “Maggie has an alibi.”

  “I don’t doubt that. Sawyer called her this morning. Maggie was ready with five names of people she was with during the day of the murders, including a bookstore manager who interviewed her for a job at three o’clock. There’s no way she could have been here to commit either murder and gotten back to Penn State for the job interview before meeting three friends at the campus pub for dinner.”

  Admiral woke up from his nap and stretched before plopping back down on the carpet between the two men.

  Joshua watched Tad’s face for his reaction to his next question. “Assuming that you’re telling the truth, there has to be another woman out there who’s Vicki’s half sister, who was on the scene when Beth was killed. Who could that be?”

  Tad’s lack of a response answered his question.

  “Who?” Joshua asked again.

  “I guess it could be possible.” Tad said, “I thought about it at three o’clock in the morning while I was on the couch listening to you snore.”

  “I don’t snore. You thought about what?”

  Tad reached down to the floor to scratch the sleeping dog’s ears. Admiral woke up with a dreamy expression. “There was only one suspect I could think of. Alexis Hitchcock.”

  Joshua squinted at the new name to add to his list of suspects. “Who’s Alexis Hitchcock?”

  “Wally’s illegitimate daughter.” Tad said, “This one he knows about.”

  “Tell me more.”

  Tad settled back in his seat. “When Cindy died, I was out for blood. It was either that or go on a binge. I decided to be constructive with my anger. So, I went in search of evidence to prove Wally had a motive for killing Cindy.”

  Joshua asked in a low voice, “What did you find?”

  “Nothing for a hell of a long time,” Tad answered. “Then, one night, about five years ago, I ran into a guy who told me about a retired topless dancer named Trixie in Steubenville. She lived in a house in the ‘burbs with her daughter and grand-daughter. They all attended Wally’s church, and they were living on the church payroll.”

  “Child support?”

  “Some might call it that. Others might call it extortion or white slavery. I made it a point to get close to Monica, Alexis’s mother. We became close.” He averted his eyes to look out the window to the back yard.

  Joshua could see how close he had become to Monica Hitchcock.

  “Monica was fifteen years old when Wally got her pregnant,” Tad said. “Trixie met him while working at a strip joint and found out that he liked them real young. So, she introduced him to her daughter and when he got her pregnant, Trixie thought they had hit the jackpot. Wally agreed to put the whole family up. I got the impression he cared for Monica as much as he could care for anyone, but she didn’t like him at all.” He stopped to swallow. “All three of them went to Reverend Rawlings’ church every weekend and sat in the second row, right behind Wally. He supported them financially, while he was married to Cindy, and visited them regularly.”

  He went on, “We got close enough that she called me after each one of his visits. Wally wouldn’t let her forget that he was paying for her and, if she refused to see him that they would all end up on the streets. She was so young when her mother set her up with him, that she didn’t know what a truly loving relationship with a man was like.”

  Joshua dreaded the answer to the question he asked, “Did you show her how loving a man could be?”

  Tad’s eyes met his. “Monica was a sweet kid. Through me, she came to realize that she was deserving of respect and her mother hated me for it.”

  Joshua plopped down into the chair behind his desk with a groan. He covered his face with his hands. “Do you know what you’ve done?”

  “I never said I was going to give up everything.”

  Ticking off on his fingers, Joshua told him, “First, you made Cindy fall in love with you while she was engaged to marry Wally to the point that she confesses to him on their wedding night that she is in love with you. Then, you hunt down his mistress, and you bed her. No wonder Wally hates you.”

  Tad defended himself. “That wasn’t my intention. I wanted to find out who killed Cindy. Monica said that Wally told her that he loved her. He could have killed Cindy so that he would be free to marry her.”

  “But he didn’t marry Monica,” Joshua pointed out, “Cindy died nine years ago, and you said you found Monica five years ago, and they weren’t married.” He laughed. “Like Wally would have an open relationship with a whore, let alone marry her? Even if he wanted to marry her, the reverend would never permit it.” He moaned, “What happened to them?”

  “One night, I was on duty at the ER. Things were really wild in my life back then. Doc Wilson had died and I took over most of his patients. I was running on autopilot. Monica called me and she sounded scared. She said she needed to see me, but she wouldn’t explain what had happened. I had four hours left on duty. We agreed to meet at a bar in Steubenville at one o’clock in the morning. When she didn’t show, I went looking for her, but she wasn’t home and I couldn’t find her.”

  “Any sign of foul play?”

  “No real evidence,” Tad said. “There was no sign of a struggle in the house. No one saw anything suspicious.”

  “So,” Joshua observed, “as far as anyone can prove, they left voluntarily.”

  “As far as the authorities are concerned, they’re dead.”

  “Dead?”

  Tad told him, “I reported them missing to the Steubenville police. This police
officer—I even remember his name—some cocky son of a bitch named Officer Scott Collins—acted like I was a jilted boyfriend—and went through the motions of reporting a missing person.”

  “He had to investigate. You’d filed a missing persons report. He had no choice but to investigate.”

  “He only did what he had to until that DC-10 plowed into the hillside after taking off from the Pittsburgh airport the next day. As soon as it hit the news about this grandmother, mother, and girl being missing, this witness calls up Collins and says that she had dropped all three of them off at the Pittsburgh airport to take that same flight to Chicago.”

  Joshua said, “Don’t tell me that you think Wally Rawlings blew up an airplane with close to one hundred people on it.”

  “No, but I don’t believe they got on that flight. I had been looking for them at least twelve hours before that. Collins swears that he checked it out and they were on that plane and killed. I think they were all dead long before the crash.”

  “Why would Wally kill them?”

  “A couple weeks later, Wally announced his running for prosecuting attorney. If it came out that he had an illegitimate daughter and a mistress while he was married to Cindy, the valley’s version of Princess Di, he never would have been elected. Last night, it occurred to me that maybe, somehow, Alexis escaped and that maybe, she saw what happened to her mother and grandmother and came back to avenge them.”

  Tad waited for him to deliver his verdict of the theory. It was a long wait. Joshua stared at the wall behind his cousin before asking, “How old would Alexis be now?”

  “She was twelve when she disappeared. She’d be seventeen or eighteen now.”

  “How old do you think Amber is?”

  Tad replied, “It’s hard to tell with all the make-up she wears in those interviews. Late teens, early to mid-twenties.”

  “But you don’t know who Amber’s family is.”

  Tad saw where he was going. “And I know everyone.”

  “I wonder who Amber’s daddy is.”

  Each one absorbed in his own thoughts, they sat in silence. Admiral put his head between Tad’s knees in order to assist him in the scratching of his ears. The dog was so large that he had to stoop down to rest his head in his lap. Tad didn’t seem to mind, or notice, that the dog’s nose was pressed against his crotch. Lost in his thoughts, he scratched the dog’s ears with more vigor.

  Joshua interrupted the silence with a question. “Who knew about you and Cindy?”

  “The whole valley.” Tad rolled his eyes. “It wasn’t exactly a state secret that I loved her.”

  “Did you tell anyone about you and Monica?”

  Tad shook his head. “I’m not stupid. Wally would have killed me if he found out about that.”

  Joshua’s eyes met his. “How long was it after the Hitchcocks disappeared that the e-mails started coming?”

  “I don’t remember exactly, but it wasn’t long.”

  Joshua said, “Cindy died nine years ago. Why?”

  “Because Wally killed her, and then when he thought they were going to kill his election chances he made his mistress and her family disappear.”

  “But what was his motive for killing Cindy? He had the money. She would never defy him, even for a platonic relationship with the man she loved. I don’t think she had the backbone to stand in the way of his affair. He certainly didn’t kill Cindy so he could marry Monica because five years later he still hadn’t married her.”

  “I may not know why,” Tad said, “but I know he did.”

  Joshua paced while he worked out the puzzle in his mind. “Suddenly, out of the blue, Vicki gets it in her head that you’re her father. During that same time period the Hitchcocks disappeared. Don’t you think it would have been a bigger scandal if Wally was dragged into a murder investigation?”

  He was on a roll. “Where did Vicki get the idea about you being her father? Her whole life, no one saw you and Cindy together. You never even speak to her mother, but Vicki got it in her head that you’re her father right after her half sister disappears. Who told her?”

  “Wally?”

  “He says no,” Joshua said. “Who would gain anything by Cindy’s murder, or Vicki killing you out of an insane sense of vengeance?” He answered, “Someone who was insanely jealous of you and Cindy.”

  “You’re making it sound like Cindy and I had an affair.”

  “You did.” Joshua tapped his chest. “It was an affair of the heart. Damn! She confessed it to her husband on their wedding night.” He gasped as a thought came to his mind. “When did you stop drinking?”

  “You know the answer to that. You were the one who dragged me, kicking and screaming, up to Glenbeigh.”

  “Eleven years ago,” Joshua responded. “Then, a year later, you come back home to set up your practice. You see Cindy around town, and she sees you. When you were a drunk, you weren’t any threat. Wally was the prestigious lawyer from a good family. You were the town drunk. Now, here you are, sober, a doctor establishing himself as a solid respectable man. Then, over the course of a year, Cindy is poisoned to death.”

  Tad was outraged. “Do you think Wally was poisoning her out of jealousy over my getting sober?”

  “It won’t be the first time a man killed his wife rather than see her leave him for another man. It was only a matter of time before the two of you would have gotten back together. Wally had to see that.”

  Overwhelmed by the theory, Tad sputtered out, “What type of man tells his own daughter that another man is her father?”

  “Wally Rawlings.” Joshua reminded him, “As unbalanced as Vicki was to begin with, it would have been a cinch for him to manipulate her into terrorizing you. Who knows? Maybe he even intended to drive Vicki into killing you when he found out about you and Monica. He was jealous of you and Cindy to begin with. If he found out that his mistress was sleeping with you—” He chuckled, “Wally murders you using his insane daughter as a weapon.”

  “But Cindy and I weren’t seeing each other, and no one knew about me and Monica.”

  “But you did see Cindy in that alley outside your practice the very afternoon before she died.” Joshua sighed. “The only problem is that we can’t prove any of it until we find out what that key goes to. If I could only remember what Doc Wilson told me.”

  “What did he tell you?”

  Joshua sat down. “Last night, I had a dream. Do you remember that time Chad Norton tackled me and I landed on my head in that game between Oak Glen and Weirton?”

  Tad cringed at the memory. “Do I? Everyone felt that impact.”

  “When I came to in the ER, Doc Wilson asked me if I had ever felt joy.” Joshua shook his head when the memory failed to come back. “I can’t remember the rest.”

  “You had a severe concussion. You drifted in and out of consciousness for two days.”

  “It was important. He said something important.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  “I want to know when Vicki’s body will be released.” Hal Poole took a seat in Joshua’s office, which was still littered with moving boxes.

  Dr. Wilson’s old leather chair creaked when Joshua sat behind the scarred up desk. “Dr. MacMillan is waiting for results from toxicology tests and, depending on those results; he may want to run more tests.”

  “Why would he want to do that?”

  “Hal, your niece was murdered.” Joshua pressed his hands together to make a makeshift steeple with his fingers.

  “Bridgette said you suspected us. She says that’s why you had us dragged in to answer your insane questions. She told me how you always hated the Rawlings. People who don’t know the Lord hate us. That makes them vulnerable to Satan’s will.”

  “This isn’t a spiritual matter. It’s a criminal matter,” Joshua said
. “It’s been proven that in a majority of murder cases, the perpetrator is someone the victim knows. I am also looking for this Amber, who has—”

  “Amber is a demon from hell sent to destroy us. The reverend says so. You will never find her.”

  “I don’t care if she’s the devil herself. She knows a lot of details about these murders and has yet to make herself available for questioning.”

  “Of course she does. Satan knows everything about us. The reverend has preached about how that’s one of his weapons. He uses our guilt and our lust for sin against us to tear us away from God. If you came to our church, you’d know that.”

  Joshua could see by the insanity in Hal’s eyes that he wasn’t going to be much help. “I’m trying to do my job. God gave us life, and it is wrong for anyone here on earth to take that away.”

  “If circumstances were different, I’d agree. But this is a war against Satan, and in every war there are casualties.”

  “Hal,” Joshua said as if he were speaking to a child, “if you know who killed Vicki and Beth, you have to tell me. Their killers need to be brought to justice.”

  “You don’t have the power to do that. The reverend says that only God can bring Satan to justice. You’re a mere mortal man and a sinful one at that. You haven’t only ignored the warnings of God’s messenger, but you have conspired with the devil’s demons against Him.”

  Ignoring the accusation, Joshua asked the question to which he already sensed the answer, “Are you saying Satan killed them?”

  “Satan took Vicki’s soul a long time ago,” Hal said. “The reverend had to explain it to me. She’d been taken prisoner. Satan defiled her body while brainwashing her to go to work for him. Oh, how she must have fought him. He took her soul from us and devoured it. When he was through, our Vicki was gone from us forever.”

  Hal looked at him with wide eyes. “Mr. Thornton, that body that was found in that trailer wasn’t Vicki Rawlings. She was one of Satan’s demons sent to destroy all that is good and pure. You can’t punish one of God’s soldiers for doing His work.”