1 A Small Case of Murder Read online

  “That should nail him!” Jan shouted.

  “Here’s the autopsy report you were looking for.” Joshua handed Tad the thick envelope.

  When Tad opened it, what resembled a black marble fell out with a clap and rolled across the hardwood floor. Jan slapped at it with her palm against the floor until it came to rest against Admiral’s head.

  With a groan, the dog lifted his head to eye the object that had interrupted his nap.

  She held it up. “It’s a bullet.”

  “It came from here.” Tad showed them the round hole in the front of the envelope before removing the contents of the envelope and reading a report attached to the top.

  Joshua took the slug from her. While he examined it, she knelt to check out the trunk.

  “It’s a forty-five.” Joshua held the slug up to the light.

  “And here is where it went in.” Jan fingered a hole on the outside of the trunk.

  “Then he was able to hit the broadside of a trunk.” Joshua went to his desk.

  “And you weren’t able to hit him, I saw,” Jan said. “I heard you were supposed to be a good shot.”

  “I wasn’t trying to kill him.” Joshua removed an envelope from a desk drawer and slipped the slug into it. “If he was a half-decent shot, you two would have been dead the way you were standing up on top of that hill. Either he wasn’t trying to kill us, or he didn’t know how to shoot.” He labeled and sealed the envelope.

  “Doc mentions my seeing him the day after Cindy’s death and reports what I had told him. He even has the date and the time. He says he told Sheriff Delaney who said that my testimony would be worthless since I was a drunk.”

  “Why try to blow you up ten years later?” Jan wondered.

  Tad continued reading the report that was several pages long. “He had been treating Cindy for gastrointestinal illness, which he had concluded was brought on by nerves. The patient was high strung.”

  “Cindy wasn’t high strung,” Jan objected.

  “No, she wasn’t,” Tad agreed before he resumed reading. “Doc noticed on more than one occasion that Cindy didn’t seem to want to be alone with Reverend Rawlings. He recounts an incident here where the reverend came into the room while Doc Wilson was taking Cindy’s pulse and her heart rate in-creased significantly. Then, she had a panic attack.”

  He turned to the next page. “After I came to see him, he realized the symptoms were also indicative of poison. Based on my statement to him, he did a toxicology test to look for arsenic poisoning and found it.”

  “It was your going to him that made him find the truth.” Joshua said to Tad, who lowered his eyes.

  “But why didn’t he do anything?” Jan asked. “He reports that being alone with Rawlings made her have a panic attack.”

  Tad told her, “He only had proof she had been poisoned, but not by whom. She’d told me it was Wally. If Wally was the one killing her, why get upset about being alone with the reverend?”

  Jan shuffled through the rest of the reports. “But why would he not suspect that she was being poisoned if Rawlings killed all these other people?”

  Joshua observed the stack of thick envelopes. “Doc Wilson found that all of these people had been murdered and used their deaths to get Rawlings to stay in line. In most cases, he probably couldn’t prove who the killer was, but he could cause a scandal too big for Reverend Rawlings to risk.”

  The evening sun shone through the window onto the stack of envelopes fanned out before them.

  Joshua checked his watch and stood up. “Well, as much as I’d love to continue reading these and piecing together our dear reverend’s sins, I have a meeting to go to.”

  “With who?” Jan accepted his hand to pull her to her feet.

  Tad was filing the envelopes back into the chest.

  “None of your business,” Joshua responded to her query.

  “You have a date.” A note of jealousy had crept into her tone, which caused both Joshua and Tad to do a double take. “That’s why you sent your kids to the beach.”

  Tad closed the lid to the trunk. “I’ll leave you two love birds to fight this out. Call me if anyone starts bleeding.” He picked up the trunk and headed for the door.

  “Wait a minute,” Joshua called to him. “She’s going with you.”

  Tad ignored his command and kept on going.

  “Who is she? Tess Bauer?”

  Joshua turned to her. “Can’t a man spend an evening alone without being accused of all sorts of illicit activities?”

  “You said you had a meeting. Now, it’s an evening alone. Which is it?”

  Joshua gave her the look. While it would have made his children make for a hasty retreat, she shot it right back to him. “I think you should leave,” he said in a low tone.

  “So do I.” Jan grabbed her purse and camera.

  A second later, Joshua heard the door slam behind her.

  Tad was washing his hands at the kitchen sink when Joshua knocked on his door. In the living room, the sound system was playing classic rock tunes.

  “How are you doing?” Joshua came in without waiting for him to answer and closed the door behind him.

  “I’ve been better.” Tad turned off the water and reached for a dishtowel. “I see you escaped Jan unscathed.”

  “Barely.” Joshua grabbed a chair from the kitchen table and straddled the back to sit in it. “What has gotten into her?”

  Tad leaned against the kitchen counter to dry his hands. “You really aren’t very smart when it comes to women.”

  Even though he agreed with Tad, Joshua shook his head in confusion by Jan’s behavior. “Valerie was easy. There were never any games with her. She always laid it right out in the open. Other women are so—”

  Jan burst in through the door. Tad jumped to his feet. Joshua stood up in time for her to blast him. “You said you had a date.”

  “You followed me.”

  Tad stepped between them.

  Joshua backed up to the living room doorway while Jan attempted to shove Tad out of her way so that she could advance on her target.

  “Oh, you are so cute!” she seethed.

  “Jan, you’ve got to leave.” While pushing her towards the door, Tad turned to his cousin for help. “She has to go. Now!”

  Jan was too angry to hear his warning. “You promised me an exclusive.”

  “Jan, we’ll talk about this later!” Joshua assisted him in moving her to the door.

  Jan wrestled out of both their grasps to rush across the room. “It’s not fair! Both of you have what you wanted. Tad, you’re one of the most respected doctors in the valley and you’ve slept with every bimbo in the tri-state area. Josh, you’ve traveled all over the world investigating famous murder cases, while I’m stuck here writing little articles for little papers and directing people to the enema aisle. All I wanted was a little help to achieve my dream, and how do you help me? You leave me out in the cold!”

  Joshua’s calm tone contrasted her fury. “Jan, we will talk about this later.”

  “No, we’ll talk about it now!”

  “I suggest you talk about it later.”

  Tad closed his eyes and shook his head.

  Jan was turning around to find the source for the deep voice that uttered the suggestion when Joshua yanked her from the living room doorway and shoved her behind him in order to shield her from the danger awaiting them.

  “I guess I’m going to have to adjust my plans.” Sheriff Curtis Sawyer removed his gun from its holster.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “Dad is going to kill us.”

  “You’ve already told us that, Donny.” Sarah laid her head back on the headrest and tried to go back to sleep.

  “Yeah, well, no one will listen t
o me, and I’m too young to die.”

  From the driver’s seat of the van, Murphy told him, “We’ve been listening to you for the last two days. If you wanted to stay with Aunt Carol, then why didn’t you?”

  “I’m only telling you that Dad’s going to kill us.”

  It was a mutiny led by J.J. and Murphy, and vetoed by Tracy.

  During the course of the road trip to North Carolina, J.J. and Murphy became more determined to return home. When they told their siblings their plan, Sarah was more than willing to go with them. Donny wanted to go, but announced they would all die. Tracy knew the extent of their father’s wrath, but her brothers and sister needed her guidance on their insane mission.

  The morning after their arrival, Murphy told their aunt that they were going to spend the day on the beach. Then, they all piled into the van and drove off. Their aunt wouldn’t realize they weren’t coming back until it was too late to stop them.

  It was dark when Murphy took the Chester exit off Route 30 into town. All of their butts were sore from riding in the van for two days—one day to the Outer Banks and one day back.

  Multi-colored lights of emergency vehicles lit up the sky above the town. When they turned onto Carolina Avenue to make the turn onto Sixth Street to take them up to Rock Springs Boulevard, they found a police barricade cutting off access onto Sixth. The block between Indiana Avenue and Church Alley was the center of activity.

  “What’s going on?” Tracy asked.

  They eyed a collection of police vehicles, ambulances, and various news crews jostling for views of one of the houses up the street.

  “I don’t know.” Murphy pulled up to the curb.

  J.J. climbed out of the passenger side of the van and wandered over to the barricade for a better look. His brothers and sisters got out behind him to stretch their legs.

  Tess Bauer and her crew were set up on the corner of Church Alley. Unaware of her audience out of camera range, Tess gave her report:

  “The police have yet to release the details of the shooting on this quiet suburban street. However, witnesses have told Channel 6 News that the shooting took place in an apartment above a doctor’s office and three people are believed to be dead. All of the victims are local residents; two men, one a doctor, the other a lawyer, and a woman.”

  “No!”

  The camera operator focused in on the wail.

  “Dad! No! It can’t be—”

  J.J. broke through the police lines while uniformed officers made vain efforts to stop him.

  With strength in numbers, the rest of Joshua Thornton’s children followed their eldest sibling up the street towards Tad’s home. They reached the scene in time to see a parade of stretchers with body bags on them coming down the steps of his second floor apartment.

  The news camera caught the action when Sheriff Curtis Sawyer intercepted Murphy before he could rip open one of the bags. The rest of the deputies and state police officers tackled the children while the journalists reported the riot.

  The police forced the children into a state police van and slammed the doors shut behind them.

  The Thornton children pounded on the doors while Sheriff Curtis Sawyer climbed into the driver’s seat and sped out of the alley.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” the sheriff demanded to know while he pulled the van around the barricades into the direct line of fire of the news cameras.

  “You killed Dad!” Tracy screamed at him from the front passenger seat across from him. Her brothers and sister sobbed in the back.

  “Where did you get a crazy idea like that?”

  In their hysteria, the children didn’t notice the sheriff turning onto Route 30 and heading towards the Pennsylvania border.

  “Everyone knows you work for Rawlings,” J.J. told him. “You don’t make a move without his say so.”

  “Why’d you have to kill him?” Sarah cried.

  “Isn’t it obvious?” Murphy answered her. “Because Dad’s too smart. Rawlings knew that it was a matter of time before Dad put them all away for good!”

  “How much did Rawlings pay you to kill Dad?” J.J. asked the sheriff.

  “I didn’t kill your father.” He crossed the state line into Pennsylvania.

  “Give us a break!” Sarah scoffed.

  “We’ve only been here a matter of weeks and we know that Reverend Rawlings runs the drugs in this valley. It’s common knowledge,” Murphy said. “If you aren’t in his pocket, why don’t you arrest him?”

  “Because we can’t put anyone away for what everyone knows without any real evidence to back it up,” Sheriff Sawyer argued. “If we could, Al Capone would have gotten the chair for ordering the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre instead of locked up a few years for tax evasion. Everyone knows a lot of things about Reverend Rawlings, but no one has squat that can put him away. Did you ever think that I was trying to get that?”

  “By killing our dad?” Tracy blubbered.

  “I didn’t kill him.”

  J.J. noticed they weren’t heading down the river to the sheriff’s department. The van was racing down a gravel road in the country. “Wait a minute. Where are you taking us?”

  “Some place where you can stay out of trouble.”

  They all had the same thought at the same time. The sheriff was doing what he had to do. They knew too much. It was simple. Do away with them and he wouldn’t have to look over his shoulder to make sure they didn’t extract their revenge on him.

  They watched Sheriff Curtis Sawyer turn the van onto a dirt lane that led up to a darkened white farmhouse that rested on a small hill behind a cow pasture.

  Wordlessly, they came up with a plan.

  They waited until he turned the police van into a driveway that ended at an apple tree before Tracy lunged at the sheriff. She grabbed the steering wheel with both hands, stomped on his foot that was on the gas pedal, and kept it there.

  The van hurtled into the tree.

  The impact threw everyone forward.

  “You damn kids!”

  Before the trained and experienced lawman could gather his senses, Tracy’s fingers were like ten daggers into his eyes. After blinding him, she gave him a left hook that stunned him long enough for her to grab the keys out of the ignition, and follow her siblings in their escape.

  Screaming for help from whoever could hear them, they ran in different directions across the farm.

  Instead of pursuing them, their abductor stayed in the van and bellowed. “Thornton! You better get out here! Now!”

  In the dark, from their hiding places, the escapees saw the silhouette of three people rush from the house to the van. They recognized the state police uniforms. While two of the three figures helped Sheriff Sawyer from the van, the third came around and called out to them.

  “All right, kids! Front and center! Now!”

  The Thornton children’s hysteria was replaced with elation, only to be replaced with fear, when they recognized their father’s commanding tone.

  “You know, one of my biggest concerns when I became a parent was that one of my children would grow up to become a delinquent.”

  Dressed in the dark green uniform of the West Virginia State police, Joshua paced the kitchen in the deserted farm-house. His children were lined up across the center of the floor in wobbly, kitchen table chairs.

  “But never, in my wildest imagination, did I ever dream that it would happen to all of them.” He paused to glare at each of them, one at a time. “You have in one week gone from trespassing into a cemetery to assaulting a police officer.”

  They looked over to the kitchen table where Tad and Jan were administering first aid to the scratches on Sheriff Sawyer’s face. His right eye was already swelling from Tracy’s punch.

  Sarah defended herself as best s
he could. “Tracy was the one who punched him.”

  Tad and Jan smirked at each other. “Curt, you didn’t tell us it was a girl who beat you up,” Tad snickered.

  “If you tell anyone that, I’ll really kill you.” Sheriff Sawyer suppressed a cry when Tad touched one of the scratches with antiseptic.

  “Sorry, I left my medical bag at home. I have to use this old first aid kit I found in the cabinet, and it doesn’t have everything.”

  “What are you kids doing here?” Joshua turned back to his children.

  “Sheriff Sawyer brought us,” Donny answered with a grin in an attempt at humor.

  Joshua didn’t fall for it. “You’re supposed to be at the beach.”

  “Would you believe we took a wrong turn?” Sarah also failed to make him smile.

  “We didn’t want to go to the beach,” J.J. told him. “We wanted to be with you.”

  “We already discussed that,” Joshua countered.

  “And you decided that we were going to go on vacation, and you would join us later.” J.J. said.

  “It was my decision to make. I’m the father.”

  “But after Mom died, you also decided that you were going to leave the Navy because you wanted us all to be together,” J.J. reminded him. “Well, how can we all be together if you send us away?”

  Joshua said, “That was totally different. My decision to leave the Navy was because I am the only parent you have left to raise you.”

  “And you still are,” Murphy said.

  “I know this is none of my business,” Tad interjected, “but your father sent you away for your own safety, and the completion of this operation we got ourselves into.”