1 A Small Case of Murder Read online

  Chapter Twenty

  Tad reached out to Joshua’s motionless body to lay his hand on his shoulder. His touch made him yelp and sit up in the hospital bed.

  “Quiet!” Hissing, the doctor pointed towards Sarah, who was asleep in her bed.

  Reminded of where he had gone to sleep while waiting for the emergency room doctor to permit him and Sheriff Sawyer to question his assailant, Joshua sucked in his breath to quiet his nerves.

  Tad whispered, “This case is getting to you.”

  “Exhaustion is getting to me.” Joshua gestured for him to follow him out of the room to prevent waking up Sarah.

  It wasn’t until they were in the dimly-lit hospital corridor that Joshua noticed that Tad was wearing his leather motorcycle jacket. He was checking on Sarah before going home when he had found Joshua.

  They strolled down the hall toward the stairs to take them to the waiting room.

  “Do you want to know something, Tad? This is the first case that I have ever had that struck home.”

  “I thought you brought every case home with you. Wasn’t that one of Valerie’s complaints?”

  “Mentally, I brought them home. They weren’t personal,” Joshua said, “not most of them. I brought them home in my mind, the way a crossword puzzle nags you all day until you can find that word that completes it. It stays with you, but it doesn’t attack your family. This one attacked my daughters, and now me.”

  Tad stopped with the palm of his hand on the stairwell door. “Well, this guy isn’t your average thug. He’s a cop. Scott Collins, the jerk in Steubenville that dropped the ball when I reported the Hitchcocks missing.”

  “Now we know why he dropped the ball,” Joshua said. “He was working for the Rawlings.

  “Are you sure he’s the same guy who attacked Tracy last night? Why would Bridgette hire Collins to kill you when Wally already hired Sawyer to do it?”

  Considering his questions, Joshua hesitated before saying, “Tracy swears that she broke her attacker’s ribs. This guy’s ribs didn’t get broken until I tossed him off the verandah.”

  They stepped into the stairwell and climbed down the stairs.

  “I have to say I’m surprised,” Tad said. “It never occurred to me that Collins was in on the Hitchcock disappearance. I thought he was your average incompetent.”

  “Maybe that’s what he wanted you to think.”

  Scott Collins was lucky to be alive. His back was broken. The fall also broke one each of his arms and legs, and six ribs. The thorns from the overgrown rose bushes that broke his fall left their mark all over his body.

  Joshua and Curt Sawyer weren’t permitted to question him about his involvement with Bridgette Rawlings until morning.

  As the prosecutor had expected, while Scott Collins’s body was wrecked, his mind was operational. From his hospital bed, he insisted on getting a lawyer before speaking to the Hancock County sheriff and special prosecutor.

  “All you have on my client is simple trespassing,” Attorney Frederick Dawson challenged them. He was dressed in the most expensive suit he could afford on the modest income generated in the valley that wasn’t known for a high crime rate.

  Joshua laughed at his assertion. “What law school did you go to?”

  “I may not be a local hero,” Dawson said, “but I do know my way around a courtroom.”

  “Do you know what evidence is? That’s what’s going to send your client to the pen. I saw him pull the trigger on a gun and take a shot a me. I also saw him swing a bat at my dog and try to, and I quote, ‘splatter my brains on all four walls’ of my room. We also have witnesses who place him at the scene. Do you want me to add to that the gunshot residue we found on his hands; and the gun with his fingerprints on it found on my bedroom floor? That is more than simple trespassing, Mr. Dawson.”

  “He tried to murder a special prosecutor,” Sawyer told the lawyer. “That makes this a federal case of conspiracy to commit murder.”

  Dawson countered, “None of your evidence is going to see a courtroom. I’ll get it suppressed.”

  “I have his statement that he was there to kill me on Bridgette Rawlings’ orders,” Joshua said.

  “That’s your word against his,” Dawson argued. “You have no other witnesses who heard him make that statement.”

  “Your client tried to kill me. He also tried to kill my daughters—”

  “I did not!” Collins exclaimed.

  “Prove it,” Joshua challenged, “Where were you the night before last?”

  Collins sputtered like a lawnmower unable to start.

  “You assaulted my daughters the night before last, and then last night you tried to kill me. That’s three counts of attempted murder, plus three more counts of murder when you count the Hitchcocks.”

  “I didn’t kill them.”

  Joshua laughed. “Of course you did.”

  “No, I didn’t.” Collins looked to his lawyer for help.

  “Nice try,” Dawson said. “You have nothing to connect my client to the Hitchcocks.”

  Joshua disagreed. “A jury is going to want to know why he closed the case without checking the passenger manifest when Hannah Pickering claimed she dropped them off at the airport. A simple check showed they weren’t on that flight. Was your client lazy, or did he get Bridgette Rawlings’ secretary to make that statement to cover his tracks?”

  “I didn’t even know Hannah Pickering.”

  When Frederick Dawson hushed him, Collins turned on him. “Do something.”

  Joshua could see the wheels spinning in Dawson’s mind while he tried to think of his next legal move.

  While Dawson scrambled for his next line of defense, Joshua plunged onward. “Why did Hannah Pickering lie about the Hitchcocks being on that flight if you didn’t make them disappear beforehand? Was it because that plane crash the day after you killed them was a much too convenient way of ending the investigation that Dr. MacMillan started when he reported them missing? Once you got yourself assigned to the case, it would have looked bad for you to let it go cold. This way, you closed the case without anyone suspecting that you were the one responsible for their disappearance.”

  Sawyer interjected, “Your chief is very curious about you, Collins. He said that their efforts to squelch the drug traffic in Steubenville have been ineffective. Every time they think they have a handle on it, it slips through their fingers. Since we told him about your statement to Josh about working for Bridgette Rawlings, they’re now wondering how you got the money to buy that fancy sports car you drive on a city cop’s salary.”

  Collins spat out, “It was an inheritance.”

  “Who died? How did they die and how many?” Joshua shot back.

  “This interrogation is over.” Dawson stood to usher them out of the room.

  “For us, but not your client,” Joshua countered. “The feds want to know why your client was so stupid about not checking the flight manifest. They’re also going to be asking him a lot of questions about his lax nature about the drug traffic in Steubenville.” He told Collins, “Both of your careers are over. You’ll be lucky if you don’t end up with a needle in your arm.”

  “I didn’t kill the Hitchcocks. I didn’t have to.” Collins shouted. “They were already gone.” Gritting his teeth, he hugged his aching ribs. “You’re right. I was hired to kill them. Bridgette Rawlings paid me to make them disappear. She didn’t care how. She said that as long as they were around, then Wally would never get elected prosecutor.” He explained, “But they were already gone. I couldn’t find them! When that Pickering broad said she had put them on the plane, I figured okay. I told Bridgette that I did the job, she paid me the twenty-five thou and I kept my mouth shut.”

  Joshua was doubtful. “Bridgette Rawlings never asked for proof that you’d killed them?
”

  “She figured I got the Pickering lady to lie for me the same way you did.”

  Hannah Pickering didn’t look or live as Joshua Thornton and Sheriff Sawyer had imagined. Knowing that she both attended and worked for Reverend Rawlings’ Valley of the Living God Church, they had assumed her lifestyle would match that of the Rawlings. They were surprised to find the unmarried, middle-aged woman living in a mobile home out in the country on the edge of New Manchester.

  When Joshua and Curt pulled up in the sheriff’s cruiser, Hannah was working with her bare hands in the soil of her vegetable garden in the front yard of her one-acre lot. The skirt of her loose fitting cotton dress was pulled forward between her bare legs and tucked into the worn canvas belt she wore around her waist. The belt was also used to hold her gardening gloves and tools. She wore her waist-length gray hair twisted and clipped on the top of her head.

  “Ms. Pickering?” the sheriff confirmed they were at the right address while stepping along the stone sidewalk leading through the garden.

  She shaded her gray eyes with her hands to study the sheriff in his uniform and the man with a blue sports coat over tan slacks. “Who are you?” she asked Joshua. Sheriff Sawyer’s uniform told her who he was.

  “I’m Joshua Thornton—”

  Hannah finished the introduction, “The man investigating Vicki Rawlings’ murder.”

  “Yes.”

  “I quit working for the Rawlings years ago.”

  “Why is that?” Joshua asked.

  “Why does anybody quit a job? I got a better one. I’m a single woman living on my own. I have to take care of myself. I got offered a job with an insurance company with better benefits, so I took it.”

  Joshua took note of the gold crucifix she wore around her neck. “You also went back to the Catholic Church.”

  “Is that a crime?”

  “Has a crime been committed?” Joshua countered her question.

  “Vicki got killed after I quit working for the Rawlings and went back to the church.”

  Joshua asked her, “Do you know what the root of the word ‘secretary’ is?”

  She answered by looking down at the tomato plants surrounding her bare feet.

  “Secret,” Joshua answered his own query. “The secretary is the keeper of the secrets. You were Bridgette Rawlings’ secretary. I suspect you heard something you weren’t meant to hear. You overheard her hiring someone to kill the Hitchcocks. You had to have seen them since you were a church secretary and they were members.”

  She admitted, “I knew them.”

  “You couldn’t do nothing and let them be killed.” Joshua stared at the crucifix.

  The sheriff gasped when he saw where Joshua was heading. “You hid them from Collins,” he finished the prosecutor’s theory.

  Hannah smiled. “Bridgette Rawlings gave me a very generous bonus for my helping that cop when I told the police that I had put them on that flight to Chicago and they closed the missing person’s case.”

  “But they weren’t on the flight to Chicago,” the sheriff pointed out a kink in Joshua’s theory.

  “That crash not only helped Collins in ending the missing person’s investigation. It helped Hannah make the Rawlings think that the Hitchcocks were dead. In reality, they were—” They waited for her to complete his statement.

  She studied them for a long moment before saying, “On a bus to Canada. I drove them out the Pennsylvania turnpike to Breezewood and put them on a bus. It took me hours to convince the old lady I was telling the truth. Monica believed me practically before the words came out of my mouth. A cop had called before I got there and said he had to come over to ask them some questions about one of Trixie’s former customers who had died and left them a bunch of money. She said she had a bad feeling about it and called Tad MacMillan.” She added, “That was another reason they wanted to get rid of them. Hal had told Bridgette that Monica had gotten real close to MacMillan. They were afraid she’d tell him something they didn’t want him to know.”

  Joshua pounced on her revelation. “What? What were they afraid she was going to tell him?”

  Hannah replied, “I have no idea. I only know that the Rawlings have a lot of dirty little secrets, so many that I was afraid to find out any of them. What I did find out about them was enough to drive me back to the church.”

  “Where are the Hitchcocks now?” Joshua asked.

  She hesitated.

  “Wally Rawlings is dead,” he reminded her. “They can’t hurt him politically anymore.”

  “Trixie died a couple of years ago. Monica married a professor. She and Alexis moved with him to Europe. Monica runs an inn in the English countryside.”

  “And Alexis?”

  Hannah smiled. “She’s going to school, playing soccer, and chasing boys like every other teenage girl. Why?”

  “In Europe?” the sheriff asked. “Like across the ocean Europe?”

  “You’re not thinking Alexis killed Vicki, are you?”

  “Not anymore,” Joshua responded.

  In the family room on the ground floor of the Thornton home, Sarah curled up on their comfortable old sofa to work on the Whitman’s box of candy Ken had brought for Tracy.

  A cool breeze blew in through the open French doors that led to the patio, which spilled out into the back yard.

  Joshua had hoped to study the recordings sent over from the news station alone; but, upon learning his plans, each of his children found a reason to be in the family room. Tracy was organizing their movie library. Murphy offered to operate the DVD player because the technology confused his father. J.J. was practicing his flute. Donny and Sarah made no pretense about their curiosity.

  “What are you looking for?” Sarah pressed her finger into the bottom of a piece of candy. Finding that it was a caramel, she returned it to the box before resuming her search for the pieces she liked.

  “Proof of who attacked you and Tracy.” Joshua handed the DVDs with the recordings burned onto them to Murphy.

  “I thought it was that cop.” Sarah popped a coconut cream into her mouth.

  “He’s too big,” Murphy disagreed. “Right, Dad?”

  Joshua said, “Collins has an alibi. Turns out he was warning a drug dealer about a bust the police were planning. The feds have had an informant in the Steubenville police department following him.”

  Murphy turned on the player and inserted the first DVD. “According to the label on this disk, this is Tess’s series of interviews with Amber on the drug market. They’re uncut.”

  Amber grinned with watery eyes at the camera. Her dark eye make-up and lipstick accentuated her pale skin. A tear in her black top revealed the black widow spider tattoo on her left shoulder. Bracelets and necklaces littered her arms and neck. She had rings on every finger and thumb, which were adorned with claw-like fingernails that had been painted magenta.

  Joshua studied the interview in which Amber told in slurred speech about her drug habits and dealings with Vicki Rawlings.

  None of it was anything new from what the Thorntons had heard in other reports or realistic television shows about drug users. Amber never knew her father, her mother’s boy-friend raped her, and she ran away from home.

  With all that information in mind, Joshua wondered how Amber ended up in Chester. Runaways generally escaped to big cities to get lost in the population.

  “Next.” Murphy selected the following interview from the menu on the disk.

  It was more of the same. Amber seemed less out of it, and even less in the next interview, which was the one Joshua had seen the first day they’d arrived in town.

  “Anyone home?” Tad’s voice called from the floor above them. They heard the front door slam shut.

  “Down here,” Joshua yelled up the stairs while keeping his eyes
on the television screen.

  Dog bounded down the stairs and leapt onto the sofa between Joshua and Sarah. While his daughter petted the dog, Joshua shoved him off the furniture. Spying Admiral under the coffee table, Dog chased what he considered a potential playmate out into the yard.

  With a large brown envelope flapping in his hand, Tad galloped down the stairs. From over the back of the sofa, he slapped Joshua’s chest with the envelope. “For you.”

  Joshua caught the envelope when Tad released his hold to let it slide towards his lap. “Are these the results of your DNA test?”

  “Nope.” Tad crossed to the open French doors. “Let’s go for a walk.” He gestured for his cousin to follow him.

  With puzzlement, the children watched them step outside.

  “What’s this?” Joshua asked once they were out of earshot. He opened the envelope and removed the long sheet of white paper with a row of dashes in a pattern unique to the subject’s genetic blueprint.

  Tad paused to study the blooms on a lilac bush. He recalled when it was a few feet tall. Now, it reached the third story of the house. “They’re Maggie’s DNA test results. I thought you might like to see it.”

  “We’ve determined that there’s no way Vicki Rawlings could be Wally’s biological daughter. That cleared Maggie.”

  Tad plucked a purple lilac from the bush. “That’s what makes this so very interesting.”

  His cousin’s tone of voice when he said the word “interesting” prompted Joshua to forget about Amber’s interviews with Tess Bauer playing inside the house.

  Inside the envelope, another sheet of paper accompanied Maggie’s test results. The name written in the upper right hand corner told him that it was Vicki Rawlings’ DNA results. Joshua studied the two results.

  Tad stated the findings, “According to their DNA, Maggie and Vicki are related.”

  “Wait a minute,” Joshua said. “You proved with elementary biology that there’s no way Wally can be Vicki’s father. If Maggie is his daughter, then she and Vicki can’t be related.”