Prime Suspect: A Psychological Thriller With A Twist You Won’t See Coming

by Cole Baxter

  This wasn't the person I was. Before Devon, I had been stronger. In high school and my first year of college, I'd thought I would change the world, and anyone who spent any time with me assured me that I would.

  And then Devon happened and now I was just a shell of my former self.

  "Hey, are you ready to go?" Mario appeared at the door. He did look tired, but he had a bright smile on his face and a coffee in his hand.

  "Yes," I said. I had my backpack all ready and my discharge papers in my hand. "Thank you for coming to get me. I know that you and Belinda worked the night shift last night. You must be so tired."

  "Nonsense," he said. "When we were young, Belinda and I used to do all sorts of crazy things together, staying up all night and making plans for all day the next day. This is nothing."

  "Yeah, I remember doing that in college," I said to him. "I thought I was invincible."

  "We all think we are invincible when we're young," he said with a smile. "Then we grow up and our bones crack when we move and we start to realize that maybe, just maybe, we're not."

  "I thought it was just me," I said with a grin. I was in remarkably good spirits, given the situation. I was actually walking out of the hospital on my own. The day was sunny and warm, and I rolled down the window a little bit in Mario's van to let the wind blow my hair.

  "Not quite," he said with a smile. " I recall wanting to be a famous athlete, but given this trick hip of mine, I'll never be the gymnast I imagined." He laughed as we pulled away from the building’s front.

  I chuckled as we drove out of the hospital parking lot. "How is Belinda?" I asked.

  "She's good," he said. "She's making you a big welcome home meal."

  "Oh, my God, she doesn't have to do that," I said.

  He smiled. "She knows she doesn't have to," he replied. "But she wants to. She wants to make you feel like we are glad to have you back home. Because we are."

  "Well, thank you," I said. "Now that we know what’s wrong, I hope that we can . . . get things fixed and I can get back to my old self."

  "Yeah, Belinda and I will both read through the treatment plan your doctor laid out," he said. "We'll see what we can do."

  "Sounds good," I replied.

  "There is something I should tell you, though," he said as we got onto the highway. There was something about the way he said it that made my heart sink.

  "Oh?" I asked. "What's wrong?"

  "I saw your ex-husband on the news," he said cautiously. "Your funeral was today."

  I felt my blood run cold. Of course, that made sense. It had been two weeks since I'd technically died. I was surprised Devon had waited so long, frankly. I was surprised he didn't just take my ashes, or my supposed ashes, and throw them over a bridge and be done with it.

  But then, that wasn't like Devon. No, Devon would want to gain the ultimate amount of sympathy for what happened. Devon would love being the grieving widower.

  Mario had arranged to give him a sealed urn full of fake ashes. They were nothing significant, but if he opened it and dumped it, it wouldn't look weird. He'd explained to me that they had burned organic material, like plants and some animal carcass, to create the ashes. I thought it was rather clever.

  "Wait, why was he on the news, though?" I managed to ask. "Because I was supposedly murdered?"

  "Because he was vowing to find your attacker," Mario said. "He was putting on a whole show. Frankly, I had to turn it off because otherwise, I would throw something at the TV."

  I had never heard Mario say an unkind word about anyone, so that was quite surprising. My heart warmed at the fact that he cared so much.

  "My attacker?" I said and shook my head. "Well, either he is going to haul an innocent man in or he's going to be the grieving pained widower who never finds his wife's attacker."

  "You don't think he'd haul an innocent man in, do you?" Mario asked.

  "Of course, he would," I replied. "Devon is absolutely mental like that. Especially when he's been drinking."

  Mario shook his head. "I'm so sorry that you had to go through all of that," he said. "I'm so sorry that Devon even exists at all."

  I smirked at that. It was funny, despite the circumstances. I stared out the window as we drove, and then I sighed. "I wish that I could expose him," I said. "I wish I could tell everyone what he did. Not for myself. I don't need pity. But . . . he doesn't deserve to be out and about, walking around and acting like he deserves sympathy. He should rot in jail for the rest of his life."

  "You could do that . . ." Mario said calmly.

  I immediately shuddered. "I couldn't," I said. "This . . . this is best for me. This is what I need."

  "Are you sure?" he asked. "Because if you chose to do that, we would support you and explain why you faked your own death."

  "No," I said. "I couldn't ask you two to do that. You've already done so much. Besides, I believe in karma. Devon will get what is coming to him."

  "Perhaps," Mario replied. "I just hope that he hasn't done this to anyone else."

  That had never occurred to me.

  "You think he might have done this to someone else?" I asked.

  Mario shrugged as he turned a corner. "It’s possible," he said. "People like that . . . they usually don't just get this way overnight. They’ve usually done it their whole lives as soon as they were capable. I mean, you said you were with him from a young age, so it's possible he hasn't had a chance to—"

  "But he wasn't that young when we met," I said. "He was already twenty-six, and I knew he had been with other women before."

  "Hmm," Mario said.

  I turned to him. "Oh, God, what if he—"

  "Laurie, I'm sorry that I put this idea into your head," he said. "I shouldn't have done that. You need to worry about your own healing, not what might have happened to anyone else before you met."

  "But what if he's doing it to somebody else right now?" I asked. "What if he just—"

  "Laurie." His voice grounded me as he reached across the seat to grip my hand. "It's okay. Everything is going to be okay."

  Somehow, he could tell that I had been on the verge of a panic attack. We stayed silent for the majority of the drive.

  When we got back to the Grace household as promised, there was a huge meal waiting for us. I was tired and I wasn't very hungry, but I was extremely grateful for the time and effort that Belinda had put in. While I ate, she and Mario fell on the discharged papers like they were starving for food of another kind. I heard them discussing it in quiet voices in the kitchen, and I heard a lot of muttering and talking. I wished that they didn't feel such pity for me.

  I wish I were strong enough to do as Mario said and expose Devon. I could call up any of the news stations right now and demand that they listen to my side of the story. At the very least, I was glad he wasn't painting me as some sort of psychopath. I supposed that he couldn't, given that I hadn't died by hanging or doing something crazy. It wasn't like I could strangle myself to death.

  I finished eating just as Belinda and Mario came back into the dining room. Belinda handed me my file with a smile.

  "Everything is going to be all right," she said. "We'll get you some therapy, and you just let us know whenever you’re feeling unwell."

  "You two will let me know when I've overstayed my welcome, won't you?" I asked.

  Belinda nodded with a smile. "We will," she said. "But I don't think that will ever be the case."

  "But you promise to let me know?" I asked again, and both of them promised. "Good. One day, when I'm well, I'm going to cook for both of you. Actually, no, because my cooking is nowhere near as good as this. I'm going to take you both out for a fancy meal, and I'm going to pay the whole bill. And then I'm going to, I don't know, buy you a private jet or something. It's not enough to repay you, but it's a start."

  "A private jet." Mario glanced at Belinda with a smile.

  "I could use that," she said, and the three of us laughed.

  I didn't know what woul
d happen in the future, but I was safe and that was all that mattered.

  Chapter Eight

  Blake

  One thing that was nice about working with the cops was that they still considered me one of them. They didn't hold it against me that I’d had to leave because of "medical problems".

  Of course, they all knew that "medical problems" was code for burnout and showing up drunk so much that they had to call a taxi for me because I couldn't walk straight. They knew Lola, and they were grieving too, but it didn't seem like any of them were grieving the way I was. Of course, they weren't, though. They weren't her partner and they didn't love her the way I did. They didn't see her beauty whenever she smiled or hear her corny jokes day in and day out. They didn't laugh with her in the dark of night or snuggle her close as the dawn came.

  I was sure that if I'd told the force that we were having an affair, they would have actually separated us. Although there wasn't any law against it, I knew that they probably thought that we couldn't focus if we were sleeping together.

  That was where they were wrong. We could focus even better if we were together every second. We were so in sync. We were partners in the truest sense of the word. Everything had to be perfect.

  "What do you need?" Anna, Sam's partner, was standing next to the computer that they'd lent me.

  She had all the login information that I'd been given, and she handed it over like it was nothing. I knew that she hadn't lived through the story, but I assumed that Sam had told her a lot, given the way she was talking to me. She was looking at me with pity, and I hated it. I hated it even more because I knew that she could flounce three aisles down and Sam, her partner, would be there, and they could shop talk until they were blue in the face.

  I hated all of this.

  "I just need the ER and hospital reports on her," I said. "So, I'm going to go into all those records, and I'll call the hospitals if needed."

  "Yeah, that's fine," she said, but she didn't move.

  "Sorry, can I help you with something?" I asked her.

  She shook her head. "No, I'm just here if you end up needing help with anything."

  "I don't need help with anything," I said. "I worked here for years. I haven't even been gone that long. It's not like you changed the computer system or something."

  "Right, I know," she said. "I just thought I'd . . ."

  "You don't trust me," I said.

  Her eyes widened. "I don't know you," she said. "But everyone else knows you and they told me it's fine."

  "Right," I said. "So, why are you still standing there?"

  "Blake, why are you being an asshole?" Sam came up behind me then.

  I groaned. "I'm not," I said. "It seems Detective Norris here can't seem to understand that I know everything and I'm fine alone."

  Sam turned to her and Anna shrugged.

  "Just in case he needs help," she said.

  "Blake does need help," Sam said, "but he'll never take it or admit it."

  "Hey, I haven't gone deaf in my old age," I snapped at him.

  "Come on, Anna," Sam said. "We have other things to work on."

  "Yeah, go work on things," I said as both of them backed away. I didn't want to be a rude asshole, but I didn't enjoy being treated like a total newbie, either.

  I logged into the database, and admittedly, it took me a second to remember how to find my way around. The police had access to all sorts of things that the public didn't know we had. It wasn't like we went snooping around. We were far too busy for that. But when the situation called for it, we could log into our database and pull up things like hospital records without going through some overworked, underpaid administrator.

  "There we go," I said to myself as the files came up. Laurie Whitman.

  What surprised me was that there was more than just one record. She hadn't just been to the ER the night she died, or supposedly died. She had been there quite a few times. It seemed like these incidences were frequent, and it made me wonder if he had abused her.

  I had been thinking it in the back of my mind for quite a while. I had been thinking that maybe he had hit her and wanted to cover it up. If he had, I wouldn't blame her for coming back from the dead and burning him to death in a fire. Hell, if I had been around, I probably would have helped.

  I hated men who did that sort of thing. I mean, I hated anyone who did that sort of thing, but husbands who did it to their wives were the worst kind of human beings, right along with child abusers.

  I told myself that I shouldn't jump to conclusions. If Lola were here, she would certainly tell me not to jump to conclusions. She would say that I was biased and I should just relax.

  Of course, that was easier said than done. And the fact that she wasn't here at all made it impossible to actually do it.

  I hated that some of the hospitals uploaded the chart in the doctor's original handwriting. Like, how was I supposed to read it?

  I squinted and started with the night she supposedly died.

  She had been brought to the ER late, and from what I could see, she was already in quite a lot of distress when she arrived.

  Her husband had reported that she had been attacked and then raped.

  The report said that she had a crushed windpipe, brain swelling, contusions, and fractures. That sounded like a pretty bad attack. My heart went out to her. I could only imagine how scared she was as they treated her.

  It seemed likely that she would die of her injuries. There were several other reports that I had read over the years which had similar traumas, and the patients did die. A few different people had contributed and therefore signed off on this report, including the morgue doctor who received her body. They basically all said, with their signatures, that she was dead.

  So, which one was lying? Who had not checked closely enough? Who didn't care? Who got their assistant to sign for them?

  I read Laurie's report thoroughly before jumping back in time to one of her other admissions. It took me a second to see it, but I realized that some of the fractures originally reported were actually old ones.

  This was also not the first time she had been treated for a crushed windpipe. There was another time where she had accidentally strangled herself while they were sailing, apparently, when the rope got caught. It obviously hadn't completely crushed her windpipe, or she'd be dead, but it had come close.

  There was something that wasn't right here. There was something that made my stomach turn as I continued to read.

  Yes, it was possible that she had actually been attacked and that she was just clumsy. After all, the report said that the husband was quite distraught and that he was begging them to try and save her the whole time. If the doctors or nurses had suspected any kind of abuse, they would have written it in the report or called the police at the time. The hospital was particularly good at reporting suspected abuse. They were, in fact, overly good at it. I couldn't count the times that I had gone down to the hospital only to find a distraught parent or spouse who’d had the cops called on them for no reason.

  Yes, there were plenty of times where calling us was a good idea. But there were plenty of times when it was clear that they should let some people grieve in peace.

  It appeared that Laurie's death certificate was no longer in the system. I could go back and check old version histories of their death certificates, and from what I could see, it was uploaded a few days after her death and then suspiciously deleted, which was a bit odd. When I checked the date it was deleted, I saw that it was a few days after the fire.

  That made things even stranger.

  I mean, yes, she wasn't actually dead, so why keep a death certificate? But they shouldn't go in and delete their own records.

  "I'm going down to the hospital," I called to whoever was listening. I had to talk to someone there, preferably someone who’d worked on the case that night.

  "Do you need someone to go with you?" Sam called across the office.

  "Nope," I responded as I got up a
nd threw my coat on. "I work alone."

  I knew that he was probably sighing and shaking his head at that, but I didn't really care. If someone, anyone, came with me, it would be far too hard. It was bad enough that I had to come in here to work. I didn't think I could walk out of here with another cop at my side. That would make me explode with grief and anger. If I could work, it wasn't going to be with a partner.

  When I got down to the hospital, it was chaos as usual. I didn't have my badge or my uniform anymore, so I had a much more difficult time than I used to in getting someone's attention and getting them to talk to me. Eventually, one of the doctors that I had worked with many times before came into the hallway and saw me.

  "Blake," he said. "Didn't think I'd see you here, and in plain clothes too."

  "Yeah," I said. "I just . . . I'm asking a few questions?"

  "On duty?" he asked.

  I nodded. Clearly, he hadn't heard that my partner had died and I’d left the force in disgrace. At least, that's how I saw it most days.

  "I can answer whatever you need."

  "I want to talk about Laurie Whitman," I said. "It appears she was dead and then she wasn't."

  "Ah, yes," he said in a tone that told me that he might have expected someone to come down and talk to him. We stepped off into a more private area and he cleared his throat. "I don't know what to tell you, Blake. I worked that night. She was dead."

  "But people . . . come back after coding, right?"

  "Yeah, they come back after coding because we help them," he replied. "Not because zombies are something. Once they have coded, we do everything we can, but eventually, it becomes too unrealistic."