Her Final Prayer: A totally gripping and heart-stopping crime thriller (Detective Clara Jefferies Book 2)

by Kathryn Casey

  Unconscious, struggling to breathe, Jacob had bloody foam bubbling from his cut throat with each gasp for air. Assessing his dire condition, I found it impossible to think of him as lucky.

  “What are his odds?” Max asked.

  The medic shook his head. “Not good. If we’d gotten here even a bit earlier… But he’s got a chance.”

  We had no way to help Jacob or to make any headway on the case simply waiting, so I said, “Max, I should call Mullins.”

  He shot me a concerned look but nodded. With that, Max and the medic walked back into the kitchen, while I lagged behind in the mudroom. On my cell phone, I hit the listing for the station house. Stef answered: “Alber PD.”

  “What are you doing on the desk?” I asked.

  “Just relieving Kellie,” she explained. I’d hired Kellie Ryland to work the dispatch desk, but Stef was still training her. “What’s it like out there?”

  “Bad,” I said. “Really bad.”

  “Shoot,” she said.

  “Listen, as soon as Kellie returns, head over here and watch the CSI unit work. It would be good for you to see how a case like this is handled first hand.”

  “You bet. She’s walking over to the desk now. I’ll be right there. Anything else?”

  “I need to talk to Mullins,” I said.

  “He’s not in yet. Called in about half an hour ago and said he might be late. He had a report to take on a break-in at a house in town. Someone got into the garage and stole the homeowner’s tool box. Had some valuable stuff in there to work on cars.”

  “Hmm.” I took a deep breath. Those were more the types of crimes I was used to in Alber. Not quadruple murders. I thought about Mullins and considered calling him directly, but decided against it. I didn’t want to deliver this kind of bad news over the phone. “When Mullins gets there, ask Kellie to instruct him to wait for me. Tell her to give me a heads-up, and I’ll drive into town. I need to talk to him in person.”

  “Something up?” she asked.

  “Nothing we can talk about now,” I said. “Just ask him to wait there for me.”

  “Will do,” Stef said.

  I hung up and trekked back into the kitchen. Max was still watching the medics work on Jacob. One had finally gotten an IV started and he held a bag while the other two monitored their patient’s vitals.

  “Did you get in touch with Mullins?” Max asked.

  “He’s not in,” I said. “I’ll head in to talk to him once he arrives.”

  Max shook his head. “Poor guy.”

  “Yeah,” I said. Determined to put the time to good use, I asked, “So where’s Laurel?”

  Five

  “What do you make of the lipstick?” I asked Max.

  “Not sure. It’s odd, isn’t it?” he said.

  We were holding up the pale blue duvet, doing our best not to disturb the scene, looking at Laurel’s body. She had on a sweet cotton nightgown covered with flowers, one that reminded me of the type a little girl might wear. It struck me as a stark contrast to the angry red lipstick encircling her mouth. From the copious amount of blood saturating the sheets beneath her, it appeared evident that this time the killer hadn’t spared the knife; the gash was longer than the one on Jacob. Whoever murdered Laurel had made sure that she died.

  “It’s so strange,” I said. Max gave me a questioning look and I explained, “Anna and her two children were shot to death outside, and Laurel and Jacob had their throats cut in the house. That’s an odd set of circumstances. Why did the killer change weapons? Why didn’t he shoot them all? So much quicker, easier.”

  “And less personal,” Max said.

  I nodded. “Maybe that’s precisely what he wanted.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Maybe Anna and her children were collateral damage, simply murdered because they were here when it happened. I wonder why they were covered with the sheet.”

  “The killer didn’t want to see them?” Max speculated.

  “It could be. Maybe the killer was ashamed and wanted to hide their bodies,” I ventured. “If you’re proud of something, you show it off. If you’re not, you’re more likely to hide it. Their deaths, the shootings, are different.”

  “What do you mean?” Max asked. “Something in addition to the type of weapon?”

  “The killer took more time with Laurel and Jacob. My guess is that they were the primary victims.”

  Max gave me a questioning glance. “In at least one way, Laurel’s killing is the same. She was covered, too.”

  “Shame again?” I speculated.

  “And Jacob?”

  “That’s different. There was no attempt to hide his body,” I said. “But if he didn’t matter to the killer, if he was simply collateral damage like Anna and her children, why didn’t the killer just shoot him?”

  “It all seems pretty bizarre,” Max said. “Any chance we could have two killers?”

  I thought about that. “Possible,” I said. “At this point, anything’s possible. We might find that the killer is a man, a woman, or multiple people.”

  While we talked, I looked about Laurel’s room. My instincts guessed that we weren’t looking for a gang of killers, at the most one or two. The scenes were all fairly small, concise. Nothing appeared disturbed; I saw no evidence of a struggle. Laurel had an antique silver brush and comb set, like one my mother had, precisely arranged on the dresser. As a child, I snuck into Mother’s bedroom just to use it, delighted by the soft bristles. The painting over Laurel’s bed was perfectly straight and was of a spray of delicate white and yellow flowers on a beige background. Looking down at her face frozen by death, I figured she couldn’t be older than nineteen or twenty.

  “I bet the killer surprised her,” I said. “Attacked her while she was asleep, or she woke up on the bed during the attack.”

  “Because there’s no sign of a scuffle?” Max said.

  “Yes, because she didn’t try to fight him off,” I confirmed. “Maybe she was lucky in a way, too.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Because she didn’t see it coming,” I said.

  Max and I paused our conversation and looked at the body again, each lost to our own thoughts. I wondered about the order of the killings. I wondered which of the victims was the last one to die. How horrible to have watched the others murdered knowing the killer would soon turn his attention to you. I thought about how loud a gunshot is.

  “All that considered, what’s the lipstick for?” Max asked. “To make her look cartoonish?”

  “Perhaps,” I offered. “Maybe to humiliate her, but there’s something else.”

  “What?”

  “Red lipstick is considered overtly sexual around here. It isn’t worn by the women. Perhaps painting her with it was like leaving an explanation for this one killing. Labeling her a tainted woman,” I said.

  The conversation faded, and my mind picked up where it left off, calculating the sound of the gunshots outside and wondering if it would have carried into the house. Was it possible that Laurel slept through the first three murders? Perhaps even the attack on Jacob? I thought about what Naomi had said, that Laurel and Jacob were expecting her to arrive early that morning. It seemed odd that Laurel would still be in bed sleeping. Although a new mother with a tiny infant is often up well into the night.

  Max gently lowered his side of the duvet so that it fell back in place, and I followed suit, covering Laurel’s face and body. We walked toward the door. “How sure are you of all this? Your thoughts on how this unfolded?” he asked from behind me.

  I turned and looked at him. “Not sure at all.”

  The three medics were loading Jacob to transport him to the hospital when we walked into the kitchen. They’d bandaged the cut in his hand and placed gauze under his neck to collect the still-seeping blood. They eased him onto the stretcher and then, one at the head and another at the foot, snapped it into place. As they turned to wheel him out, Jacob suddenly stirred, thrashe
d about, but they had him strapped down. He let out a deep guttural sound, and his eyes opened.

  “Stop!” I shouted.

  “We’ve got to get him to the hospital,” the lead medic protested, indicating the others had to keep moving. “Come on, let’s load him on the ambulance.”

  “Owww,” Jacob moaned. His head turned, and he looked directly at me.

  I wondered if he’d die on the way to the hospital. Looking at him, it seemed likely. With no time to think, I seized what might be my one opportunity to talk to the only witness. Before I even knew what I was doing, I had thrust my foot under the front wheel and grabbed the gurney’s frame. Max latched on at the back and held it steady.

  “We’ve gotta get him loaded,” the medic in charge wailed. “You two let go.”

  We were determined to try to get any information we could from Jacob, and Max held tight, while I leaned over Jacob and thrust my face close to his. “Who did this to you and your family?” I asked. “Jacob, tell me—who did this?”

  Jacob’s eyes grew rounder, and he nodded ever so slightly at me. He searched my face and his lips moved a touch. I felt certain that he was trying to talk. But then, as he strained to take yet another breath, the sucking sound coming from his throat built and that awful rattle returned. All hope evaporated as his eyelids drifted down and locked closed. The monitor attached to his chest kept beeping.

  “He’s out again,” the medic shouted. “We’re moving. Now!”

  Max and I stood back as the EMTs pushed the gurney toward the front door. We followed and stood on the porch as they loaded him into the back of the ambulance.

  “For a moment, I thought maybe he’d at least try to talk,” Max said, visibly disappointed. “Maybe mouth something so we had a name.”

  “No such luck,” I said.

  It took seconds to secure the gurney into place inside the ambulance. “You think we’ll ever be able to talk to him?” I asked.

  Max shrugged again. “I hope so, but it’s no better than a toss-up.”

  “We’ll, of course, keep our fingers crossed that he makes it, but we need to work this like we’ll never be able to ask him a single question,” I said, and Max gave me a raised eyebrow that signaled agreement.

  Six

  As the ambulance pulled onto the open road, the air filled with the wailing of the siren. I thought about Mullins, about the fact that he still didn’t know about his daughter, and pulled out my phone yet again, hoping to see I’d missed a call. Disappointed, I slipped my phone back into my pocket as an Alber PD squad pulled into the driveway. Rookie officer Stef Jonas got out. Her skin a deep copper, her eyes the darkest of browns. Hair in her usual cornrows that fanned out around her face, she wore a uniform that pulled a bit too tight across the middle. Stef looked at my dirty clothes and said, “Out digging?”

  We’d gotten fairly close over the past few months. Stef had helped in the investigation that pulled me back to Alber. She knew about my extracurricular activities, too. Perhaps I should have kept it more of a secret. I gave her a half-hearted smile and said, “I couldn’t sleep.”

  A short sigh that seemed to mix amusement and resignation, and Stef looked about at the CSI officers documenting the first location, the bodies found under the sheet. She appeared intrigued, and I knew that she ached to get into the mix.

  I hadn’t noticed that George Wiley MD, the internist from Wilbur who served as the county’s medical examiner, had shown up, but he was hard at work, inspecting the sad body of little Benjamin. I walked over with Stef and Max, stopping a way back. Doc Wiley sauntered over to us. His white hair disheveled, his clip-on bowtie crooked, he wore a lab coat with his name embroidered on the chest.

  “Clara, Max, I had my assistant cancel my appointments and rushed right over. Did you just get here? I didn’t see you.”

  “We’ve been in the house.” I motioned at the newest arrival. “All except Stef, she’s studying forensics and is here to learn. Can you show her, all of us, what you know so far?”

  “Sure. A lot of it you’ve probably already figured out,” Doc said. With our lack of specialists in the county, Doc tended to go beyond the normal ME duties. “We’ll have to double-check all this once I get to the lab and have my equipment. I need to put their clothes and skin under magnification, get a better look at the powder marks and wounds. But first glance, it looks like the children were shot from a short distance, maybe two or three feet away, based on visible powder residue on their clothes.”

  “And their mother?” Max asked.

  “At least five or six feet away,” Doc said. “Maybe more. All three were standing when they were shot.”

  I’d been wrong about the little girl, Sybille, it appeared. I thought perhaps she’d been sitting. “How do you know?” I asked.

  “The blood patterns. I found drops not far from each of the bodies that I think were initial impact.” Doc pulled out a pencil, held it in his gloved hand and pointed at a spot on a dried leaf just behind Benjamin that had an evidence marker next to it. “They’re round, as if the blood fell straight down.”

  “All shot from behind,” I said. “The kids in their heads, and Anna Johansson in her back.”

  “That’s right,” Doc said. “I think Anna may have been shot first. I think she was hanging the laundry when it happened.”

  “How do you know that?” Max asked.

  “Blood spatter,” Doc said, pointing at the clothes pinned onto the line. “There’s a fine mist on a few of the pieces near where she fell.”

  “Were the bodies moved?” I asked, wondering about my hunch about Benjamin.

  “It appears the boy was rolled over,” Doc said. “I think he was initially standing, tottered, stumbled and fell after the bullet hit him and landed on his back. I checked his neck, above his shirt, and he has mild lividity on his back, but it’s darker on the side he’s lying on.”

  When the heart stops, gravity pools blood at the body’s lowest point and causes lividity, a purplish tone to the skin that resembles bruising. I thought about what Max and I had just been debating, why the killer covered the bodies. This might be more evidence that he did it out of shame. Rolling Benjamin off his back and onto his side kept the kid’s blank eyes from staring up at the killer. “I’d noticed the angle of the shot seemed off for him to have fallen in that position,” I said. “It makes sense that he initially fell on his back.”

  “I’ll know more when I open them up and chart the trajectories of their wounds,” Doc said. “But, yes, I think you’re right about the boy. The woman and girl, however, I’m guessing simply fell and were left in those positions.”

  “Time frame?” I asked.

  “Rigor mortis has begun to set in, but it’s early in the process. I’d say this happened two to three hours ago,” he said, adjusting his wire-rimmed glasses. “From what I hear, Jacob Johansson was bleeding out pretty badly in the kitchen. That right?”

  “It is,” I said. “Throat was cut but not carotids. Some blood on his shirt. A moderate pool near the neck when the EMTs arrived and started an IV.”

  “That type of blood loss, it’s lucky he survived that long,” Doc said. “Anyway, looking at the condition of Anna’s body and those of the children, I believe they died early this morning. My guess is roughly about seven a.m. or so. But we’ll do a liver temp to check cooling as soon as I get them to the morgue. That should tell us more. Although none of this is precise, always an estimate.”

  “Anything about the weapon?” Max asked.

  “Not from the bodies, but I think the CSI folks have information for you,” Doc said. “I may find fragments during autopsy that could help, but we’re not there yet.”

  “Thanks, Doc,” I said.

  The old man shook his head and his lips melted into a deep frown. “Gotta be one of the saddest things I’ve ever seen, Clara, and I’ve seen a lot,” Doc said. “What the hell’s wrong with people that someone would do this?”

  None of us had a good answer,
so we didn’t even try to explain the tragedy surrounding us.

  “When are the autopsies?” Max asked. Doc said he’d start on them that afternoon, and we thanked him and excused ourselves, then made our way over to Craig Mueller, the Smith County sheriff’s lieutenant in charge of the CSI unit. There’d only been a handful of evidence markers when Max and I left to go inside, but now they spread across the grass and one was off fairly far into a grove of trees. Stef’s eyes had grown rounder, and she appeared excited. I remembered my first few murder scenes, the excitement of being involved in an investigation. It might change Stef’s attitude if she knew that one of the victims was Mullins’ daughter.

  “What have you got?” I asked Mueller.

  “We found the murder weapon,” he said. “At least, I’m guessing it’s the murder weapon.”

  “Where is it?” Max said. “Show it to us.”

  Mueller started to respond, but I cut in. “No, Lieutenant, take us through how you think this unfolded,” I said. “I want to see it the way it happened, assuming you have a theory on sequencing?”

  “Yeah,” Mueller said. A tall, gangly guy with an angular face and a prominent Adam’s apple that bobbed up and down with each word, he seemed more arms and legs than body. He led us over to a point about six feet back from where Anna Johansson lay. “It started here,” he said, pointing at a few discharged cartridges on the ground.

  While Max and I understood Mueller’s inference, I asked, “Explain what we’re looking at for Stef. She’s a new officer, and she’s taking forensic classes at the community college.”

  Mueller shot our CSI-officer-to-be a supportive glance, and then pointed down at the cartridges. Nearby someone had perched a yellow plastic evidence tent with the number six on it. “We believe the gun’s a nine-millimeter semi-automatic with an extended magazine,” he said. “We found one dropped or thrown in the trees. We’ll work our way there. We think the shooting started here with the woman.”