by Laura Snider
Undetermined Death
Laura Snider
UNDETERMINED DEATH
Copyright © 2021 by Laura Snider
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Severn River Publishing
www.SevernRiverPublishing.com
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
ISBN: 978-1-64875-129-5 (Paperback)
ISBN: 979-8-45053-626-2 (Hardback)
Contents
Also By Laura Snider
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Epilogue
Join the Reader List
You Might Also Enjoy…
Thanks for Reading
Next in Series
Read Undetermined Death
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also By Laura Snider
Ashely Montgomery Legal Thrillers
Unsympathetic Victims
Undetermined Death
Unforgivable Acts
Never miss a new release! Sign up to receive exclusive updates from author Laura Snider.
SevernRiverPublishing.com/Laura-Snider
For my sisters and strong women everywhere.
Others call you bossy, cold, and aggressive.
I call you what you are.
Inspiring.
Prologue
Rachel
100 days before trial
Alone. It was such a strange word to her. When broken down it was one letter, “a” followed by the word “lone.” Its meaning, without others, was somewhat of a dream to her. It made her think of The Lone Ranger. A man and his horse out there on the wide range, surrounded by miles and miles of land.
But that was not how she was alone. Her alone came from within. A malfunction in her brain—in her life—that separated her from everyone around her. It detached her even from herself. She didn’t choose it. She didn’t even like it, but it was the only way to survive in her world. And that was all she was doing. Surviving.
That was how she found herself in a motel room in the tiny town of Brine, Iowa. Alone. Scared yet determined. She’d made a plan, and it was already in motion. There was no way out. She reminded herself that she was prepared. She had a bag full of supplies. One bottle of vodka. One pair of scissors. One bag of snacks and one bottle of Ibuprofen.
So, this is it, she thought. Who was she kidding? She was not prepared. There was no point in lying to herself anymore.
Her eyes traveled around the room, sparsely furnished but containing the basic necessities. A bed with two end tables, each holding a single dusty lamp. A decade-old television atop an ancient dresser. Weatherworn drapes that clung to a paint-chipped curtain rod.
The room was shabby, she had to admit, but she didn’t begrudge it for its condition. For she knew its true beauty lay in the freedom that came within. She knew better than anyone that beautiful surroundings could never replace the independence that this room provided, even if only for a couple hours. She set her bag of supplies on the bed and pulled the curtains closed, blocking the small fingers of light cast out by the setting sun.
The bathroom was tiny, but it contained all that she needed. A sink, toilet, and bathtub, which would become vital in a matter of hours. Or would it be minutes? She had no idea how long it would take. She flipped off the light and returned to the bedroom, sliding the top dresser drawer open. It made a scraping noise, wood on wood, and moved slowly, jerkily. Inside the drawer, she found the TV remote and a copy of the Holy Bible. She grabbed the former and left the latter. She had no need for a Bible. Her soul was not worth saving.
She lay on the bed and clicked the remote’s power button. It was the first time she had complete power over a remote. Her father, Isaac, was the only one permitted that kind of control. The TV screen sprang to life. Voices permeated the room as three talking heads filled the screen. A news anchor and two guests, bickering like cats from rival territories. She changed the channel, flipping from one station to the next until she found something worth watching. Cartoon Network. An episode of Scooby-Doo was on, and she settled in to watch the show.
Rachel watched the group of teenage crime solvers. Velma, the supposed dumpy one, always caught her attention. The girls at school had always preferred Daphne. Not that any of those girls would talk to Rachel. But she was an expert at hiding in the shadows. Becoming invisible. Listening. That was how she overheard many conversations over the years. Most teenage girl conversations were garbage. Nonsensical discussions about boys and teachers. But sometimes the girls spoke of her.
None of it was kind. She probably shouldn’t have bothered to listen, but part of her wanted to know how they felt about her. In that way, she could belong to those cliques of girls, even if it was only through insults. So she listened as they called her a freak. A whore. A waste of good genetics. She listened when they said that she was sleeping with the school counselor, Mr. Frank. She listened as they claimed her frequent absences were because she worked the streets at night.
Rachel hated them. Not for their words, but because she envied them. She coveted their plainness. Their normality. She’d give up her beauty any day. Trade her face with another’s. Any one of them would do. Jessica, whose skin was almost entirely consumed by freckles. Michelle, whose deep acne scars marred the lower half of her face like craters on the moon. Emily, whose underbite had all the boys calling her “bulldog.”
Rachel would trade faces with any of them—all of them—in a heartbeat. Take that which they loathed and give them what they desired. Beauty. But she’d give them the option that nobody gave her. She’d warn them first. She’d say, be careful what you wish for. For Rachel’s beauty was the source of her problems. Without it, she wouldn’t be in her current predicament.
She shook her head, dispelling thoughts of school, and refocused on the television. In this episode of Scooby-Doo, the Gang was trying to solve the mystery of the Creeper. The villain was a green, goblin-like creature with a hunched back and a very unfortunate haircut. Rachel liked how the bad guys in Scooby-Doo committed their crimes by pretending to be ghosts and ghouls that scared people away. It was unrealistic, and that was precisely why it was so refreshing. For Rachel knew true villains; they were not so kind as to scare oth
ers away first. True villains kept their victims close, held onto them, and never let them go.
A sharp pain, almost like a pulse, drew her attention away from the television. She wrapped her arms around her rounded belly and moaned. These are the early contractions? she wondered. How will I get through active labor?
Rachel shoved herself into a sitting position and grabbed her bag from the end of the bed, unzipping it in one fluid motion. Several towels tumbled out along with a large bottle of Hawkeye vodka that belonged to her father. She stole it from his liquor stash. He would notice its absence—he noticed anything out of place—but Rachel didn’t plan to return home.
Another contraction rocked her body. She curled into a ball, moaning, until it passed. Then she unscrewed the top of the bottle and took a large swig of vodka. She coughed and almost spat out the vile-tasting liquid, but she forced herself to swallow. The liquor burned its way down her throat, warming her from within.
Can I do this? Rachel wondered.
She shook her head, forcing the thought from her mind. It wasn’t a question of can. She must. Her plan was foolproof. She’d had nine months to prepare, and she knew what to do. She would give birth, then she would leave. It was a good scheme. One that would work in most circumstances. Except, like everything else in Rachel’s life, it didn’t quite work out as she had planned.
1
Ashley Montgomery
76 days before trial
The girl did not look like a killer. She was tiny, insubstantial, sitting there across from Ashley in her jail jumpsuit. Her clothing was a faded green with no design or wording except Brine County Jail printed in heavy black block lettering across the back. The outfit was meant to dehumanize. To show ownership. To say that this girl was something less than human. A criminal. A piece of property owned by the county. It disgusted Ashley.
Shackles wound their way around the girl’s feet. A chain ran between her legs and up her waist, connecting her leg restraints to the manacles twisted around her wrists. That’s not necessary, Ashley thought. The restraints created a barrier between Ashley and her client. Differentiating them. When, in truth, they had quite a lot in common.
The girl kept her head down, her hands folded neatly in her lap, shoulders rounded. Her fingers were long and elegant, but her nails were bitten to the quick. A disgusting habit that didn’t appear to be new judging by the size of her nailbeds.
“Rachel,” Ashley said softly.
Rachel lifted her head but did not meet Ashley’s gaze. She stared at different portions of Ashley’s face—her forehead, chin, and cheeks—dusty brown eyes darting around in quick, awkward shifts but never making eye contact. Rachel’s eyes were haggard and worn, like they belonged to a woman five times her age.
“Rachel,” Ashley repeated.
“Yeah.”
Rachel focused on Ashley’s forehead so intensely that Ashley had the urge to cover it with her hand. It made her feel uncomfortable, self-conscious, reminding her of the way kids used to call her “forehead” when she was a teenager.
“How are you?”
Rachel blinked several times, surprised by the question. Like she didn’t know how to answer. It was a dumb inquiry, Ashley supposed. Rachel was in jail, charged with murdering her newborn baby. She was probably feeling pretty shitty. How else was there to feel?
“Who are you?”
“My name is Ashley Montgomery. I’m your attorney. I’ve been appointed to represent you.”
The girl’s expression did not change. Her facial features remained still as a statue. Eerily calm. Those high cheekbones protruding as though chiseled out of stone.
“I’m your public defender.”
“Oh,” Rachel said.
Ashley was one of only two defense attorneys local to the small town of Brine, Iowa. All other attorneys came from Des Moines or Carroll. The latter was also a small town, but not Brine small. It was large enough to have two Subway sandwich shops. Brine had one, but it closed years earlier. There weren’t enough sandwich eaters in a town of only six thousand people.
“I’m here to help you.”
The girl shook her head, slowly and deliberately. A denial made in slow motion. “Nobody can help me.”
“I disagree.”
Ashley was the best defense attorney in the region, maybe even the state. In the past two years, she tried two high-profile cases. A murder and a sexual assault. One ended in an acquittal, the other in a near acquittal. Of course, both of those men were later murdered, but that had nothing to do with Ashley’s representation.
Rachel shrugged as if to say, maybe, but maybe not.
Ashley was a public defender. She understood the stigma that came with that title. She could spend the rest of the meeting outlining her stellar credentials, but that would be a waste of time. It never changed any minds, and Rachel would see Ashley in action soon enough. There was no point in belaboring the issue. Time was limited, and they still had some basic questions to get through.
“How old are you?”
In Ashley’s initial client meetings, she always started with the easiest questions. It was a way to develop a rapport before getting into the difficult details that would come later.
“Eighteen.”
“Still in high school?”
The girl looked around. The walls were cement, heavy and impenetrable, the doors made of steel. The jail was a giant cage, built to confine the dangerous, the criminal.
“Not anymore.”
Fair enough, Ashley thought.
Rachel would not complete her second semester of her senior year. She would not go to her senior prom or receive her diploma along with her classmates. She would be in jail. The magistrate had set her bond at one million dollars cash. No judge was going to change that, not with the interest in the case rising to national levels. It was too political. Iowa judges had to answer to voters in retention elections, and Rachel’s story had made the front page of every newspaper, the headline of every broadcast. She was a star. And not in a good way.
Ashley would see about arranging an in-jail GED program for Rachel, if for no other reason than to keep the poor girl occupied. Ashley knew what it was like to be behind those bars. She had been wrongly accused of two murders a year earlier, and her time in jail had almost broken her. All charges were dismissed, but Ashley’s incarceration had stolen a small piece of her soul. She knew how it felt to be in Rachel’s position, and she would do everything she could to help ease the girl’s stress.
Ashley pulled a legal pad and pen out of her bag, writing Rachel Smithson Notes on the top line.
“Where did you go to school?”
Rachel was not from Brine. Everyone knew everyone in a town so small. But Ashley had never seen Rachel before. A girl with that kind of beauty did not go unnoticed.
“Waukee.”
Waukee was a small town in Iowa that had been swallowed years ago by Des Moines’s ever expanding population. Large, luxurious houses had replaced the endless acres of cornfields. It was not a cheap place to live. Rachel had grown up with money. Ashley wondered why her parents hadn’t hired one of the large criminal defense firms in Des Moines. People with money did not leave their children’s representation up to public defenders.
“Have you spoken to your parents?”
Rachel flinched. Her shoulders twitched and she ducked her head lower.
“I’ll take that as a no,” Ashley said. It was a bizarre reaction, but it was too early to understand the meaning behind it. “You’re eighteen, legally an adult. We don’t have to involve your parents. But I can give them a call at your request.”
“No.”
Rachel’s voice was tentative but firm. She did not want her parents involved. It didn’t necessarily mean anything. If Rachel was from a well-to-do family, she may not want them to know that she had been criminally charged. Considering that her face had been flashing across all the news stations, though, that ship had sailed.
“I won’t contact
them, but can you tell me their names?”
“You won’t call them?” Rachel sounded suspicious, like promises made to her had a history of being broken.
Look into the family, Ashley jotted on the second line of her notepad.
“I work for you, Rachel. Not your parents.”
“You do?”
Ashley sighed. “You are an adult now. That comes with consequences”—she gestured to the room around her—“like jail instead of juvie. But also benefits, like attorney-client privilege, that doesn’t extend to your parents.”
“Are you saying that you can’t repeat anything I tell you?”
Ashley shook her head. “Not unless you want me to.”
Rachel looked down at her hands, picking at her fingernails. It was a stalling tactic, a way to gain space to think when space was something that had to be taken rather than freely given.
“Isaac and Lyndsay Smithson.” Rachel’s full lips barely moved, but the words were clear.
Ashley scrawled the names on the third line of her notepad. As she did, the sleeve of her shirt pulled up toward her elbow, exposing her forearm.
