Undetermined Death : A Legal Thriller (Ashley Montgomery Book 2)

by Laura Snider

  Yeah, she thought with a nod. Texting is safe. Probably. But probably was better than the alternative. They may be on opposite sides of the law, but Katie was still Ashley’s best friend.

  Ashley grabbed her phone and began typing. I’m about to commit relationship suicide. Or is it homicide?

  It took a few moments, but three familiar bubbles appeared beside Katie’s name, dancing and waving as she typed. I believe the term you are looking for is murder-suicide.

  A smile quirked into the corner of Ashley’s mouth. The bubbles appeared again.

  Why? What did you do?

  Ashley typed with both thumbs. He was with a girl when he called.

  And…

  And he said he wasn’t coming until tomorrow.

  And…

  Damn it, Ashley thought.

  Katie had a point. It sounded so silly when it was broken down to its simplest terms. When it was all laid out in black and white, all emotion removed, Tom hadn’t done anything wrong. He had called. Told her what he was up to. Then she’d freaked out because Harper was there. It wasn’t like her to overreact like that.

  Ashley turned back to her phone. She didn’t know how to respond. She tried, It made me mad, but quickly deleted it. That sounded childish. I didn’t like it. Also immature. Finally, she settled on, It just bothered me. I don’t know why.

  The bubbles appeared by Katie’s name again. It went on so long that Ashley thought Katie had been interrupted and stopped mid-text. But finally, after what seemed like forever, the text came through.

  Listen, Ashley, normally I’d suggest we get drinks. I won’t do that for obvious reasons. What I would tell you if we were out is this: get some sleep. You are working too hard. I don’t say that as a police officer, tired of your shenanigans (even though I am).

  Ashley smiled again.

  I am saying it as your friend, the message continued. Your car is parked in front of your office every time I drive by day or night. It isn’t healthy. Go home. Pet your dogs. Have a glass of wine. Relax.

  Ashley nodded as she read. It was solid advice.

  Then, tomorrow, once everyone has cooled off, you can call Tom and apologize. Not because you think you are wrong. Because you and I both know you cannot, for the life of you, admit that you are wrong. But because you love him, and you don’t want to murder-suicide your relationship. Nothing is dead yet, but it will end up that way if you let it fester.

  Ashley sighed and began to type back. You’re right. She paused, then sent another message. Don’t tell anyone I said that, though. And if you use that against me during your deposition, I’m going to be super pissed.

  Deposition?

  Great, Ashley typed. Thanks for your help. See you Monday!

  Monday?

  Ashley didn’t respond.

  Several moments later, Ashley received another text from Katie. When will you see me Monday?

  Ashley still didn’t respond. Katie would receive her subpoena soon enough.

  A flurry of texts followed. All from Katie.

  Ashley.

  Answer me. What deposition?

  Seriously?

  What.

  Did.

  You.

  Do!

  Katie wasn’t going to like giving a deposition on such short notice, but at least Ashley had warned her. It would soften the blow. What would have turned into an argument would now be more of a mild hiccup. Katie would forgive her. She always did.

  The more complicated issue would be Tom. She’d told him not to come. Katie was right that Ashley needed to apologize. Tom’s feelings were easily hurt. They had argued in the past, but nothing like this. She wondered if they would ever recover from it.

  Ashley set her phone aside just in time to avoid the splash of blood that spilled from her nose. Shit, Ashley thought as she grabbed several tissues and held them over her nose. As she leaned over, she noticed that Carley’s card was still on her desk. She hadn’t called the reporter yet. Perhaps she would tomorrow.

  The potential of raising more funds for her office was growing more and more appealing. She was exhausted, stressed beyond all reasonable bounds. If her nose kept bleeding like this, she’d be anemic by the end of next week. What Ashley needed was an investigator. At least for Rachel’s case. Doing everything herself was not working.

  As she held the Kleenex to her nose, she grabbed Carley’s card with her free hand. She flipped it over several times, then tucked it into a pocket of her laptop bag. Tomorrow, she thought. I’ll make the call tomorrow.

  9

  Katie

  71 days before trial

  It was Saturday, but Katie didn’t have the day off. There was no 9-5 shift for police officers, especially when the department had only six. Correction, five officers and one detective. Chief Carmichael had yet to replace John Jackie after his arrest and subsequent conviction. The chief claimed that he was waiting for a worthy applicant, but Katie doubted that was the case. It was the newly imposed fiscal constraints courtesy of Forest Parker and his merry band of budget slashers. If the budget cuts continued, Chief Carmichael would have to start laying off employees.

  Katie shook her head, dispelling all thoughts of Forest. She could spend an enjoyable afternoon pondering all the ways she’d like to get even with him, but she had better things to do. She needed to focus on the Smithson investigation. It was almost done, just a few tiny issues to shore up. Three to be exact. The cop, the school counselor, and Rachel’s father. Katie would start with Isaac Smithson. He was closest to Rachel and the victim. Father and grandfather, respectively. He’d been evasive during his interview, and she was determined to figure out why. She would not let Ashley surprise them at trial.

  Katie sat at her desk in what passed as her office at the police station. It was one of five cubicles, all small and lined up in a row. Each contained three flimsy walls, no windows or doors. Just a missing final wall, which meant that anyone who walked by could clearly see her computer screen. It wasn’t usually all that annoying, except those occasions when King George decided to leave the confines of his solid-walled office to mingle with the commoners.

  “Facebook? You women are such social creatures,” he had said one time, feigning shock.

  She had been on Facebook, but not to socialize. She’d heard her victim in a case was recanting and she wanted to see if there were any public statements about it. She hadn’t told George that, though, because it was really none of his business. If Chief Carmichael had a problem with how she spent her time—which he didn’t—then he was perfectly capable of discussing it with Katie.

  “Online shopping, eh? Girls will be girls,” was another of George’s gems.

  She hadn’t been shopping. She was checking the value of a stolen set of drill bits to determine the degree of theft appropriate for a charging document.

  “MapQuest, huh? I didn’t even know that existed anymore. Directionally challenged, are we?”

  No. She was not directionally challenged. She was researching the mileage in a motor vehicle theft case. The car had been driven from Brine to Des Moines, where it was discovered. Lost gas was part of restitution for the victim.

  She blinked hard, forcing thoughts of George from her mind. She had to focus on the task at hand. The men in her life were frustrating, to say the least, but there was another man who needed her attention. Isaac Smithson, Katie thought, shaking her computer mouse. The screen popped to life. The desktop image was a picture of Katie, Tom, and Ashley apple picking at the nearby orchard.

  She smiled. Tom and Ashley had become Katie’s only true friends. She’d known them since before they were a couple, but Katie always thought they belonged together. She hoped they could work through their argument. Katie hadn’t thought much of what a breakup would do to the three of them. It would force her to choose. Naturally, she’d pick Ashley, but it wouldn’t be an easy choice. She hoped that Ashley had called Tom like she had suggested. Maybe they had been able to patch things up.


  She pulled up her browser and started with a simple search of the father’s name. Nothing came up. No social media accounts. No news articles. Apparently, Mr. Smithson had lived a very unremarkable life. That, or he had chosen to stay off the radar. Which wasn’t a crime by any stretch of the imagination, but it was abnormal. Even if Mr. Smithson was not a social person, she had expected him to have a LinkedIn account for business connections. Although, she really had no clue what Mr. Smithson did for work.

  That was a dead end. Katie then tried searching his wife’s name. The screen populated with multiple articles, mostly from Des Moines society pages. Katie clicked on the first one. An article about the construction of a meat packing plant just outside Brine. That plant had to be twenty years old now. It was owned and operated by the Arkman family. A photo of the family accompanied the article. It showed two parents and four smiling children, one of whom was Lyndsay Smithson.

  Lyndsay Smithson is Lyndsay Arkman, Katie thought.

  The family was well known throughout Iowa. Katie’s family had once been in the Arkmans’ social circle. Back before Katie’s dad embezzled millions of dollars and went to prison. The Arkmans had disowned one of their daughters because she had eloped, marrying someone they considered far beneath her. It was a big deal at the time. Katie remembered overhearing her father telling Mr. Arkman that he should yank the girl’s trust fund.

  Katie had thought that was a little harsh, but it didn’t matter. Mr. Arkman had apparently already tried and couldn’t do it. His daughter had waited until she was over the age of twenty-one, when she gained control of the trust. There was nothing he could do.

  That explains where the Smithsons’ money comes from, Katie thought. A trust fund.

  Katie searched the public records to find the marriage certificate for Lyndsay Arkman and Isaac Smithson. Wedding date September eleventh. An unfortunate date. But that wasn’t the only thing that caught Katie’s attention. It was the year. Exactly eighteen years earlier. A month before Rachel Smithson’s birth. Katie easily remembered Rachel’s birthday. It was seared into her memory because Rachel was barely eighteen when she killed her baby, which allowed Katie to charge her as an adult and completely bypass any potential juvenile court involvement.

  But why marry a month before Rachel’s birth? The obvious reason was to legitimize the baby, but Katie doubted that was the case. Lyndsay had given up her entire family and her place in society so she could marry Isaac. There was no reason to legitimize the birth at that point. Nobody to appease unless it was Isaac’s family.

  That left one other less obvious potential. Besides true love, of course. Judging by Isaac’s treatment of Lyndsay, Katie seriously doubted their union had anything to do with love. It was a bit of a stretch, this idea of Katie’s. A possibility that stuck in the back of her mind all the same. A hunch that required her to take a trip to the county recorder’s office and look at Rachel’s birth certificate.

  Unfortunately, it was Saturday. The county recorder wouldn’t be open until Monday. Katie stood and stretched, lifting her arms above her head and arching her back. It felt so good that she issued a groan of satisfaction. A throat cleared behind her. It wasn’t loud, but the silence of the small police station amplified the sound.

  Katie whirled, her heart racing. “Oh,” she said in surprise.

  It was only a sheriff’s deputy, fresh-faced and young in his brown uniform with a gold star placed just above the heart. “Umm,” he said, grinding the toe of his heavy black boot into the carpet. “I didn’t mean to scare you, but I have something.”

  “For me?” Katie asked, placing a hand on her chest.

  He took a step toward her and held out a document. “Yes, ma’am.”

  Katie accepted it and reviewed its contents. A subpoena duces tecum. Commanding Katie’s presence for a deposition at nine on Monday morning. The signed attorney line said Ashley Montgomery.

  So, this was what Ashley meant.

  “Thank you,” Katie said to the deputy before turning and grabbing her phone.

  Seriously, Ashley? she typed. A subpoena duces tecum? You have a copy of Rachel’s interview. I gave it to the county attorney weeks ago.

  A subpoena duces tecum demanded her presence as well as the production of evidence. In this case, the evidence was the video recording of Rachel Smithson’s interview. George had been the point person for the questioning, as always when it came to His Highness, but Katie had been present the entire time. She’d turned the camera on before the interview started, but that was all. That recording was the video Ashley wanted.

  No, I don’t, Ashley said. Chuckie hasn’t handed it over yet.

  Katie had to snicker at the nickname for the prosecutor. Charles Hanson did not tolerate nicknames. He made that abundantly clear during his first week on the job when Ashley had called him Chuck. He freaked out, demanding that she use his “full Christian name,” insisting that he would not respond to Charlie or Chuck, and certainly not Chuckie.

  Well, Katie typed to Ashley. I gave Charles my only copy.

  It was all fine and well for Ashley to push the prosecutor’s buttons, but Katie had to work with Charles rather than against him. With budget cuts, she wasn’t in a position to start burning bridges lest she find her name first on the chopping block when the inevitable downsizes came to fruition.

  Then get a copy from him.

  “Damn it,” Katie said aloud. It was the weekend. Charles wouldn’t be back at the office until Monday.

  Friend or not, Ashley wasn’t going to let her off the hook. She’d have to waste her time tracking the video down. Charles should have given it to her by now, but Ashley also didn’t have to use a subpoena duces tecum. Both attorneys were playing games, and Katie was caught in the middle of their shenanigans. She tossed her phone aside and headed down the hall, looking for George. She found him in his office.

  George was leaning back in his chair, hands behind his head and feet propped up on his desk. His eyes were closed, and she could see his chest rising and falling in the easy, rhythmic fashion of someone in deep sleep.

  “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Katie grumbled before banging her knuckles against the open door.

  “What, what?” George said, jumping up. “Where’s the fire?”

  “Whoa there, sleeping beauty,” Katie said, striding into his office. It was something he would say to her. It was nice to twist his words and use them against him.

  “I wasn’t sleeping.”

  “And I’m a millionaire.”

  “In that case,” George said, settling back into his seat, “I need to borrow some money, but I don’t plan to return it.”

  “That’s not borrowing, then. It’s a gift. And I think there’s a tax for that.”

  “You should know,” George said.

  It was a reference to Katie’s past. Back when her parents, and Katie by extension, had millions of dollars. Back when they had been friends, George was one of the few Katie had entrusted with that knowledge. Now she wondered if he would someday use her father’s incarceration against her. Or perhaps he already had.

  Katie blinked several times, reining in her temper, then handed George the subpoena. “Did you get one of these?”

  “Nope.”

  “Well, then, here’s your heads-up. Ashley is going to depose you.”

  There was no way that Ashley would stop with Katie’s deposition alone. Usually, she would depose all officers on the same day so that later deponents wouldn’t have a chance to discuss her questions with those who testified first.

  “I’m not surprised,” George said. “She always deposes everyone in serious cases like Rachel’s. Have you seen this?”

  George held up a copy of that morning’s Brine Daily News. Katie recognized the photo above the fold. A portrait-style picture of Forest Parker, smiling, smug and proud. His teeth were so white they practically sparkled, and his wavy hair was just unruly enough to be considered rugged yet professional. He was handsome, Ka
tie couldn’t deny that, but he was a jerk. A characteristic that leeched all the attractiveness straight out of him.

  “Yeah. What of it?”

  The article was about Forest’s recent attempts to cut the police department’s budget, yet again. Normally, the general public would ignore him, but the arrest of a former Brine police officer had drummed up plenty of support for Forest’s cause. It wasn’t fair, but it also wasn’t surprising.

  George snapped the paper and huffed a sigh. “He won’t rest until we are all out of a job.”

  “I’m not sure what we can do about it.”

  “Stop him,” George said, leaning forward. He stared at Katie with an oddly intense gaze, saying nothing for a long moment.

  At first, she didn’t understand what he meant. Then it clicked. “Me? You expect me to do something about it?” She shook her head. “There’s no way I’m getting through to him. He hates me.”

  “Maybe,” George said with a chuckle, “but he wants to hate-fuck you.”

  “What?” Katie said, shocked. It was a ridiculous suggestion, one that George, as a coworker, should not have voiced. It was borderline sexual harassment. “He does not.”

  “Take him out, get him drunk. Take some pictures of him drooling or something.”

  “No,” Katie said emphatically. George was suggesting that she blackmail Forest. Blackmail was part of the reason that John Jackie ended up in prison. She would not take that route, no matter what the stakes. “I’ll talk to him, but that’s it.”

  Tension had been brewing between Katie and George for nearly a year, but she’d never been quite so furious with him as she was in that moment. His suggestion—that she should essentially commit a crime to save his job—was completely out of line. She wanted to punch him in the face, and he didn’t even notice. It was like his promotion had come with a pair of rose-colored glasses that he’d chosen to put on and never take off.