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

by Laura Snider

  Rachel’s smile disappeared and her mouth dropped open.

  “It means that we have won.”

  Rachel gripped the back of the other blue plastic chair, leaning against it like she might faint.

  “You’re going to walk.”

  A tear slid down Rachel’s cheek as she pulled out the chair and sank into it.

  “You’re free.”

  Rachel was speechless for a long moment, then she shook her head. “No. This isn’t how it was supposed to happen.”

  “I don’t understand…” Kylie had said that Rachel’s reaction might be odd, but Ashley was unprepared for the complete lack of joy.

  Rachel traced little circles on the desk with her fingers, then looked up. “I want to plead guilty.” Her eyes were hard and determined, an expression Ashley had never seen from her client.

  “What?” Ashley leaned back in her chair, as though creating physical distance would give her the space she needed to find a way to change Rachel’s mind.

  “I said I want to plead guilty.” Rachel set her jaw firmly.

  “Why? You’ve won.”

  “I can still plead guilty, can’t I?”

  “Umm, yes,” Ashley said, shaking her head. “But I don’t know why you would. We are talking about life in prison here.”

  “That’s what I want. Life in prison.” There was no hesitation. “Thank you for your assistance. I truly appreciate it. But I don’t want what you want. It is safe in here, in jail. It will be safe in prison, too.”

  “Safe from whom?”

  “Isaac.”

  Ashley sucked in a long breath. She should have expected this. She had read the calls to service. It was clear that Isaac had been physically abusing his daughter for more than ten years. And hadn’t Kylie tried to warn her? But she’d been too excited, too arrogant.

  “I know Isaac has hurt you, Rachel, but we can keep you safe. There are options out there.”

  “Were you able to keep yourself safe?”

  “I don’t know what you…”

  Rachel cut Ashley off. “Your poisoning. I don’t know who the cops think did it, but it was poison in homemade chocolates, right?”

  “Yes. But I still don’t see what that has to do with you.”

  “My mom makes the homemade chocolates. Isaac adds the last ingredient. Rat poison.”

  Ashley shook her head, unable to fully process the information.

  “That’s one of the ways that he punishes me.”

  “What? Did he do that to you while you were pregnant?”

  A tear slid down Rachel’s cheek. She made no move to brush it away. “I tried to be good during the pregnancy. Not that I wanted to have a baby that was half him, but I thought that maybe he would turn out like me instead.”

  It was Ashley’s turn to sit down. “But Isaac is your dad.”

  Rachel shook her head. “Not biological.”

  “So he raped you.”

  Rachel nodded. It was a gesture of resignation. Like her past was something she’d been unsuccessfully attempting to block from her memory.

  “More than once?”

  Tears threaded their way down Rachel’s cheeks, leaving sparkling track marks in their wake. “Yeah. He wanted a son. He said he always wanted a boy, and my ‘bitch’ mom wouldn’t give him one.”

  Isaac had raped his daughter. He knew she wasn’t biological, so he also knew the baby would be healthy. Rachel was a victim. A very unexpected victim. Vilified by the world, but they were wrong. The poor girl had been abused her entire life.

  “I don’t understand,” Ashley said. “How did the baby die?”

  “He left me alone until the end. I thought I was safe since he seemed to want the baby so badly. I don’t remember what he thought I’d done wrong, but apparently, I had done something to piss him off. That’s when he did it. He had snuck some rat poison into my dinner. I knew he’d done it the moment I finished eating. The way he was looking at me and smiling in that cold, horrible way.”

  “Did the baby…” Ashley’s voice trailed off.

  “I got pretty sick that time. I think he gave me more than he had meant to. That, or my tolerance for the poison was low since it had been so long since the last time he had punished me.”

  The thought broke Ashley’s heart. It meant that this poor girl had been poisoned so often that she’d developed an immunity to it.

  “I missed a couple days of school. But when I went back, I left early and went to see a doctor. I was barely eighteen by then, so I could go without my parents knowing. They couldn’t find a heartbeat. Labor started a couple hours later. It wasn’t all that painful at first, so I came up with a plan. I’d have the baby, leave it in the hotel room for someone to find. Then I’d tell the cops that I had smothered him. They wouldn’t know the difference so long as they thought he was born alive.”

  “Why?” Ashley said. She was stunned, but she had to admit it was a genius plan if Rachel did, in fact, want to spend life in prison. The doctor, bound by privacy laws, wasn’t able to provide information to the State that the baby had died before birth. “Why would you do that?”

  “You know why,” Rachel said, her eyes flashing with anger. “He got to you, too. And he’s getting away with it, isn’t he? I doubt he’s even on anyone’s radar as a potential suspect. Someone will go down for your poisoning, but he’s made sure it won’t be him.” She paused, pursing her lips. “Don’t you see? You’re not even safe from him. The only place that I’m safe is in here. That’s why I want to plead guilty.”

  Ashley sighed deeply. Rachel had lived one fucked-up life. Ashley could have asked Rachel why she hadn’t gone to the authorities—why she didn’t report the abuse years earlier—but she didn’t need to. There were years of calls to service that explained why Rachel didn’t trust law enforcement or any other adult. They came, then they left. They never helped.

  The revelation explained why Rachel had blossomed in custody. It was the only time in her entire life that she had been free. It wasn’t true freedom, but it was something far better than what she had on the outside. But still, Ashley loathed the idea of letting an innocent person plead guilty. The thought made her stomach twist. Then, she had an idea.

  “Rachel,” Ashley said.

  Rachel clenched her jaw, preparing for an argument.

  “Just hear me out, okay?” Ashley spoke cautiously. She kept her voice low, soothing, a tone that one might use with a spooked horse.

  “Okay.”

  “What if Isaac is arrested?”

  “What for?”

  Rachel was growing suspicious. Ashley couldn’t blame her. All the adults in her life had lied to her, raped her, and abused her.

  “Well, there are two potential possibilities. One, for attempting to murder me, and the second is for nonconsensual termination of human pregnancy.”

  Rachel was silent for a long moment.

  “The termination of pregnancy is a ten-year sentence and attempted murder is a twenty-five-year sentence. If we can get the State to add a sexual assault charge or two, he’s looking at the rest of his natural life trapped inside the walls of a prison.”

  Rachel chewed on her lip, then she nodded. “Okay. I’ll give you a week. But if they don’t charge him, then I want to plead guilty.”

  “Can I have two weeks instead?”

  “No. I don’t want them to dismiss my charges before I can plead.”

  “Fair enough.” Ashley knew it was a long shot, but she had to try. She stuck her hand out and Rachel shook it. “We have a deal. If Isaac isn’t in jail in the next seven days, you can plead guilty.”

  Rachel nodded, the smile reappearing on her face. “Deal.”

  Ashley left the meeting with a heavy heart. While she didn’t understand Rachel’s position, she could sympathize with it. But Ashley was a defense attorney. Her goal was to get her clients released. Here she was on the precipice of a monumental win against the State and her client wanted to plead guilty. The two though
ts—winning at all costs and duty to her client—which had always been in sync, were now at war.

  Yet there was a way out. Isaac Smithson’s arrest. Only one person could help Ashley with that. Someone who had an in with the Waukee Police Department, where the bulk of the crimes occurred. It was her old pal Katie Mickey.

  30

  Katie

  41 days before trial

  Katie’s interview with Chief Canterbury had gone well. Or at least she thought it had gone well. But that was yesterday, and she hadn’t heard anything since then. It felt like an ominous sign. Wouldn’t they have called her by now if they were going to offer her the position?

  She’d spent the afternoon pacing across her living room, then pausing at the coffee table to glance at her phone, willing it to ring. But it hadn’t. And she’d ended the night with a heavy feeling of dejection hovering over her.

  By nine o’clock Tuesday morning, she’d all but given up. Then her phone began to buzz. She dashed across the room and picked it up.

  “Hello?”

  “Hey.” It was Ashley. She sounded tired.

  “Oh, hey.”

  “You sound like your day is going about as well as mine is.”

  “Why? What’s going on?”

  Ashley issued a heavy sigh. “I need your help.”

  “Okay. What’s going on?” Katie didn’t hesitate. She’d do anything for Ashley. Especially since they were no longer working on opposite sides of the law.

  “It’s Rachel Smithson.”

  Then Ashley launched into a story about Isaac and Rachel Smithson and poison that was too fanciful to be untrue. Ashley’s words tore at Katie in a way that no other case had aside from Ashley’s wrongful arrest and near murder last year. Once again, law enforcement had gotten it all wrong. Rachel hadn’t killed her baby, Isaac did. A dark sense of panic swelled within Katie’s stomach, but it only grew worse the longer Ashley spoke.

  “What do we do?” Katie said once Ashley finished talking. “We can’t let Rachel throw her life away like that.”

  “We have a week, but aside from that, I’m out of ideas. That’s why I’m calling you.”

  Katie thought for a long moment. “How quickly can you be at my place?” She lived in a small duplex at the outskirts of the Brine city limit. Ashley’s office was nearby.

  “I’ve got a hearing at ten o’clock, but I should be able to make it there by eleven. Why?”

  “That should be fine. I’ve got to try to get one other person here anyway.”

  Ashley groaned. “Not that douchebag from Waukee.”

  “If you’re talking about Josh, then yes. He is the lead in the Waukee investigation into your poisoning and it’s important that he be present for what we are going to do.”

  “What are we going to do?”

  “You’ll see. Be here at eleven.”

  Katie hung up and immediately dialed Josh’s number.

  “Long time, no see,” Josh said as a form of greeting. “Did you change your mind about my offer?”

  When she saw him after her interview, he had asked her to meet him for a dinner date. She’d refused on the premise that they would soon be coworkers. Interoffice relationships were rarely seen in a positive light.

  “No. But I need you to come to Brine.”

  “Sure thing, sweetheart. When?”

  “Now.”

  Ashley and Josh pulled up to Katie’s duplex within minutes of one another. Katie met them out front, jittery with excitement. She’d felt so useless over the weekend, knowing she wouldn’t have a job to go to on Monday. Now, she had something to work on. A problem to solve.

  “Come in, come in,” Katie said as they both got out of their cars, eyeing one another suspiciously.

  Katie motioned them to the front seating area. “Have a seat and make yourselves comfortable.”

  “What’s going on?” Ashley said, choosing the old La-Z-Boy recliner that Katie had bought a few years ago at a local estate sale.

  Josh sat on the sofa, as far away from Ashley as he could get, and Katie sat between them.

  “First,” Katie said, nodding at Ashley. “I want you to tell Josh what you found out yesterday.”

  “About Rachel?”

  Josh winced.

  “What?” Ashley said, frowning deeply. “You’re that offended by the mention of Rachel’s name. The law says she’s innocent until proven guilty. You should know that. Cops…” She shook her head and crossed her arms.

  “Actually,” Josh said, “it’s quite the opposite. I know at least some of what Rachel’s been through. I feel sorry for her.”

  “Oh,” Ashley said, but she didn’t apologize.

  “Can we cool the police officer-defense attorney hate dance and skip to the important details?” Katie asked. Because, really, it was a ridiculous waste of time. She hadn’t brought them together so they could argue.

  Ashley launched into the story about her meeting with Rachel, telling Josh about Isaac poisoning Rachel for punishment, that he was the father of Rachel’s baby, and that he had killed the baby by “punishing” her in her last month of pregnancy. By the time Ashley was finished telling the story, Josh’s face was red with rage.

  “I knew it,” he said, shaking his head. “I knew he was doing something to her. That bastard.”

  “Whoa, Officer,” Ashley said, putting her hands over her ears. “My virgin ears.”

  Katie gave Ashley a hard look, then turned to Josh. “Don’t mind her. She swears like a sailor.”

  “I’m just fucking with you.” Ashley turned her attention to Katie. “Why are we here?”

  “We need to get a recorded interview of Rachel telling her story,” Josh said. “That’s why I’m here, isn’t it?”

  “Nope.” Ashley gave her head an emphatic shake. “She won’t do it. We have to prove her innocence without her. She wants to get away from him, and her last-ditch effort is prison. She won’t let us take that option off the table until Isaac is in jail.”

  “Then what are we doing?”

  Both Ashley and Josh looked at Katie.

  “Tom.”

  Ashley’s mouth dropped open, and her eyes filled with hurt. “What about Tom?”

  In that moment, Katie’s phone started buzzing. She glanced at the caller ID. “Right on time,” she said before pressing the green phone icon. “Hey, Tom.”

  Ashley gasped. Katie shook her head and mouthed, just wait, before pressing the speakerphone button and placing her phone in the middle of the coffee table.

  “Katie,” Tom said, his voice barely above a whisper. “I’m going to put my phone in my pocket and try to get Harper to confess. Are you somewhere that you can listen?”

  “Confess?” Ashley hissed. “To what?”

  Katie leaned toward Josh. “Turn on your body camera. We need to record this audio.”

  Josh nodded and pressed a button near his chest pocket.

  To Ashley, Katie whispered, “Tom thinks Harper had something to do with your poisoning.”

  Ashley crossed her arms and harumphed in a way that indicated Harper’s involvement had been clear to her from the beginning.

  “Okay,” Katie said. “We’re ready on this end. Go ahead.”

  There was a rustling noise followed by the voices of Tom and Harper, muffled but audible. Katie, Josh, and Ashley all leaned forward to listen.

  “Harper, I need to talk to you.” Tom sounded hesitant, but his voice was clear.

  “Then talk.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me about your connection to Ashley?”

  Katie glanced at Ashley to see if she would react, but her face was stone.

  “I don’t have a connection to Ashley. I lived with her for like six months when I was a kid. I’m new to the whole roommate thing, but I didn’t realize you needed to know everything about me. Would you like to know the names of all my sexual partners and my favorite positions, too?”

  “No.” Tom’s voice rose. “You know what I meant. Stop t
wisting my words. You knew Ashley was my girlfriend and you chose to live with me to get back at her.”

  “Yeah. That’s probably true. You should have seen her face when she came to the door. Hilarious.”

  “But that’s not all you’ve done to get back at her, is it?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.” Harper’s voice dripped with sarcasm.

  “Katie showed me the notes sent with the poisoned candies. They are notes that I wrote you. One was from when I left dirty dishes in the sink and you flipped out.”

  “Yeah, well, that was gross.”

  “And the other note was one I left you after I forgot to wash some facial hair down the sink.”

  “It’s so easy to turn the water on. That’s all you had to do.”

  “I understand. That’s why I apologized. What I don’t know is how those letters that I wrote you got into packages sent to Ashley.”

  A short pause.

  “Don’t shrug. You know.”

  “Listen, Tom. You’re right. I don’t like Ashley. I did want to get back at her. I had planned to fuck with her by using you, but then this dude showed up one day. He had been following me around and I called the creeper out. Because, seriously, sneaking around behind a girl like that is weird. Anyway, he asked me if I was friends with Ashley. I laughed in his face. Then he asked if I had anything that he could use to mess with her. The only thing I could think of were your letters. I’d been holding on to them. I was planning on using them myself to screw with the bitch, but I realized that this little weirdo was willing to do it for me. So I gave him the letters and that was that.”

  “Weirdo? Who?”

  “He said his name was Thomas, but that was a lie. He must think I’m an idiot. His face is everywhere. On every news cycle talking about that girl of his who killed her baby, Rachel…” Harper snapped her fingers like she was trying to remember.

  “Smithson?”

  “That’s her.”

  “What did Isaac Smithson do with my letters?”

  “Don’t know, don’t care. Like I said, that was the end of my involvement.”

  The conversation deteriorated after that. Katie had never heard Tom lose his temper, but there was a first time for everything. Harper and Tom shouted at one another for a good ten minutes, but Harper didn’t admit to any further involvement in Ashley’s poisoning. So Katie ended the call. Harper had behaved childishly, but she hadn’t violated any laws.