NO OTHER WAY (Harry Hunter Mystery Book 3)

by Willow Rose

  Nick exhaled. His eyes were filling.

  “Did your dad tell you to lick the toilet seat? Did he lock you in the bathroom, and have you drink out of the bowl? Did he tell you to cut yourself with razor blades? Did he, Nick? Nick? Darn it, Nick, talk to me.”

  Nick shook his head. “I…I don’t know. I don’t remember…”

  “But the DCF suspected it. In your file, they said you told them those things. When you were four years old, you said these things were done to you. Were they right? Was it your father? Was that why you pulled that gun on him? Did he torture you and your mother and then kill her, did he? Nick?”

  “YES!” he yelled, then bent forward like he was in pain, talking through a curtain of tears. “Yes, he did all of those things! I knew no one would ever believe me like they didn’t believe me back then. That’s why I shot him. There was no other way for him to be punished for what he had done.”

  “How did you know, Nick? How did you find out he killed your mother?” I asked, my heart pounding in my chest. Finally, I was getting somewhere in this case. It wasn’t pleasant what was being revealed, but it had to see the light of day. “How did you realize it?”

  Nick leaned forward like he was telling me a secret, and no one else could hear. But it was just us there, and the guard, who didn’t seem to care even a little bit.

  “I’ve always known but never dared to say anything. I suggest you ask his new wife.”

  Chapter 25

  “Are you Detective Hunter?”

  I had just walked out the front door of the building housing our police department on my way to my bike. It was late in the afternoon now, and I was running late for Camille’s treatment. I almost rushed past him without seeing him. But as he addressed me, I recognized him right away. When someone gets shot in front of you, you tend to remember their face forever. Same goes when they’re the main suspect of your investigation.

  “Mr. Taylor? What are you doing here?”

  He was smaller than I remembered him yet seemed bigger because of how well trained he was underneath his suit. He had a sharp jawline like his son and big bushy eyebrows that I suspected Nick would get one day too.

  He exhaled. His flaring nostrils, along with the vein in his forehead, told me he was agitated. I stayed a few steps away from him. He pointed a finger at me. I didn’t move. His gesture was aggressive, and I didn’t want him to think I was scared of him. I was twice his size.

  He spoke through gritted teeth.

  “It has got to stop.”

  “Excuse me? What has got to stop?”

  He growled angrily. “This. You. Whatever it is you’re doing.”

  “I don’t know. What am I doing?”

  I looked at my watch. I was so late for my appointment with Camille and had put my hope in traffic being light enough for me to make it anyway. Now, we were going to be late if I didn’t break a few traffic regulations on my way home.

  “My son is sick, Detective. Don’t believe anything he says.”

  I wrinkled my forehead. “What do you mean he’s sick?”

  “He’s a pathological liar, Detective. He does this. He’s been doing it all his life. Ever since he was a kid, he’d lie to his teachers and tell them these stories.”

  “So, you’re telling me he’s lying when he tells me he was abused as a child?” I asked bluntly, then waited for his reaction.

  It came pretty fast. His eyes went blank for a second, then fired up in rage. I could tell he was trying to keep himself composed, but failing miserably. Everything inside of him exploded while he bit down, trying to stifle it by clenching his fists. He lifted one up toward me, but it barely reached my face.

  “I…How dare you!”

  “How dare you…sir? Torturing a little child? Murdering your wife?”

  Andrew Taylor stared at me. The fist came down, and he pulled back. It was obvious he was taken aback by my words. That was the point. I wanted him to know that I knew what kind of a person he was and that I was going to expose him.

  “Is that what he told you? And you…you believe him? How? Why? The boy is not well. You must know this. Didn’t you see the videos from his computer and phone? Didn’t you see what kind of a sick monster he is? How he abused those girls and humiliated them? That is the kind of person he is. You saw it with your own eyes. He tried to kill me, Detective. I’m the victim here. He’s sick, just like his mom was too. My son belongs behind bars. I hate to admit it, but that is where he should stay, and I suggest you keep it that way. Don’t you understand? He never liked the fact that I remarried. He hates my wife, and now he’s trying to get back at me this way, trying first to shoot me, then tell anyone stupid enough to listen that his dad is an abuser and a murderer. Don’t tell me you’re actually buying into it? Are you that stupid, Detective?”

  I looked down at the man in front of me in the blue suit and yellow tie. Yes, I wanted to slap him across the face; I wanted to hurt him. For what I believed he had done to his son while growing up, and how he had abused and probably murdered his wife. But this was not the time or place. Justice would come soon enough. And that’s when he’d be taken down.

  I lifted my arm and looked at my watch. “I have somewhere to be. If you’ll excuse me, I don’t have time for this.”

  Andrew Taylor scoffed as I pushed my way past him, hitting my upper arm against his shoulder, pushing him aside.

  “You’re a fool for believing him, Detective; don’t you see? He’s using you!” he yelled after me, but I was no longer listening. I got on my bike, then roared it to life and put my helmet on, ignoring him. As I rode it across the parking lot, I could still hear him yelling, his voice growing smaller and smaller behind me.

  Chapter 26

  We were fifteen minutes late, and Dr. Kendrick wasn’t very pleased with us as we rushed inside, me pushing Camille in the wheelchair even though she didn’t need it that much anymore and walked mostly on her own. She still couldn’t run, at least not yet.

  “I am so sorry,” I said as she gave me that look, arms crossed. “Something came up at work.”

  “You have been late to every afternoon treatment for the past week now,” she said. “That means other patients’ treatments who are scheduled after her will be pushed too.”

  “I know. I am sorry.”

  Dr. Kendrick sent me a compassionate smile. “I know it’s not easy to have to come in twice a day.”

  “I wish we could just do all of it at once,” I said while the assistants helped Camille get in the chamber and closed the lid with a low shush. Camille’s eyes locked with mine as it closed. I knew she didn’t enjoy the claustrophobic feeling right after it was locked, knowing she couldn’t get out, but after a few minutes, she would usually calm down and be able to relax.

  “Why can’t we just do an entire week of treatments at once?”

  Dr. Kendrick nodded. “I get that a lot. But we can’t leave her in there for too long. Wouldn’t be good.”

  “What would happen?”

  Dr. Kendrick pushed a button on the instruments, and the air hissed in the steel cylinder. “Well, we have to do this with oxygen at high atmospheric pressure, so at first, it would damage her ears…possibly burst her eardrums, and we won’t want that to happen. It could also change her vision or collapse her lungs. Oxygen toxicity or poisoning could occur; too much oxygen in the body’s tissues can cause convulsions and other complications. It can damage the central nervous system, and in severe cases, cause death. So, that’s why we’re very cautious. But I am so happy to see the big progress in your wife. It’s truly remarkable. We’d like to write her story for a medical paper after we’re done here. Would she be willing to participate in that?”

  I smiled and glanced at my wife inside the chamber. Her eyes were closed now, and I knew she was resting.

  “Why don’t you ask her yourself?” I said. “She is capable of answering for herself now.”

  It was true. She had been speaking more and more over the past week
or so, and she was able to use entire sentences now. It was like she was finally truly coming back to us…like she was slowly becoming herself again.

  Dr. Kendrick smiled and nodded. “Very well. We’ll do that when we get closer then. Her story is truly remarkable, and we’re trying to get this treatment FDA approved for brain injury, so I am hoping her story can help that process and maybe speed it along so other patients can get it too and maybe even get their insurance to pay for it. So many come here knowing this is a chance for help, but they can’t afford it, and they leave emptyhanded. I hate to see that, knowing I can actually help them. It’s heartbreaking.”

  “I can understand how it must be,” I said, then sat down in my usual chair, pulling up my computer and placed it in my lap. Camille’s treatments had become a time for me to really dig into my work, and I was beginning to enjoy those little moments of quietness in my life. I still thought about the meeting with Nick’s father earlier and shivered when thinking about what the boy had told me at the detention center. I opened the case files and looked through them again, then reached into my briefcase and pulled out the old file on the murder case of Kate Taylor. I had asked to have her autopsy sent over from the ME’s office in Key West and needed to go through it. As I read through it, one line, in particular, grabbed my attention and wouldn’t let go. I kept reading it over and over again, then stared at Camille inside her chamber before returning to it. I flipped a page, then looked at the next one, searching for another detail, then found it. I stared at the words on the page, wondering if I had just discovered the proof that she was, in fact, murdered, and how it was done.

  The problem was that it made absolutely no sense to me.

  Chapter 27

  “And then you look up at me with those big brown eyes of yours, and you say to me, you do realize you have it in your hand, don’t you?”

  Camille burst into laughter, and Josie joined in, laughing wholeheartedly. It was becoming an everyday thing for Josie to ask her mother to tell her stories from back when she was just a young child during dinner. And I had a feeling it was one of Camille’s favorite moments of the day as well. To me, it was more than that. It was everything. Watching them reconnect was my favorite thing in the whole world.

  “I can’t believe you did that, Mommy,” Josie said and ate her noodles. We had brought home Chinese food today. We had been eating a lot of take-out food lately since it was impossible for me to make it to Camille’s treatments and cook dinner as well, so even though it meant we ate a lot of the same food, it was what was possible these days. And it worked fine. Gave us plenty of time to talk till Camille got tired and needed to get back into her bed.

  “It’s true,” I said. “I was there. I’m a witness.”

  Josie gave me an endearing look. She had been so happy lately, and it was a joy to see. Being fourteen wasn’t an easy age, to put it mildly. But ever since her mother got better, there had been less of those meltdowns, and the rolling of eyes and growling had subsided for a little while too. I knew it would be back eventually, of course, it would. Teenagers would be teenagers, and I just enjoyed the way things were right now until it changed back.

  I rose to my feet and grabbed the plates, then walked to the kitchen to wash them off and put them in the dishwasher, while Josie asked her mother for another story.

  “Don’t forget your homework,” I said to her. “Your mom needs to rest soon too, baby.”

  “Please, Dad?” she asked. “Just one more story. I only have math and science. It’s so easy.”

  I chuckled. I didn’t know of any other teenage girls who’d call math and science easy. And she was even in advanced classes in both subjects, yet it still seemed like it was almost too easy for her.

  “All right,” I said and closed the dishwasher. “Just one more story then.”

  “Yay. With pictures. I want to look at pictures too,” she said, then rushed to the shelves in the living room and pulled down a photo album. She hurried back to her mother and opened it, then flipped a couple of pages till she found one she liked and pointed at it.

  “This one. What are we doing here? How old am I?”

  Camille glanced at the picture, then smiled warmly. As it turned out, remembering things from her past was very good for Camille’s rehabilitation as well.

  “That one,” Camille said. “Is from our trip to Key West. You were…four, I think? Right, Harry?”

  I nodded and wiped my hands on a dishtowel, then walked back to look at it over her shoulder. A very young Josie stared back at me from a white sandy beach, wearing goggles, a determined look on her face.

  “You loved watching the fishies in the water down there,” I said. “You could spend hours watching them.”

  “And your dad was fishing,” Camille said. “But you didn’t like that he would catch the fish, and you would always tell him to throw them back.”

  “I wanted to eat them, but you would hear nothing of it,” I said with a light chuckle.

  Camille flipped a page. “Look, there you are, holding a baby hammerhead shark. You caught that with your bare hands in the water.”

  “I think I remember this,” Josie said. “I threw it back out in the water, didn’t I?”

  “You sure did,” I said and looked at my beautiful daughter. This was one of those moments you just wanted to last forever. I was so happy in this very second that I paid very little attention to the screeching tires in the street outside.

  Chapter 28

  The microwave beeped, and Jean got up. She pulled out her dish. It was supposed to be some kind of chicken and mashed potatoes, but she couldn’t really tell which was the chicken and which were the potatoes, and the gravy seemed more greenish than brown. She stared down at the plastic tray and its contents, then decided to toss it in the trash. She made herself a sandwich instead, while glaring at the house next door, wondering what they were doing in there. She wondered what they were having for dinner and whether Josie needed help with her Spanish homework.

  Let it go, Jean.

  Spread out on the table behind her were listings for rentals in Savannah, Georgia. Jean had a sister living up there and thought it was time she moved closer to her. She had seen a couple of job listings searching for a nurse up in the area as well and applied for some of them. They weren’t as exciting as the one she had working the ER in Miami, and they paid less too, but it was what she needed right now. She had to move on.

  It was time.

  Jean sat down and ate the sandwich while reading through the rental listings. There was a nice little townhouse in walking distance from the center of Savannah, close to restaurants. It had a nice porch outside and was built in that old Victorian style she loved so much.

  Jean smiled and took another bite of her sandwich. She imagined herself living there, sitting out on the porch on the swing, or walking to downtown and going out to dinner or even just for a cup of coffee.

  Jean had always been drawn to Savannah and knew that if she didn’t live in Miami, that’s where she’d go. Often when visiting her sister, who lived about half an hour outside of the town, she had taken trips to Savannah and loved just walking the streets there, looking at the pretty old houses with their wrought-iron porches and Spanish moss hanging from the trees. It would be a new start for her, a brand-new life, and it was exactly what she needed.

  Get away from the old.

  Jean walked to the window and looked out at her old street. She had lived there for almost twenty years now. She still liked it there; she had to admit. Yet she had that sense inside of her that she was done with it; she was done with Miami.

  And with Harry Hunter.

  Yes, she was going to miss him and Josie. It was going to be hard for the first couple of months, but it was better than staying here and having her heart broken every time she saw either one of them.

  Anything would be better than here.

  Jean finished her sandwich while looking into the street, thinking about the first time she an
d Harry had met when he and Camille had just moved in. Jean had not been very excited to get new neighbors since she enjoyed her privacy and being in her yard without anyone seeing her. The house had been empty for years, and she liked it that way. She avoided them for the first couple of days after she saw the truck arrive, thinking the last thing she wanted was to get tricked into having to help them carry their stuff.

  But then one day, a young woman, pregnant on the verge of bursting, had knocked on her door, asking if she had a couple of eggs because she was baking. As soon as Jean had opened the door and looked into the woman’s eyes, she knew she couldn’t resent her. As Harry came over later to give her the eggs back, she realized she was going to love those two forever. But mostly him. As Jean stood there thinking about it, she realized she had loved him from the second she stood face to face with him on that porch. She hadn’t wanted to admit it back then because he was married, and she really liked Camille, especially after they began to hang out almost every day, drinking coffee or later having a glass of wine. Jean had kept it to herself that her heart beat just a little faster when he was nearby, or how she’d jump in happiness when hearing his voice.

  You need to get out of here, fast, girl, she thought to herself as she looked into the street, a tear caught in the corner of her eye that she didn’t allow to escape. She grabbed her phone and checked her emails, seeing if there were any responses from the jobs she had applied for or the rentals she had written to. She sighed and thought about her new life instead, trying hard to get excited about it, when she heard the tires screeching. She lifted her eyes and saw the car drive into the road, then rush past Harry’s house, opening fire.