One (Count to Ten Book 1)

by Jane Blythe

  “Not so far as I know.” Lachlan was quickly becoming even more disinterested in tolerating them.

  “Where were you last night around midnight?” Xavier demanded.

  Exploding, “I don’t have to answer that,” Lachlan roared. “It’s time for you to leave.”

  Following him to the front door, “Your daughter’s going to need all the support she can to get through this.” Kate had to force the words out, not sure how much help this angry, bitter, potentially dangerous man would be to his traumatized daughter. But it seemed as though Nicole still loved her father or she wouldn’t continue to spend time with him knowing how much he hated her husband.

  “If she admits she was wrong to leave home and marry that man and apologizes, then she can come back,” Lachlan announced before slamming the door in their faces.

  “You think he’s involved?” she asked Xavier as they climbed back into the car.

  “I wouldn’t put it past him,” Xavier started the engine. “He didn’t shed a single tear over his dead family or show an ounce of sympathy for his daughter. I don’t like him. It’s possible that he could have killed the Englewoods as a diversion, make us think it was a serial killer and give him cover to get rid of the son-in-law he hates so his daughter had no choice but to come home.”

  Kate was as yet undecided about whether or not Lachlan Thompson was involved but she definitely disliked the man as much as her partner.

  “How about we grab some lunch,” she suggested as her stomach growled loudly, “and then go get some answers from Nicole Jenner.”

  * * * * *

  3:16 P.M.

  “You think she’ll talk about him?” Xavier asked Kate as they strode through the hospital towards Nicole Jenner’s room.

  “About her father?” Kate asked.

  “Uh huh.”

  “I guess it depends on how much she loves him versus how obligated she feels towards him.”

  Xavier was tired, too many days with too little sleep, but he was glad that Kate hadn’t peppered him with more questions about Annabelle during lunch. He was thinking about Annabelle enough on his own without having his partner constantly bringing her up. Knowing that she was just rooms away was making his heart thump faster than he’d have liked.

  On their way to the hospital, they’d had Lachlan Thompson checked out and it turned out that the guy had quite a temper. He’d had arguments with colleagues that had gotten physical, a few fights at the local bar, and there was an incident several years ago with a sales assistant at a golf store. Xavier wasn’t positive that Lachlan was the killer, but he also wasn’t positive that he wasn’t.

  “We’re here,” Kate announced, coming to a stop outside room 216.

  Sensing something in his partner’s voice, he stopped, too. “You thinking about her relationship with her dad?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What’s wrong?” he asked immediately after catching the slight tremble in Kate’s lip.

  “I was just thinking how lucky I was to have such a great father,” she smiled up at him.

  He squeezed her arm, “Is anything else bothering you?”

  “It’s just sad that so many kids don’t have a great dad or mom. I wonder if Nicole Jenner’s life would have turned out differently if her mom hadn’t died,” Kate explained.

  He nodded his agreement, but it did no good to speculate, this was the hand life had dealt Nicole Jenner and one way or another she had to deal with it. Remaining unconvinced, though, that it was all his partner had on her mind, he let it go for now and pushed open the door.

  A quick flash of Annabelle lying in her hospital room the first time they’d talk to her flashed into his head. He remembered the hate and anger he’d been barely able to control as he’d looked at the woman he’d believed had just slaughtered her entire family.

  Focusing his mind on the present, Xavier quietly assessed the woman in the bed. Thirty-four years old, a little chubby, obviously her personal appearance was not too important to Nicole. Still, she was pretty, with big brown eyes and long dark hair. She had milky white skin and little crinkles around her eyes that implied she spent a lot of time smiling.

  “Mrs. Jenner?” he spoke softly as he approached, not wanting to startle the woman.

  A pair of red-rimmed brown eyes turned to look at him. “Yes?”

  “I'm Detective Montague and this is Detective Hannah. We need to ask you a couple of questions about what happened; do you think you're up for that?”

  “I guess,” Nicole answered uncertainly, her gaze wandering back to the window.

  “Did you get a look at the man who hurt you?” Kate asked, taking a seat beside the bed.

  Shaking her head, sending tears spilling down her cheeks. “Not really.”

  “Not really?” he repeated, taking a seat beside Kate. “So you saw something?”

  “I’m not sure,” Nicole hesitated, her hands moving subconsciously to her eyes.

  “Did you see something before he put the tape on your eyes?” Xavier asked gently.

  “No, I woke up when he put the tape over my eyes.”

  Nicole began to tremble and before he realized what he was doing, he had reached out and taken her hand. “But you saw something?” he pressed.

  Bobbing her head. “When I woke up and realized someone was in the room, I started lashing out, trying to fight them off…” Her voice hitched but Nicole focused her eyes on a spot on the ceiling and continued. “He put a knife against my neck and I went still. I thought if I kept still he might not kill me but…” She began to lose control again, “…but I could feel something wet and sticky in the bed, I knew it was Henry’s blood…”

  They let her cry for a moment before Kate rested a hand on the woman’s shoulder. “What happened next, Nicole?”

  Speaking through her tears, Nicole continued, “He stabbed me, I cried out and he put tape over my mouth. Then it felt like…like he was painting something on my feet.” Her eyes met theirs. “Was it my husband’s blood? Did he paint my husband’s blood on my feet?”

  “Yes, he did,” Xavier told her truthfully.

  She processed that. “Why would he do that?”

  “We don’t know,” Kate told her. “But he’s done this before and he’s probably going to do it again, so anything you can tell us might help us catch him.”

  That seemed to give Nicole a purpose, so she steeled herself and resumed, “He hung around for a while. I could hear him; he was breathing really heavily and I kept wondering if he was going to…if he was going to… going to…rape me,” her resolve fumbled, trying to hold on to a semblance of composure. “But he didn’t. I think that he covered himself in the blood and then danced around.”

  “Why do you say that?” Xavier asked, trying to block out any thoughts of rape that seeped into his brain. Ever since Julia had been raped and their life together had fallen apart, he had been particularly sensitive to the vicious crime. The thought that Annabelle might have been raped too left him feeling like someone had dumped a bucket of burning coals in his stomach.

  “I could feel the bed dipping as he leaned all over it, then I could hear him jumping about, our floorboards creaking. Then I heard him open the curtains before coming toward me, I lay really still, tried to breathe evenly through the pain so he thought I was unconscious. He pulled off the tape, and as he was leaving I peeked…”

  “Did you get a look at him?” Xavier hardly dared to breathe as he waited for her answer.

  “I couldn’t see him well, he was covered in blood, but he was tall and really muscled,” Nicole finished tiredly, her energy beginning to fail. “When he left the room, I was so scared that he was still in the house that I didn’t get up to check on the kids.”

  That description could fit her father. “Have you noticed anyone hanging around your house the last few weeks?” Xavier asked.

  “No.”

  “Any letters, emails, phone calls in which you felt threatened, or that seemed in any way unusual?�
��

  “No.”

  Remembering what Ricky Preston claimed to have seen outside the Englewood house, he asked, “What about a red car parked outside your house?”

  “No. Why? Do you think that he was watching our house?”

  “Someone reported seeing a red car outside the Englewood home a couple of days before they were killed,” he explained. “Do you know anyone named Englewood?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “John Englewood was an electrician; have you had any work done recently?”

  “No.”

  “Kathy Englewood was a bank teller; do you remember anyone with that name at the bank you usually use?”

  “No.”

  “Any teachers at your children’s school with the name Annabelle Englewood?”

  “No,” Nicole's voice hitched this time at the mention of the son and daughter she had just lost.

  “Okay,” Kate soothed, “have you received any threats from friends or colleagues or neighbors?”

  “No.”

  “What about family?” Kate asked carefully.

  Nicole Jenner's eyes grew guarded. “You mean my father? You talked to him?”

  “He wasn’t very upset about the deaths of his grandchildren,” Xavier replied.

  “He hasn’t been to see me yet,” Nicole’s bottom lip wobbled and she took on a child-like vulnerability.

  “Your father told us your mom died when you were little,” Kate pressed on.

  “I was four.”

  “That must have been tough.”

  Nicole nodded. “I hardly remember her now; I was so young.”

  “So it was just you and your dad when you were growing up?”

  “Yes,” she gulped, obviously anticipating where this topic of conversation was veering.

  “Did your father ever hurt you, Nicole?”

  “He was lonely,” she whispered. “I was all he had.”

  Xavier took that as an affirmative. “Did he hit you?” he asked gently. “Did he make you do things you didn’t want to do?”

  Her eyes grew shuttered, not wanting to deal with childhood trauma on top of everything else.

  “Has your father ever threatened you, Nicole?” he continued.

  “He said if I didn’t leave Henry and the kids that he would cut me out of his will,” she wavered. “He got a huge settlement when my mom died while undergoing surgery, he never spent most of it,” Nicole explained. “He’s dying of cancer, he wanted me to move back and stay with him until he died.”

  The fact that he was dying jumped Lachlan Thompson up several notches on the suspect scale. If he was dying, he may be motivated to rid Nicole of what he perceived to be the baggage that prevented her from coming home to him, possibly pushing him into taking drastic action. The fact that he was dying also meant he had nothing to lose.

  “My father would never do something like this,” Nicole told them seriously.

  “Is there anything else you can think of?” Kate asked.

  “No, I've told you everything I remember. But I mean it; my dad may not be the nicest person, but he’s not a killer. You believe me, right?”

  Before Xavier could respond, the door swung open, “I think that is enough for today,” Dr. Daniels announced.

  Apparently, the man was Nicole Jenner’s doctor as well as Annabelle’s. “We’ll talk to you later,” Xavier told Nicole, trying to release his hand from Nicole’s grip.

  “Detective Montague?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Are you going to find him? The man who did this?”

  “Yeah, we are,” he assured the woman, wishing he could stop making promises to victims that he knew he couldn’t necessarily keep.

  Satisfied, Nicole released his hand and let her heavy eyes fall closed, and both he and Kate followed Dr. Daniels out the door.

  “How’s Annabelle doing?” Xavier asked once they were back in the corridor.

  “Actually, she’s pretty exhausted. I don’t want you interviewing her today; she needs to rest,” Dr. Daniels challengingly arched an eyebrow.

  Xavier exchanged a glance with Kate, “We can interview more relatives of the Jenners today and speak with Annabelle in the morning,” she proposed.

  He nodded his agreement, “Tell her we’ll be here early in the morning,” he informed the doctor. Once they were out of earshot, he turned to his partner, “Lachlan Thompson is looking pretty good.”

  Kate nodded, “Let’s see if we can get a few more people to corroborate his intense dislike of his son-in-law and maybe we’ll have enough for a warrant to get his fingerprints. We get that and we match them to the ones from the Englewood and Jenner homes and we could have our guy before anyone else gets hurt.”

  “Let’s just hope it goes that smoothly.” Xavier wanted to give some measure of peace to Nicole and Annabelle. And, as much as he hated to admit it, the first thought that had jumped into his mind was that once they found the killer, there would be nothing left standing between him and Annabelle.

  MAY 7th

  7:48 A.M.

  “I’d feel a lot better about things if we could find a link between the Englewoods and the Jenners,” Kate was saying as they once again plodded their way through the hospital.

  “If Lachlan Thompson really did kill the Englewoods to cover getting rid of his daughter’s family, then he had to have crossed paths with them someplace. Hopefully Annabelle can shed some light on the how, when, and where.” Xavier was hoping that Annabelle had calmed down enough to help them.

  “Detectives,” Dr. Daniels suddenly appeared before them, “may I help you?”

  Xavier was beginning to dislike this man who kept popping up at inopportune times and wondered whether the doctor had been standing outside Nicole’s room yesterday listening to their entire conversation.

  “We’re here to see Annabelle,” he informed the doctor.

  “Annabelle’s gone,” Dr. Daniels stated calmly.

  Fear spiked his blood pressure. “What do you mean gone?” Xavier demanded. Had her condition changed and suddenly become more serious than they’d thought and she had died? Or had the killer come back to finish her off? Images of every horrible thing that could have befallen the girl rushed through his mind.

  “I mean, she’s not here,” the doctor rephrased.

  “Do you know what happened to her?” Kate jumped in to ask calmly before he had a chance to grab the doctor by the collar and shake answers out of him.

  “Yes,” Dr. Daniels was studying them with a probing stare. “She left.”

  “Left?” Xavier echoed, overwhelmed by a sense of loss at the prospect he may never see her again. Of course, that was ridiculous on so many levels. As a victim in a case he was working, he would continue to see her until they caught the killer and the case was closed. And even if he never saw her again, that shouldn’t bother him. They didn’t even know each other.

  “Where did she go?” Kate asked.

  “She wanted to go home…” Dr. Daniels began.

  “Her house is a crime scene; she can’t go back there,” Xavier interrupted.

  “I know that,” Dr. Daniels shot him a withering frown. “She went to a motel.”

  Getting the feeling that the doctor was deliberately yanking them around, Xavier asked, “Do you know which motel?”

  “Yes. I called her a cab and lent her some money, and told her to call me when she was settled in case you two came back to speak with her again.” The doctor’s scowl made it clear he thought they were harassing and not just speaking with Annabelle.

  “When did she leave?” Kate queried.

  “Yesterday morning.”

  “Yesterday morning,” Xavier spluttered. “Why didn’t you tell us that when we were here yesterday afternoon?”

  “Because I thought she needed a break,” Dr. Daniels’ face turned a bright shade of red. “You’ve already harassed her twice, both times I needed to sedate her. She’s just lost her entire family, you accused her of bei
ng a killer, then changed your mind, then came back and dumped a truckload of questions on her when she was in no condition to deal with them. She needed a break. I wanted to let her have some time to try to sort things out before you unleashed another tirade on her. I knew she was not a killer from the second they brought her in,” he announced adamantly. “Anyone with such amazing eyes could never take a life.”

  He felt a stab of unexpected jealousy that another man was noticing Annabelle’s unusual eyes. Xavier was really going to have to let go of this crush he was developing on a woman who he didn’t even know and who probably hated his guts.

  “You should have told us this yesterday, Dr. Daniels,” Xavier reprimanded sternly. “She’s a witness in a murder case, not to mention the fact that the man who did this is still out there. What if he were to find her when she was alone and completely unprotected?”

  The doctor’s face paled at the thought. “I didn’t want to put her in danger; I was just trying to protect her.”

  Xavier was pleased that he had managed to upset the doctor. “She’s just been through a major trauma. What if the psychological stress was to get overwhelming and she attempted to hurt herself?” Xavier goaded, even more pleased when the doctor’s face paled further. “Have you got the name of the motel where she’s staying?”

  Sullenly, the doctor answered, “Yes.” He fished a bit of paper from his pocket and thrust it in their direction.

  “Thank you, Dr. Daniels,” Kate smiled. “You take good care of Nicole Jenner.”

  “I will.” The doctor’s face switched immediately to fiercely protective.

  “Have a nice day.” Kate kept her smile in place as the doctor rolled his eyes and hurried off.

  “I don’t like that guy,” Xavier muttered as they backtracked to the car. “He’s creepy.”

  “You think he’s got something to hide?” Kate asked.

  “I think he’s way too interested in Annabelle Englewood.”