Witness

by Denise Gwen

  Witness

  Denise Gwen

  Contents

  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

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.

  Witness COPYRIGHT©2018 by Denise Barone.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  Contact Information:

  baroneliteraryagency@roadrunner.com

  Cover Art by Amanda Walker PA and Cover Design

  Created with Vellum

  1

  Saturday, April 27, 5:00 a.m.

  When the alarm on the night-stand beeped at five in the morning, the old farmer groaned, rolled over, slammed it off, and wondered if perhaps he shouldn’t have stopped at the eighth beer last night, instead of drinking that one last Yuengling, because now his head throbbed like a mother-fucker.

  His wife Priscilla, sleeping beside him, grunted at the sound of the alarm, rolled over onto her right side, and fell right back to sleep.

  He gazed at the digital numbers on the clock and sighed. Yep, it sure as hell said 5:01 a.m. Time to get a move-on. He heaved himself out from under the toasty warm comforter, regretting, as he tucked the covers up against his wife’s back, that he hadn’t gone to bed earlier, but it was time to get up, and besides all that, if he wanted to catch his load before Ralph Hagland got to the fishing site before he did, then he needed to get his ass up and out of bed.

  He crept out of the bedroom and used the downstairs bathroom to pee, then walked into the mud-room, sat down on the oak bench, and slipped on his oilskin overalls, a pair of wellingtons, and a Carhart jacket. He grabbed his fishing gear, the tackle box, and a pair of gloves and let himself out of the house. He whistled for Beau as he walked to the truck and dropped the fishing supplies into the truck bed.

  “Come on, ole boy,” he said. He opened the front driver’s side door and waited to let Beau jump up and onto the seat, then climbed in after him, shut the door, and turned the ignition.

  He pulled out of the drive, turned left onto Highway 50, drove to the secluded spot on the Licking River, and pulled off the road onto the gravel path leading down to the water. He smiled with satisfaction to see that he was alone. He pulled the truck up under a tree and killed the engine. “Okay, boy, that’s the way,” the man said gruffly as the dog wagged his tail and gazed out through the windshield. The man opened the door and stepped down onto the grass.

  Beau jumped down out of the truck and ran, barking, for the river.

  The man grinned to himself as he walked over to the bed, reached in and grabbed the tackle box and the fishing rod, and ambled down to the shoreline where Beau stood, barking at a rabbit, over on the opposite bank.

  “Okay, boy,” he said, “time to settle down some.”

  Beau barked a few more times, then ran off down the bank a ways, chasing after the rabbit. He’d tire himself out after a bit, then come back and settle down beside him.

  The man leaned on a stump, opened the tackle box, picked out a lure, affixed it to the end of the line, cast the rod into the water, and let his thoughts wander.

  Beau trotted over, panting from his run, and sat back on his haunches.

  The lure bobbed along for a bit, then dipped, the man reeled in a minnow, unhooked the little fella and tossed him back in.

  He settled down for a good think.

  The line tightened—a lot heavier than a minnow this time, might be something interesting—he stood up and started pulling.

  Beau jumped to his feet and whined.

  The short hairs on the back of the man’s neck prickled up and he looked at the dog. “What is it, boy?”

  The line tightened and the old man grunted as he clutched the rod.

  God-damn, this fish is a big’un.

  The pole bent like a sapling in a strong wind as the fish fought him, straining to break free. He rose to his feet and bent his legs to ground him, and hung in there, until, finally, a huge, white mass emerged, dropped below the surface, then bobbed back up and stayed on the water’s surface as the pole straightened out and a dead white fish floated close to the shore.

  “God-dammit,” he said. “I thought they said they’d cleaned up the river—”

  Beau barked furiously and jumped back and forth, then dropped down to his haunches and whined.

  There’s something wrong here. What am I not seeing?

  As the old man stared at the dead fish, a shiver of fear trickled down his spine.

  He glanced up and down the river bank and realized, suddenly, how alone he was out here. He was standing on a solitary river bank, accompanied only by his faithful hound-dog, and with a strange, dead animal floating close to him, and for every swell of water that drew the dead animal closer, a rising sense of dread filled his heart, and he suddenly realized something.

  This isn’t a dead fish.

  Or, if it was a fish, then it’d been drifting around on the river bottom for some time, but now, as he gazed at the dead thing, he decided it might be a deer, or perhaps even a hog—there were some farms upriver—that’d fallen into the water and drowned, but it was also something that really shouldn’t be in a river, in the first place, and dead in the water, in the second place . . .

  Beau whimpered and let out a strange, haunting howl as the dead white fish—no, it wasn’t a fish—rolled from side to side with a lazy, slow movement that mirrored the river’s undulating waves.

  Beau jumped to his feet and growled as the man used the pole to ease the pasty white, flaccid-skinned animal onto the shore and walked forward to take a closer look.

  What the hell is that thing?

  Beau drew back his ears, tucked his tail between his hind legs, whirled around and ran back to the truck, jumped up into the bed, and started barking in earnest.

  “Beau, come on back, fella—”

  The words died in his throat as he gazed down into the milky-white eyes of a human face.

  The head, bloated beyond recognition; the eyes, the only indication that a human soul once resided inside this sopping mass of wet, pasty flesh.

  “Holy Mother of Jesus,” he whispered.

  2

  Friday, April 26, 5:45 p.m.

  “What a fucking joke,” Randy Randalls mu
ttered to himself as he walked away from the Rowan County Jail. He’d spent a sum total of fifteen minutes in the pokey before Chris Castle of Castle Bail Bonds drove out to the jail, bonded him out, handed him a piece of paper with his next court date printed on it, and then escorted him out of his own fucking jail with his own name on the fucking door.

  The assholes.

  He eased across the parking lot with a studied indifference, just in case somebody was watching, to let them all know how little he cared, climbed behind the wheel of his patrol cruiser—it still belonged to him, was still his, at least until someone took it away from him—and drove his sorry fucking ass home.

  He pushed the button to open the garage door and drove into the two-car garage. He slid up beside Miranda’s Mercedes—so Josie had gone ahead and given it back to him, good for her, the bitch—waited as the automatic garage door shuddered closed behind him and then sat there in the dark for a long moment, the engine still running.

  I could just keep the engine on, let myself die quietly.

  Why not do it? Let the carbon monoxide fumes fill the garage with its invisible poison and take him out, the mercifully silent way.

  Better turn the engine off.

  But still, he waited.

  The garage door mechanism clicked and he sat for one second longer, then, reluctantly, turned off the ignition.

  Another thought struck him.

  Will I get sent to prison?

  Yes, most certainly.

  The attorney general’s office was calling him every day, the FBI haunting his every move, and the boys down in Mexico were watching and waiting, biding their time, just waiting to see what happened before they made their next move. They were the ones that worried him . . . silence meant bad things brewing. He hadn’t received word of any more shipments; that line of work appeared to be drying up . . . for the time being, anyway.

  I could still go inside and eat my gun.

  But that wasn’t his way. No, he planned to fight this domestic violence charge. He wasn’t going down that easily, and that preening peacock of a prosecutor could just go fuck himself, for all he cared. No, he didn’t want to take the coward’s way out, not his style, so he sat there, listening to the engine ticking itself into silence.

  “Ah, fuck it,” he muttered, and got out of the car.

  He let himself into the kitchen through the garage door. Oh, it singed his ass, it really did, the way that strutting peacock of a prosecutor stood on the courthouse steps, talking out through his ass, yapping away about his so-called investigation, and what’d been so hard about it, anyway? How hard was it to put the pieces together and find the elements of domestic violence, huh? A five-year-old could’ve gotten him indicted, for fuck’s sake, and there’s that jack-ass, Stick McGlone, strutting around, acting like he was Jesus Christ himself, come down from the heavens to perform this great miracle, when all he’d really done was find something to pin on him.

  Well, good for him. Pin a gold star on his shiny bronzed ass.

  That Stick McGlone, he’d really saved the day, uh-huh, uh-huh.

  Randy wandered around the kitchen, looking around warily, but saw nothing to draw his suspicion. The house looked pretty much the way it’d looked when he left that morning. He checked the sliding glass door; nobody had jimmied the catch or fiddled with the lock.

  Good.

  He grabbed a beer from the fridge, pulled the tab, and took a long, refreshing swallow.

  Christ, that tastes good.

  He wandered into the dining room through the swinging door and stood there for a long moment, his black work shoes no doubt, leaving black streaks on the soft pile blue carpeting, and stared up at the chandelier.

  The room was empty now, everything else had been cleared away; the dining table, the chairs, the gilt-edged mirror, the buffet, the expensive cupboard that held Miranda’s good china and linens. All gone, to that greedy little cunt step-daughter, or rather, to her greedy cunt of a step-mother, even right down to the fucking curtains. They even took the god-damned curtains that Miranda had special-ordered.

  What good was it going to do that woman to take the fucking curtains? They’d been designed to fit the particular dimensions of the dining room window.

  So, now he stood in a bare room with only the lush blue carpeting and the chandelier, and he found, to his surprise, he kind of liked it that way.

  He sipped his beer.

  His step-daughter’s greediness didn’t bother him, not really, but it did surprise him that Brittany had wanted the mirror.

  Especially considering what she’d seen through it.

  Then again, it’d probably been the step-mother who wanted it.

  He took another swallow.

  Oh, sure, the hard times were coming, and soon. They’d be knocking his door down any day now. He expected a visit from the FBI. They’d arrest him, charge him with the murder of his wife. Charge him with the disappearance of Rob Billings.

  But they couldn’t really pin anything on him, could they?

  What, after all, were the facts against him?

  His wife hanged herself.

  Enough of the evidence had got messed up, and the scene itself hadn’t been properly processed, and on top of all that, two evidence boxes had gone missing . . . so he felt pretty good about the tracks he’d covered.

  Yep, he’d done a pretty good job of it all.

  Despite all the bullshit, despite Kathryn McGlone’s fucking interference, despite Rob Billings’s interference and near self-immolation, everything had worked itself out, in the end.

  And when he sat down and considered it all, it was all good.

  And maybe, just maybe, once he got cleared of any wrongdoing into Miranda’s death, when everything calmed down, he and Josie would get married.

  Then again, why rush things?

  He’d made a mistake in marrying Miranda so quickly after Sally divorced him. Better to let things run their natural course this time.

  Besides, Josie didn’t seem too interested in him anymore.

  As he raised the beer to his lips again, he saw something out of the corner of his eye, just outside his peripheral vision, out of the shadows of the front yard, through the bare dining room window, and he started with surprise and dropped the can and it spilled on the blue carpeting—dammit, he’d have to hire a carpet cleaning service—and reached for his holster and realized, a second too late, that he’d been stripped of his service revolver, and yes, there really was someone out there, as a figure darted from out of the shadows, raised what appeared to be a gun with a silencer and just as Randy thought, well, lookee here, I’m gonna get my fucking brains shot out—

  3

  Friday, April 26, 5:35 p.m.

  “I’m home,” Rowan County Deputy Sheriff Kathryn McGlone announced as she walked into the foyer of her mother’s home and locked the door shut behind her.

  “Dinner will be ready in a minute,” her mother called out from the kitchen.

  “Smells delish,” Kathryn said as she put her wide-brimmed hat on the hook above the mirror. “I’m gonna wash my hands.”

  “Okay.”

  Kathryn shrugged off her leather jacket and put it away in the coat closet, then walked through the family room on her way to the bathroom. As she passed by the television set, the news came on, and she stopped short to watch.

  “Channel Five, always on your side, covering Rowan, Manchester, and Brown Counties, in the south-eastern region of Ohio. Good evening, I’m Hilary Flores, and this is the evening news.”

  “Oh, honey, will you turn that thing off? I forgot to do it when I started making dinner.”

  “In a minute, Mom.”

  “A new investigation into the apparent suicide of Sherri Randalls, the deceased wife of disgraced former Sheriff Randy Randalls, has uncovered new revelations.”

  “Oh, God,” Kathryn said. “Now what?”

  Mom carried a tureen of soup into the room and set it down on the dining table. “Come on a
nd eat your soup, sweetheart.”

  “Oh,” Kathryn said, glancing at the soup tureen, at the nicely-set placemats, napkins, soup bowls, spoons, and a loaf of bread, warm from the oven, with a butter dish beside it. Her stomach growled.

  Mom walked to the foot of the stairs and called up, “Ginny, Evie, girls. Come on downstairs, it’s time for dinner.”

  “Melanie out of town?” Kathryn asked.

  “She’s met this nice man and they’re going out of town for the weekend, and I said I’d watch the girls.”

  “I sure hope to hell this one’s a nice man,” Kathryn said.

  “Shh, Kathryn, honey,” Mom said. “The girls will hear you.”

  “Oh, Mom, the girls know what I think of their father.”

  “All the same, honey.”

  “Rowan County Interim Sheriff, Richard McCallister, has appointed a special prosecutor to re-open the investigation into the matter of Miranda Randalls’s death.”

  “Miranda Randalls?” Mom asked. “Isn’t she the Sheriff’s wife?”

  “She was,” Kathryn said grimly.

  “Oh, that’s right. She’s the lady who committed suicide, right?”

  “Yes,” Kathryn said uneasily. “She was found, hanged, from her dining room chandelier.”

  “Oh, dear, that’s right, the poor woman.”

  “The investigation, conducted by retired Hamilton County, Ohio, special prosecutor, Stick McGlone, took place over a period of three months and covered several counties. In a few minutes, we’re going live to a press conference, but first, a brief message from our sponsor.”