Sullivan’s Evidence

by Nancy Taylor Rosenberg

  Hank used his cell phone and called the station, asking the dispatcher to send more officers and the K-9 unit. He squatted down beside her, using his pocket knife to cut off a piece of her skirt. “I’m sorry,” he said, covering the lower half of her body with his jacket. “We need this for the dog.”

  “The tape,” Carolyn mumbled.

  “This is going to hurt,” he said before pulling the tape off her mouth as gently as possible. Seeing the blood near her lip and nose, he took a tissue from his pocket to wipe it away.

  “No, Hank.” She stopped him by turning her face away. “Don’t contaminate me.”

  “That monster raped you?” he said, overwrought. “Why in hell did you come out here by yourself? Jesus, Carolyn, he could have killed you.”

  “Calm down,” she said weakly, “you scared him off just in time. Put on a pair of gloves, then get the rest of this blasted tape off me. I’m okay, but I was certainly glad to see you.” She extended her hand so Hank could help her to her feet. Pulling a pair of plastic gloves out of his pants pocket, he slipped them on, then picked up his jacket and tied it around her waist before he began removing the rest of the tape from her head and hands.

  Carolyn stood, unsteady on her feet. The room began swimming, and she slumped against the detective. “I might have a mild concussion,” she told him, touching a sore spot on her forehead. “He banged my head against the porch.” She felt something pricking her back and yanked it out with her fingers. “A splinter,” she said, tossing it on the floor. “The only evidence you’ll get out of that one is from me.”

  “Even if he didn’t actually rape you,” Hank said, his concern for her showing on his face and in his voice, “you still need to go to the hospital for a medical legal exam. The doctors can also look at that bruise on your head.”

  “I know.” Carolyn grabbed his shirt to keep from falling. “Contact your men and see if they caught him. Holden’s our killer, Hank. We can’t let him get away.” She thought of her kids and searched the floor for her cell phone. “He must have taken my phone. I don’t want John and Rebecca to know what happened here.” She reached over and took Hank’s phone from the clip on his belt, calling her house and reaching her daughter. “I got tied up at the office, sweetheart. Is your brother there?”

  “John’s barricaded in his room,” Rebecca told her. “He made himself a steak. I had to eat leftover pasta. I’m trying to lose weight. Now I’ll blow up like a water buffalo.”

  Carolyn welcomed the normality, her daughter’s voice erasing the terror she had just escaped from. “But I defrosted three steaks this morning.”

  The girl’s tone changed. “You’re with that new guy, aren’t you? I can tell by your voice that something’s going on. Are you at his house? Are you going to sleep with him?”

  “No,” Carolyn said, “I’m not with Marcus.” She told Rebecca she’d be home in a few hours and handed the phone back to Hank.

  “Marcus, huh?” Hank said, a downcast look in his face. “That’s the guy you were talking to that day at the lagoon.”

  “I need a minute to get myself together, Hank. This isn’t the time to ask me questions about my personal life.”

  “Sorry. I wasn’t thinking. As soon as the other units get here,” he continued, donning a professional demeanor, “I’ll have one of them take you to the hospital. They’ll wait and drive you home. I want to stay here and oversee things. There’s a field with an old shed on it about a mile from here. Holden might be hiding out there until the heat dies down.”

  “I’m not going home in a police car,” Carolyn argued. “I told you I don’t want the children to know what happened.”

  “I guess you could call your new boyfriend to come and get you?” he said, hands on hips.

  Carolyn knew what he was implying, that he’d always been there for her, even if it meant risking his life. The previous year, he had pulled her out of the ocean when she’d driven an arms dealer’s car off a cliff. If it wasn’t for Hank, she wouldn’t be alive. “I’m not going to answer that,” she told him. “The kids have been through enough scares in the past. There’s no reason for them to know what went on here tonight.”

  He pulled out a toothpick, shoving it in between his teeth. “Wait here.” He stepped outside to speak with the other officers. “No sign of Holden,” he told her when he returned. “We’re going to canvass the neighborhood, but I doubt if we’re going to find him tonight. Let’s get you out of this place. I’ll drive you to the hospital, wait, and then take you to the house.”

  “I’ll drive myself,” Carolyn told Hank, wanting to distance herself from anyone who had a penis.

  “I can’t let you drive,” he said. “You need medical attention. Besides, no one who’s been through something like this should be out on the roadway. Why won’t you let me take care of you?”

  “If you want to do something for me,” Carolyn said, “catch this rotten bastard before he rapes and kills again. If you don’t, I’ll hunt him down myself.”

  “You already tried that,” the detective said quietly. “It didn’t work out that well.”

  Carolyn cut her eyes to him. “Next time I’ll be better prepared.”

  Mary Stevens arrived on the scene, rushing over and embracing Carolyn. “I’ll take it from here,” she told Hank, placing a blanket over Carolyn’s shoulders. “Don’t worry about your car, honey. Give me the keys, and I’ll get someone from patrol to drive it to your house.”

  “I don’t want my kids to know,” Carolyn told her.

  “No problem,” Mary said. “I’ll have them park it down the street. Then when I drop you off later, we can move it to the driveway.”

  After Carolyn handed Mary the keys, she turned to Hank and smiled. “At least one good thing came out of this.”

  “Really?” Hank said, the corners of his mouth barely lifting. “And what is that?”

  “You don’t have to worry about getting a search warrant. Now that it’s a crime scene, you can rip that house apart.”

  CHAPTER 22

  Wednesday, September 20—7:50 P.M.

  Carolyn sat through an hour-and-a-half examination. She had bruises where Holden had slugged her and slammed her head into the porch, but she figured she’d be able to conceal them with her hair and makeup. The doctor wanted her to spend the night to make certain she didn’t have a concussion. She knew the warning signs, she told him, and would return to the hospital if she experienced anything disturbing.

  A young blond nurse inspected every inch of her body for physical evidence. Even though Holden hadn’t penetrated her, the nurse scraped her fingernails, combed her pubic hair, and searched for bodily fluids, such as blood, saliva, and pre-emission sperm.

  Hank had assigned Mary Stevens to handle the paperwork. She waited outside the room as the SAAE nurse, Sexual Assault Abuse Examiner, did her job. Before females had entered the police force, a male officer had to be present during examinations of rape victims, adding another level of humiliation to an already degrading situation. Now female nurses were trained specifically for this purpose, although not every hospital had them. But women police officers were generally available.

  Carrying a pair of jeans and a red shirt, Mary entered the room after taking possession of the evidence. “You ready to get out of this place? I brought you some clothes I had in my car.”

  “Isn’t this your murder shirt?” Carolyn said, stepping into a pair of Mary’s jeans, which were two sizes too large.

  “Yeah, I figured the way you feel right now, it might be appropriate.”

  “You’re right on that one,” Carolyn said. “I’m not sure what’s worse, the assault or the embarrassment of someone probing my private parts with a cotton swab.”

  Mary gave her a sympathetic look. “Bad, huh?”

  “Holden was like a bull,” Carolyn told her, buttoning up the red shirt. “I didn’t stand a chance with him. I’m just lucky Hank picked up his cell phone and showed up when he did.”

>   “I feel sorry for the next rapist you handle,” the detective told her, leaning against the wall. “Bet you won’t be buying their sob stories.”

  “Amen to that one. I’d personally be willing to castrate the bastard if the court doesn’t put Holden away for life this time. The death penalty would be even more satisfying. Callous, huh? As a Christian, I’m supposed to forgive my enemies, turn the other cheek.”

  “I’m more of an eye-for-an-eye kind of girl,” Mary said, rubbing the side of her face. “On that note, you want to get something to eat? You’ll feel better with food in your stomach.”

  “No thanks, I want to get home to my kids.”

  Once they were on the road, Mary turned to her. “Can you talk about what happened with Holden, or would you rather wait until later?”

  “We have to nail this guy, Mary,” Carolyn said, wrapping her arms around her chest. “He’s out there right now stalking his next victim. Trust me, he had no reservations whatsoever about killing me. I’m almost positive there are other victims we haven’t found, some from before he killed Tracy Anderson. When I interviewed him, he practically confessed to it.”

  “I don’t understand,” Mary said. “We know Holden had four victims. What are you’re trying to tell me, Carolyn?”

  “He wasn’t talking about the three other women he raped,” she said. “He said specifically, “When I put my fingers around their necks.” He didn’t touch the rape victims’ necks, only Anderson’s. I tried to tell the DA’s office he might have killed other women, but they refused to listen. As far as they were concerned, it was over. Now look at the nightmare we have on our hands.”

  After contemplating that fact for a few seconds, Mary said, “We hit a snag this morning in St. Louis.”

  “You mean Lisa Sheppard isn’t our victim? I thought you said she had the same fracture to her leg.”

  “No, we’re good on that,” said the detective, pulling out of the hospital parking lot. “The X-rays should be here by tomorrow morning. They have to dig them out of archives, but at least they think they still have them. The problem is Lisa’s grandmother, Eleanor Beckworth. The PD in St. Louis said she committed suicide around the same time her granddaughter was reported missing. She wrapped an electrical cord around her neck, then hung herself from the bedpost.”

  “How sad,” Carolyn said, thinking how she would feel if either Rebecca or John disappeared. The waiting was the worst, not knowing if your child was alive or dead. The more she thought about it, the stranger Eleanor Beckworth’s suicide seemed. The maternal instinct was one of the most powerful emotions a woman possessed.

  “If the grandmother had died of a heart attack or something, it would make sense,” she reasoned out loud. “But her granddaughter could have eventually surfaced. Why kill yourself before you know for sure your child or grandchild is dead? And what a terrible thing to do to them. Have the missing woman turn up safe only to learn that her grandmother killed herself.” Carolyn thought of something else. “How long after Lisa’s husband reported her missing did her grandmother commit suicide?”

  “The next day. It didn’t set right with me, either. Sounds almost convenient, doesn’t it? Husband tells the police his wife moved back in with her mother, then the one person to substantiate his story dies a day later.”

  Carolyn placed a hand over her chest. “My God, the husband may have killed both of them.”

  “It’s certainly a possibility,” said Mary, slapping the steering wheel in frustration. “You realize this means not one, but two police agencies may have walked past a murder and just kept right on going. Damn, how much worse can it get in this stupid world?”

  “You’re asking me?” Carolyn tapped her chest with her fist. “A maniac just tried to rape me. I thought for sure Holden was our man, especially after what happened tonight. Do you think it’s possible that Holden passed himself off as Matthew Sheppard and married Lisa, then killed her?”

  “Maybe. St. Louis is sending me everything they have on the case. Don’t think I’m making excuses for them if Beckworth’s death turns out to be a homicide, but suicides among the elderly are fairly common. We handled a case last year where an old guy about to be placed in a nursing home used the same technique. You know, stringing themselves up on the bedposts. Like the situation in San Diego, Mrs. Beckworth’s house has already been resold.”

  “What in the hell are we dealing with?” Carolyn asked, nervously scratching a place on her wrist where the duct tape had been. “This case was complex to begin with. Now I don’t know what to think. If Sheppard murdered his wife in San Diego, he had to get on a plane and fly to St. Louis the next day to get rid of her grandmother. You not only have to catch Carl Holden, you’ve got to track down Matthew Sheppard.”

  Mary’s eyes met hers. “Unless they’re the same person.”

  The thought was not new. Carolyn realized that they now had to give it serious consideration. “Are either of these cases in Ventura’s jurisdiction?”

  “Good question,” the detective said, passing Ventura College and turning down Day Road toward Carolyn’s house on Bethel Drive. “If our Jane Doe is Lisa Sheppard, which seems to be the case, then we own the homicide. The rationale is that the murder occurred somewhere in Ventura because the body was dumped here. St. Louis is left holding the bag on the grandmother. Our only involvement there is how that crime ties into ours. Don’t forget, Matthew Sheppard could also be a victim of Carl Holden. And the grandmother could have killed herself for reasons we may never discover. Once we take a look at the phone records, we’ll get a clearer picture. It’s possible that Eleanor Beckworth may not have known her granddaughter was missing.”

  Carolyn fell silent, her thoughts returning to the incident with Holden. She considered telling John and Rebecca the truth, but she could imagine their reaction. If she’d stayed in law school and managed to open up her own practice, her life would have been fairly simple. Simple was static, though, and static was boring.

  Pulling up alongside Carolyn’s white Infiniti, parked at the end of her street, Mary said, “I’m going to have to submit a formal report on the attempted rape, you realize. If you’re not up to it tonight, we can do it tomorrow, maybe even handle it over the phone to make things easier.”

  “Tomorrow would be better.” Carolyn pulled out her compact and dabbed makeup on the bruises on her forehead. “Keep me posted on what’s going on. I’ve got to buckle down and get some work done. My cases are piling up like mad.”

  Mary leaned over and hugged her. “Are you sure you can drive?”

  “I’m fine,” Carolyn told her.

  “Would you like me to come in for a while?”

  “No, but thanks. Like I said earlier, I’m more pissed than anything. I don’t mind being roughed up now and then if there’s a chance of getting someone like Holden off the street. If I went through this for nothing, it’ll be a shame. I had my gun drawn when I snooped around his place. I should have used it before he got his hands on me. But after what happened last year and all—”

  The detective cut her off. “I’ve never shot anyone,” she said, a pensive expression on her face. “I hope I never do. Sometimes it’s either us or them. The guy you shot would have killed you, Carolyn. He deserved to die.”

  “Sounds good in principle,” Carolyn agreed, “but once you pull the trigger, you have to live with the fact that you’ve taken a life.” She stared out the window, then took hold of the door handle. “I have to get some rest if I want to be productive in the morning.”

  “I wish my dad was still alive,” Mary told her. “Not only would he have liked you, he would have tried to recruit you. You go through a night of hell and all you’re concerned about is your work. You’re a real trooper.”

  “Thanks.” Carolyn stepped out of the car and waved good-bye as Mary took off. As she walked up the sidewalk leading to the house, she glanced at the flowers lining the walkway and thought of watering them before she remembered they were artificial.
She needed to plant more as they were somewhat sparse in areas. This time, she decided, she’d use the arrangement in her bedroom.

  She found Rebecca in the kitchen, eating ice cream and staring at a sink full of dishes as if she expected them to clean themselves. “Hi, honey. How was your day?”

  “Same as always. Kinda crappy.” The girl glanced at her mother’s apparel. “Wow, Mom, you don’t look half bad. Turn around. To be really cool, though, your crack has to show.”

  “Cute,” Carolyn said. “I had to go out to a crime scene, so one of the female detectives loaned me some of her clothes. Any calls for me?”

  “Sorry, no hot guys called,” said Rebecca, twirling a spoonful of ice cream. “Since I already screwed up my diet, I decided to pig out.”

  “Please, Rebecca, don’t slop that stuff all over the floor. All I need is an army of ants crawling around here in the morning. And you have to clean up the kitchen before you go to bed. If you don’t, I’ll hold back your allowance.”

  “You mean my big ten bucks?” She wiggled her fingers in the air in mockery. “That barely buys lunch at McDonald’s. Kids in grade school get more money.”

  “I give you lunch money every day,” Carolyn said, letting her shoulders roll forward. “Why don’t you babysit for Mrs. Robertson? There are other jobs you could do as well. You could get a paper route. It pays very well.”

  Rebecca looked at her as if she’d lost her mind, shoving the container of ice cream into the freezer and tossing her spoon into the sink. “Oh, the FedEx guy called to confirm our address,” she shouted as she headed out of the room. “They’ve got a package for us.”

  Carolyn rushed over and grabbed her arm. “You didn’t give out our address, did you?”

  “Let go of my arm,” Rebecca snapped. “How else do you expect him to deliver the package? I thought it was something important, maybe about one of John’s scholarship applications.”