If It Walks Like A Killer (The Carolina Killer Files #1)

by Kiersten Modglin

  I don’t tell him I know he’s telling a lie. I don’t tell him I heard my mommy say his name back before he hung up. Instead, I go to the kitchen and sit down at my chair. My tummy is growling. Grownups are so weird.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Hampton

  Argus Hampton’s body was filled with dread as he pulled up to Shayna Steele’s office. He’d been quiet the whole drive over, rehearsing silently how they were going to have this conversation. Rachael had been quiet too, seeming to be lost in her own deep thoughts.

  He absentmindedly pulled open her door and led her into the lobby.

  “Well.” She turned to him, waving good morning to the red headed secretary.

  God, what is her name?

  “I guess I’ll see you at four.”

  “Actually,” Hampton said softly, “I’ll be joining you for your session today.”

  Surprise filled her eyes. “You will?”

  “We have a few things we need to discuss. Shayna thought it’d be best if we all sat down together.”

  “Bad news?” Rachael looked defeated.

  “Depends on how you look at it.” Hampton shrugged his shoulders, looking toward the door as Shayna stepped out. Hampton recognized the remorse in her eyes that he’d seen in his own mirror that morning.

  “Good morning, Rachael, Hampton.” She smiled. “Come on in.”

  Hampton walked into the office, realizing then that he’d never gotten a good look inside before. He chose a pink couch to sit on and seated himself uncomfortably on the edge. He cleared his throat as Rachael took a seat cattycorner from him, followed by Shayna who sat in the chair directly across from her.

  “Now, Rachael, as you can see this session is going to be slightly different. We have a lot to go over in a very short amount of time so we need you to listen carefully.” Shayna paused, glancing in Hampton’s direction. He nodded, mentally willing her to go on.

  “Some of this is going to be hard for you to hear, some of it you won’t want to believe, but all of it is important and it’s important that you know what we’ve learned over the past few weeks.”

  Rachael nodded, her expression hard to read.

  “First things first, Rachael, after the past four weeks of sessions, I’m sorry, but I was unable to successfully diagnose you with DID.”

  When Rachael was silent, Shayna continued. “After listening to you and seeing you daily, it’s obvious to me that you are clearly in your right mind. I’ve seen no signs that would lead me to believe you are not completely healthy and stable.”

  “How can you say that? We still have two weeks left. You said you’d do everything you could for me.” Rachael covered her mouth, breathing heavily in shock.

  “Rachael, I need you to stay calm. I’m not saying I’ve given up on you, quite the opposite in fact. That’s why we’re here. Hampton and I have been working on a theory for the past week and we finally think we are ready to tell you.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “We think we’ve found something to save you,” Hampton spoke up, he’d been waiting to use that line. Rachael’s eyes lit up at him, though her face contained no smile.

  “Look, in order for us to tell you, you’ll have to be open-minded. We’ve sifted through this theory over and over again, making sure we had it figured out before we brought it to you but we’ve hit a stopping point. We need your help with the rest, Rachael. It’s time that we filled you in.”

  Rachael nodded. “If it’s going to save me, it can’t be that bad.”

  People who work retail know they can never brag about how slow their store had been or else the entire town will stop in all at once. Brides know never to brag about how pretty the weather will be on their wedding day, else it just may come a flood. Hampton was a firm believer in jinxes, and Rachael Abbott had just jinxed herself.

  He grimaced at her hopeful face. It can be that bad. It can be worse.

  ***

  Rachael

  Rachael watched anxiously as Argus flipped through a stack of papers in the manila folder on his lap.

  Shayna spoke first. “Rachael, the other day I asked you about Caide’s affair, if you’d known about it. Do you remember what you told me?”

  Oh God. Oh no. “I told you no.” Rachael’s heart pounded loudly in her chest.

  “Is that true?”

  “Of course it’s true. Why would I lie?” Rachael asked, forcing a convincing smile.

  Shayna looked to Hampton and then back again, before saying almost apologetically, “Maybe you think admitting you knew about the affair gives you a motive, maybe you thought we’d stop believing you.”

  When Rachael was silent, Shayna went on. “Rachael, one of the most important things they teach you when you study psychology is how to detect a lie, how to know when someone is consciously lying to you, how to tell when a child was coached on their testimony. It’s one of, if not the most, important parts of my job. When you told me that you didn’t know about the affair, your body language told me, very clearly, that you weren’t being truthful.”

  She paused, Rachael pressed her lips together, holding in the one secret that had held her family together for all of these years.

  “Honey, we can’t help you if you won’t tell us what’s going on.”

  Rachael sighed, conscious of her betraying body language. “Well, I mean, what wife hasn’t suspected her husband of cheating at some point, right? He works long hours, we aren’t always happy, so of course it’s crossed my mind, but there was never proof. It’s always been just mindless worry that I knew would do nothing more than incriminate me further. If there had been more, of course I would’ve told you. There was nothing to tell.” She smiled, praying to be believed.

  “That’s what you want me to believe? That’s all there is?”

  “That’s the truth,” She said firmly. Well, that’s my truth.

  ***

  Hampton

  Hampton tapped his pen on his yellow legal pad, his heart flitting from fear. “All right, Rachael, before we get into the research I’ve done I need to tell you what sparked the past weeks’ chain of events. I’m not going to lie to you, the first couple of weeks I’ve run into dead end after dead end, nothing was adding up and there was nothing I could find to help you. Then, two weeks ago, I turned on the TV and saw Caide. There’s really no easy way to tell you this, but he has withdrawn his support from your case. Publicly.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He’s come forward telling the press that he no longer believes you are innocent. He no longer plans to back you in court and—” He paused, looking down at his paperwork.

  “Hampton, go on,” Shayna urged, “She needs to hear it.”

  “He doesn’t want your kids to speak to or see you. Rachael, I know this must be hard for you to hear, but it’s important that you have all of the facts. I’ve tried calling him, I’ve asked him to visit or at least call you, but he’s refusing.”

  She began hyperventilating, her chest rising and falling rapidly. “You’ve known this all along? You didn’t tell me anything? You’ve just let me keep calling, keep feeling like I was letting my family down by not calling when they’re home, when you’ve known all along that they’re just ignoring me? My own husband doesn’t believe me anymore? Doesn’t believe in me. What happened to everything he said about me in court? How I’m a good person, how he loves me? He’s just taking it all back? Just kidding? Why? How could he do this to me? What kind of a person does this to their wife?”

  Hampton swallowed, the words leaving his mouth before he’d planned for them to. “The kind of person who frames his wife for murder.”

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Caide

  Caide threw open the lid to the washing machine, ending the horrible screeching sound it had been making. Just what he needed, one more thing to go wrong in his ever-tumbling life. He pulled the load of towels and pajamas out, searching for the culprit. As he pulled the last towel
from the bin, there it was. He’d all but forgotten about the mysterious key since he found it weeks ago, but there it sat stuck to the bottom of the washing machine, screeching and scratching as if begging for him to find it. He reached to the bottom, tugging on it firmly. It remained tucked just under the agitator. The pile of wet clothing was now beginning to form a rather large puddle around itself and Caide found himself clueless as to whether or not Rachael kept tools in the house. He’d never been one for fixing things, growing up in a house where if it was broken you just had it replaced. He was embarrassed to admit, even to himself, that he’d never learned how. He was sure Rachael had kept some of her dad’s old tools though he couldn’t remember where. He wandered to the garage, trying to remember a time when they’d ever had to fix anything. He vaguely remembered her complaining about a cabinet door not shutting right, and once, a few winters ago a pipe in the kitchen had burst. The kids had knocked a hole in the wall last summer, one that he’d promised to fix. Caide hadn’t fixed a thing, though, and he couldn’t, for the life of him, remember how they’d actually gotten fixed. Sometime or another Rachael had stopped complaining, stopped asking for help and Caide realized now, that all of those things had been taken care of.

  The garage was empty except for their cars and a few of the kids’ old toys. Caide looked around briefly to no avail. He looked under the sink, but found only cleaning supplies, in the bathroom and found only old bath toys and a box of tampons. About to give up, he decided to check their closet where Rachael sometimes hid Christmas presents, like Caide wouldn’t see them. Would she have hidden the tools from him? Maybe to shield him from the reminder of a childhood absent of that afternoon where Dad teaches you to hammer a nail? Maybe to keep her dad’s things separate from the emptiness they now considered to be their lives? Maybe just to keep Brinley and Davis out of danger? Either way as Caide walked into the closet, his gaze fell upon a worn burlap bag in the far corner, nearly hidden behind the vacuum and an old suitcase. He pushed the suitcase aside, pulling the bag out. It was filled with odds-and-ends tools, all worn and dirty from years of use. He recognized the metal hammer with wood banded around its handle. The initials R.C. were carved into the handle. Ross Cline. Caide placed it down, digging further into the bag, pulling out tools he didn’t have a name for and couldn’t venture a guess as to how they worked or what they were used for. As he neared what felt like the bottom of the bag, his fingers met a cool, smooth metal, unlike anything else he’d pulled from the bag. He pulled the metal, its heaviness surprising him, out of the sack. It was a black metal box with a small silver handle on top. He was sure right away it was no tool, and by the relative new-ness, he was certain it hadn’t belonged to Ross. Rachael had owned this. Rachael had hidden it from him. The silver metal key hole did not match the golden key that was now stuck at the bottom of his washing machine but something made him curious to try it anyway. He held the handle in his hand, grabbing a blue handled tool with an end that looked like tweezers. He ran back to the laundry room, feeling himself fill with hope and worry. He felt as though he were close to uncovering one of Rachael’s dirty little secrets.

  As he entered the laundry room, he sat the metal box down onto the dryer top, careful not to make too much noise and draw the kids from the living room. He placed the blue handled tool into the machine, using it to grasp the key firmly. He pulled once, twice, and the third time it was out with a loud groan. Ignoring the pile of wet clothes, he turned his attention to the box, inserting the key. His heart pounded as it fit right away. His hands shook as he turned the key, wondering what he was about to uncover. With one swift motion, he threw the box lid open and gasped. Whatever he’d been expecting, this was worse.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Rachael

  Rachael sat staring across the table at Argus and Shayna. “Excuse me? You think my husband set me up? That’s ridiculous.”

  “Is it?” Hampton implored, “Rachael, look, he was sleeping with her. He was the last one with her. He sent everyone else home that night. He was the police’s first suspect, there’s all of this mounting evidence that makes him look really bad but then suddenly there’s this random evidence against you.”

  “None of which makes any sense, by the way,” Shayna added.

  “Right. There are all of these questions—timing, DNA. You’ve got no cuts on yourself whatsoever, yet your blood was found on the murder weapon. For you to have committed this murder, you literally would’ve needed to be in two places at once. It’s just impossible, but it’s also easy. People want to believe what’s easy. Even I missed it. Until Caide made his little statement, that is. It got me wondering what kind of a monster would do that. Even if he didn’t believe you, even if he was grieving over Blaire’s death, I just can’t imagine a reason to come forward unless he needed you to look guilty. Unless he somehow benefits from you being in prison. Think about it, Rachael. Say he was struggling between two women, trying to balance the affair and his marriage. Then he gets this idea. She’s out of the way, you’re out of the picture, he gets to play grieving, unsuspecting husband. He keeps the house, your car. It all works out in his favor. Hell, maybe they even planned it together. Maybe she wasn’t supposed to die, maybe she was going to say you attacked her, but something went wrong. He hit too hard.”

  Rachael’s head grew fuzzy, she stood from her seat. “No. There’s got to be some other explanation. Caide may be an awful, awful man but he’s no murderer.”

  “If he’s not then who is? We have less than two weeks to figure something out or you are going to jail. We don’t, for one second, believe you’re guilty, Rachael, but someone is. If we don’t find that someone, whoever they are, you are going down for this. The police were ready to lock Caide up until there was convenient, foolproof evidence against you.”

  “So what? What are you asking me to do?”

  “We’re asking you to trust us.”

  “And be honest with us,” Shayna added, her eyebrows perched into a ‘I know you’re lying’ position.

  “So then what? Caide got my blood from somewhere? You said yourself I’m not cut anywhere. And what about the tape? How do we explain that? Caide is no computer whiz. You expect to convince the jury he framed me with what? His extensive knowledge of Solitaire?”

  “The blood’s easy. It would’ve been way too easy for him to get your blood anytime and freeze it. Who knows how long he’s had to plan this all out. The tape was trickier and that’s why we’ve been hesitant to come to you so far, until now. We’ve talked to old college professors, roommates, and friends. We’ve looked up records, grades, talked to Caide’s bosses, even your students. Rachael, we were at a dead end, until…do you remember a Professor Prather from your junior year of college?”

  Rachael thought hard, recalling all of her professor’s names, but drawing a blank. “No.”

  “We figured you wouldn’t. See, she didn’t teach you or Caide, but when she heard about your case, she reached out to us. Apparently she was really fond of you.”

  “But I don’t know her.”

  “I think you do. You see, Professor Prather taught computer science and though she never taught you she seems to know you quite well. Apparently, you were always around with a person who she claims was her best student.”

  It hit Rachael, then, like a ton of bricks. The weight of what they were suggesting caused her eyes to blur and fog to fill her thoughts. No, no, no, no, no, no.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Caide

  Caide stared at the pile of cash in front of him. The metal box was filled with rubber-banded stacks of cash. Counting it out, he’d come to a grand total of eighteen thousand five hundred and eighteen dollars. He had no idea where she could’ve come up with such a large amount of cash or what she could have needed it for. The other items in the box gave few clues. In amongst one strap of cash, Caide had found a key to an old Honda, a key to a car they’d never owned. Attached to it was another, smaller key, probably to a padlock. Th
e last item in the box was the one that had crushed Caide the most: at the bottom of the box sat another white box. It was marked with red writing: ‘At Home Paternity Test.’ It pictured a man holding a baby with a carefree smile Caide couldn’t have mustered in his daydreams at that moment. A sickening feeling filled his stomach, like he may vomit and cry all at the same time. Questions filled his mind: When had Rachael bought this? Why did she need it? Why had she never used it? How much did he truly not know about his wife? He wondered which of his children the test had been meant for or if maybe there’d been another child, one he’d never known about. Had Rachael been having an affair? Could he believe that to be true? Up until finding the box, the very thought might’ve made him laugh, but he now realized he may not have known his wife as well as he’d thought. Caide knew one thing for certain as he looked over the cash, keys, and test: his wife had been prepared to run, but why and to or from whom remained quite unclear.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Rachael

  “You can’t be serious. No way. No way. She’s my best friend.”

  “Rachael, you have to look at the facts here. She is a computer science major. You didn’t think you should’ve told me that?”

  “Argus, Audrey is my best friend. Yes, she works with computers, but she hates Caide. She’d have no reason to help him. More than that she’d have no reason to hurt me.”

  “You have to admit it’s convenient. She just happens to work in computer technology. There’s a serious time lapse in that night, yet somehow the jury believes it, why? Because of the tape. Because tapes don’t lie. Unless Rachael, unless they do. If we can prove that it’s a fake tape, if we can give them a reason to believe someone framed you that would be enough. You’d be free.”