1 A Small Case of Murder

by Lauren Carr

  Tad said, “I heard from a former church member and friend of Hal’s that Bridgette convinced her groom that sex, other than to make babies, was a sin. Now, they have no children. You tell me.”

  Joshua asked, “Why would she marry him if—”

  “Because her daddy ordered it,” Tad replied. “The Poole family is a big supporter of the Rawlings’ church, both financially and politically. By political I mean that since early in Reverend Rawlings’ ministry Hal’s parents have brought a lot of people into the church and a lot of Rawlings’ followers follow the Pooles. If the Poole family left, it’s safe to say that a large portion of the congregation would go with them, along with a dependable source of income. If Bridgette had turned down Hal’s proposal, do you think his family would have continued attending their church?”

  Jan screwed up her face in disgust. “So Bridgette married a man she didn’t love, and then manipulated his little pea brain to keep him from touching her? Those two deserve each other.”

  Tad’s shoulders shook while he chuckled. “Now you know why I find it so laughable for you to suggest that Cindy would have an affair with him.”

  Joshua’s ringing cell phone interrupted the debate. His watch said that it was near midnight. Sheriff Sawyer was calling to report that the children were home safe, and he had already spoken to Wallace Rawlings, who assured him that he could pick up his money in the prosecuting attorney’s office at ten o’clock in the morning.

  Joshua found it ironic that a hit man was picking up his pay off for two murders in the prosecutor’s office. He hung up the phone and looked at his partners in crime.

  “Ten o’clock tomorrow it will all be over,” Jan sighed.

  Joshua studied the tips of his fingers in the dim light. “No, I expect at ten o’clock tomorrow, it will be just beginning.”

  The Thornton children were exhausted. They had been on the road all day. Between the emotional upheaval of learning of their father’s death; then his being alive; and then his wrath; they were worn out by the time Sheriff Sawyer had dropped them off at the back door of the Thornton home.

  After Tracy won the race for the one bathroom to take a bath, her brothers and sister, grumbling about how long it was taking to bring their house up to the twenty-first century, went to their rooms.

  J.J. took the phone to their room to call their aunt to apologize for their deception and any worry they had caused her. She wasn’t surprised. She knew her sister’s children well.

  The twins opted to try for the bathroom in the morning, before going to Reverend Andrews’s home to retrieve Admiral from where their father had dropped him off before he was “killed”. Donny didn’t care if he ever got a bath. Sleep also being her priority, Sarah went to her room to go to bed.

  Dressed in her bathrobe, Tracy turned on the overhead lamp before turning on the water in the claw-footed tub. In the mirror, she was studying a pimple appearing on her chin when she saw the bathroom door closing behind her and a figure dressed in black step out from behind the door. Tracy forced out a scream as the door slammed shut and the lights went out.

  J.J. and Murphy had both put on their sweat pants they wore for their pajamas when they heard Tracy’s shrill scream. “Intruder!”

  “What was that?” J.J. paused long enough to ask.

  Murphy was already racing down the stairs.

  J.J. was compelled into action when he heard a body slammed up against a wall.

  On the second floor, Sarah was pounding on the bathroom door when Murphy bound out of the stairwell. Cat screams came from inside the bathroom.

  As if she was the obstacle to getting inside the bathroom to help Tracy, Murphy yelled at Sarah to open the door.

  Too frightened to move, Donny watched from his bedroom doorway at the end of the hall.

  “The door is locked!” Sarah wrenched the glass doorknob.

  “Stand back!” Murphy ordered her.

  Even though he was known for his athletic prowess, Murphy was surprised when the force of his kick, combined with the deterioration of the century-old glue sealing the panels together, knocked out the top portion of the door. Tracy dove toward the light entering the room through the hole her brother had created.

  Nearly hysterical, Tracy sobbed while Sarah and J.J. pulled her out through the hole in the door, before Murphy shoved it open and rushed inside. Her hands and arms were slippery from the blood rushing from her wounds.

  The sight of his bloodied sister scared Donny into action. He raced downstairs to the phone to call their father for help.

  The assailant shoved Murphy into the water-filled bathtub before making an escape. The three witnesses in the hallway weren’t prepared to stop the figure dressed from head to toe in black that raced past them and down the stairs.

  While the blood that covered Tracy motivated Donny to call their father, it triggered Sarah to go on the offensive. She didn’t stop to consider what would happen next if she succeeded in catching her sister’s assailant.

  Despite everyone’s calls to stop, Sarah tackled the intruder on the steps. When Tracy’s attacker turned to take a swing with the blood-covered knife at the girl, Sarah dove and caught the intruder by the waist, which sent both of them down the staircase in a tangled mass of rolling bodies.

  “Sarah! No!” All J.J. could do was watch them tumble down the long staircase.

  From the bottom of the stairs, Donny watched Sarah and the black clad figure rolling together down the stairs towards him. “Sarah!” he squawked through a throat tight with fear.

  With the plop of her head hitting the hardwood floor, Sarah landed in a heap at the foot of the stairs.

  Sarah’s body cushioned the intruder’s fall. The assailant halted only long enough to get up before racing out the front door into the night.

  “What am I doing?” Joshua cursed while circling the examination table the morgue.

  “I believe it’s called pacing,” Jan answered.

  Wearing a surgical mask to hide his identity, Tad was up-stairs talking to the emergency room doctor, a trusted colleague, to find out the condition of Joshua’s daughters. In a state of shock, his sons were gathered in the waiting room.

  “I shouldn’t be here. I should be with my kids. I should have been home tonight and not out playing cops and robbers. Damn it!” Joshua shouted loud enough to wake the dead bodies in the room. “I quit!”

  He threw open the doors to head for the elevator to take him up to his children.

  Jan grabbed his arm to pull him back into the morgue. “If you go then everyone will know that you aren’t dead, and we won’t have Wally, and he’ll stay the prosecutor, and the reverend’s business will go on as usual.”

  “They came after my kids. Tad said they killed a whole family. Why would they draw the line at my children? What was I thinking?” Joshua shook her off his arm like she was nothing more than a gnat and punched the button to call the elevator. His voice shook when he asked her, “Do you know what I’ve been doing?”

  Confused by the question, Jan shook her head to convey that she didn’t know about what he was asking her.

  Joshua slumped against the white concrete block wall. “I’ve been hiding.”

  “I know. I was at that farmhouse, too.”

  He shook his head. “No, not that. I’ve been hiding from fatherhood. I don’t want to be a single father. I don’t like it. I never know if I’m doing the right thing or not. So I let myself get all wrapped up in this case and sent my kids to my sister-in-law’s because I didn’t want to deal with feeling clueless. Murder is more fun than parenthood.”

  “More fun or more comfortable?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Jan said, “Josh, God gave you a gift. The gift of being able to put together puzzles and uncover the truth where no other man can. You’ve spent your
life using that gift to help people. You’re good at it and you know it.” She added, “And Valerie was good at raising kids. Look at your kids. You can see it. She stayed home and took care of them while you went off chasing bad guys and getting shot at because that was what she was good at.”

  He blinked his eyes to hold back tears of guilt and fear.

  “You’re probably right about getting all involved in this case to escape from your parental responsibilities, but—Damn! You’re not the only one here.” She grinned. “I’d choose playing dead and sneaking out of Tad’s apartment to stocking the laxative aisle at my store any day.”

  A grin crept to his lips. “I think raising my kids is more important than unpacking laxatives. The price parents pay for neglect is much higher.”

  “What are you going to do about it?” she asked.

  “Quit.”

  “You can’t quit!”

  “Watch me.” He turned around and punched the call button once more.

  Jan grabbed his arm with both her hands. Determined not to let him go, she yanked him a couple of feet back from the elevator. “What about your responsibilities to this valley? You said that Doc Wilson told you that the reverend was evil. They went after your kids. That proves that they’re evil, and they need to be stopped, and if you don’t do it, then no one will. Didn’t you say in your valedictorian speech something about man’s responsibilities to his fellow man?”

  The elevator doors opened.

  Thinking about her argument, he hesitated.

  Seeing that he was listening, Jan resumed. “This is our chance to take them down. If we don’t take it, then there may not be a next time. We’re so close. We can’t quit now that we’re only a couple of yards from the goal.”

  The doors shut again. Joshua let her lead him by the arm back to the morgue.

  “Sarah and Tracy could be dead,” he muttered.

  “Then give the Rawlings hell. The way only you can.” Jan held open the door to the morgue.

  Joshua hesitated when he heard the elevator doors open again.

  Dressed in a surgical gown, Tad stepped off the elevator. He carried a gown and mask over his arm.

  Murphy, J.J., and Donny stepped off the elevator behind him. When he saw his father, Donny ran to him and threw his arms around his waist.

  Reading his son’s sobs as indications of the worst news, Joshua hugged him tightly.

  While the Thornton men went into a group hug, Tad relayed his report. “Everyone is going to be okay. Tracy is being patched up right now. Whoever it was went after her with a knife, but she defended herself well. All she got were defense wounds on her arms.”

  “Her face?” Joshua choked.

  Tad shook his head as he ushered them back into the morgue. “No cuts on her face. I’ve already called the best plastic surgeon in the area. He’ll be able to fix her up so there’ll be no scars. I looked at them myself. They’ll heal up fine.”

  “Sarah?”

  “A concussion and a couple of broken ribs. Tracy will be released in the morning, and Sarah can go home in a couple of days.”

  They heard the elevator doors open down the hall.

  Tad gave Joshua the gown and mask. “We’ll go back upstairs and you can see them,” the doctor was saying when the sheriff came in.

  “Well, our plan hasn’t gone completely haywire,” Sheriff Sawyer announced. “Tess Bauer is already upstairs reporting about the tragedy of the Thornton family. It’s a real tearjerker.”

  “How did she find out about it so fast?” Jan asked with a note of jealousy.

  “She’s got sources everywhere,” Sawyer said.

  “Did you find out who did it?” Joshua queried the sheriff while Tad tied the back of his gown.

  “I called Wally Rawlings again. I made like I was pissed that he hired someone else to do what I could do with fewer complications. He claims he had nothing to do with it. His orders were just to kill you and Tad and no one else. Then, he chewed me out for offing Jan and said he wasn’t giving me any bonus for taking her out.”

  “Do you believe him?” Jan wanted to know.

  “I believe that he didn’t hire someone to do it. He was worried about the direction suspicions might fly.”

  “It wasn’t a pro,” J.J. said. “I mean, Dad, wouldn’t a pro have been neater about it?”

  Donny told them, “Tracy swears it was a girl.”

  “There are female assassins,” Jan said.

  “No, it was a cat fight in there,” Murphy disagreed. “There were screams from two girls. She was pulling Tracy’s hair and trying to cut her up. When I went in there, and she shoved me, I grabbed her and felt her boobs—” Aware of Jan’s presence, he corrected himself, “I mean, breasts.”

  Tad told them, “Whoever it was, Tracy says she got in a few good punches. She swears her attacker now has a couple of broken ribs.”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised,” Sheriff Sawyer rubbed his injured eye.

  Tad tried not to smile at his wound. “We’ll keep an eye out here in the hospital for any female patients with broken or bruised ribs.”

  Joshua warned them, “Let’s not make any assumptions that this is connected to the Rawlings.” He asked his sons, “Was Tracy having any disagreement with any girls in town?”

  “We’ve just moved here,” Murphy reminded him.

  “How about Ken? Does he have any old girlfriends who might be jealous?”

  Tad shook his head. “I know Ken. He’s a nice kid. He wasn’t seeing anyone who would go nuts like that.”

  Jan gasped, “You don’t think one of Vicki’s weird friends did it to make you stop trying to put Rawlings out of the drug business.”

  The thought sickened Joshua. “Like Amber.”

  “Amber is long gone,” Sheriff Sawyer declared. “The word on the street is that Reverend Rawlings has an open contract on her. If she’s still around, she’s more stupid than we thought.” He added, “And speaking of contract killings—”

  Joshua asked, “There’s another contract on me?”

  Sawyer said, “That one was already filled. Everyone still thinks you’re dead. I’m talking about the Hitchcocks. I called the FAA to check that passenger manifest for that DC-10 that the Hitchcocks were supposed to be on. Their answer was waiting for me on my desk when I got to the office tonight. There were no Hitchcocks. As for the girl—” the sheriff asked Tad, “You said that Alexis was around twelve years old then?”

  After Tad nodded his head to answer his question, Sawyer went on, “There were no children on that flight, period. So,

  we know for certain that, at least, Alexis Hitchcock wasn’t on that plane.” He chuckled, “So much for Steubenville’s Officer Scott Collins swearing that that witness put them on that plane. I left a message for his boss to have a talk with him. I’m thinking I’m not the only dirty cop in the area.” His chuckle turned into a sarcastic laugh. “Funny thing about Collins’s witness that says she put them on that plane. Hannah Pickering is her name.”

  “What about her?” Joshua wondered.

  “She was a member of Rawlings’ church, and Bridgette’s secretary.”

  “They’re dead,” Tad predicted.

  Jan said, “Alexis is Wally’s daughter. That makes her Vicki’s half sister.”

  “No,” Joshua reminded her. “We found the evidence that proves that Vicki wasn’t Wally’s daughter. That eliminates Alexis as a suspect.” He muttered, “I want to know why Collins didn’t check out that witness statement. A simple check of the manifest would have proven she was lying.”

  The sheriff was grumbling, “I want to check that out myself. I hate crooked cops.”

  Joshua wasn’t paying any attention. The wheels in his mind churned. “Alexis Hitchcock disappears. Tracy was attacked wi
th a knife. Morgan Lucas interviews Amber and she’s stabbed to death. Vicki was impaled.” He turns to his sons. “How was it that Tracy ended up in that bathroom and not one of you?”

  Not sure where Joshua was going, all three boys exchanged questioning looks. It occurred to J.J. what he wanted to know. He answered, “She got there first.”

  Joshua hung his head before he asked his cousin, “Tad, do you know the medical examiner in Pittsburgh?”

  Tad laughed. “Know her? She’s a woman in the tri-state area.”

  “Hound,” Jan cracked.

  “I want you to get me everything you can on Morgan Lucas’s murder.” Joshua turned to Sheriff Sawyer. “And I need you to call the news station. I need all the taped, the unedited ones, of Amber’s interviews.”

  Tad asked, “Are you still thinking that Amber is Alexis Hitchcock out for revenge?”

  Jan argued, “Didn’t we eliminate Alexis as a suspect because the killer was Vicki’s sister and we proved that Wally wasn’t Vicki’s birth father? Why is she on our list of suspects?”

  “Tracy never met Amber or Alexis,” Murphy objected. “Why would they want to hurt her?”

  “To get to me, that’s why,” Joshua said.

  “Okay, here’s how it is going to go down,” Sheriff Sawyer told the state police, federal agents, his deputies, and “victims”.

  The morning after the “hit”, everyone met at the sheriff’s satellite office in Newell. They couldn’t risk warning the county’s prosecuting attorney of his arrest by gathering at the courthouse across the parking lot from his office.

  Sheriff Sawyer’s Newell office consisted of a single room with a phone, desk, and chair. The officers and agents, dressed in bulletproof vests, had crowded into the tight space. To blend in, the sheriff’s three victims wore state police uniforms.

  “I’ll go in like usual.” The sheriff gestured towards his arresting officers. “You wait in the stairwells and around the building until I give the signal. That will be when I say, ‘Nice doing business with you, Mr. Prosecutor.’”