Don't Trust Me

by Jessica Lynch

  “Shh. It'll be fine. Let me talk to Cait.”

  Moving in front of Tess as if blocking her, Maria turned toward the open door. Caitlin De Angelis stood there, a scowl crossing her pointed face, her red hair dark with damp as it hung in heavy clumps down her back, barely brushed. A towel was in her hand. She’d changed into a pair of jeans and a flowy yellow blouse that made her seem even smaller somehow.

  “Maria, was that you honking the horn? What gives?”

  She didn’t even wait for an answer. Raising her towel up to her head, she wrapped the wet strands of hair, vigorously rubbing at it in an attempt to dry it.

  “Jesus, can’t a girl take a shower in peace? My radio has been buzzing nonstop these last ten minutes. I finally answer one of the calls, and it’s Sly telling me that you’re worried about Mase of all people. And now you’re killing me with the horn. What the hell?”

  “Sly, he’s right, Caity,” Maria told her. Whether on purpose or not, she shielded Tessa’s smaller frame as she drew all of Caitlin’s annoyance her way. “Something set Mase off, now there’s a good chance he’s coming to confront you. We don’t want that to happen. No. He’s a good deputy, and a good man. We all know he’ll regret it if he loses his cool. We wanted to stop him before he did.”

  “We?” Caitlin finished with her towel, tossing it onto the porch chair before she stormed down the couple of steps that led down to the walkway. “I don’t get it, why would my deputy want to— oh.”

  Her thin lips pulled into a sneer. She’d finally noticed Tessa tucked behind Lucas’s sister.

  “You.”

  If looks could kill, Tess would be joining Jack.

  Caitlin wrinkled her nose, disgust plain on her face. “I should’ve known. You’ve been nothing but trouble since you appeared in my town and now you’ve got the nerve to drag me into it? At my home?”

  “Cait, that’s not fair.”

  Ignoring Maria, Caitlin stopped in the middle of her sidewalk. As if she couldn’t be bothered going any closer to the other two women. She perched her hands on her narrows hips, her stare boring holes right through Tess.

  “Look, I don’t know what kind of spell you’ve cast on my guys, but you can just stop it right now.”

  “Caitlin!”

  “Luc, Mase, they're all better off without you.”

  Unwilling to let Maria defend her, Tess found her voice. “It’s not me. I didn’t—”

  “I warned you not to come between Mason and Hamlet. What were you thinking?”

  Her cheeks were on fire. To think she’d come all this way to stop something bad from happening, only to be scolded like a naughty child. Ducking around Maria, Tess stood up, facing off against the belligerent sheriff.

  “I was thinking that I didn’t want to come between anyone. Forget it. I don’t know why I even tried.” Her fists tight, she glanced over her shoulder, past Maria, looking for an answer that she’d never find. Biting down on her bottom lip, she turned back to Caitlin. Tess flexed her fingers, exhaled softly. “I’m sorry for trying to… hell, I don’t know. Whatever. I’ll just go.”

  “Tess,” Maria called softly behind her, “don’t do that. You came here for a reason. You don’t deserve to be attacked. Maybe if you explain… go on, sweetie. Tell Caity what happened with you and Mase.”

  “What did you do to my deputy now?” Caitlin demanded.

  That was the problem, wasn’t it? What did she do?

  Tess hesitated. “I just—”

  The piercing shot rang out into the gloom of dusk. Unlike the day before, it was only the one time.

  Once was enough.

  Maria screamed.

  Tess, flashing back to the doctor’s office, curled in on herself and dropped to the curb.

  The sheriff, standing alone on the walkway, glaring daggers at her opponent instead of being aware of her surroundings, was an easy target. Depending on where the gunman was hiding, it was nearly impossible to miss her.

  And he didn’t.

  She opened her mouth again, the softest gasp escaping from her as the force of the bullet slammed her two steps back. Her eyes widened in surprise. Red blossomed on the sunny yellow of her blouse. An instant later, she crumpled to the grass in front of her home.

  Maria was still screaming.

  The constant high-pitched shriek was background noise to Tessa as her training kicked in. Just like when Lucas had been shot, she tamped down her fear and sprang into action. Scrabbling in the grass, she stayed low to the ground in case gunfire rang out again. When she reached the sheriff, she dropped down and grabbed for her limp wrist, desperately searching for a pulse.

  It was pointless.

  Sheriff De Angelis was dead.

  22

  Over the next few days, Lucas called in as many favors as he could. Most he didn’t have to. Outrage and grief poured in as news of Caitlin’s death spread throughout Hamlet and the neighboring counties. Bonnie’s inn was full of outsiders who came to offer help in finding her murderer. When the Hamlet Inn had no vacancies, one or two were invited to stay at Ophelia, including Detective David Rodriguez.

  Despite two witnesses on scene, there were no leads. Led by Rodriguez, crime scene investigation teams from the next town over worked around the clock, looking for clues, finding evidence and questioning nearly every single one of Hamlet’s residents.

  Because of her position as head of law enforcement, the outsiders took over point on the investigation. No one seemed to argue. They were too busy mourning.

  As her former husband, Lucas was one of the first questioned. He tried not to be too insulted. It was rough, especially when he flashed back to that morning in Jack Sullivan’s hotel room and Caitlin’s insistence that the spouse was usually guilty. Only the fact that this would get the investigators one step closer to discovering who killed his ex-wife kept him cordial during the tedious process.

  When they finally let him go, they gave him one nugget of good faith information to tide him over. The ME who was taking care of Caitlin had recovered the bullet. God willing, they’d figure out what gun fired it.

  Lucas didn’t mind that someone else was doing his job. In fact, that was one of the favors he called in personally. When it came to Caitlin, he wouldn’t work on her. He couldn’t. Not when only a week ago he joked with her about seeing her on his slab. As Hamlet’s only acting medical examiner, he was no stranger to dead bodies. But this wasn’t just a DB, a gunshot victim. This was his ex-wife.

  Someone else had to do it.

  Luckily, over the course of his career, Lucas had made many contacts and bonds with plenty of others in the same field. Within hours of Caitlin’s murder, he had countless offers from those willing to come into town and take over his duties so that, for once, he didn’t have to be the only doc. He could grieve.

  Not that he spent much time doing that. Keeping busy was a perfect balm to obsessing over this newest and most awful tragedy.

  When he wasn’t making arrangements with her deputies, Lucas spent most of his time at Ophelia. He tended to his sister, who was traumatized after watching Caitlin die, and he talked with Tessa Sullivan. The poor woman eyed the world warily now, as if she suspected anyone and everyone of being behind these terrible deeds.

  As much as it went against everything he believed in as a doctor, Lucas overmedicated them both. Tessa still couldn’t sleep without a little extra help. The anxiety that plagued Maria after her attack came back with a vengeance. He raided his limited pharmacy, trying to keep the women calm.

  The anti-anxiety meds left Maria drained and more than a little dull, and she spent most of the time sleeping in a vain attempt to cope.

  Tess fought sleep until he threatened to shove a sleeping pill down her throat. The first night, she took it. The second, he really thought she’d make him follow through with his threat before she finally gave in.

  Lucas couldn’t remember the last time he got more than a few hours down. It didn’t matter. He could sleep when he was
dead.

  He made the mistake of saying that to his sister the morning after Caitlin’s murder when Maria pointed out his five o’clock shadow and the circles under his eyes. She burst into tears. He immediately borrowed one of her rooms, showering and shaving so that he looked human.

  After that, he put her back on her medicine, keeping her mildly sedated as he pushed on. So many things to do, so little time. The busier he was, the easier it was to simply forget that someone killed Caitlin. It wasn’t callous or cold but, rather, just his own coping mechanism. If he stopped to think about what happened, he’d crash. He didn’t have time for that sort of luxury. Not now.

  Tessa was the only one in Hamlet who understood how he felt. When Maria locked herself in her room, she sat with him in the kitchen, keeping him company. The homey room they returned to Thursday night after he'd been forced to pronounce his ex dead on the scene became the center of their unspoken vigil. Neither could say what it was they were exactly waiting for.

  Then, on Saturday afternoon, Maria’s radio buzzed. And it seemed as if they’d been waiting for something just like that.

  Lucas stiffened at the unexpected sound. He recognized it immediately. It was the emergency signal, the one reserved for the sheriff’s department, and it was playing on his sister’s radio.

  Maria was sitting on the same side of the table as Tessa. Her long dark hair was mussed from the nap she took earlier that morning. Blue eyes were glassy and unfocused as she absently nibbled on the cheese sandwich Lucas slapped together for her. She’d taken to carrying her radio with her. It was propped up next to her plate while she struggled to eat something. When the radio started its chirp, she set the sandwich back down.

  No one reached for the communicator. It continued to sound, the frequency growing higher in pitch. Tessa shook her head back and forth. Maria blinked before nudging the radio with her forefinger, moving it away from her. She scooted it in front of Lucas.

  He sighed. Picking the damn thing up, he pressed the answer button. “Yes?”

  Crackle. “Who is this?”

  “Lucas De Angelis speaking.”

  “Doctor. It’s Deputy Collins down at the station. I was hoping you were still with your sister. I thought you’d both like to know.” He paused. In a curiously emotionless voice, he continued, “There’s been an arrest.”

  Lucas nearly dropped Maria’s radio.

  It had been less than forty-eight hours since Caitlin was slain. Her wake was scheduled to be held all day Monday, her burial the morning after that. He expected the investigation to drag out until the collective anger at her murder faded into a sad acceptance that she was gone. Since learning of her death, he prayed for the best and prepared for the worst. After his own questioning, he hadn’t had much hope that they could find the culprit without a little help.

  Could it be that they had? And so soon?

  Maria clasped her hands in front of her in a silent prayer. Tessa, strung as tight as piano wire, seemed to vibrate in place as she silently implored Collins to spill.

  His hand shook so bad that his finger slipped off of the receiver button. “Collins? You there, Deputy?”

  Static filled the room, then the morose voice of the stunned deputy.

  “It was supposed to be routine. They asked us all for our weapons to make sure that none of them matched the bullet that shot the sheriff. But one of ‘em did so Detective Rodriguez just came and took him.”

  Lucas jammed the receiver button, he slammed his thumb into it so fast. When the static died, as if he lost the connection with Collins, he smacked the back of the radio with the flat of his palm. “Who? He took who?”

  And then the deputy said the words that shocked the room:

  “Mason, doc. That outsider detective just charged Mase with murder.”

  To the surprise of everyone in Hamlet, the charges ended up being two counts of homicide against Mason Walsh.

  It was the ballistics tests that did him in. Whether he was cocky or just plain stupid, he used his own gun to kill Caitlin De Angelis. His prints were all over the barrel and the trigger. The bullets fired in testing were an exact match to the slug Lucas’s ME friend pulled out of her chest.

  Talk about a smoking gun. Thinking he’d never be caught, Mason actually handed over the gun that fired the fatal shot. And then he had the nerve to be shocked when they matched it.

  The investigators were thorough. Once they identified Mason’s gun as the murder weapon, they had their warrants in less than half an hour. While he was locked up in the county jail, loudly proclaiming his innocence, a team of devoted detectives tore through Mason’s home.

  By the time they were done, they hit the jackpot. Tucked in a storage bin, hidden in the back of his garage, one of the detectives found a carefully coiled length of rope and a pair of gardening gloves.

  Detective Rodriguez brought it to the lab himself. And when the verdict came back that the same type of rope had strangled Jack Sullivan at the Hamlet Inn, Mason earned his second count of murder.

  Tess could have let it go. When it was just Caitlin, she almost managed to convince herself that she had nothing to do with it. She’d only known the man for a handful of days. No matter how he angry he’d been when he’d run off the night Caitlin was shot, was it really her fault?

  And then came the announcement that Rodriguez’s team found the rope and the repercussions from that discovery had Tess absolutely and utterly convinced that she was to blame for everything that happened.

  After convincing Maria to skip her morning dose of medicine, Tess got her to drive her to the county courthouse about forty minutes outside of Hamlet. The small village wasn’t prepared to play host to a double murderer. When Rodriguez came to take Mason away, Deputy Collins accepted that it was a conflict of interest for any Hamlet law enforcement official to have a part in the capture and arrest. He was one of them. It was easier that way.

  Since she didn’t know how to get there—and she’d just about given up wondering what happened to her car—Tessa asked Maria if she would go with her to see Mason. She first thought about asking Lucas, only to chicken out at the last minute.

  In fact, she made Maria promise that she wouldn’t even tell her brother that they made this trip. Caitlin’s wake was still scheduled to be held the next day. He had a thousand things he had to do. She couldn’t expect him to hold her hand. Besides, this was something she had to do on her own.

  Though she offered to go in with her, Maria’s relief was obvious when Tess refused.

  “Thanks for bringing me,” she said, climbing out of the car. “Once they let me in to see him, I won’t be long.”

  Maria swept her hair behind her, concern pulling her forehead into light lines. “You sure, sweetie? You don’t have to do this.”

  “Yes. I do. Detective Rodriguez says they’re moving him again. This might be my only chance to talk to him before… well, I don’t know what’s going to happen. But I’m leaving soon, Maria. Before I go back home, I have to see him. I have to know.”

  Maria’s eyebrows rose so high, they disappeared beneath the fringe of her bangs. “You’re going? Already?”

  Tess didn’t have the heart to tell the other woman that it hadn’t been her idea to come to Hamlet at all. But Maria De Angelis had been nothing but kind to her so, with a small quirk of her lips, she nodded. “I have to. It’s time. As soon as they let me, I want to go home.”

  Maria leaned over, laying her slender hand on Tess’s arm. “I’ll be right out here if you need me. You don’t have to face him alone.”

  “I know. And I appreciate it, but that’s something I have to do, too.”

  Taking care not to slam the door behind her, Tess took a deep breath and started for the building. She expected the paperwork, the metal detector, the curious looks and wasn’t let down.

  Fifteen agonizing minutes later, some faceless deputy gestured for her to follow him into the cells. She almost turned tail and ran. Digging deep, she ignored her i
mpulse to flee and stepped lightly behind the bulky deputy. He led her down corridor after corridor without a word until he pointed at the third cell in.

  Tessa swallowed her gasp.

  Mason.

  She always heard jail was hell. Here was proof.

  The fallen deputy was pacing back and forth, his shoulders hunched and his hands curled into fists at his side. He looked like a caged animal. Her impression only grew stronger when he froze, his head lifting as if he caught a scent. A heartbeat later, his whole body tensed, then he turned. His big, brown eyes were wild and just a little crazy as he zeroed in on her.

  Launching his body at the cell door, he wrapped his hands around the bars. Mason mashed his forehead up against the grate.

  “Tess, you came!”

  The orange jumpsuit they put him in made his tan complexion look faded and wan. The circles underneath his bloodshot eyes were so dark, they were nearly black. He looked like he hadn’t had a wink of sleep since his arrest.

  Taking care not to get too close to him, Tess edged closer to the cell. She stopped with more than a foot separating them. “Why did you do it?”

  Her whisper hit him like a sucker punch to the gut. Mason recoiled, folding over as he shoved away from the cell bars before staggering back. Shock made his features go slack, replaced by utter despair only seconds later.

  “You believe them.” His tone was empty. “You think I could have done any of this.”

  She wouldn’t let his wounded expression sway her from her what she came here to do. “Deputy Walsh, I—”

  “Mason. Tess, I’m still Mason. Don’t do this,” he begged. “Please.”

  It really was like that first night all over again. He’d insisted she call him by his name rather than his title even after he brought her down to the station. This time, though, she didn’t indulge him.

  This time she wasn’t the one behind bars.

  “Deputy Walsh,” she repeated. She wouldn’t make this personal. She couldn’t let herself. “What else am I supposed to do?”