1 A Small Case of Murder (29 page)

“Look at her,” Jan ordered Tad to see the injustice Joshua was committing before her very eyes.

From the living room window seat, Sheriff Sawyer, Tad, and Jan watched Tess Bauer interview Joshua. The rest of the Thornton family watched from seats out of the camera shot.

The journalist and the subject of her exclusive interview sat in his two leather wing-backed chairs in front of the fireplace. Her clipboard with her list of questions resting in her lap, she sat up straight at the edge of the chair.

“So much for my exclusive,” Jan pouted.

Tad soothed her envy. “Keep watching.”

“I guess,” Tess concluded, “Reverend Rawlings got there before Bridgette and killed Vicki before she could reveal that he was really her father.”

Joshua disagreed. “Reverend Rawlings would never have killed Vicki.”

“Family loyalty? He killed his own wife.”

“The man we knew as Reverend Rawlings wasn’t stupid. He knew that Vicki’s death would eventually lead to the truth about what he did to Cindy, which would mean the downfall of his church. That’s why he had sent the mail bomb to Dr. MacMillan after Vicki had died. He was afraid Tad would discover the truth and he’d end up with the same problem he had with Doc Wilson, if not worse. Before Vicki’s death, the reverend terrorized Tad with threatening e-mails, which we traced to his laptop. He was trying to drive Tad back to the bottle, which would discredit him or, better yet, drive him out of town. He also manipulated Vicki to stalk him. Orville Rawlings had to get rid of Tad because he didn’t know if Cindy had told him about the rapes. Once Vicki was dead, then Tad had access to the physical evidence that’d prove who her real father was.”

“Since killing was so easy for the reverend, why not just have Tad killed?” Jan interjected a question to spear-like glares from Tess and her news crew.

Joshua responded, “I asked that question myself. I’m guessing here, but I think he didn’t kill him because everyone here in Chester knows how close Tad and I are. The local media has followed my career and my tenacity is no secret. If someone hurt Tad, I’d be back here in a heartbeat, and no one would stop me from finding out who did it. He didn’t want to take that chance.”

Tess regained control of her interview. “But you came back anyway.”

“Yeah, I did, didn’t I?” Joshua returned to the previous question with a slight shake of his head. “The reverend couldn’t let anything happen to Vicki, if only to protect himself. That’s why, with all the trouble she caused him—the DUIs, the car accidents—he never had her killed.”

“But Vicki was going to tell all about Rawlings’ drug operations. She told Amber,” Tess pointed out. “Amber saw him kill Vicki—”

“And Beth Davis?” Joshua reminded her of Amber’s interview with Morgan. “She claimed she saw him kill Beth, too, and we proved Bridgette Poole did that.”

“W-well,” Tess stammered, “Amber did do a lot of drugs.” She sucked in her breath. Joshua saw her grimace before she asked, “Who did kill Vicki Rawlings?”

With a laugh, he said, “That was the murder that tripped me up.”

Tess joined in his amusement before asking, “How did it do that?”

“Well,” Joshua began, “the problem I had was in the way I looked at Beth’s and Vicki’s murders. We had two murders, but we kept looking at it as one crime, even though we knew the murders had been committed two hours apart. I thought, assumed, that the two murders were connected.”

“But that wasn’t the case?”

Joshua held up two fingers. “When I looked at the crime scene as two separate murders, with two murderers with two separate set of motives, whose crimes coincidentally happened in the same location, like two puzzles in the same box, then it made sense. Then, I saw what happened.”

The journalist asked, “What happened?”

“Tess, you killed Vicki Rawlings.”

Her face blank, Tess stared at Joshua.

Silence filled the room.

Joshua broke the silence. “Remember the glove you made sure everyone at my news conference knew about?”

“One of my sources told me about the glove,” Tess said.

“There was a bloody fingerprint on that glove.”

“Amber explained that to me,” Tess said. “She said she had picked up the glove to see what Rawlings dropped on his way out.”

“Tess, you’re a respected journalist.” Joshua sat up in his seat. “You’re up for an award for your series on drugs in the valley. Years ago, you interviewed a presidential candidate in Pittsburgh, did you not?”

“Yes, I did.”

Jan, Tad, and Curtis Sawyer stood up from the window seat. The children sat at the edge of their seats while the poised journalist’s composure slipped away.

Joshua spoke in a soft tone. “We got a match on the fingerprint off the glove that you picked up after Rawlings dropped it at the courthouse. We ran it through national security. Did you forget? To interview a presidential candidate, you have to pass security background check. They take your fingerprints, which remain on file in the government database.”

Thinking quickly, Tess observed the people in the room. “There must be some mistake.”

Stunned by the change in the tone, the camera operator forgot about taping the interview. The station manager and news producer stepped forward from where they had been watching in the background.

Joshua was shaking his head. “No, Tess, there wasn’t any mistake. For years, you’ve been telling everyone that you blamed the Rawlings for your sister’s death. You claimed that you turned down the network offer because you were going to stay here to get the drug dealers who killed your sister.”

“Yes.”

Joshua indicated his front porch outside. “Right out here on my porch, you told me that drugs killed your sister, and that was why you were after the Rawlings.”

“I remember.”

“You never mentioned that she bled to death from cuts on both her wrists.”

Tess cleared her throat and swallowed. “I was too ashamed to tell you. She killed herself. The drugs were destroying her, and she couldn’t stand it. She was weak. The Rawlings fed on that weakness. Vicki got her hooked. Diana never would have killed herself if she hadn’t have gotten her hooked.”

Joshua watched her closely. “I was in the Navy when the wall came down in Germany. Then, something interesting came out. You see, during the Cold War, the Soviets were accusing the Americans of all these awful things we were doing: bribery, blackmail, and murder for secrets. What’d come out afterwards was that the Soviets diverted suspicion from themselves by accusing us of the very things they were doing. It’s a very interesting little ploy.”

Tess stared at him with wide eyes.

“You killed your sister because she stole your boyfriend.”

“No!” Tess cried out.

Joshua said, “It was supposed to look like a suicide. When the medical examiner in Hookstown wasn’t able to rule that with certainty, because there wasn’t any hesitation in the slashes on her wrists, you had to make sure no one suspected you. Shortly before Diana’s death, you got into a huge fight with her in front of witnesses. If your sister’s death was being investigated as a murder, you’d be the prime suspect. So, to divert suspicion, you cried foul and pointed your finger at the Rawlings.”

Joshua leaned toward her. “Vicki knew the truth and was blackmailing you. So, you had to win her confidence to get close enough to kill her. That was another reason you didn’t go to New York. You couldn’t afford to live there with all the blackmail you were paying her. She was as ruthless as her birth father. But she didn’t know who she was dealing with.”

Sheriff Sawyer interrupted. “We checked your bank records. A lot of cash had been disappearing, leaving you barely enough to live on. Not only did it stop disappearing after Vicki Rawlings died, but the day after her death, you got a safety deposit box at the same bank. Care to show us what’s in it? Could it be a bundle of drug money that you stole from Vicki after killing her? It seems kind of odd that with all the drugs Vicki was dealing that no cash was found at her place.”

“I was lending money to a friend and they finally paid me back. I put it in the safety deposit box so the government wouldn’t know about it.” Tess turned back to Joshua and sputtered, “I would never kill my sister. I loved her.”

“We talked to the state police in Pennsylvania.” Joshua reported, “A girl with short dark red hair and gothic make-up was seen outside Diana’s boarding house the very night she died. They suspected she was the one who supplied her with the drugs. Her description matches Amber to a ‘T’.”

Tess choked, “Amber killed my sister?”

“As suddenly as she showed up on the drug scene with your sister, Amber disappeared. Then, according to the drug underground—we’re talking years later—she reappeared, right in time for your series on the drug culture and Vicki’s murder.”

Tess’s tears stopped. She shot him a crooked grin. “Amber did it.”

“And you’re Amber.”

“That’s not true,” Tess asserted. “You saw my interview with her where she told me on camera about what she knew and gave me the tape. Both of us were on camera.”

“No one was there to see it recorded.”

“It was two o’clock in the morning. Amber was scared.”

“Tess, what’s one of the first things you learn in communications?” Joshua answered his own question while she gazed at him. “Film editing and special effects. One special effect, which is surprisingly easy anymore, is to make double images. To shoot one scene with an actor, and then shoot a second scene with the same actor and splice them together to make it look like you have twins.” He indicated his own twin sons.

Jackie, the news producer, confirmed his statement with a nod of her head. “We have the software to do it in our own studio. You know how to use it, Tess.”

Joshua plunged ahead. “You did so well in diverting suspicion from yourself for Diana’s murder that you tried it again by framing Reverend Rawlings of killing your blackmailer.”

Tess was so shocked she didn’t wipe away the tears that soaked her face.

Joshua said to her, “I threw a monkey wrench into your plan by refusing to accept the glove you had left behind as evidence. Unwittingly, I gave you the idea of using Amber as an eyewitness. I said bring me a witness and I’ll arrest Rawlings.” He laughed. “Suddenly, out of the blue, Amber showed up to say she saw it all.”

“She did see it!”

“You did. You saw everything except for Beth’s murder, that is.” Joshua observed how she held on tightly to her ribs. “You gave it away the night of the murders when you showed up before the police—”

“Amber called me.”

“You were shocked out of your gourd that there were two murders.”

“Amber had only told me about Vicki.”

“You had only killed Vicki. Bridgette showed up after-wards with Beth while you were changing out of your Amber costume. You gave yourself away in your special report by proving that you had been on the scene at the time of Vicki’s murder.”

The news producer announced, “We gave the prosecutor the unedited tape of your report.”

“You said that Vicki had been stabbed with a steel stake,” Joshua reminded her. “I heard you report that at the scene less than an hour after we found the bodies.”

The sheriff told her, “The authorities never released to the media that the murder weapon had been a steel stake. We only said it was a stake.”

Joshua shrugged, “Why not assume it was a wooden stake? That’s what they used to kill vampires, and Vicki was a bloodsucker. The stake was a symbolic gesture on your part. She was sucking you dry.”

Her eyes wide to hold back the tears as best she could, Tess laughed. “Amber killed her.” She added desperately, “Amber told me it was a steel stake when she called me.” She rambled on, “Amber killed Vicki! She killed my sister and then she killed Vicki! She’s crazy and she’s setting me up!”

“Yes, Amber killed your sister and Vicki.” Joshua pointed at the reporter. “And you’re Amber.”

“You’re insane!”

Joshua said, “The station sent the original tape you brought in of your interviews with Amber to the state forensics lab. They found where it was edited.”

“Amber is real. People have seen her. Ask around.”

“But no one has ever seen the two of you together.” Jackie looked for confirmation to the camera operator, who shook his head in response to her question. “You were so good that none of us even realized it until Mr. Thornton asked us. Every time Amber came in asking for you, you couldn’t be found. You wouldn’t even answer your cell phone.”

“That doesn’t mean anything.” Tess wiped her running nose on her sleeve.

“Let’s look at your interviews.” Joshua went to the television and DVD player concealed in the entertainment center. As he spoke, the image of Amber in her reddish black hair and lipstick came up on the screen. “You were good, Tess. Amber had a different style and manner of speech. I was fooled for a long time—”

“—I heard Vicki screaming at her old man! I could hear her fighting him. Then suddenly, it was quiet, and that was worse than the screaming because I couldn’t tell what was happening. Then-Oh,God!” Amber covered her face with her hands.

The image on the screen froze with Amber, her bare shoulder peaking out of the black sleeveless top. Her hand with her claw-like fingernails covered her face.

Joshua pointed to Amber’s shoulder. “Look. No tattoo. Now, I looked at all your interviews with Amber. She had a black widow spider tattooed on her left shoulder. But, in this interview with Morgan Lucas, she has no tattoo. The night she came to my house to give me her statement, the tattoo moved to her right shoulder.”

Stepping across the room, Joshua reached down to take her hand. Wordlessly, he observed her fingernails, which were trimmed and painted a soft pink color. “You have pretty hands. I can see that you take good care of them. You keep your nails short. I noticed that the night you were here. My wife kept her nails trimmed, too. They’re easier to take care of, and you can do more when you keep your nails short.”

The prosecutor pointed to the screen where Amber covered her face with her long claws. “But, that afternoon that I came to your studio after Amber told the valley about seeing the murders, your fingernails were long and dark like Amber’s. I wasn’t the only one who noticed that you had Amber’s fingernails. Morgan did, too. She had to notice. She was sitting three feet from you. When you were ranting and raving at her for stealing your source, you pointed your finger at her, and that was when she realized that you were Amber.” Joshua sighed, “That’s why you had to kill her.”

Tess snatched her hand out of his grasp.

“You had to glue Amber’s nails on over your real nails. In order to remove them without damaging your own nails, you have to soak them in a solution. You didn’t have the time, or maybe the means, to get those nails off before returning to the studio to go into your act about Morgan Lucas stealing your story.”

Joshua looked down at the woman hugging her ribs that ached as she trembled in her effort to not sob.

“When I met Amber up close, I knew she wasn’t the real thing, either.”

Tess dropped her head.

Joshua observed the pain on her face. “My daughter put up more of a fight than you expected when you came here to attack one of my kids to make me back off.” He looked at Tracy, who was watching from the kitchen doorway. “Tracy has a brown belt in martial arts. Her mother taught her well. She felt your ribs break when she kicked them in, and you knew better than to go to the hospital to have them treated.”

Even as she felt jealous of the woman who had achieved her dreams of being a journalist, Jan felt sorry for Tess.

Joshua bent down to whisper in her ear. “Take off your wig, Tess.”

She grasped the crown of her honey blond hair. The wig came off to reveal closely cropped, reddish-black hair.

“You’re wrong about one thing, Mr. Thornton.” Tess looked up at Joshua with a tear-soaked face. “Vicki wasn’t blackmailing me because I killed my sister. She saw me kill that pig that dumped me for her. The little slut was hiding in his closet.”