1 A Small Case of Murder (4 page)

Chapter Three

The sprawling red brick church on top of the hill along Indiana Avenue is a center of social activity on Sunday mornings. Members of its congregation greet each other in front of the First Christian Church to catch up on the week’s news. It is the same way at all the churches representing almost every orthodox religion along the same street.

During the sermon, the Thornton children admired the oak interior of the old church building. The floors were hard-wood with the walls and high cathedral ceilings paneled, and the pews constructed of matching oak. Glass lamps hung down from the ceiling over the center aisle.

Upon hearing the opening notes of the closing hymn, Reverend Steven Andrews gave his customary sigh of relief. He silently thanked God for letting him live through another sermon without throwing up on the pulpit. After six years as a church pastor, the young reverend still got stage fright before giving his sermons.

While he played the keyboard, music director, Tad McMillan, tried in vain to get the pastor’s attention.

Reverend Andrews was unaware of the choir’s gaze at the back of his head. At the close of the hymn, he lifted his arms up towards the ceiling. “And now, may the Lord go forth with you and be with you. Amen.” Instead of going forth, the congregation looked up at their pastor. A murmur rose from within the sanctuary. Reverend Andrews turned to Tad, who hissed, “You for-got the offering.”

Laughter rippled throughout the church while the ushers rushed down the aisle, grabbed the offering plates, and passed them to the pews. Joshua fought to not chuckle while he dropped a check into the plate.

When he turned around in his seat to hand the plate to the family in the pew behind him, he noticed a girl dressed in a skimpy shirt with baggy pants slung so low on her bony hips that it was a mystery as to how they kept from falling down to her ankles. Her poker-straight hair, bluntly cut at her jaw, was the color of a new copper penny.

The girl dressed in black had come in at the back of the church and made her way down the aisle at the far side of the sanctuary.

The father of teenagers, Joshua thought he was incapable of being shocked by anything done in the name of fashion. He realized that his assumption was wrong when he laid his eyes on the girl making her way to the altar.

Joshua saw under her midriff top the scales of a black snake tattoo draped across her stomach. The snake wrapped itself around her body, up her back, over her right shoulder, and across the front of her throat. The serpent’s head, his mouth open in mid-strike, rested on her left shoulder.

His concentration directed at the song he was playing on the keyboard, Tad didn’t notice her glassy gaze fixed on him.

The girl with the snake caused a stir amongst the congregation. All eyes were fixed on the visitor.

Was she going up to the pulpit to plead for the reverend to save her from the serpent that had taken control of her body?

Joshua saw beyond the body art to notice her hand in her shoulder bag as she moved in the direction of his cousin. A family consisting of three generations took up the pew between him and the girl with the snake. He didn’t have time to go around them.

“Excuse me,” he said repeatedly while squeezing his way in front of the seven people blocking his path.

The grandmother with a purple hat perched on top of her gray head sputtered when she lost her balance and landed on her rump in the pew. “Joshua Thornton, didn’t they teach you manners at that academy? I never.”

He recalled when the elderly woman had once complained to his grandmother about him being “mouthy”.

The girl pulled her hand out of the bag to reveal a hand-gun. She aimed it at Tad.

“She has a gun!” Tad took the pastor down onto the floor in a full body slam.

Joshua heard the roar of the congregation in his ears when he dove like a player racing for home plate. In midair, he caught her arm and thrust the gun towards the ceiling.

When they hit the floor, the bullet discharged from the barrel and struck one of the hanging lamps to send a shower of glass down onto the congregation. The bullet flew upward until it planted itself into one of the oak panels high above them. 

The congregation scattered. Their screams bounced off the wooden interior around them until it built to a crescendo. The men sheltered the women who grabbed their children.

At the foot of the altar, the man and girl, screaming like a wild animal, wrestled for the weapon.

While fighting to keep her finger from again squeezing the trigger of the gun, Joshua felt a sharp pain shoot up from his groin to his chest. That pain was replaced by another in his up-per arm where she planted her teeth. Determined to win the fight, she bit down harder.

“She’s biting me!” Joshua kept his grip on the gun that she refused to release while he called out for help.

Her teeth tore into his flesh.

J.J. attempted to pry her jaws open while Murphy pounded her wrist with his fist to force her to let go of the weapon.

“Bastards!” she cursed in a shrill voice.

She lunged at J.J. when Joshua took possession of the battle’s prize. The wild look in her eyes and the sight of his father’s blood on her lips caused the teenager to retreat.

“Stop it!” Joshua landed a punch across her jaw.

The girl with the snake tattoo collapsed to the floor in a heap.

The intended victim was the first to his feet. Tad leapt over the railing between him and the congregation to get to the fallen girl.

The pastor sat up to look down at the girl lying motionless below the pulpit like a dead animal sacrifice.

Her top had become disheveled in the fight to reveal another tattoo.

At first glance, the serpent seemed to be guarding his prey. A closer look revealed a pentagram tattooed on the girl’s left breast beneath the head of the snake. The serpent was guarding the symbol of Satan, the lord of the underworld.

The silence evaporated into a hum of murmured questions that built to an echoing roar.

Donny shouted, “Dad hit a girl!”

“I’m sorry, Reverend. She left me no choice.” Joshua apologized to the pastor, who stepped down from the pulpit on trembling legs.

Tad pointed to Jan. “Call 911. We have a potential drug overdose here.”

She rushed back to the office to make the call.

“What’s that?” Donny pointed out the tattoo that adorned the young woman’s left breast.

“She worships Satan,” the pastor whispered, while looking around as if searching for other members of her “church”.

“Who is she?” Joshua asked anyone who would answer.

Tad responded to the query. “She’s Vicki Rawlings, Reverend Orville Rawlings’ granddaughter.”

After the shooting, Joshua watched with awe while Tad tended to the unconscious Vicki Rawlings. Her attempt to kill him was irrelevant to saving her life.

When the paramedics loaded the assailant into the back of the ambulance, Joshua observed the stark contrast of Vicki’s roots from the girl with the serpent tattoo wrapped around her body. A black MG convertible rested in the parking space ahead of the ambulance. Next to the personalized tag that read “RWLNGS4”, was a bumper sticker proclaiming “Jesus Lives!”

“She’s out of danger,” Tad announced when he joined his cousin in the hospital waiting room after a nurse sterilized and bandaged Joshua’s bite wound with liquid stitches.

Murphy and J.J. excused themselves from flirting with two nursing students by the vending machines to learn what Tad had to report about the girl with the gun.

“Medical danger,” Joshua said. “Where’s her family?”

“It’s Sunday,” Tad reminded him. “They’re at Rawlings’ church putting on a show of a functional family.”

“Are they simply going to leave her here?”

“At least until after their Sunday night service. Then, one of them will slip in under the cover of darkness and whisk her away to a psycho ward someplace for the customary three days of confinement until they have to take her home.”

“She shot up a church, man,” Murphy said. “What about the police?”

Tad told him, “Vicki is the county prosecuting attorney’s daughter.”

Joshua wasn’t satisfied with the explanation. “She took a shot at you.”

Despite his attempt to appear unaffected, Tad uttered a sigh that betrayed a note of emotional exhaustion. “That girl has been stalking me for over three years, and no one has been able to stop her yet.”

Joshua picked up on his distress. “You have a whole church full of witnesses who saw that girl pull a gun and try to shoot you.” His next statement was delivered with the force of a declaration of war. “My children were in that sanctuary.”

“And by the time Rawlings’ lawyer is through, they’ll all have new cars and amnesia.”

“Maybe Wally won’t do anything about his daughter, but I will.” Joshua demanded to know, “Have you filed complaints with the sheriff?”

Tad’s attention was drawn to an ambulance that had pulled up outside the emergency room doors. The attendants were unloading a gurney. “I’ve documented everything. I’ve even saved the e-mails she’s been sending.”

“The state attorney general will be very interested in why the prosecuting attorney won’t do anything—” Joshua stopped speaking when he saw that Tad’s focus was elsewhere.

The doctor caught up with the gurney. “Excuse me, but this is one of my patients. What seems to be the trouble?”

“Looks like an allergic reaction to medication,” Joshua heard the paramedic tell him.

Joshua Thornton wasn’t having a good Sunday.

After leaving Tad at the hospital, he had taken the twins to his office to continue wading through the junk left by the previous owner. He felt as if he hadn’t made any progress when it was time to return home.

He was looking forward to a cold beer and dinner. Since her mother’s death, Tracy had done her best to continue with the tradition of cooking a special dinner for her family on Sunday.

However, as soon as he came through the door, Sarah informed him that Tad needed his help right away. Still dressed in his work clothes, Joshua left behind a home-cooked dinner of baked chicken and potato salad to jog down the street to his cousin’s apartment.

On the first knock, Tad answered the door and yanked him inside.

The woman at the kitchen table vaguely resembled the girl he had almost married the night of their senior prom. Beth’s unkempt hair hung in her eyes. What make-up that hadn’t dripped off in her nervous sweat was smeared. Her fingernails that had always been manicured were now bitten down to the quick.

While explaining their dilemma at a hundred miles an hour, Tad peered into the alley like he was harboring a fugitive before slamming the door behind his guest. “We need some good advice. This afternoon one of my patients was brought into the ER—”

“Was that the woman I saw them bringing in when we were talking?”

Tad nodded his head. “Gloria Frost. Nice lady. She has a chronic sinus infection. I prescribed erythromycin because she’s allergic to penicillin. She was given amoxicillin, which is penicillin-based, and she had an allergic reaction. She’s in serious condition, but I think she’ll make it.”

“Did she know that amoxicillin is penicillin-based?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Tad said. “The bottle was marked erythromycin by the pharmacist who gave her the wrong pills.”

Joshua followed his gaze to Beth, who wrung her hands while staring wide-eyed at him from across the room. “How could you make a mistake like that?”

“I don’t know.” While recounting what had happened, she spoke with more conviction. “Mrs. Frost came in with her prescription. Then, Bridgette Poole came in and—You were there. She was yelling at me, and I got confused, and I grabbed the wrong pills. It wasn’t my fault.”

Tad spoke softly, “Of course, the emergency room doctor had to call the authorities. The police are going to want to talk to Beth. Mr. Frost has already said he intends to sue.”

“Why did you call me?” Joshua wanted to know. “If you wrote the right prescription—”

“Knowing Wally, I have no doubt but that he’ll charge Beth with criminal negligence.”

“Wally has been out to get me for years.” She picked up her purse from the floor and dug through it.

Joshua recognized it as the same macramé handbag he had seen on Tad’s kitchen table the previous night. “Why?”

She removed a bottle from her purse and popped two pills into her mouth. “How should I know?” She spoke around the pills while gesturing to Tad, who shot her a look of displeasure before filling a glass with water from the tap. 

“A woman almost died because of you,” Joshua said.

Her wide-eyed stare changed into a glare. “Aren’t you supposed to defend me?”

“At this point, only if I choose to. It would be easier for me to decide to help you if you showed at least an ounce of remorse for what happened.”

“She should have looked at the pills before she took them.”

“The bottle label read erythromycin and the information sheet in the bag was for erythromycin,” Tad said. “It was your responsibility to make sure the right medication got into that bottle.”

She jumped to her feet. “I thought you were on my side.”

“I said I would help you. You’re my friend—”

“You certainly don’t sound like it.” She put her purse on her shoulder.

Tad yelled back at her. “Don’t give me that shit. I didn’t have to warn you about what was coming down the pike. I could have simply sat back and let you shit your pants when the deputies showed up at your door to question you.”

He blocked her escape when she headed for the door. His voice took on a pleading tone. “Beth, you have to take responsibility for your actions, especially when it comes to messing up other people’s lives.”

“I made a mistake.” She rolled her eyes.

“You screwed up.”

“Like you never screwed up.” She pushed past him to the door.

“You go through that door, then don’t come back. I won’t be here to clean up your messes anymore, and neither will Josh. You’ll be on your own, babe.”

Beth slammed the door on her way out.

“Screw it!” Tad picked up her glass and threw it against the door behind her. The glass shattered.

Joshua wondered what he had witnessed.

After he got hold of himself, Tad picked up a dishtowel. “I’m sorry I got you over here for nothing.”

Still hot and thirsty, Joshua poured a glass of milk from the refrigerator. “Tell me about your relationship with Beth.”

Tad was on his hands and knees mopping up the spilt water and broken glass. “We’re friends.”

“Yeah. Right.”

Tad sat back on his haunches to watch Joshua gulp down the milk. “Is that green I see in those baby blue eyes?”

“Beth’s purse was on this kitchen table at midnight last night. If it was completely innocent, you wouldn’t have been so shy about letting me know she was here.”

“It wasn’t what you think.” With a sigh of defeat, Tad climbed up to his feet. “I’ve been trying to get Beth into rehab for years.” He deposited the broken glass into the trash.

“She’s an alcoholic? Come on. We dated all through high school. I drank more than she did.”

Tad explained, “Beth took it hard when you dumped her. That’s no excuse, but she used it as one. Then she said her nerves were bad and went to a quack therapist who got her hooked on Valium. Since she was a pharmacist, she went on to become hooked on her own pills. Diet pills. Sleeping pills. She uses a pill for everything.”

Tad poured a glass of milk for himself and refilled Joshua’s empty glass. He sat on top of the kitchen table to drink it. “I got a call from a bartender buddy of mine last night. Beth was getting into trouble. So, I got her and brought her back here.”

Joshua asked, “What was she on when she gave Mrs. Frost the wrong medication?”

“She could have been trying to get off them. She yo-yos. One day, she’s going to get clean. The next day, she slides back to where she was before.”

“Does Jan Martin know about her problem?” Joshua realized Beth may not be the only one in legal hot water. “The Frosts can sue her, too, since she owns the drug store.”

“Jan thinks Beth has a drinking problem. If she had known she’d been stealing pills, she would have had her out of there years ago.”

“Well, she’s going to know now. Beth and I have a past, but Jan doesn’t deserve this.” Joshua stepped toward the door. Remembering Vicki Rawlings, he stopped. “Did you print up those e-mails?”

“E-mails?”

“The e-mails from Vicki. Any letters you may have saved will be helpful, too.”

Joshua followed Tad into the living room. The doctor had a busy practice and was active in the church and drug abuse counseling centers. That left him little time to notice, let alone clean up, the clutter in his cozy living space.

Dog was stretched out on what appeared to be more of a dog bed than a sofa. The furniture looked like something left on a street corner on garbage day. Magazines, books, medical journals and patient folders were stacked on every flat surface.

Tad was rummaging through a box that had originally been a container for a new pair of boots. It contained a stack of paper that had been printed from his computer, which he kept in his office downstairs. “Here they are. They’re all here.” He handed the box to him.

“Thanks. I’ll have to read them.”

Joshua’s cousin shrugged off any explanation. “Go ahead. I have nothing to hide. Do whatever you want with them.”

“I’ll get right to work on it.” Joshua went back into the kitchen with Tad behind him.

“Wait.” Tad tore a sheet of paper off a memo pad on the kitchen counter next to the answering machine. “Jill left a message for me today. She says Rick would be glad to talk to you about that dead body. He lives in Cleveland now.” He handed him the slip of paper. “Be careful.”

“I didn’t get where I am today by not being careful.”

“If you were so careful you wouldn’t have five kids.”