1 A Small Case of Murder (9 page)

“I’m unable to comment on the specifics involving the current investigation into the deaths of Victoria Rawlings and Elizabeth Davis,” Joshua Thornton read from the statement he had prepared for the journalists gathered at the county court-house days later.

Tess Bauer and the rest of the media had been hounding him since Marjorie Greene announced that the former JAG officer had been appointed special prosecutor in charge of the case.

The double murder was big news. It isn’t every day the Satan-worshipping granddaughter of a prominent church pastor gets killed after being arraigned for attempting murder.

While Joshua felt obliged to make a statement, he didn’t intend to say anything. He announced that he was doing all he could to get the evidence he needed to convict Vicki Rawlings’ and Beth Davis’s killer. Then, he said he would take a couple of questions.

Tess Bauer shot the first question. “Mr. Thornton, have you questioned Reverend Orville Rawlings?”

Prepared for that question, Joshua answered, “I’m unable to answer any questions on the specifics of the case. I will tell you that everyone is a suspect and all suspects will be inter-viewed if they haven’t already.”

“Are you going to ask him about the glove?”

Joshua’s smile dropped.

Tess pressed on. “The reverend’s driving glove was found on the scene, wasn’t it?”

Unaware of a glove found at the scene, the other jour-nalists began questioning her.

Joshua turned to Sheriff Curtis Sawyer, who waited off the small stage, out of camera range.

In response to the prosecutor’s silent question, the sheriff glared at Tess and shook his head like a big dog tearing up an annoying little pest.

Joshua turned back to the microphones. “I’m not able to comment on that.”

“Mr. Thornton, you were the first official on the scene of the murders that night,” Tess announced. “You were there even before the police. Can you tell us about your connection to the Rawlings?”

“Ms. Bauer, I’m much too busy to have time to banter around insinuations. If you have any accusations to make about my credibility, then come right out and say them. Otherwise, let me do my job.”

There was a hush in the room.

Tess took a second to regain her resolve. “Do you intend to seriously consider Reverend Orville Rawlings a suspect?”

“He’s already seriously considered a suspect, as are several other people who I will not name.”

“Has the blood-covered glove at the scene been identified as belonging to Reverend Rawlings?”

“Ms. Bauer,” Joshua said with a forced smile, “a glove doesn’t make for a conviction and I won’t waste my time, or the taxpayers’ money, arresting someone for a crime unless I can get a conviction. Do you know what circumstantial evidence is?”

He waited for her answer, which didn’t come. “It is evidence that is based on circumstances. It’s Reverend Rawlings’ glove, so we are to arrest him? Anybody could have stolen it and placed it at the scene. It was his granddaughter’s home. He could have dropped it there while visiting her days or weeks before. I look for real evidence, such as a murder weapon with his fingerprints on it, or a witness who saw him at the scene at the time of the murder.”

He challenged the journalist. “You bring me a witness who saw Reverend Orville Rawlings at the scene committing the murders, and I’ll get the arrest warrant.”

The lawyer nodded at the journalists, unnerved by his candor, and smiled charmingly. “Thank you.” Then, he left the room before they could regain their composure to ask him more.

“I don’t think anyone has ever laid into Tess Bauer like that before.” Sheriff Curt Sawyer flipped through the pages of his notepad for his notes from his interview with the Rawlings following the murders.

The sheriff and special prosecutor had returned to the scene of the crime.

Joshua studied the pictures and report from the state forensics team. His meeting with them didn’t turn up anything he hadn’t already learned from Tad.

“She’s sharp.” Joshua’s attention turned to the blood-stained bed and floor where he and Tad had found the two bodies.

“You’re right there. She could have gone to New York a couple of years ago. She had a job lined up with the network.”

“Why didn’t she?” Joshua went to the other side of the bed to examine the blood-splattered wall with a hole cut out of it. Forensics had removed a portion to examine the slug in it that had gone through Beth’s head.

“After her little sister died, Tess vowed to get the Rawlings for selling her the drugs that killed her.”

Joshua studied the bed where Vicki’s body had been found. He dug through the crime pictures. “Any line yet on who that coat belongs to?”

“I think it’s one of the Rawlings.”

“But not the reverend?”

Sheriff Sawyer shook his head. “Not big enough.”

“Why do you think it belongs to the Rawlings?” Joshua laid out the pictures on the bed.

“Because when I asked Wally about it, he made a big deal about how many people in the valley own trench coats,” Sheriff Sawyer said. “He pointed out that you probably own one.”

“He’s right.”

“When did you last see it?”

“This morning. In my closet. Do you want to see it?”

Joshua recalled that Tad had said that he didn’t think Beth was able to drive when she’d left the hospital. The security video showed someone escorting her out of the emergency room. “Where’s Beth’s car?”

“We impounded it. It’s at a garage out on Route 8.”

“Did anyone examine it?”

Sawyer said, “One of the crime scene investigators went over it. The thing’s a mess. We picked up some prints. There’s no ID on them, but we got them.”

“Good.” Joshua squinted at the bed.

“What are you looking at?”

“How did Vicki end up on this bed?” Joshua referred to the forensics report. “Carpet fibers on Beth’s clothes and shoes confirmed that she was dragged across the living room and down the hall to be put on the floor next to the bed. There are no carpet fibers on Vicki’s clothes. She was killed on the bed.”

Joshua studied the picture of Vicki’s body. Cringing at the sight of the snake that had entangled itself around her body, he forced himself to look beyond the tattoo to observe the scene of her death. “She wasn’t wearing any underwear, but there was no sexual activity. She was completely exposed. The killer didn’t bother covering her up. That means either he didn’t know her, or at least, if he did, he didn’t care enough about her to cover up her body. If he cared, he would have pulled down her shirt or put a sheet over her.” He handed the autopsy re-port to the sheriff and pointed to the information that had caught his attention. “I knew I read it here somewhere.”

“There was a puncture mark on the left side of her genital ridge.” The sheriff translated. “She got a shot in the crotch.”

“Tad had said she was shot up with a muscle relaxant to incapacitate her so the killer could plunge the spike through her heart. She let him shoot her up in her groin.”

Joshua imagined the scene that had taken place on the bed. “She and the killer were having foreplay. That’s why she wasn’t wearing panties. She probably thought it was a stimulant to enhance sex, but instead it incapacitated her. She couldn’t do anything but lie there and watch him ram the stake through her heart.”

“What a way to go,” Sheriff Sawyer breathed.

“Well, we know one thing about the killer,” Joshua muttered. “It was someone Vicki Rawlings trusted, who didn’t give a damn about her.”

Chapter Eight

The threat of rain loomed in the air with unseasonable cold winds. Thunderclaps warned of the summer storm’s imminent arrival.

Tad didn’t notice that the living room light was on when he tossed his motorcycle helmet onto the kitchen table. He turned on the light over the sink before taking milk out of the refrigerator and gulping it straight from the carton.

“You could have called.”

Tad whirled around to find Joshua standing in the living room doorway. “I thought we had agreed to see other people,” he cracked before gulping more of the milk. He closed the refrigerator door, but kept the milk out to finish for his lunch.

“I was worried. Where have you been for the last two days?”

At the sound of his master’s voice, Dog scurried in from where he had been lounging on the bed. He jumped up onto Tad, who returned the greeting before easing his front paws back down to the floor.

“I went to see Maggie.” Tad stepped around Joshua to go into the living room, where he took off his leather jacket and tossed it across the arm of the sofa. After plopping down next to it, he placed the top of the milk carton between his teeth in order to remove his boots. He let out a sigh when the air hit his sweaty feet.

Tad was so focused on getting nourishment into his body and removing his boots that he didn’t notice the crates of books stacked up along the wall under the picture window.

“How is she?” Joshua asked.

“She’s been better.”

“That must have been some romance. When she was up here—”

“What do you want?” Tad’s abrupt tone startled him.

“I’ve been worried. You took off so fast, and no one knew where you went.”

“I told Reverend Andrews I was going away for a few days when I asked him to take care of Dog.”

“You never said where you were going,” Joshua countered.

“I’m a grown man. I can come and go as I please.” Tad put his feet up on the coffee table.  “Can’t a guy take off for a few days without being interrogated like a murder suspect?”

“I’m not interrogating you. Should I?” Joshua could see that he hadn’t slept in a long time. He hadn’t eaten either.

Tad took another gulp of the milk. “Did Sawyer tell you?”

“Tell me what?” Joshua sat on the arm of the recliner across from him. “Did the results from the DNA tests come back yet?”

Tad emitted a hollow laugh. “It’s still going to be a couple of weeks for that.” He laid his head back and shut his eyes. “They got a match on the fingerprint off Beth’s fingernail,” He told him with his eyes closed. “You’ll never guess whose it is.”

“Reverend Rawlings?”

“Close. Wally. There’s only one problem with that finger-print. It’s upside down.”

“Upside down?”

With an exhausted groan, Tad stood to pick up a pair of scissors from a stack of magazines. “Let me show you. You’re Beth. I put the gun in your hand and I put my hand over yours to pull the trigger. I would have to wrap my hand around yours and press my finger on top of yours to pull the trigger.”

As he explained, Tad pressed his fingertip tip over Joshua’s. “Now, my index finger is right over your fingernail. Right?”

“Right.”

“That’s not how the fingerprint is on Beth’s fingernail.”

“The print was planted,” Joshua said. “Someone’s trying to frame Wally.”

Tad plopped back down onto the sofa. “Or Wally planted the fingerprint knowing that we would know it was planted and eliminate him as a suspect.” He took another gulp of the milk before laying his head against the back of the sofa and closing his eyes again. “What do you think of our Sheriff Curtis Sawyer?”

“He’s on the ball. Kind of young.”

“He ran unopposed after Patterson was elected to Congress. He was military police like Delaney. His father died when Curt was a baby. He and his mom lived in a trailer on the outskirts of New Manchester. He came back here to take care of her after she got divorced from a jerk.”

“Good guy or bad?”

Tad sighed deeply, lifted his head again, and opened his eyes into a squint. “I haven’t decided yet. His mother cleans house for the reverend. He had Rawlings’ support in his campaign. Yet, some of the things he does are completely opposite of what Delaney would do.”

“What type of things?”

“Like one night, Vicki broke in here while I was out on a call. I came home and found him in here arresting her. Sawyer said he was driving by and saw the broken window in my kitchen door. She was flipping out on something and had a butcher knife. He overpowered her and hauled her away to jail. The way Wally feels about me, if it was Delaney, he would have let her kill me, and then frame someone who pissed him off for it.”

“Why didn’t he ever keep her in jail?” Joshua asked.

“Sawyer says he was doing all he could about her. I think he was sincere. Before and after Vicki broke in here, I would see him out my window checking things out to make sure I was okay. But he never got her off my back.”

Joshua agreed. “There’s only so much the law can do when the prosecuting attorney is refusing to enforce the law.”

“That’s what Sawyer told me.”

Joshua acted casual when he asked, “Why was Vicki threatening you?”

“I don’t know. Suddenly, out of the blue she was telling me that I was responsible for her mother dying, and that I wasn’t going to take a breath or make a move without her being there.”

Joshua cocked his head and furrowed his brows. “Was Cindy one of your patients?”

Tad got up and dropped to his knees in front of the stack of books. He fingered the dusty volumes of medical textbooks in the crates.

Joshua had seen the look in Tad’s eyes in his own reflection in the mirror eight months earlier when his wife passed away.

With the voice and face of an angel, Cindy Welch had been a complete contrast to her daughter Vicki. It was easy for Tad to have fallen in love with her.

The Welch family had been the model of middle-class domesticity. They didn’t smoke, drink, or swear. Cindy’s father had worked in the steel mill, and her mother had baked cookies for the PTA. The family had lived in a brick ranch-style home with two deer statues in their front lawn along Route 8.

With her honey blond hair, deep blue eyes, and warm smile, Cindy Welch had won all the beauty pageants, which climaxed with Miss West Virginia Junior Miss. She was out of the motorcycle-riding, beer-swilling, and pot-smoking Tad MacMillan’s league.

Things aren’t always what they seemed.

Joshua recalled, “Back in high school, there used to be talk about you and Cindy Welch. Some people thought you two were a couple.”

“Talk about the odd couple.” Tad laughed. “The rebel and the virgin.”

“I remember you and her being over at our house, lying on the floor, and watching television together.”

A thick textbook in his hands, Tad turned to him. “I was Cindy’s project. She was going to save me from myself.” He fingered the exposed end of a slip of paper sticking out of the volume while he recounted, “I can still see her that first day I laid eyes on her. It was the last month I had of freedom before starting my residency and adulthood. I was at Tomlinson Run Park, sitting on my bike by the creek, smoking a cigarette and talking to Crazy Horse. There she was, playing on the teeter-totter with this fat girl. Cindy laughed and threw back her head, and all this blond hair fell down her back. She was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen.”

“Cindy was beautiful.” Joshua agreed.

“So I tossed aside my cigarette and went over and said, ‘I’m a doctor. Will you marry me?’”

“Did you really say that?”

Tad chuckled as he recalled a turning moment in his life. “Do you think I would have stood a chance with her if I wasn’t a doctor?”

“I think it was pretty much already decided that she was going to marry Wally.”

Tad’s smile faded.  “Cindy laughed when I said that. Her fat friend told me to get lost. I didn’t. By the time I was through, I knew her name and kept bugging her ever since. I figured I stood a chance. I did, but—” His eyes reflected regret, “I never got what I was looking for.”

Joshua stated rather that asked. “You did love her.”

“Now you know.” Tad opened the book and glanced at the sheet of paper tucked between the pages.

“No, I don’t. There’s a lot you’re not telling me.” Joshua was about to ask about Vicki’s e-mails when he saw that Tad wasn’t listening to him.

As he studied the paper in his hand, Tad’s eyebrows came together to meet between his eyes. He studied the page it marked.

“What’s wrong?” Joshua asked.

Tad laid the book aside, took another book out of the box, and fanned the pages. After dropping that one to the floor, he moved on to another, and then another.

“What are you looking for?”

“The rest of this.” Tad handed the paper and medical book to him before resuming his search.

Joshua read the paper in his hand. He had seen this paper before: not this specific piece of paper, but the type. It said clearly what it was.

It was a death certificate.

Joshua recognized his scrawled illegible signature.

Dr. Russell Wilson had signed it as the medical examiner appointed by Hancock County.

The name typed on it read in clear letters: “Cynthia Anne Rawlings. Maiden name: Welch.”

Below her name was the information prompting Tad’s manic search. “Cause of Death: Homicide.”

“What did you do with the rest of Doc’s books?” Tad’s voice broke through his thoughts.

“They’re still in my office,” Joshua answered. “The kids are going through them.”

“They didn’t throw anything out, did they?”

“No. Why would Doc put a death certificate in a medical textbook?”

Tad stuck the open book under his nose. “Look at it. It’s a textbook about poisons. Look at the page he put it in. Arsenic. He knew what was going on.”

“Which is that anyone who gets close to the Rawlings ends up dying a premature death,” Joshua said.

“In Cindy’s case it was a slow painful death over the course of a year.” Tad picked up a crate, turned it upside down, and dumped the books to the floor. He dug through them like a miner digging for gold after finding a single nugget. “I need to find that autopsy report.”

Joshua leafed through a couple of the books before he told him, “It’s not here. It has to be at my office.”

Tad yanked his boots back onto his feet and practically crawled on his hands and knees for the door in his haste to get to Dr. Wilson’s former office.

Joshua followed him out the back door and down the steps. “That is what you’ve been looking for. Patient files were an excuse. You’ve known all along that Cindy was murdered.” He rushed to keep up with him.

The clouds hung in the sky like a thick blanket threatening to drop onto them any second. The thunder rolled insistently.

“Doc laughed at me when I told him Cindy had been murdered,” Tad recounted. “When I asked to read the autopsy report he wouldn’t let me see it. I had no authority to request it, nor did I have any proof. Doc said it was hemorrhaging from a bleeding ulcer.”

As they turned the corner onto Carolina Avenue at the bottom of the hill, Joshua caught up to him, and they walked together. “I thought you two stopped seeing each other after she married Wally. That was at least ten years before she died.”

“We didn’t even talk to each other,” Tad said. “You see, in the beginning, Cindy was the virgin ground I wanted to tread and, I think for her, I was the guy she couldn’t bring home to mother, sort of James Dean to her Natalie Wood: Rebellious, yet sensitive. Dangerous enough to be interesting, but not threatening.”

“Then something happened,” Joshua prodded him to continue.

“We got to know each other. She kept saying no, but I stuck around. At first, I had hopes that eventually she’d say yes. Then, after awhile I didn’t care so much if she let me get into her panties. I wanted to be in her life and, she saw that I had a problem that was going to kill me if I didn’t do some-thing about it. She set out to save me and I think—I know—she fell in love with me.”

“But she married Wally.”

“Because she didn’t have the guts to stand up to her parents. Wally was the guy any nice churchgoing parents would want their daughter to marry. They were too blind in their faith to see that underneath it all he was a hypocrite.”

“What happened between you two?” Droplets warning of the oncoming downpour splashed into his eyes, causing Joshua to blink.

“The last time Cindy and I were together was the night be-fore she married Wally. She didn’t want to marry him, but she didn’t want to disappoint her parents, who had planned the valley’s version of the royal wedding. She rationalized that her hormones were what was making her sneak around with me.”

“So you two did sleep together!” Joshua accused him.

“No!” Tad stopped trotting to face him so he could see the conviction in his green eyes. “Cindy was a virgin on her wedding night. That was important to her. Can you believe it? This was the eighties and Cindy Welch wanted to wait until her wedding night for the right man. Unfortunately, she chose Wally Rawlings for that man.”

Tad resumed his jog. “She came to my apartment. Back then, I lived in that little efficiency over the garage on Second back behind the church. She didn’t look like an excited bride. She was scared to death. She came right out and asked me if she was doing the right thing. I was drunk because I was sick about her marrying Wally. We started kissing, and that night we went further than we ever had. I thought we were finally going to consummate this love affair we were having, but then, she got scared. I got mad. She cried and left. The next day, she got married, and I got drunk.”

Tad stopped in front of the law office. Pawing the ground like a racehorse ready to bolt when the gate was opened, he waited for Joshua to unlock the door.

“A couple of weeks later, when they got back from the honeymoon, Cindy called me. She had told Wally everything, and he forbade her from ever seeing me again.” Tad glared at the memory. “Needless to say, she vowed to obey rather than cherish.”

“It’d be hard for me to vow to cherish Wally,” Joshua cracked while racing to beat the storm in unlocking the door.

“I told her, ‘No problem.’ Like I was going to hang around as her toy boy. She burst out crying and hung up. Some happy bride.”

“Was that the end of it?” Joshua opened the door.

“For a while.” Tad waited for him to close the door and turn on the lights before climbing the stairs to the office. “I’d see Cindy around. This is a small town. We’d make eye contact but nothing more.”

“She had Vicki not long after they got married,” Joshua said on his way up the stairs. “I recall hearing talk that maybe Vicki was yours.”

“We never completed the act.” Tad passed him at the top of the stairs. After turning on the lights, overwhelmed by the volumes of books that lay before him, he halted.

Joshua came in behind him. “I think I better call for reinforcements.”