My Soul to Keep (7 page)

“
It is the fluid that the prostate creates,” Nicole said. “Usually, you only see it pre-ejaculate, though.”

The Captain nodded.
“We’ve got a subpoena to collect Mr. Ash’s fluids for comparison.”

“
And how exactly are they going to collect those?” Ruben asked.

“
Look, there are some things in this job I need to know,” Glick said. “This is
not
one of them.”

“
It doesn’t matter,” Nicole said. “As long as it proves Mr. Ash was in Megan’s bed. It corroborates Megan’s journal and his own confession,”

“
Well, there’s a problem with that,” Glick said. “Turns out Mr. Ash was on anti-psychotics, surprise, surprise, which he stopped taking when he found out Megan was dead. His attorney is stating his client wasn’t in his right mind when he talked to you. He is petitioning the court to get it thrown out.”

“
Whoa,” Nicole said. “He was perfectly lucid when we talked to him.”

“
Did you ask him if he was on any meds?” Glick asked.

“
No,” Ruben said. “It isn’t part of our SOP.”

“
Well, it may have to be now. This is the second confession invalidated due to missed medication.”

Nicole loved the justice system, but sometimes, just sometimes
, it was idiotic. If someone confesses to something that they actually did, what did it matter what meds they were on?

“
So, we really need a confession out of the mother,” Glick stated. “She’s clean of meds.”

Nicole nodded. Although getting a woman living with a child molester for decades was going to take some work. Plus
, it didn’t exactly make any sense that she would kill Megan. Usually, if a mother finds out her husband is committing incest, she kills the husband. Not the daughter.

Nicole had her work cut out for her.

* * *

Ruben stood outside the interrogation room watching Nicole question Mrs. Ash. She had been at it for over an hour. The woman refused to budge off her story that they had a perfect
family. She shrugged off the diary. She didn’t care what her husband confessed to. Her lawyer had very little to say, given how vigorously Mrs. Ash defended herself and her family.

Glick entered from the squad room, voices and chatter floating in with him.
“Tox just came back. Lead poisoning. They found it in Megan’s cereal, as well.”

“
Like Nicole said, poisoning is a woman’s tool.”

Ruben texted Nicole the information. She pulled out her phone
, read it, and then typed something, but it wasn’t back to him. Probably forwarding the information to Kent. How he could help in this from thousands of miles away, Ruben wasn’t sure, but that wasn’t going to stop Nicole from having faith in the profiler.

“
Any match on the prostatic fluid?” Ruben asked.

Glick shook his head.
“I guess they are having some problem.”

“
Like what?” Ruben asked.

“
I don’t know,” Glick said. “Joshua just sent me a bunch of frowny face emoticons.”

Yep, that sounded like Joshua.

Ruben watched through the glass as Nicole leaned back and folded her arms over her chest. Not a good sign. Knowing that the murder weapon was lead was of no real help. Or even the fact that it was in Megan’s cereal. Of course Mrs. Ash’s prints would be all over the box. She was the one who served breakfast. Unless they found a container of lead powder in Mrs. Ash’s house with her and only her fingerprints, they couldn’t prove anything. And, looking at the shrewd woman, Ruben doubted very much they would get so lucky.

It was down to Nicole, but at the moment
, it looked like the momentum was in Mrs. Ash’s direction. She was leaned forward, her finger tapping the metal desk to make her points.

They had already gone through the mantra of suspects.
“How dare you accuse me?” “How could you ask me these questions when my daughter’s body isn’t even cold?” “I am going to sue the department.” “If anything happens to my children while in your care, I’m going to kill you.”

All the normal stuff. Self-righteous indignation pretty much ruled the day.

* * *

Nicole felt like she was stuck in a room with a broken record. Mrs. Ash had denied any involvement in every possible way
, giving alibis when none were needed. Her lawyer had tried to shut her up several times, but clearly Mrs. Ash was used to running the show.

She had hoped the woman would run off at the mouth, but so far, Mrs. Ash had stuck to her story
, however lame the denial may have sounded.

Nicole
’s phone vibrated at her hip. It was a call, though, not a text. She ignored it. It would roll over to voice mail. Sure enough, a few seconds later her phone pinged, indicating that there was a message waiting. Then the phone rang again.

If it were an emergency, Ruben would just walk in the door
, which pretty much left only one other person to phone urgently.

“
Sorry, I need to get this,” Nicole said, grabbing her phone. Sure enough, “unknown caller.” She answered it. “Hello?”

“
Stalemated, I take it?” Kent’s smooth voice asked.

“
You could say that,” Nicole said, smiling at Mrs. Ash’s lawyer. It was very poor interrogation form to take a call.

“
Pretend to hang up but leave the phone on the desk so I can hear.”

“
Okay, goodbye then,” Nicole said, setting the phone down and turning off the screen but leaving the call intact.

“
You know after this, you really are going to have to admit how much you need me,” Kent said.

Of course
, Nicole couldn’t answer him, not and keep their cover up.

“
We need to strike at the heart of the motive,” Kent explained. “So repeat everything I say.”

Nicole
’s skin crawled with gooseflesh. There was something so wrong and yet so provocative when she was the one to act out Kent’s mental traps.

“
How did it feel?” Kent asked. Nicole repeated the question to Mrs. Ash.

“
What feel?” the woman responded, perhaps for the first time slightly off balance. That was how fast Kent worked.

“
To have your husband spend his nights in Megan’s bed. Did your sheets get cold?” Kent coyly asked in her ear.

Nicole tried to
convey the same oily quality to her voice.

“
I have no idea what you are talking about,” Mrs. Ash contended, but Nicole noticed that the woman pushed off away from the table. As Kent would say, distancing herself from the truth.

“
How did it feel to know that your husband preferred your daughter over you?” Kent demanded. Nicole echoed the words.

“
She was young and hot. And what were you? A shriveled up old woman?”

Mrs. Ash
’s cheeks blotched with color and her fingers balled up into a fist.

Nicole took it from here without Kent
’s help.

“
Do you know what that ‘W’ stands for? It isn’t for Juanita, it’s for witch. That’s what your boys call you everyday. Even your boys hate you. They use ‘D’ for dad, but ‘W’ for you.”

“
They do not!” Mrs. Ash shouted, slamming her fist on the table. The motion bounced Nicole’s phone nearly off the edge. She caught it just in time.

“
Mrs. Ash,” her lawyer tried to soothe. “The detective is just trying to bait you. Don’t rise to it.”

The woman took in a deep breath and smoothed her blouse.
“Of course.”

“
You shared a wall, didn’t you? Could you hear your husband as he made love to Megan? Coursing his hands over her curves?”

Nicole pressed on.

“Could you hear her moans of ecstasy?” Kent asked.

Nicole
stopped short on that one. Not willing to sully Megan’s memory quite so much.

“
My dear, we have got to go there. We’ve got to dig deeply into this woman’s jealousy to override her desire to protect herself and her family.”

“
Could you hear her moans of ecstasy?” Nicole asked.

Again
, the woman’s face blotched, and the vein at her temple throbbed, pounding against the skin. So Nicole didn’t hesitate to repeat Kent’s next question.

“
Could you hear her come over and over again?”

“
That whore!” Mrs. Ash shouted, coming out of her chair at Nicole. Only her lawyer’s quick grab saved Nicole from a punch to the face.

“
Ah, you have to love the crazies. Once you hit their leverage point, they can’t keep the crazy in,” Kent chuckled in Nicole’s ear.

“
After everything I did for her,” Mrs. Ash sobbed, “she still took him away.”

“
What do you mean everything you did for her?” Nicole asked.

But the woman crumpled into a chair.
“And now she was sullying herself with that biology boy?”

“
So you knew about Deacon?” Nicole asked.

“
It was only a matter of time before it came out about Megan and Roger. And then our family would be ruined by that little whore.”

“
So you poisoned her?” Nicole asked over the lawyer’s protests for Mrs. Ash to shut the hell up.

“
What else could I do?” Mrs. Ash said, her eyes brimming with tears. “She’d betrayed me. Betrayed us all.”

Nicole
’s phone vibrated again. This time it was a text from Joshua.

“
Mr. Ash is not packing the family jewels. I repeat, he has no cojones.”

Nicole had to read the text several times to understand what he meant. She sent it to Kent
, who seemed to get it right away. “No testicles?”

She texted quickly back to Joshua.
“Are they undescended?”

His response was
lightening fast. “No, man. He’s got the basket, just no eggs in it.”

“
Oh my,” Kent said. “Her crazy runs deeper than even I suspected. You’ve got to give her credit, though. The woman doesn’t just talk the talk, she walks the walk.”

Kent
’s admiration of Mrs. Ash was not helping anything, though.

“
When you said ‘you’d done everything,’ Mrs. Ash, did that include castrating your husband?”

Mrs. Ash looked up
, and for the first time seemed clear-eyed. Present. Connected with reality. “I found out years ago. Like you said, we shared a wall. I insisted he stop, but he wouldn’t. Even tried to sedate me at night so he could carry on his dirty work. Well I showed him.”

Nicole gulped
, imagining what was coming next. The woman was an RN, after all.

“
So I skimmed some Propofol from the hospital and did what I had to.”

“
You thought neutering him would stop the abuse?”

Mrs. Ash nodded.
“But Megan must have been asking for it. The whore took my husband away. The whore ruined out family.”

How the woman got from her daughter being abused to it being Megan
’s fault was the leap of an unstable mind.

“
So you admit to surgically castrating your husband and murdering your daughter?”

“
Yeah, she’s going to have to give back all of her best wife or mother coffee cups,” Kent said.

Mrs. Ash slowly nodded.
“What else could I do?”

The woman
actually seemed to believe that she was the victim in all of this.

“
Okay, well, this has been fun, but it looks like the insurgents are at it again,” Kent said. “See you soon.”

The click of the disconnect sounded loudly in Nicole
’s ear. Somehow, this victory felt a little less bright without Kent to share in it.

Nicole had a job to do
, though. She couldn’t mope over Kent.

She rose from her chair.
“Mrs. Ash, you are under arrest for the murder of Megan Ash.” Nicole got out her cuffs. “You have the right to remain silent…”

* * *

Ruben opened the door as Nicole escorted Mrs. Ash out of the room, finishing up her Miranda rights. Glick moved out of the way as they passed.

“
If you book her now,” the captain said, “we should be able to arraign her this evening.”

“
Yes, sir.”

Glick turned back to Ruben.
“That was quite the feat your partner just pulled off.”

“
Yes, but I’m not sure if she can claim it for her own.”