1 A Small Case of Murder (24 page)

Joshua forgot all about the murders and his daughters in the hospital when he saw the sealed moving box resting on top of his desk in his study. He ripped it open and dug through the plastic bubble wrap to find the picture in the cut glass frame he had always kept on the corner of his desk.

He gazed at the image in his hands. Valerie was so young, so filled with love. Her long auburn hair was swept up. It seemed entwined with the pearl crown from which her veil flowed. Her cheeks were flushed with excitement while she smiled at the photographer’s camera.

Blinking back tears he felt welling up in his eyes, Joshua traced the outline of her image with his fingertips.

“Hey, Dad, I think everything’s here.”

At the sound of Murphy’s call from the hallway, Joshua wiped away his tears with the back of his hand and placed the picture on his desk. He turned his attention to the remaining contents of the box. He removed a stack of framed photographs to sort through.

Murphy held the inventory clipboard up for his father to see. “Everything is checked off. It seems to be in good shape, too, considering that it has probably been tossed around half the summer.”

He picked up the picture that was on top of the pile Joshua was making on his desk from the box’s contents. “What’s this?”

Upon noticing the one beneath it, Murphy laid the two pictures next to each other. One picture was of a black cat with a white background. The other depicted a mirror image of a white cat with a black background. “Looks kind of tacky for Mom’s taste.”

Smiling with fondness at the memory, Joshua wiped the glass frames with his forearm. “Those are a couple of puzzles your mother got me the first Christmas we were married. It was two puzzles in the same box. It took me two months to do them. I was so proud of myself, your mother had them glued together and framed.”

“Two puzzles at once.” Hearing that, Murphy admired them. “That must have been hard.”

“It took a real adjustment of my thinking to figure them out.” Joshua recalled, “It wasn’t only one puzzle that I had to figure out. It was two that were connected only by virtue of being in the same box. Once, I figured that out, it all made sense.”

He stared at the two puzzles he held in his hands and saw Vicki’s and Beth’s dead bodies.

Two murders. Two times of death. Two murder weapons. One crime scene.

Two puzzles in the same box.

Joshua handed the frames back to him, and headed for the door.

“Where are you going?”

“To catch a couple of killers.”

Dressed in his gloves and leather apron, Tad was hosing down the autopsy table with scalding hot water when Joshua came into the morgue. The prosecutor had two thick brown envelopes tucked under his arm.

“Is Tracy all checked out?” Tad yelled over the noise of the spraying hose.

“Yep, I’m taking her home with me.” Joshua added, “Sarah is hurting.”

“She’ll be better tomorrow.” Tad turned off the hose and put it away. “You’re a lucky man.” He took off his gloves before patting him on the shoulder. “What have you got there?” He gestured at the envelopes.

“The transcript from Eric Connally’s trial for vandalizing the post office and files sent from the JAG office.” Joshua indicated the table where the remains of Wallace Rawlings and Hal Poole had been examined. “What can you tell me?”

Tad hung the surgical apron up on a hook by the table. “Same as I said in New Cumberland. Wally was shot from at least three feet away. Died around one o’clock. Hal died about the same time. Contact wound to the temple. No signs of a struggle. He had fired a gun.”

“No other evidence on or in them? Drugs?”

“You’ll need to wait for the toxicology reports for that information. I sent a sample of both of their DNA to Weirton for comparison to what we’ve got for Vicki’s and Beth’s murders.” Tad sat down at his desk to complete his reports from the autopsies. “Oh, I talked to the examiner in Pittsburgh about Morgan Lucas like you asked me to.”

“And?” Joshua sat on the corner of his desk.

“I have a date with her for this Friday, but she did give me a preview. The police are figuring it to be a crime of passion. She was stabbed like seventeen times. Plus, what they didn’t release to the media is that her face was sliced up.”

“Jeez.”

“That’s what I said. She was dead before she got the cosmetic surgery. There was no forced entry into her place.”

The prosecutor digested that news while nodding his head. To Tad, Joshua looked like a bobble head of himself. After a moment of watching him stare into space, Tad concluded that their conversation had taken a break and turned his attention to his paperwork.

Joshua tore open one of the envelopes and removed the report from Washington. He scanned the information while asking, “What can you tell me about Tess Bauer?”

Tad answered two questions on the form before replying, “What do you want to know? I know her family. They were real holler people, what they used to call hillbillies.”

“What else?” Joshua put the report back into its envelope.

Tad stopped writing. “What are you looking for?”

“Anything? Tell me what you know about them.”

“Tess is more sophisticated than the rest of her folks.” Tad said, “Guess she’s trying to forget her roots. You can see that in how she dresses.”

“Keep going. What else?”

Clueless about what Joshua wanted, Tad took a breath and let it out while he thought of what to say. “Her mother used to sleep around.”

“What do you mean?”

Tad laughed. “What do you think I mean?”

“I thought you said they had six kids.”

“And word is that they weren’t all from the same man,” Tad said. “Ingrid Bauer had a body that wouldn’t quit. She had a face like a horse, but her body made up for it. Russ Bauer had this routine. When he got paid, he’d go to the bar and drink like half of it away before going home. Meanwhile, Ingrid was stuck up in that hollow with all those kids. So, when she got lonely, she’d get a ride into town and end up getting picked up by some guy and have a fling. Don’t ask me if she planned it that way. Maybe she did it to get even with Russ. After it was over, she’d run back to the hollow and go on with her life.”

“Did her husband know about this?”

“If he did, he never let on to anyone outside the family. Everyone else in the valley knew.”

“What type of men did she have flings with?”

Tad laughed. “Anyone who had a pack of cigarettes and a pulse.”

“Rawlings?”

“Which one?”

“Name one.”

“Wally, maybe. I can’t see him passing up an opportunity. But he liked his women real young and she was older than him. Not only that, but she wasn’t exactly high class. Tess has class. I guess she got it from the milkman.”

Joshua joked, “Wasn’t your father a milkman?”

“My dad was a dairy farmer and he knew well enough to stay away from Ingrid.” Tad mused while considering Joshua’s real question. “As for the reverend, I can’t see him chancing his reputation for a quickie with a hillbilly.”

Joshua agreed with his assessment. “What else can you tell me about Tess?”

“I was surprised with her reaction to her sister’s death. They were never particularly close.” Tad paused for a beat. “Maybe Tess regretted how she treated Diana before she died and that was why she decided to be so gung-ho about seeking vengeance against the Rawlings for her sister’s death.”

“How did she treat her?”

“Diana was pretty, not that Tess is hard on the eyes; but when Di entered the room…” Tad added, “She took after her mother. She was very sexy and knew how to play the guys. She’d use them, and then toss them aside.”

“Did you sleep with her?”

“I don’t do jail bait,” Tad replied. “Diana was only sixteen when she died.”

“Go on,” Joshua urged him to continue.

“I guess it was only natural for Tess to be jealous of Di. I heard about a fight those two got into once.”

“Fight?”

“Cat fight.”

“Cat fight?” Joshua repeated the same term that his sons had used the night before to describe Tracy’s encounter.

Tad made a motion with both his hands in the pretense of cat claws and made a screeching noise. “It was a cat fight. Diana had slept with Tess’s boyfriend.” Taking time to recall the long forgotten details, he doodled on his notepad. “I don’t know Tess that well. She may have had other men, but this guy dumped her for the little sister and Tess about scratched Di’s eyes out at this party out in Hookstown. He took off. Then, Diana got high and slashed her wrists, and Tess gave up her chance to go to the networks to avenge her death. Go figure.”

Joshua’s shock was so evident that Tad stopped doodling and looked up.

“I thought Diana Bauer died of a drug overdose,” Joshua said.

“No,” Tad replied, “she slashed her wrists. She was pumped up on drugs at the time and bled to death. I can call the medical examiner in Hookstown to confirm it if you want me to. Do you mean to tell me that Commander Thornton made an assumption?”

Joshua groaned, “I guess I did.”

“Well, I guess that proves it,” the medical examiner laughed, “The mind is the first thing to go.”

Humiliated by his error, Joshua pressed on. “What were the circumstances?”

“I’m not that familiar with the case,” Tad said. “It happened in Pennsylvania, which is out of my jurisdiction. All I know is what I heard through the grapevine. The M.E. there is an old drinking buddy of mine.”

“Was it a suicide?” Joshua wanted to know.

“That’s what I heard.”

“Why was I led to believe it was a drug overdose?”

“I never said it was a drug overdose.”

“You never said it wasn’t an overdose,” Joshua raised his voice. “You and everyone told me that Tess Bauer has been after the Rawlings because her sister died of drugs. What am I suppose to think?”

“Which goes to prove that when you assume you make an ass out of you and me,” Tad said in a calm voice.

“How did Diana Bauer die?”

“She was found in a tub in her rented room in Hookstown with her wrists slashed by a broken wine bottle.” Before Joshua could ask anymore, Tad answered, “I did hear there were no hesitation marks in the cuts. But she was strung out that could explain why there wasn’t any hesitation.”

“No hesitation usually points to murder.” Joshua asked, “Any suspects?”

“None that could be found. The boyfriend was gone.”

“Gone where?”

Tired of the continuous questioning, Tad sighed. “I don’t know.”

“Who was he? Was he into drugs?”

“He was an insurance salesman who liked sixteen-year-old girls. Everyone assumed that after all the scandal Tess created over catching him with her under-aged sister that he skipped town.”

It was Joshua’s turn to smile. “Everyone assumed, huh?”

Tad said, “We’re talking statutory rape and Diana did have three big brothers. I would have left town under the darkness of night, too, if I were him.”

“So he disappeared? Before or after Diana was found in the bathtub?”

Tad shrugged for his answer. Seeing the familiar look in Joshua’s eyes, he sighed. “You want me to find out.” It was a statement.

Joshua’s grin broadened.

“I’ll call Hookstown.”

“Thank you, Dr. MacMillan,” Joshua mocked with sickening sweetness.

“Yeah. Right.” Tad made a note on a yellow notepad to call his old drinking buddy. “Anything else you want from me?” 

“No, that’s okay. Can I use your phone?” Without waiting for Tad’s consent, Joshua proceeded to dial the phone number.

Joshua didn’t identify himself when Curtis Sawyer picked up the other end of the line. “Curt, did you run those finger-prints on Rawlings’ glove through the federal database?”

On the other end of the line, Sheriff Sawyer, confused by the question, stopped and looked at the phone receiver he held in his hand. “No. Why?”

Joshua responded, “If it comes up the way I think it will, then I think we’ll find Amber.”

“Speaking of Amber,” Sawyer said, “I got those tapes from the news station you asked me for. They were real easy to get. The station manager says we’ll have more than his cooperation, if it helps finding out who killed his anchor.”

“Great. I’m on my way to pick them up.” Joshua hung up. Excited, he paced and he rubbed his hands together.

“Do you have something?” Tad asked.

“An idea. All the pieces of the puzzle have finally come together, and it’s all so clear now. Where’s Doc’s trunk?”

“I took it back home. Why?”

“I have a lot of reading to do,” Joshua pointed at him, “and so do you.”

“We both already read everything that’s in there.”

“I need for you to find out who Vicki’s father was. Doc Wilson knew. That’s why he put her patient file in that trunk.”

Tad disagreed. “Doc thought he knew. He was wrong.”

“You knew Doc better than I did. Was he a man who listened to rumors, or was he a man with his own mind?”

“He thought I was a drunk.”

“You were a drunk. Now, you’re sober. You sobered up before he died and won his respect.” When Tad scoffed, Joshua added, “Doc Wilson never would have run that tox test on Cindy if he didn’t respect your opinion.”

While the realization of Joshua’s statement hit home, Tad sat up in his seat.

Joshua continued pleading his case. “Doc knew when Vicki was born that Wally wasn’t her father, and he had an idea who the father was, not based on rumors about you and Cindy, but on medical facts. He put everything he knew in those files and hid them so he could hold them over the Rawlings’ heads. Now, you have them, and I’m counting on you to put it together for me.”

“Where’s Admiral?”

Tracy was the first one to notice the dog’s absence during dinnertime. Joshua noticed the pleasurable experience of eating his pizza without dog drool pooling on his thigh.

Despite her insistence that their family pet would never beg from the table, Valerie would sneak food to Admiral from her chair at the head of the table. After her death, Admiral switched to the other end of the table to beg at Joshua’s chair.

In order to relieve Tracy of cooking dinner, Joshua had ordered two extra large pizzas, one with extra cheese, the other with everything, including anchovies. They had eaten half of the pies before she noted that she hadn’t seen Admiral since she had arrived home from the hospital.

“He’s probably sneaking a nap on my bed.” Joshua suppressed a yawn. It was only after he sat down to eat and enjoy a cold beer that he realized that he hadn’t slept in thirty-six hours. Exhaustion had set in. He fought to stay awake long enough to finish his slice of pizza.

Joshua wondered if he had dozed off when he was startled by the touch of Tracy’s hand on his. “I guess this has been a long day for you, huh?”

He frowned when his eyes fell on her bandaged forearms. “I guess I’m not very good company tonight.” Excusing himself, he left his half-eaten slice of pizza and went upstairs.

In his bedroom, Joshua plopped onto the bed and buried his face into the comforter that still contained Valerie’s scent.

A cool evening breeze drifted in through the doors that opened up to the verandah to flow across his back. At noon, the heat had made the room so stifling that he had opened the doors to air it out.

Admiral’s low growl interrupted his descent into sleep.

Joshua turned his face from the pink floral comforter that Valerie had selected for their bed in San Francisco, and spied the dog.

Admiral was sitting at attention with his gaze trained on the closet door.

“There you are. You missed dinner.” He pulled a pillow down from the head of the bed and hugged it to his face.

Admiral growled again. This one ended in a pleading whine.

Joshua opened one eye and looked at where the dog was on point. Admiral was looking over his shoulder back to his master. After their eyes met, he turned back to the closet door.

“Admiral, what’s wrong with you?” Joshua smelled the sickeningly sweet scent of cheap aftershave.

It wasn’t his brand.

No. Not two nights in a row.

Slipping off the bed, Joshua searched for a weapon he could use in his defense and found his baseball bat resting in the corner.

Seeing that his master had caught his message, Admiral growled at the door as if to say, “Now you’re going to get it.”

Armed with the bat, Joshua braced against the wall next to the door and ordered, “You in the closet. I know you’re in there. Throw out your weapon and come out. Hands first.”

Silence answered his order.

“I’m calling the sheriff.”

After a pause, during which everyone in the room, including the dog, held his breath, the glass doorknob to the closet door turned. A hand stretched out.

“I want to see both hands.” Ready to swing, Joshua held the bat off his shoulder.

As the door burst open, the intruder fired one shot that went wild.

Before the shooter could stop to determine what he’d hit, the closet door swung shut again to hit him in the face. The wood in his face stunned him senseless long enough for Joshua to use the bat to knock the gun out of his hand to the floor, yank the door open again, grab him by the shirt, whirl him around and shove him down onto the bed with his intended victim on his chest.

“Who are you?” Joshua spat into his assailant’s face. “Why did you attack my daughters?”

If it hadn’t been for the aftershave, Joshua would have expected to find Amber in his closet in an attempt to carry out her threat against him. Instead, it was a muscular young man with a face so smooth that it looked almost pretty. In spotless jeans, he didn’t fit the profile of a common breaking and entering type.

“Your worst nightmare!” he responded in the tradition of his he-man movie idols. He punctuated his statement by head butting Joshua between the eyes and tackling him to the floor.

His delight at pinning Joshua was temporary. He was so focused on eliminating the special prosecutor that he had forgotten about the dog that had him trapped in the closet for almost six hours.

It was like one hundred and fifty-five pounds of fur and teeth had descended from the heavens onto the assassin.

Covering his face with an arm, he rolled off Joshua.

The growling slobbering mass had him by the other arm.

Joshua scurried on the floor in search of the gun he had knocked out of his hand.

The attacker swung the bat at the dog’s head. Yelping, Admiral retreated into the closet.

“Dad, are you all right?” Tracy called from behind the closed bedroom door.

Spying the ball bat that the assailant now welded, Joshua screamed at his daughter. “Get out of here! Call Sawyer!”

The two men were at a standoff.

The intruder grinned when he saw Joshua, unarmed, eying the ball bat.

“Who hired you?” Joshua circled him.

“Take a guess.”

“Rawlings. Bridgette Rawlings.” Joshua positioned himself before the French doors leading out onto the verandah.

“Smart man. Too bad all your brains are going to be splattered across these four walls.”

Joshua gestured for him to come at him. “Take your best shot.”

It was a dare he knew the intruder couldn’t pass up. Joshua could see in the way he dressed to show off his finely-toned muscles and smelled of cheap aftershave that he was a man of superior ego and inferior intelligence.

As he rushed forward with his weapon poised to bash in his head, Joshua ducked, grabbed him around the waist, lifted, and threw him up and over his shoulders.

Joshua sent him flying head over heels, not unlike how he had flown during that great Oak Glen-Weirton game. Only his assailant didn’t land on his head. He flew over the verandah’s railing to land in Joshua’s great-grandmother’s precious rose garden.