An Intimate Murder (The Catherine O'Brien Series)
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Authors: Stacy Verdick Case
An Intimate Murder
Stacy Verdick Case
http://www.beforethefallbooks.com/
Copyright ©2014 by Stacy Verdick Case
Editor: Elizabeth Goldstein
Cover Design: Designs by Jeff
Author Photo: Joanna Obraske
ISBN: 978-0-9837137-6-0
Library of Congress Control Number: 2014900008
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents, are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental
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For My Parents Margaret and Jim Verdick
Thank you for showing me your strength, courage, compassion, and love. You are my heroes.
Love, Stacy
“This better be good, Louise.”
My feet had barely hit the ground as I stepped out of my Dodge Charger. Louise held up her hands in surrender.
“Keep your voice down, Catherine. I’m sorry to yank you back to work.”
“You should be. I was about to get sweaty and dirty with my husband.”
“Exercising?”
“Just because you’re a spinster doesn’t mean you have to be bitter.”
She held her index finger to her lips. “Notch it down, Catherine.”
“Fine.” I dropped my voice to a harsh whisper. “I’m serious, Louise, don’t you ever leave the office? The Saint Paul Police Department does employ other homicide detectives you know. Give them a chance to solve a case now and then.”
Louise used the thumb of her left hand to flick her middle finger nail, which made a tick, tick, tick sound. She narrowed her eyes at me.
“You’re a workaholic.”
“Detective Montgomery?” A tall, slender woman who looked to be in her mid-fifties crossed the lawn toward us. “Is it okay if I take Chad inside?”
She gestured to a man who sat on the lawn with his back to us, wrapped in a silver shock blanket.
Louise straightened. “Ms. Hind, I’d like to introduce you to my partner, Catherine O’Brien.”
Her eyes trailed up and down me in the cool appraisal of an inventory control clerk sizing up a new shipment. “Nice to meet you.” I wished I’d bothered to find a clean pair of jeans before I hopped into the car to come over here. Her lips turned up at the corners, but her expression stopped short of an actual smile, more of a polite gesture.
“Would it be okay to bring Chad into my house, Detectives?” She nodded toward a group of uniformed officers. “I was told they would be bringing his parents out soon.”
Ah, now I understood the shock blanket.
“I don’t think that Chad could handle seeing his parents in a body bag. Plus, the Saint Paul Police Department probably doesn’t want the maelstrom of publicity a hysterical son, crying over the body of his parents, on the six o’clock news will cause.”
Pam inclined her head toward the road.
Behind a yellow line of police tape, every local news agency, including the local AM college station, had a crew lined up. All of them ready to catch any gruesome details that we might be willing to share, or might accidentally let slip. After all, the public must have their evening dose of human abhorrent behavior before they go to bed at night, or how could the public rest easily this evening?
“I see your point,” I said. “By all means take Chad into the house.”
She whirled around, bent over Chad, and whispered in his ear. He stood and followed her inside like a remote controlled toy.
“Pam Hind is the next door neighbor to Mr. and Mrs. Jonathan Luther,” Louise said.
“And Chad is Chad Luther son of the deceased.”
Louise nodded and trudged across the lawn.
“Chad found the bodies?”
“Correct.” She held the front door open.
I stopped on the threshold. “Chad killed his parents. Case closed.”
“What brings you to your hasty conclusion?”
“Instinct.” I tapped my finger against my temple. “Pure instinct.”
Louise gave a dismissive shake of her head.
“Catherine, I hate to argue with your well-honed instincts, but I don’t think so. Chad is terribly upset.”
“I bet if we grilled him like a cheese sandwich, he’d confess.” I folded my arms over my chest. “Come on, we could be home in a few hours. What do you think?”
She leaned on the screen door and held it propped open with her shoulder. “I think at the moment Chad would confess to the Lindbergh kidnapping if someone pressed him hard enough.”
“He’s really upset, huh?”
“Yes. Hysterical is the word that comes to mind.”
I stepped into the foyer. “Then I guess we’ll have to do this the old fashioned way.”
“Why did you become an investigator, Catherine? You never want to investigate.”
I sighed. “I have an overwhelming need for justice.”
She rolled her eyes heavenward.
“I do. Most people don’t know that about me. If killers would pick a better time to off someone, instead of waiting until I’m about to have a sweaty, freak fest with my husband for the first time in weeks, then you’d see a whole different Detective O’Brien.”
Louise pursed her lips and nodded. “So it’s more of a timing issue?”
“Exactly.”
“I can respect that.”
Louise led me through the upper, middle class home of a family that was far from risk takers. Beige dominated every wall and carpet. The only color in the room came from the neat, symmetrically hung family photos on the long wall above the sofa.
One corner of the living room held a curio cabinet with Hummel figurines, similar to the ones my Grandma Rue collected. While the Hummel figurines looked perfectly normal in Grandma Rue’s doily enshrouded living room, they glared like a neon sign in the minimalist beige home.
Spatters of blood snaked up the curio cabinet and onto the walls, like red vines. From the pattern, the blood wasn’t arterial spray but cast off.
The lab techs buzzed efficiently around the area with the effortless coordination of a hive of bees. Near their feet lay the body of a woman, face up and eyes wide in horror.
“Mrs. Luther?” I knelt next to the body.
“Yes.” One of the techs answered. “We’ve finished processing her body. You can move her if you need to, Detective. We’re just about to take her out of here anyway.”
I nodded my thanks and stole a pair of gloves from one of the kits on the floor. I snapped on the non-latex gloves and lifted the edge of Mrs. Luther’s shirt.
Louise crouched across from me. “I couldn’t count them all.”
“My God,” I whispered. “Someone really didn’t like this woman. What could she possibly have done to deserve this?”
Dotted across her chest were multiple punctures, some appeared shallow, some viciously deep.
Louise lifted Mrs. Luther’s arm and turned it palm up. “No defensive wounds. Maybe she died before she endured too much pain.”
I checked the arm on my side; no visible wounds, not even a scratch.
“That’s odd,” I said. “From the look on her face, it doesn’t look as though she died instantly.”
I twisted my neck so I shared the angle of Mrs. Luther’s head and examined her face.
“This isn’t just the look of fear,” I said. “It’s the look of disbelief. We have photos of her right?”
“Yep, every inch,” the tech said.
I closed Mrs. Luther’s eyes. Whatever she had seen that had caused her such fear and pain was gone. She didn’t need to look at this world any longer.
Louise stood. “Come on. I’ll show you Mr. Luther.”
Jonathan Luther was a collector of all things train. His death had come two flights up from his wife, in the attic of his home, which he'd converted into a train themed room. His body lay sprawled across the tracks of a miniature Northern Pacific Railroad.