If It Walks Like A Killer (The Carolina Killer Files #1) (25 page)

Chapter Forty-Three

Caide

Caide threw open the lid to the washing machine, ending the horrible screeching sound it had been making. Just what he needed, one more thing to go wrong in his ever-tumbling life. He pulled the load of towels and pajamas out, searching for the culprit. As he pulled the last towel from the bin, there it was. He’d all but forgotten about the mysterious key since he found it weeks ago, but there it sat stuck to the bottom of the washing machine, screeching and scratching as if begging for him to find it. He reached to the bottom, tugging on it firmly. It remained tucked just under the agitator. The pile of wet clothing was now beginning to form a rather large puddle around itself and Caide found himself clueless as to whether or not Rachael kept tools in the house. He’d never been one for fixing things, growing up in a house where if it was broken you just had it replaced. He was embarrassed to admit, even to himself, that he’d never learned how. He was sure Rachael had kept some of her dad’s old tools though he couldn’t remember where. He wandered to the garage, trying to remember a time when they’d ever had to fix anything. He vaguely remembered her complaining about a cabinet door not shutting right, and once, a few winters ago a pipe in the kitchen had burst. The kids had knocked a hole in the wall last summer, one that he’d promised to fix. Caide hadn’t fixed a thing, though, and he couldn’t, for the life of him, remember how they’d actually gotten fixed. Sometime or another Rachael had stopped complaining, stopped asking for help and Caide realized now, that all of those things had been taken care of.

The garage was empty except for their cars and a few of the kids’ old toys. Caide looked around briefly to no avail. He looked under the sink, but found only cleaning supplies, in the bathroom and found only old bath toys and a box of tampons. About to give up, he decided to check their closet where Rachael sometimes hid Christmas presents, like Caide wouldn’t see them. Would she have hidden the tools from him? Maybe to shield him from the reminder of a childhood absent of that afternoon where Dad teaches you to hammer a nail? Maybe to keep her dad’s things separate from the emptiness they now considered to be their lives? Maybe just to keep Brinley and Davis out of danger? Either way as Caide walked into the closet, his gaze fell upon a worn burlap bag in the far corner, nearly hidden behind the vacuum and an old suitcase. He pushed the suitcase aside, pulling the bag out. It was filled with odds-and-ends tools, all worn and dirty from years of use. He recognized the metal hammer with wood banded around its handle. The initials R.C. were carved into the handle. Ross Cline. Caide placed it down, digging further into the bag, pulling out tools he didn’t have a name for and couldn’t venture a guess as to how they worked or what they were used for. As he neared what felt like the bottom of the bag, his fingers met a cool, smooth metal, unlike anything else he’d pulled from the bag. He pulled the metal, its heaviness surprising him, out of the sack. It was a black metal box with a small silver handle on top. He was sure right away it was no tool, and by the relative new-ness, he was certain it hadn’t belonged to Ross. Rachael had owned this. Rachael had hidden it from him. The silver metal key hole did not match the golden key that was now stuck at the bottom of his washing machine but something made him curious to try it anyway. He held the handle in his hand, grabbing a blue handled tool with an end that looked like tweezers. He ran back to the laundry room, feeling himself fill with hope and worry. He felt as though he were close to uncovering one of Rachael’s dirty little secrets.

As he entered the laundry room, he sat the metal box down onto the dryer top, careful not to make too much noise and draw the kids from the living room. He placed the blue handled tool into the machine, using it to grasp the key firmly. He pulled once, twice, and the third time it was out with a loud groan. Ignoring the pile of wet clothes, he turned his attention to the box, inserting the key. His heart pounded as it fit right away. His hands shook as he turned the key, wondering what he was about to uncover. With one swift motion, he threw the box lid open and gasped. Whatever he’d been expecting, this was worse.

Chapter Forty-Four

Rachael

Rachael sat staring across the table at Argus and Shayna. “Excuse me? You think my husband set me up? That’s ridiculous.”

“Is it?” Hampton implored, “Rachael, look, he was sleeping with her. He was the last one with her. He sent everyone else home that night. He was the police’s first suspect, there’s all of this mounting evidence that makes him look really bad but then suddenly there’s this random evidence against you.”

“None of which makes any sense, by the way,” Shayna added.

“Right. There are all of these questions—timing, DNA. You’ve got no cuts on yourself whatsoever, yet your blood was found on the murder weapon. For you to have committed this murder, you literally would’ve needed to be in two places at once. It’s just impossible, but it’s also easy. People want to believe what’s easy. Even I missed it. Until Caide made his little statement, that is. It got me wondering what kind of a monster would do that. Even if he didn’t believe you, even if he was grieving over Blaire’s death, I just can’t imagine a reason to come forward unless he needed you to look guilty. Unless he somehow benefits from you being in prison. Think about it, Rachael. Say he was struggling between two women, trying to balance the affair and his marriage. Then he gets this idea. She’s out of the way, you’re out of the picture, he gets to play grieving, unsuspecting husband. He keeps the house, your car. It all works out in his favor. Hell, maybe they even planned it together. Maybe she wasn’t supposed to die, maybe she was going to say you attacked her, but something went wrong. He hit too hard.”

Rachael’s head grew fuzzy, she stood from her seat. “No. There’s got to be some other explanation. Caide may be an awful, awful man but he’s no murderer.”

“If he’s not then who is? We have less than two weeks to figure something out or you are going to jail. We don’t, for one second, believe you’re guilty, Rachael, but someone is. If we don’t find that someone, whoever they are, you are going down for this. The police were ready to lock Caide up until there was convenient, foolproof evidence against you.”

“So what? What are you asking me to do?”

“We’re asking you to trust us.”

“And be honest with us,” Shayna added, her eyebrows perched into a ‘I know you’re lying’ position.

“So then what? Caide got my blood from somewhere? You said yourself I’m not cut anywhere. And what about the tape? How do we explain that? Caide is no computer whiz. You expect to convince the jury he framed me with what? His extensive knowledge of Solitaire?”

“The blood’s easy. It would’ve been way too easy for him to get your blood anytime and freeze it. Who knows how long he’s had to plan this all out. The tape was trickier and that’s why we’ve been hesitant to come to you so far, until now. We’ve talked to old college professors, roommates, and friends. We’ve looked up records, grades, talked to Caide’s bosses, even your students. Rachael, we were at a dead end, until…do you remember a Professor Prather from your junior year of college?”

Rachael thought hard, recalling all of her professor’s names, but drawing a blank. “No.”

“We figured you wouldn’t. See, she didn’t teach you or Caide, but when she heard about your case, she reached out to us. Apparently she was really fond of you.”

“But I don’t know her.”

“I think you do. You see, Professor Prather taught computer science and though she never taught you she seems to know you quite well. Apparently, you were always around with a person who she claims was her best student.”

It hit Rachael, then, like a ton of bricks. The weight of what they were suggesting caused her eyes to blur and fog to fill her thoughts.
No, no, no, no, no, no.

Chapter Forty-Five

Caide

Caide stared at the pile of cash in front of him. The metal box was filled with rubber-banded stacks of cash. Counting it out, he’d come to a grand total of eighteen thousand five hundred and eighteen dollars. He had no idea where she could’ve come up with such a large amount of cash or what she could have needed it for. The other items in the box gave few clues. In amongst one strap of cash, Caide had found a key to an old Honda, a key to a car they’d never owned. Attached to it was another, smaller key, probably to a padlock. The last item in the box was the one that had crushed Caide the most: at the bottom of the box sat another white box. It was marked with red writing: ‘
At Home Paternity Test
.’ It pictured a man holding a baby with a carefree smile Caide couldn’t have mustered in his daydreams at that moment. A sickening feeling filled his stomach, like he may vomit and cry all at the same time. Questions filled his mind: When had Rachael bought this? Why did she need it? Why had she never used it? How much did he truly not know about his wife? He wondered which of his children the test had been meant for or if maybe there’d been another child, one he’d never known about. Had Rachael been having an affair? Could he believe that to be true? Up until finding the box, the very thought might’ve made him laugh, but he now realized he may not have known his wife as well as he’d thought. Caide knew one thing for certain as he looked over the cash, keys, and test: his wife had been prepared to run, but why and to or from whom remained quite unclear.

Chapter Forty-Six

Rachael

“You can’t be serious. No way. No
way
. She’s my best friend.”

“Rachael, you have to look at the facts here. She is a computer science major. You didn’t think you should’ve told me that?”

“Argus, Audrey is my best friend. Yes, she works with computers, but she hates Caide. She’d have no reason to help him. More than that she’d have no reason to hurt me.”

“You have to admit it’s convenient. She just happens to work in computer technology. There’s a serious time lapse in that night, yet somehow the jury believes it, why? Because of the tape. Because tapes don’t lie. Unless Rachael, unless they do. If we can prove that it’s a fake tape, if we can give them a reason to believe someone framed you that would be enough. You’d be free.”

Hampton stood from his chair, getting on his knees in front of Rachael. He grasped her hands in his and looked at her firmly. His breath smelled of coffee and spearmint gum and the whiskers on his chin had a few gray places Rachael hadn’t noticed before.

“Rachael, if you tell me there’s nothing to find I’ll believe you. But if you believe, even just a tiny bit, that it’s possible, you need to tell me. I know she’s your best friend, but I also know you didn’t commit murder and I don’t want to see you in prison for it. Your children deserve to have their lives with you. They deserve days at the park and picnics. I want you to help your daughter dress for prom and dance with your son on his wedding day. I don’t want to see Caide steal that away from you. Unless you allow us to help you, you’re giving up. Unless you help us, you’ve let him win.”

He brushed a piece of hair from Rachael’s face and she let herself daze off in his eyes. He’d put it in a way that she could no longer see any way around it. For years now, she’d kept the secret that could ruin the life she’d built, but in that moment, his thumbs rubbing the backs of her hands in an attempt to ease her fears, she found herself remembering that night. The night everything changed. She sat still, anchoring herself in his gaze as if afraid that if she were to blink she’d drown in a sea of lonely misfortune, and then before she knew what was really happening she heard herself begin to speak.

“I don’t know when it started. Probably in college, but I never suspected it back then. I mean, they hated each other. I always thought maybe they were just jealous of the time I spend with the other, I don’t know. After we got married and moved back, Audrey stayed in Chapel Hill. We kept in touch, not like we used to, but a phone call every week or two. She told me she’d met John and that she was falling in love with him. He proposed before Brinley was six months old. A few months after their wedding, Caide’s job started and he, almost immediately, started having long business trips that would take him out of town.”

She frowned, squeezing his hands for comfort and making sure they were still there. “On Brinley’s first birthday, Audrey told me they were moving home. My brilliant, free-spirited, ‘never coming back to that dump of a town’ best friend was moving home of her own free will. Still, I thought nothing of it. I was just excited to have her home. Once she was here for about a year, she told me they were trying for a baby. They’d been trying for a while and she was beginning to worry. A few months after that, she called me in hysterics. She told me that John was sterile. They started having a lot of problems after that. We didn’t realize how serious the problems were until she showed up alone to Thanksgiving. We never even talked about it, I was so scared to say the wrong thing or to hurt her worse somehow. That night, after dinner I sent her home with half of the leftovers. Caide walked her outside, I stayed in with Brinley. I was going to get her ready for bed when I noticed Audrey had forgotten her part of the apple pie. I picked it up to walk it outside to her and that’s when I saw them.”

She swallowed hard, looking away from him for the first time. “Her arms were thrown around his neck. I thought they were hugging at first. Then I saw him pull away, he held onto her face like they were teenagers. I watched her run her hands through my husband’s hair and I watched him rubbing his hands all over her like it was nothing. Like they’d been doing it for years. Like they weren’t standing out by our porch light, just feet away from me catching them.”

She paused, remembering that night. She recalled how painful it had been, like a slap in the face. She remembered how disrespected she’d felt. “It all made sense then—how his business trips had stopped occurring after she’d moved home, how their playful banter could turn cool and hateful with no notice at all, how I’d come home from the studio and find them there together watching TV or cooking supper. John was never there. It all fell into place. I should’ve done something. I should’ve screamed, should’ve thrown something, kicked her out, or hell, even kicked him out. Instead I snuck quietly back into the house, like I was the one doing something wrong. I put Brinley to bed and cleaned up the kitchen. He came back in a few minutes later, offering no excuse as to why he’d been outside for so long. He kissed the side of my head, I remember holding my breath, I was so afraid I’d smell her perfume and that would break me.”

Hampton rubbed her arms gently, inching closer to her.

“I never saw them together again. That spring, she told me she was pregnant. I pretended to be happy for her, but I knew what it meant. I’d started stashing money after that Thanksgiving. I’d told myself if I caught them again I would leave. I don’t know if I actually would have, but it made me feel better to believe it at the time. What kind of a weak woman stays after that?” She looked at Argus, back to the present for just a moment.

He placed his hand on her shoulder, merely inches from her face now. Shayna’s presence was nearly forgotten. “Go on.”

“So, I used cash to buy a car from out of town. I put a suitcase and a car seat in it. It was our little getaway plan, just me and Brin. I bought a paternity test. I was going to make her take it. If the baby was Caide’s, we’d leave. I would take my daughter and we’d sneak off into the night, never to be heard from again. Caide’s big on what people think of him, that’s what he cares about more than anything, I think maybe that’s why he never left me. He’d be terrified to be the man who left his wife and child. Anyway, I kept saving, kept planning for the baby to be born, for my question to be answered. Then, when she was eighteen weeks along, Audrey miscarried. We went to the hospital with her, cried with her. I hated myself for being glad it was over, but that didn’t stop the relief I felt. I’d never have to look at that awful paternity test ever, ever again.”

She dropped Hampton’s hand then, rubbing a tear from her eyes. He backed up slightly. “That night, I made love to my husband for the first time in nearly a year. He was so full of hatred and passion that I was sure he was going to just die right then. I wasn’t sure if I should tell them what I knew, after waiting so long, so I continued to put it off. Six weeks later, the morning sickness hit me. It was so much worse than it had been with Brinley. When I broke the news to Caide, I think it was what he needed at the time. Those nine months were the happiest we’d ever been, the happiest we’d ever be. I locked up the money and the test and I hid it away where he’d never find it. Once our pregnancy was announced, Audrey and John moved away, back to Chapel Hill. As much as it hurt, as pissed as I was, I could never bring myself to tell them. Audrey is my best friend, she’s the only person who’s always been there for me. I can’t imagine being truly mad at her. I can’t believe she’d do something like this.”

Argus rubbed her hands once more before moving back to his seat. “Rachael, when did Audrey come back home?”

“Recently.” She thought back to the day Audrey had shown up and gasped. “The day of the murder. She visited me a few hours before it happened.”

Shayna pressed her lips into a fine line, a worried look filling her face.

“You don’t think they planned this, do you? She comes over to check up on me? They couldn’t have.” Rachael shook her head in disbelief.

“We know this doesn’t make sense to you, but you have to look at the fact that it does make sense. Audrey comes back into town the day Blaire’s murdered. Caide is the prime suspect until suddenly they have a tape proving you were there, even though this tape goes against any logical time frame. Caide supports you in court, hires me, and plays a doting husband while he thinks you are just a prison time bomb, but then when we suddenly have something that could vindicate you, he gets mad. He refuses to pay me and then when I continue to work your case, he publicly withdrawals support. If one thing’s been made clear here, it’s that if Caide doesn’t believe you’re guilty he certainly wants everyone else to.”

Rachael felt fury in the far corners of her body. If Argus was right, she’d been betrayed and this was not going to be an easy fix.

“So how do we find out for sure?”

Argus looked to Shayna before speaking. “Well, first of all, we have to hear it from you. Is Audrey capable of altering a tape like this?”

Rachael mustered a deep breath. “If you’re asking me if I believe my best friend, the girl who helped me get ready for my first date and pick out my prom dress, the girl who cried with me when I found out I was pregnant, who held me at my dad’s funeral and made me soup when I got mono, if you’re asking me whether I believe she could’ve framed me for murder, whether she could sleep at night knowing I’m rotting in a cell for something I didn’t do, just so she could have my husband, I can’t answer that. Not now, not like this.” She paused, hating herself for what she was about to admit. “But if you’re asking me if Audrey is talented enough to alter a tape, or to even create a tape, given the right amount of time, the answer is yes.”

Argus nodded. “Then you need to know, we don’t have the time or resources to investigate this tape or have it sent off for analysis before your trial. The judge won’t allow it and frankly the police may not hand it over. That being said, we have no other choice but to have it be our word against theirs.”

“Just like that?”

“You’re a cheated wife, Rachael. The jury wants to side with you. The world wants to side with you. If we give them our evidence, they’ll take it and run with it. We just have to give them a solid reason to believe us.”

Shayna spoke up. “Rachael, you know what this means, right? You’ll have to go up on the stand. You’ll have to testify against them. You’ll have to admit you knew about their affair.”

“Based on what? A theory? We have no more on them than they have on us. You want me to ruin their lives even if they’re innocent, just to save mine? How can you ask me to do this? After all that I’ve been through? You want me to do it to someone else?”

“Not if you don’t believe it. Notice I said
don’t
believe it, not
don’t want
to believe it. We won’t ask you to lie on the stand,” Argus said.

Rachael was silent once more, thoughts and emotions rattling through her.

Shayna sighed. “Rachael, either way, I’m going to have to testify that you tested negative for DID. I have to tell the judge and the jury that you’re of sound mind and that I don’t believe you could have blacked out during Blaire’s murder. I’ll be signing your one way ticket to prison, you realize that? Federal prison. For life. We believe you’re innocent, if you believe in yourself like we do, then you know that someone out there did this and someone out there is about to get away with it if we don’t stop them.”

“Theory or not,” Hampton added, “we have a damn good case against them—one that stands a chance in any court. Shayna’s right, now, we can either bend over and let them take you off to jail with our tails tucked or we can fight like hell to get your life and your freedom back. The choice is yours.”

Rachael sulked. “This is just a lot. I think I just need some time to process.”

“Of course,” Shayna said.

Argus nodded, almost grumpily, but agreed. “We need to know though. Sooner rather than later so we can prepare.”

Rachael nodded, resting her head on a pink pillow beside her. With Shayna and Argus both staring at her, she closed her eyes, hearing the clock on the wall tick as she, for once, counted down the minutes until she could go back to jail.