SUICIDAL SUSPICIONS: A Kate Huntington Mystery (The Kate Huntington Mystery Series Book 8) (7 page)

“Earth to Katie.”

“Sorry, I was just trying to put together the pieces.”

The priest smiled at her, his eyes twinkling again. “You always did love puzzles.”

Kate smiled back, realizing he was right. As a kid, she’d loved puzzles of any kind–jigsaw puzzles, crossword puzzles. Now she made her living sorting out the mysteries of what was going on in her clients’ psyches. And far too often in recent years, she’d dealt with the mystery of a murder.

Did she really want to get involved in another one?

“Can’t think of anything else helpful,” Father Sam said.

She pulled out her wallet and extracted one of her business cards. “Will you call me if you do think of anything?”

“Surely, and you keep me posted. I’d love to be able to tell her parents she can be buried in their plot at the New Cathedral Cemetery.”

Kate suppressed a chuckle. The
New
Cathedral Cemetery wasn’t all that new anymore, having been founded in the 1800s. But it was the most prestigious Catholic cemetery in the area, so she wasn’t surprised the Hartins had a family plot there.

The priest showed her to the door. “Where are you going to church these days, Katie?”

“St. Catherine’s in Towson.”

He looked puzzled for a moment, then his face cleared. “Ah, St. Catherine’s
Episcopal
. Catholic Light, same rituals…”

“Half the guilt,” they said in unison.

They both laughed, then Father Sam pulled her into a warm hug.

Kate’s stomach growled as she drove back to her office, reminding her that she’d never eaten lunch during her lunch break. She pulled into a fast food drive-thru and ordered a quarter-pound cheeseburger and fries, promising herself she’d do an extra aikido workout this weekend to make up for the calories.

Waiting in the line of cars that was barely inching forward, she tapped her fingers on the steering wheel. She really needed to know more about that clonazepam prescription. Who had prescribed it, and was it even prescribed for Josie? But she couldn’t keep bothering Skip and Dolph every time she needed more information.

Maybe she had enough to get Dolph’s old partner at the Baltimore County police department to open the case as a homicide investigation. Judith Anderson was a lieutenant now, so she certainly had the clout, if Kate could convince her there was enough evidence to counter the assumption of suicide.

Maybe she could borrow Dolph one more time, to get her in to see Judith. But first she had to free up some time during a weekday. Police lieutenants worked nine to five, unless they had an important case going on, in which case Judith wouldn’t have time to see her anyway.

She mentally reviewed her schedule for the next two days. Carol was coming in again tomorrow at two. She had to see her for sure, but her three and four o’clock clients had been in a  good place lately. Maybe she could postpone them to next week.

Anxiety and guilt blindsided her. What if one of them went into a downward spiral while they were waiting to see her again, like Josie had?

Don’t be ridiculous.

Neither of those two clients was prone to depression or suicidal ideation. And besides, wasn’t she ninety percent convinced now that Josie hadn’t committed suicide?

She gripped the steering wheel. She needed to find out, one way or the other, for her peace of mind.

And so Josie could rest in peace.

CHAPTER SIX

Dolph Randolph was wearing his usual uniform–a white dress shirt and dark slacks, slightly rumpled–when he met Kate in front of the police station Thursday afternoon. They greeted each other with a hug. Then he leaned forward and opened the door for her.

Kate stepped into the station’s outer lobby. Despite the heat emanating from the mass of bodies, as well as from the air vents, Kate felt a chill. She rubbed her goose-bumped arms.

The last time she’d seen this lobby it had been virtually deserted, late on a Sunday evening, after the most harrowing weekend of her life. She shuddered at the memory of their race against the clock to save her former boss, Sally Ford, from a serial killer.

Today, the lobby was teeming with a cross-section of humankind, from the well-dressed businesswoman impatiently checking her watch to the disheveled and jittery young man who looked to be in desperate need of whatever substance he was addicted to.

At the panel of bulletproof glass that separated the reception desk from the masses, Dolph spoke quietly to the female officer.

She broke into a wide smile. “Of course I remember you, Detective Randolph.”

A buzzer sounded, almost drowning out the click of the door unlocking.

Dolph returned the woman’s smile. “Thanks, Officer Browning.” He opened the door to the inner sanctum of the precinct and bowed slightly in Kate’s direction, making an after-you gesture with his arm.

“It’s good to have connections,” she whispered as she walked past him.

He chuckled. “A good memory for names helps too.”

They made their way to the detectives’ bullpen, and the lieutenant’s office beyond it. The door was ajar.

Dolph rapped a knuckle against it, then stuck his head into the opening.

Kate heard an exaggerated groan.

“What do you want, Dolph?”

He signaled to Kate to follow him and stepped into the office.

Judith Anderson stood behind a desk as cluttered as Father Sam’s but not nearly as elegant. Her eyes lit up. “Hey Kate, how are you?”

Kate snickered. “I’m good, and something tells me I might have gotten further with my request if I’d come alone.”

Judith snorted. “Well, since you’ve already brought the old goat in here, you both might as well sit down.” She gestured toward two metal chairs with beige vinyl seats that were theoretically cushioned.

Kate sat down, then shifted to try to find a comfortable spot. None seemed to exist.

Judith broke into a rare grin. “Keeps my people from lingering in here when they should be on the streets.”

Kate returned the smile. “How have you been, Judith?”

The lieutenant dropped into her desk chair. “I’m good, but I doubt you came by just to inquire about my health.”

“You know anything about the Josephine Hartin case?” Dolph asked.

Judith shrugged. “Not much. It was a suicide.”

“Last I heard,” Dolph said, “that was still tentative, pending the tox reports.”

“Okay. So what about that case?”

Kate leaned forward. The hard vinyl under her butt squeaked. “I have reason to believe that it wasn’t a suicide. I knew the young woman but…,” she intentionally paused, “I can’t tell you how.” She knew the lieutenant would make the appropriate assumption.

Judith nodded. “So why do you think it wasn’t a suicide?”

Kate filled her in on the cheerful phone messages, and pointed out that Josie wouldn’t have left her puppy locked up in a crate to starve like that. “And she was having strange dreams.” This was skirting the edge of violating her promise to Father Sam. But Josie’s mother had also mentioned the dreams, and Kate didn’t consider her meeting with the Hartins as confidential, since they weren’t clients.

“In that last phone message, Josie said something about checking something out. I’ve got a gut feeling that whatever that something was, it may have been related to those dreams.”

Judith was quiet for a moment, then she shook her head. “Can’t say that’s enough for me to open the case up as a homicide.”

“I’m not asking for that,” Kate said, although she had hoped for it. “But there are a couple other things that are off, and I can’t tell you about them unless I’m sure they mean something. I need more information from the police file.”

“Could you get the file for us to look at?” Dolph said.

Judith looked from one to the other of them, then blew out air. She stood. “Be back in a minute.”

After she’d left the office, Kate said in a low voice, “Doesn’t she have minions now to fetch files for her?”

“Yeah,” Dolph said, “but she wants to look at it first before she shows it to us.”

That made sense. “I don’t even necessarily need to see it, if she’s uncomfortable showing it to me. I just need some questions answered.”

Dolph ran a hand through his gray hair, highlighted with a few remaining streaks of its original rust color. “Well, I want to see the thing. You’ve got me intrigued now. I didn’t know before why Skip asked me to check into the case.”

Kate’s stomach clenched. “Dolph, you’ve got to keep it to yourself that–”

He held up a hand. “I know, Kate. I’m not gonna blab about your connection to the woman.”

“Sorry. It’s just that confidentiality doesn’t die with the client, but…”

“But it’s more important to find out if the gal was murdered, and if so, by whom.”

Kate nodded. “Still, the Hartins are powerful people. I don’t want to give them grounds for a malpractice suit.” Especially since they were already considering one for not preventing the suicide.

“What do you need to ask about?” Dolph said.

Kate dug a small notepad and pen out of her purse. “Prescriptions and the note.”

He nodded.

Judith came through the door, leafing through a file in her hands.

“That was quick,” Dolph said.

“It was still on Baxter’s desk. As you said, pending the tox screens.”

Dolph’s bushy eyebrows flew up. “And he just let you have it without an argument?”

“No, he’s not in.” A flash of a smile. “I borrowed it.”

Dolph shook his head. Kate gathered from his expression that Baxter and Judith were not friends.

“I don’t want to cause any trouble,” she said.

“Don’t worry. I outrank him now.” There was a glint in Judith’s eye as she dropped into her desk chair. “What do you need to know?”

“There were three pill bottles found,” Kate said. “I need to know the drugs, the doses, and who prescribed them. And whether they were completely empty.”

Judith shuffled through the papers in the file. “Here’s the two that were beside her on the floor.” She read off the generic names for Depakote and Xanax, then the doses.

Kate wrote it all down. The dose for Xanax was relatively low.

“Both were empty. Prescribing doc was a guy named John Montgomery.”

“He’s the psychiatrist I–” Kate caught herself. “And the third one?”

Judith leafed through a couple more pages. “It was in the medicine cabinet. Clonazepam, 20 milligrams.”

Kate stopped writing. That struck her as a high dose. “You’re sure?”

Judith looked again. “Yeah, that’s what it says. Doc was a Gerald Kraft. Two pills left in it, even though it was only filled on March tenth. Wait a minute!”

Kate’s head jerked up. “That was probably the day she died.”

Judith was already back to the first page of the file. “Yeah, that was the coroner’s best guess at the scene, that she’d been dead between twelve and thirty hours before she was found.” She was rifling through papers again. “Autopsy didn’t narrow down the time of death much. Between nine-thirty a.m. on Tuesday, the tenth and one a.m. on the eleventh.”

Icy fingers danced down Kate’s spine. “I got that message from her at noon on the tenth.”

Judith grabbed her own pad and jotted a note. “Are you sure that’s when she’d called?”

“No, but it had to have been between eleven and twelve. There were no messages when I checked at eleven. Wait a minute. Why was the original time span estimate so wide?”

More rifling through the file. “Heat was turned off in her apartment.”

Kate flopped back in her chair. “That slows down the whole rigor mortis and such, doesn’t it?”

“You’ve been watching CSI again, haven’t you?” Judith said in a teasing tone.

Kate ignored the attempt at levity. She was re-examining the pieces that had fallen into place, making sure she wasn’t trying to jam them in where they didn’t really fit. “She would
not
have turned the heat off, not with her dog there. By the way, do you have the name of the veterinarian who took her dog?” She wasn’t sure the vet could tell her anything useful, but she wanted to make sure the pup was okay.

Judith leafed through papers in the file and read off a name and address.

“What earthly reason would this young woman have for turning the heat off just before committing suicide?” Dolph brought them back to that question.

Judith rattled a piece of paper. “We’re forgetting here that she left a note.”

Kate held out her hand. “May I see it?”

Judith didn’t hand it over. “It’s a copy. The original would be in the evidence room. The parents wanted us to keep the contents confidential.”

Dolph let out a low chuckle. “We’ve already got plenty of secrets going here.”

Judith frowned at him. “I like my rank.”

“I’m not going to tell anybody,” Kate said.

That was a fib. She might very well tell Skip. And maybe Father Sam, if she didn’t think the note really was meant to be a suicide note. Even if she couldn’t prove that Josie didn’t commit suicide, if the priest was convinced she hadn’t, he’d bury her in consecrated ground. That would mean a lot to him and to Josie’s parents.

Judith relented and handed the page to her.

Kate took a deep breath, bracing herself, then looked down at the paper. She thought it was Josie’s handwriting, although she’d only seen it on checks.

I can’t take this anymore. No one really understands what it feels like. Not even Kate. She calls it a roller coaster. She’s right, up to a point. It takes you up a mountain, which is exciting at first, then dangles you over a cliff, totally out of control. Then it plunges you down, and you can’t stop it. It bores right down into the ground, until you feel like you are buried alive, the earth pressing down on you, suffocating you in depression.

Kate stopped and swallowed hard. Josie had said similar words in her office, but somehow reading this, in the woman’s own hand, knowing these were her last thoughts… She made herself keep reading.

Ironically, I think the out-of-control highs are sometimes worse. Kate says that may be because the out-of-control feeling reminds me of being a kid, unable to control what was happening to me. She’s probably right. All I know is I hate that feeling. I’d give anything never to feel it again.