No One Else to Kill (Jim West Series) (15 page)

“Damn,” I said.
 
I
also realized that I was now the one holding my head and looking down at the
table. “I think Sean
Bettes
was the guy I heard
crying last night.
 
I don’t think he had
anything to do with this though.”

“I’ll need you to come back up with me and show us where
you found the chair.”

“Sure,” I said.

“First, though, why don’t you think this wasn’t a
suicide?”

“I just don’t.
 
Too
much trouble to hang herself, plus I talked to her late yesterday afternoon, or
maybe it was early evening.
 
Anyway, she
didn’t sound like someone who was contemplating suicide. It doesn’t smell
right.”

“Why would the killer fold up her clothes and then rest
the marker on top of them?”

“To make it look like a suicide.
 
I don’t know.
 
I just don’t see it as a suicide.”

“Despite the lack of evidence, she was number one on our
list of Benson’s possible murderers.”

“I can accept her involvement in the murder and even
possibly being the murderer.”

“That’s grand of you,” he said.

“I don’t mean it that way.”

“Did you know her before this trip?” he asked.

“No, and I have no motive at all to do her any harm.”

“She did seem to have an attraction to you.”

“It’s a curse,” I said half joking.
 
My reference related to people dying around
me since I left the military, not women falling for me.
 
However, I didn’t think elaborating would be
in my best interest.

“Anything else you can think of that I should know?”

“No,” I answered honestly.

He led me back up to the third floor.
 
We took the elevator, this time.
 
Once there, I showed him the earlier position
of the door and put the chair back to where it had been.

“Anything else?” he asked again.

“No.”

“I still want to talk to you in the morning.
 
We may have to move the time around a little,
but don’t go anywhere before we meet.”

“I’ll be here,” I said and went back to my room.

The message light was flashing on my room phone.
 
I listened to the message.

“Jim, this is Bev.
 
I heard that woman killed herself tonight, and you found her.
 
Are you okay? Did she really kill
herself?
 
I feel awful for you.
 
I just wanted to make sure you’re okay.
 
If you need to talk to someone, give me a
call.
 
My number is 555-6084. Don’t worry
about the time. Bye.”

That woman?
 
Of course she knew her as the woman who came
by to talk to me earlier in the bar.
 
She
had teased me about her.

I didn’t call Bev back.
 
I would see her later.
 
However
sleep, my number one priority at the moment, eluded me.
 
Instead, my mind raced with a million
competing thoughts. Most of them didn’t even make sense. Should I have noticed
something else in the hall?
In the room?
Did I, and
did it simply slip from my mind?
 
Did the
killer see me?

When sleep came, things only got worse.
 
I was back in the room trying to get the
noose off Randi. It wouldn’t come off and she was crying, “Hurry, hurry.”
 
It wouldn’t come off.
 
I woke up in a sweat. I slept again, and
again I was back in the room.
 
This time
I got the rope off but rather than breathe into her, I was kissing her and she
was kissing me back.
 
Then, in my dream,
I suddenly realized she wasn’t kissing me.
 
I saw her vacant, dead eyes, inches from mine, staring at me.
 
I awoke with a gasp.

I had a desire to get up, read, and escape the nightmares,
but stayed in bed and tried to focus my thoughts on happier things. It didn’t
work, but at least my dreams didn’t wake me again before morning. I remembered
that last disturbing dream though.
 
In it
I was performing CPR vigorously on Randi, trying to keep her alive. A doctor
pulled me away from her and snarled at me.
 
“You fool! Her heart is not on that side of the chest! You killed her!
You killed her!”

Needless to say, I think I felt more tired at seven thirty
in the morning than I had when I went to bed a few hours earlier.

Randi’s death troubled me a lot more than Cross
Benson’s.
 
Obviously, my being there had
made it personal, but there was more to it than that.
 
Both individuals had befriended me, but
Randi’s strangeness had both intrigued and bothered me. While the police may
have to peel back Benson’s personality and past to solve their crime, I had no
interest in what made Benson tick. My mere presence at the lodge during
Benson’s murder brought about my interest in analyzing it.
 
I would be happy to go home at any time and
leave it to the police.

On the other hand, the same behavior in Randi that had the
contradictory impact on me before now served as kindling to the small fire of
curiosity that had started to burn inside of me. Randi’s death inexplicably
created a personal desire to understand what had happened.

ow’re you feeling this morning?”
Detective Bruno asked me as I munched on a piece of toast.

“Not well, but I’m okay.
 
How about you? Did you get any sleep?”

“A couple of hours.”

He must have slept here, I thought, as he had on the same
shirt with a bleach stained collar that he had on the night before. Plus, he
hadn’t shaved.

“Let’s go over again what happened last night.”

I gave him a look that indicated I really didn’t want to
do that, but he ignored me and waited for me to start talking.
 
Over the next fifteen minutes I covered
everything. He seemed satisfied.

“Why do you think it wasn’t a suicide?” he asked.

“My gut, mainly.”

“Did you know that she had tried to commit suicide twice
before?”

“No.
 
When?”

“Admittedly the last time was nearly twenty years ago, but
there is a history.”

“How did she try to kill herself back then?”

“Pills one time, slashed her wrist the second time.”

“Real attempts at suicide, or gestures?”
I asked.

“Real enough that she needed medical
attention.”

“Still, that doesn’t change how I feel.
 
We had a couple of short conversations the
last two days. Yesterday, I had the feeling she wanted to tell me
something.
 
I got the impression
something frightened her.”

“I heard she may have had more than a casual interest in
you,” he said.
 
His face told me more
than his words.

“I don’t know what she had for me,” I responded. “I
couldn’t read her that well. However, I didn’t get any feeling at all that she
was despondent enough to commit suicide.”

“What had she said to you?”

“Her comments were always accompanied with sexual
innuendo, but she did say she wanted to talk to me.
 
I think she saw me as a safety base away from
her group.
 
Benson, in a conversation we
had at dinner that night, alluded that Randi might come across as being easy,
but that I might have better luck elsewhere.”

“You mean with the other woman?”

“Yes, but that’s why I kept thinking Randi’s remarks
signaled more of a need to get away from the hunting group and talk to someone
else.
 
That someone else she picked was
me.
 
Only, we never got to talk.”

“Too bad.”

“Yeah,” I looked over at a handful of the hunting
group.
 
They huddled together at the far
end of the room, but every now and then one of them would peer in my direction.
“One other thing, when she mentioned she might come down to see me in my room
last night, I thought I saw a look of fear or apprehension. I may have been
mistaken.”

“Yeah, you mentioned that. You might not be wrong.”
 
He glanced over at the hunting group and back
at me.
 
“Listen West. If it wasn’t for
the fact that you were trying so hard to keep her alive last night, and the
fact that I’ve been doing a little checking on you, you would be on our prime
suspect list.”

“I didn’t do it, Detective.”

“I believe you,” he looked over at the hunting group
again, “but they don’t.”

“I can’t say as I blame them.
 
I’m an outsider.
 
They know I was inside the lodge when Benson
was shot and with Randi up in the room where she died.”

“Should I take you in?” he asked smiling. I didn’t respond
to what I hoped was his joke.

“Women don’t usually commit suicide by hanging themselves,
do they?”
 
I asked.

“You’d be surprised. Maybe not as often as men, but I don’t
think there’s that much of a difference.
 
The folding of the clothing is a woman’s thing though.
 
I’ve never heard of a man doing it.”

“Would a woman get naked simply to hang herself? Why
expose
herself
like that?”

“Good question, but I can’t see a man doing it either.”

“True,” I acknowledged. “Seems overplayed, something a
killer might want to do to play games with us.”

“Could be.”

“Randi wasn’t very tall.
 
Average height, maybe five foot four or five.
 
Even on a chair getting that rope over the
rafter and securing it would have been a hassle.”

“Would have been a hassle for a couple of the guys, too,”
Detective Bruno said.

“Well they’re all taller than she was.
 
The tall guy, Nesbitt, wouldn’t have had much
trouble, and a couple of the others - Vic, I can’t think of his last name at
the minute—“

“
Schutte
.”

“Yeah, Geri’s husband and Griffith are both tall enough to
make it relatively simple,” I said.

“If simple was important.”

“You have me rambling.
 
Does this mean that you don’t think it was a suicide either?”

“Just looking at all the possibilities,” he answered.
 
No doubt he knew a lot more than he was
sharing with me.

“She could have been involved in Benson’s murder,” I said.

“I would bet she was, but unfortunately, she won’t be able
to confirm it now.
 
That note had to be
written as either a confession by her or written by the true killer to mislead
us.”

I felt like saying, “
obviously
,”
but refrained.

“I imagine you’re right.
 
Still, though, even if she didn’t shoot Benson, she may have known
something about the murder that the killer didn’t want her to be able to tell
anyone.”

“I assume you searched her room again,” I said it rather
than asked it.

“Of course.
 
There was nothing new.
 
But get this, her friend, Mrs.
Schutte
, spent the night with her in her room.
 
Somehow, we believe, she, and not Randi, took
the Xanax provided to Randi to help her sleep.”

“Now that’s interesting.”

“We had a hell of a time waking her up last night to
interview her.
 
She’s adamant she didn’t
take it on purpose and has no idea how it would have gotten into her system.”

“Believe her?”

“At this point, I do. She carried around one of those
Arizona ice teas for about two hours.
 
Our guess is that someone drugged her drink.
 
She claimed to have finished it when she and
Randi turned off the lights to go to sleep, around eleven thirty.”

“Where was the medicine kept?” I asked.

“On the bathroom counter in the victim’s
room.”

“Could Randi have doped her?”

“She doesn’t remember Randi ever getting close to her
drink.
 
She thinks someone must have
slipped it into her drink when everyone, except Randi, was in her room after
dinner.”

“Could you tell if an extra dosage or two were missing?”

He smiled.
 
“I heard
you were good.” I didn’t ask him who he had been talking to.
 
“We did.
 
From what we can tell the prescribed amount was missing, no more.
 
We’ll do lab tests on the victim, of course,
but she may not have taken her nightly dose.”