Revenge of Innocents (34 page)

Marcus was on the 101 Freeway now, only a few miles from his destination. He traveled through one of those odd spots where the road was completely dry, when behind him and in directly in front of him, the rain was coming down in transparent sheets. He saw a bolt of lightning zigzag its way across the sky, not something you saw that often in this section of California.

He checked his rearview mirror to make certain Bear was still behind him. Was Carolyn was trying to get across some type of message? In addition to bringing up the night she’d driven into an ambush, she’d mentioned torture, and not calling him if she were ever kidnapped, which in itself was alarming.

Marcus had heard on the news that a young girl had been raped last night near the marina, which wasn’t very far from where Carolyn had asked him to meet her. Since he’d talked to Brad, Hank, and Mary this morning, he was certain they would have said something if Rebecca had been the victim. It seemed impossible that another tragedy could happen after the events of the past two weeks. “Talk to me, Carolyn. I’m almost there, but I’m worried about you. You aren’t thinking of hurting yourself, are you?”

“No.”

Bear was a top-notch driver and had managed to stay up with Marcus. They were both exceeding the speed limit, which was dangerous on the rain-slick roads. He let up on the accelerator when he exited the freeway. Instead of entering the public parking structure, he left the car with the valet at the Holiday Inn.

Bear pulled up behind him. Marcus rushed over and hit the
MUTE
button again on the phone, advising the bodyguard to follow him from a distance. Marcus had a license to carry a gun, but he’d locked the gun in the safe the day before. He started to ask Bear for his gun, then decided against it. Veronica’s death had made him wonder if carrying a gun might be more of a risk than a benefit.

He walked toward the water, but he couldn’t see Carolyn. With the rain and low cloud cover, it was hard to see anything. “Where are you?” He caught sight of what looked like a person on the ground, and began running toward her, his feet sinking in the deep sand. “Is that you? Are you sitting down? Stand up so I can see you.”

Carolyn stood and waved to him. He relaxed when he saw she was alone. The moment he reached her, she threw herself into his arms.

“Everything’s going to be fine, honey,” Marcus said, brushing her wet hair off her face so he could look in her eyes. “I love you. You’re going to be my wife. We’re going to have a beautiful life together, understand? Let’s get you out of this rain and into some dry clothes.”

The mere thought of something happening to Carolyn because of his work was so terrifying, Marcus decided it might be time for him to change occupations. He could always sell his business and do consulting for companies that wouldn’t place himself or anyone he loved at risk. He should have realized a long time ago that a person who needed bodyguards was in the wrong profession. When he had been single, it hadn’t mattered.

Carolyn had her head pressed against his chest. Sweeping her up in his arms, Marcus trudged back across the sand. Bear started walking toward him, but he shook his head as a signal that he didn’t need him.

Thursday, October 20
—
11:45
A
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M
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H
ank and Mary were speeding to the Snodgrass residence. “Are you certain Carolyn is all right?” he asked. “Did you talk to her?”

“Marcus said she was sleeping. He refused to wake her, but he reassured me she was fine, just suffering from acute exhaustion. I told him to keep her away from the hospital and Jude. Gabriel should be there by now. It’ll be interesting to hear how Jude tries to lie her way out of this one.” Mary heard something on the police radio. “Someone reported a DOA in Barranca Vista Park.”

“Wasn’t that where Gary was staked out all night?”

Mary didn’t answer, busy calling Gary Conrad at home. A handwriting expert had confirmed that the diary was written by Haley Snodgrass. When they’d interviewed Chloe Williams at the station that morning, she had also told them about seeing Mr. Snodgrass’s bronze Lexus circling the school on numerous occasions. On the days Chloe saw him, Haley would say she was sick and leave school early. That’s why Haley hadn’t graduated with her class. Chloe assumed she was secretly meeting Reggie Stockton, even though Haley refused to talk about him. When the lab had matched an unidentified print found inside Jude’s black Taurus to Snodgrass, Lou Redfield had given them the green light to arrest him.

Gary Conrad answered the phone in a groggy voice, “I didn’t shoot anyone, if that’s what you’re thinking. If it’s the same guy I followed from the jail, he probably just croaked. He looked like he was on his last legs.”

Mary disconnected when Hank pulled up and parked in front of the Snodgrass house. Something looked amiss. The front door was standing open, and a teenage girl with long blond hair was sitting on the front steps of the house sobbing hysterically. Hank and Mary bailed out and raced toward her.

“My dad…” Anne Marie told him, gasping for breath. “I found him in the bedroom.” She placed a hand around her neck, her fingers trembling. “He, he…Oh, God…I want my mother.”

Mary saw something clutched in her hand. “Calm down, sweetie,” she said, sitting down on the porch beside her while Hank drew his gun and entered the residence. “Can you tell me what happened?”

“I—I called my mother because the kids at school said my dad was a child molester. I wanted her to come and get me, but she had to take Kylie to the doctor. I ditched class and walked home. My dad…no one was here.” The girl stopped speaking, staring out into space.

“Everything will be okay, honey,” Mary said. “Did your father hurt you?”

The girl looked at her with eyes filled with horror. “I found him in the bedroom. He was…hanging from a rope. I tried to get him down. I—I couldn’t reach him. I think he’s dead.”

Mary placed a comforting hand on her thigh as she called the station and requested an ambulance, along with additional units. Angela Snodgrass pulled into the driveway, opened the door to her Cadillac, and rushed toward them, leaving her nine-year-old daughter in the backseat. Before the girl’s mother reached the porch, Mary pried the piece of paper out of Anne Marie’s hands, then darted inside the residence.

Hank was in the master bedroom. Don Snodgrass was hanging from a thick rope attached to one of the exposed beams in the high ceiling. Suicides by hanging were not always successful, but Snodgrass had made certain he would never see the inside of a jail.

An aluminum ladder rested on its side in the corner, evidently from where Snodgrass had kicked it when he’d hanged himself. In shock, Anne Marie must not have seen the ladder when she’d discovered her father.

“Did you check to make sure he’s dead?” Mary asked, although she knew it was a moot question. Snodgrass’s protruding tongue was black, a clear indication of death.

“I hate ladders,” Hank told her. “The sucker is dead. If he was alive when we got here, he’s certainly not alive now. Kind of nice when a menace like this does our job for us. At least we don’t have to worry about getting a conviction.”

“Shut up, for Christ’s sake,” Mary snapped at him. “There’s a girl out there who’ll carry this image to her grave. You want her to walk in here and hear you talking about her father that way? The wife showed up, as well as the younger sister. I wasn’t even aware there was a younger sister. Preserve the crime scene while I go out and talk to them.” She handed him the piece of paper she’d taken from Annie Marie. “This time, try reading it. There’s writing on the back as well.”

The handwritten suicide note was also a confession. In letters so small they were difficult to read, Snodgrass admitted killing Haley and Veronica, although he swore Haley’s death was an accident. He said Haley considered Veronica like a second mother and must have called her to come to the Motor Inn without his knowledge, thinking her position as a probation officer would assure his arrest.

The most shocking part of the letter was Snodgrass’s admission that he’d been molesting his youngest daughter, Kylie, since Haley’s death. The previous evening, his wife had walked in and caught him in the child’s bed. He realized his “sickness” as he referred to it would never go away, and had decided to end his life so he would never harm another child.

Mary found Angela Snodgrass and her two daughters huddled together on the porch, all of them crying. “It might be better if your daughters waited in the car,” she said. “We need to ask you some questions, and our forensic people will need access to the house.”

“Is he…”

“Yes,” Mary told her, her face etched with sympathy. It was always sad to see a family in ruins. She recalled the situation with her brother, and was glad he had been killed in the car accident before she’d had to tell her parents that he’d been sexually abusing her. When her father had been killed on duty, she’d been certain she would never get over it. Even something as terrible as this family had gone through could be overcome in time. Not forgotten, but accepted as one of the uncharted events that sometimes occurred during the course of a human lifetime. Her mother had always told her that if a problem didn’t kill you, it would make you stronger. She looked at the tortured faces of Anne Marie, Kylie, and Angeles Snodgrass, hoping her mother’s homegrown wisdom would one day come true for them.

Marcus crawled into bed with Carolyn and touched her shoulder to wake her. He hadn’t needed to call Dr. Wyman. As soon as they’d reached the house, Carolyn had gone to the bedroom, stripped off her wet clothes, and promptly passed out. “I have good news,” he said, kissing her on the forehead when she opened her eyes. “Your problems might be over.”

“What do you mean?”

“Snodgrass confessed. Then the bastard hung himself.” He explained what Mary had told him about the diary. Carolyn bolted upright in the bed, trying to push him aside so she reach the phone. “No, you don’t,” he told her. “There’s nothing to do right now. The police sent a detective to the hospital to speak to Jude. From start to finish, it looks like everything that kid told you was a lie. I was taken in by her, too, so don’t feel bad.”

“Who murdered Drew, then?” Carolyn said. “Snodgrass didn’t admit to killing him, did he?”

“Mary didn’t say anything about Drew,” Marcus told her, the look of relief disappearing from his face. “Please, before you dive back into this thing, tell me what happened this morning. I was terrified you’d been kidnapped, or that you were going to hurt yourself. I overheard you tell Mary you were going to drown yourself, so I didn’t know what to think.”

“I’m a Catholic, Marcus,” Carolyn tossed out, scooting over to the other side of the bed to get out. “We believe it’s a sin to take a life, even your own. I wasn’t serious when I said that to Mary. Trust me, you’re way off track on this one.”

He followed her around as she got dressed. “You’ve been acting strange, baby. I know it’s probably stress, but still, I was worried about you even before I got that frantic call from you.”

Carolyn headed to the bathroom to comb her hair and try to make herself look presentable. Marcus leaned against the door. “I found a Smith & Wesson in the kitchen cabinet,” she said, linking eyes with him in the mirror. “Was it yours?”

“No,” Marcus told her. “It was probably Josephine’s. She got scared when she came to work for me and found out I had bodyguards.”

“It’s a ghost gun.”

“What the hell does that mean?” After Carolyn explained, Marcus rubbed his chin. “Josephine probably got it from one of her relatives back East. I think they’re in the Mafia.”

“I guess you’ll have to buy her a new gun,” she said. “I threw the Smith and Wesson into the ocean this morning. That’s what I was doing at the beach.”

“Why would you do something like that? See what I mean, Carolyn? Don’t get mad, but you’ve been doing some strange things lately. You have your own gun. Why take Josephine’s?”

“I needed a clean gun,” Carolyn explained. “I went to Barranca Vista Park this morning to kill Reggie Stockton.” She stared at her image in the mirror as she relived those awful moments.

Carolyn was running across the damp grass, the gun flush at her side. Before she reached the restroom area where Stockton was curled up with his parka over his head, she felt as if an invisible wall dropped down and stopped her. What in God’s name was she doing? She wasn’t a vigilante. It went against everything she believed in.

Almost every murderer had some type of justification for what he had done. And killing Stockton wasn’t the same as the man she had shot in self-defense. She remembered the guilt she carried to this day, and how she had prayed for God to forgive her. Her clothes were soaked with perspiration. If she killed Stockton, she would be the same as him. She would never be able to love again, feel joy again. Even if she got away with it, it would haunt her the rest of her life.

Placing the gun back in the waistband of her jeans, Carolyn walked over and pulled the parka off Stockton’s head, wanting him to know how close she had come to ending his life. When she realized the man wasn’t Stockton, she gasped in horror.

Racing back to the Range Rover, she felt so shamed and weak that she had to lean against the car to keep from passing out. She’d been only seconds away from killing an innocent man. The thought that she had gotten this far was terrifying.

Carolyn heard Marcus’s voice and turned around, pushing aside the images from that morning. “Stockton wasn’t even there, Marcus. Gary Conrad must have followed the wrong guy from the jail. I decided I couldn’t do it even before I found out the man wasn’t Stockton.”

Marcus was beside himself. “My God, how could you even consider doing something like that? You could have ended up in prison. What about me? What about Rebecca and John? You’ve let Jude and her crazy stories drive you insane.” He stopped and leveled his finger at her. “That girl’s dangerous, Carolyn. Mary instructed me to keep you away from her. The police are in charge now. You should never have been assigned to their task force. You were too emotionally involved.”

“The DA refused to prosecute, Marcus,” Carolyn said, leaning against the bathroom counter. “Stockton was going to walk. You’re wrong about Jude. I admit that I believed her, particularly after she suffered such a devastating injury. Even if ninety percent of what she told me was a fabrication, the other ten percent is more than likely true. I’m certain Stockton killed Drew. Jude told him he’d been abusing both her and Haley since they were children. She convinced him that Drew killed Haley. He must have genuinely cared about the girl.”

“You mean Jude set her father up to be murdered?”

“Maybe not intentionally,” Carolyn said, going into the closet to get dressed. Marcus stood in the doorway. “All Jude wanted was attention, Marcus. She didn’t think about the ramifications. I’m not making excuses for her, but the girl has serious psychological problems. Not only does she have to recover from the accident, but if things happened the way I suspect they did, none of this will compare to what Jude may be facing if the DA decides to prosecute her for murder.”

Marcus looked bewildered. “This morning you were ready to kill for her. Now you want to see her go to prison for murder.”

“I wasn’t ready to kill for Jude,” Carolyn protested. “I was going to kill a murderer who’d been released to kill again.” She stood on her tiptoes and kissed him, cupping the side of his face with her hand. “I’ll check in with you later. Don’t worry, I’m feeling fine now. The sleep did me a world of good. I didn’t kill anyone, and you’re right. We’re about to put an end to this nightmare. Then, if you still want me, we can set a date for our wedding.”

“Of course I want you,” Marcus said. “But you have to promise you’ll never think about killing anyone again.”

“I promise,” Carolyn said, probing deep into his eyes. “But are you sure you want to spend the rest of your life with me?”

Marcus engulfed her in his arms. “You’re hell on wheels, but you’re the most fascinating woman I’ve ever known. How could I not want you? You’re one of a kind, and I’m just a high-paid computer geek.” He reached down and squeezed her buttocks. “When you’re not running around chasing criminals, stealing guns, or plotting to kill someone, you’re a pretty good lover. Of course, there’s always room for improvement.”

“Same goes for you, guy,” she said, extracting herself. “Oh, I’m taking the Infiniti. There’s nothing wrong with it. I thought it might attract too much attention since I was planning on taking out Stockton. That’s why I took your Range Rover.”