SUICIDAL SUSPICIONS: A Kate Huntington Mystery (The Kate Huntington Mystery Series Book 8) (35 page)

Rose followed her line of vision. A teenaged girl, with long red hair, was crossing the front yard.

Correction, a petite woman who looks like a teenager from a distance.

“Wait,” Kate said. “I know that woman!”

“Who is she?” Rose said.

“The assistant who quit without notice.”

“Huh?”

Kate shook her head. “Too complicated, but if she’s Coleman’s wife, it all makes sense.”

The woman had reached the street. She raised her hand and pointed it toward Skip’s truck.

Rose sucked in air.

“She’s got his keys,” Manny said.

The woman climbed into the truck.

Heart pounding, Rose grabbed Kate’s shoulder from behind. “Stay. In. The. Car.”

The woman was pulling Skip’s truck into the garage. The door slid closed behind it.

“Call 911!” Rose barked at Manny. “And keep her here.” She pointed at Kate.

Rose bolted from the car. She crouched down and raced across the lawn.

Mac was moving along the front of the house, hugging the brick facade. Rose got to the garage just ahead of him. “I’ve got the front,” he growled softly.

Rose nodded and slipped around the corner and along the side of the garage. There was a regular door on the side, with a window in it. She eased up to it and peeked in along the edge of the window. Flimsy, semi-sheer curtains gave the scene inside a dream-like quality.

The middle-aged man, Coleman, was slowly and awkwardly dragging Skip’s inert body across the garage floor. His petite wife held open the back passenger-side door of Skip’s SUV.

¡Dios mio! Let him be alive!

It took them awhile to wrestle the big man into the backseat. It looked like little Mrs. Coleman was doing as much lifting and shoving as her husband was. The couple finally stepped back. Coleman slammed the back door of the truck, and they both climbed into the front.

Rose already had her snub-nosed .32 in her hand. Now she turned it around, ready to break the window in the side door with the butt. She waited for the whir of the main garage door opening.

A couple quick, hard raps had enough glass out for her to reach in and unlock the door. In the next second, she was inside the garage, her gun pointed at the truck’s windshield.

“Stop!”

Two gunshots exploded in the confined space, deafening Rose. She dove behind some boxes.

She could barely hear, over the ringing in her ears, Mac’s voice shouting, “I shot out the rear tires.”

Rose raced to the driver’s side window. She pointed her gun at the head of the man. “Put it in park,” she yelled, “then hands on the wheel!”

The man closed his eyes for a second. Then he shifted the truck into park. His chin sank to his chest.

Mrs. Coleman bolted out of the truck and ran for the door into the house.

Mac blocked her way and grabbed her arm. “Where the hell do you think you’re going?”

The back passenger door was ripped open. Kate clambered into the truck. “Skip! Skip!”

Rose sighed. She’d known the woman wouldn’t stay put.

Skip’s eyelids fluttered and his mouth moved.

Rose’s knees wobbled.
¡Gracias, Dios mio!

Coleman hadn’t so much as twitched. She said a second prayer of thanksgiving for that.

Unbeknownst to him, the truck’s window glass was bulletproof.

~~~~

Heart pounding, Kate clung to Rose’s hand, watching as the paramedics worked on her husband. He was stretched out on the Colemans’ garage floor, unconscious but breathing.

“Anybody got any idea what he was given?” one of the paramedics called out.

“Roofies,” Coleman said.

Kate narrowed her eyes at Mrs. Coleman. “And maybe clonazepam.”

Horror on his face, Coleman tried to turn toward his wife, but the cop hanging onto the elbow of one of his handcuffed arms hampered the movement.

Mrs. Coleman–also cuffed and in the custody of another officer–gave a small nod.

The paramedic swiveled around on his heel without standing. “Is it in his stomach?”

“No. Injected,” the woman said.

The paramedic spoke into the radio clipped to his shoulder, then turned to his partner, who was already drawing something into a syringe.

Kate’s tense muscles relaxed some. Skip was healthy and strong, and help had arrived in time.

Rose squeezed her hand and let it go. “You ride with Manny to the hospital. I’ll fill Judith in.”

“Tell her Mrs. Coleman worked at that pharmacy. She’ll know what that means. And I think she was following me. See if she owns a red knit scarf.”

Rose nodded and jogged away.

Kate followed her path with her eyes. Judith was getting out of an unmarked car at the curb.

Movement across the street caught Kate’s attention. A teenaged girl with auburn hair and a dark-haired boy a year or two younger climbed out of a car and crossed the street. At the end of the driveway, the girl broke into a run. “Mom! Dad!”

Kate’s throat closed.

Two uniformed officers intercepted the kids, turning them toward the front door of the house. The girl looked back over the cop’s shoulder, tears streaming down her face.

Kate’s own cheeks were wet.

Father What-A-Waste in more ways than one.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Kate sat next to the hospital bed, holding her husband’s inert hand and anxiously watching his still face. His eyelids had fluttered a few times, but he hadn’t yet regained consciousness.

The doctors had reassured her that he was out of the woods. She’d called Rose, who’d promised to let everyone else know.

Kate’s stomach was queasy and her chest hurt. Guilt, an all too frequent companion lately, lay heavy on her shoulders.

Skip had insisted on trading the nun for the ex-priest to protect her, but neither of them had honestly thought the man would be dangerous. Why had they assumed that?

She shook her head slightly. Because Josie had called him heroic, had seemed to like, even admire him.

The nun had said something about the lights going out and then the janitor made the kids take their clothes off. In the dark, seven-year-old Josie might never have realized that Father Bill was one of her abusers.

Or the traumatic amnesia had been sufficient to also block out the negative feelings about the priest. Kate had seen that often enough in incest cases. The abused child’s psyche would split the abusing parent into two beings–during the day, the loving parent on whom the child depended; by night, the monster who came to her room.

Kate sighed. They would never know all the answers, since Josie was dead.

Her eyes stung. She let the tears trickle out. It was time to finish grieving for Josie and let her go.

The hand she was holding twitched. Kate’s head jerked up.

Skip’s eyelids were at half-mast. “Where am I?” he mumbled.

She hastily swiped the tears off her cheeks. “In the hospital. Coleman drugged you, but the doctors say you’ll be fine.”

He nodded slightly, then winced.

“Headache?”

“A killer of one.”

Bad choice of words, sweetheart.

She let go of his hand and reached for the call button. “Let me ring for the nurse. See if she can give you anything.”

“What’d they drug me with?”

“Rophynol and clonazepam.”

“Clonaze… wasn’t that the other drug in Josie’s system?”

“Yes.” Much of the tension released in Kate’s body. She took his hand again and gave it a squeeze. “Sounds like your brain cells are starting to fire.”

A young nurse came in with a small paper cup. She poured water one-handed from the pitcher on the bedside table into its matching plastic cup. Then she held the little cup of pills up to Skip’s mouth.

He went cross-eyed looking down at it.

“It’s acetaminophen,” the nurse said.

With the hand Kate wasn’t holding, Skip took the small cup from the nurse and tossed the pills into his mouth. She handed him the water.

His hand was less steady with that but he managed not to spill any as he lifted the cup to his lips and drank. He paused for breath, then downed the rest of the water.

He handed the cup back to the nurse. “Thanks.”

“The doctor will be in to check on you soon, now that you’re awake.” She smiled down at him and then left the room.

Before the door could close completely, it was nudged open by a black-clad foot. Judith Anderson stood in the doorway.

“Lieutenant,” Kate greeted her.

Judith stepped into the room. “How’s the patient?”

“Groggy but alive.” Kate blew out air, finally allowing herself to feel the full impact of her relief.

“With a killer headache,” Skip added. “Did you catch Mrs. Coleman?”

Judith gave him an odd look. “Yeah, she and her husband are in custody. She lawyered up right away, but he confessed to everything. The abuse at St. Bartholomew’s years ago, Josie’s murder and trying to kill you.”

Skip shook his head, then grimaced. “He wasn’t home when I started feeling funny. The wife gave me coffee and we were talking…” His voice trailed off. “That’s all I remember.”

“Wait,” Kate said. “That jives with something that happened before you got there, Judith. The wife was the one who confirmed that Skip had been given clonazepam, and the husband seemed horrified by that news.”

“So he’s protecting her,” Skip said.

“Hm, seems like I’ll be having another little chat with the Colemans.” Judith took a deep breath and let it out. “We found camera equipment and pictures stashed in a locked room in their basement. Some of the pics are older ones, of kids.”

Kate winced. “Naked?”

“Yup, and the rest were of Mrs. Coleman, with bows in her hair, posing as if she’s a child.”

Kate’s stomach clenched. Bile rose in her throat.

Skip grimaced and squeezed her hand.

“Yeah,” Judith said. “Coleman seems to think he never hurt those kids at the church, because he didn’t touch them, just took off their clothes and took pictures of them.”

Ah, the flashes in Josie’s dream–they were flashbulbs going off.

“And the janitor helped,” Kate said.

Judith nodded. “Coleman claims it was Jones’s idea and it might have been. I sent Baxter,” she smirked for a second, “and a couple of uniforms to pick him up. He would take the pictures, then give the kids their clothes back. Then they’d turn the lights back on and Father Bill would console them, tell them they were okay, they didn’t need to tell anybody, yada, yada.”

“Crap!” Kate said. “That’s why Josie thought of him as, quote ‘heroic.’ She thought he’d saved her from the bad guy who’d made her take her clothes off.”

“Jones sold copies of the photos to his pervert buddies,” Judith continued. “Coleman claims that was a good thing, that it kept those men from actually abusing children even though they were committing a sin by masturbating.”

“Gag me,” Kate said.

Judith snorted. “Yeah, that was my reaction.”

Kate recalled some of the journal entries. “In one of Josie’s dreams, the janitor was yelling in her face that she ruined something. And she had the feeling that she’d opened a door and someone yelled ‘No lights.’ She stumbled onto their darkroom.”

“That makes sense,” Judith said. “I will need those journals now, and you may have to testify, Kate, about where you got them. That is, if we can’t get Coleman to admit his wife did it. I doubt she’ll confess.”

Kate nodded, although the thought of testifying at such a trial made her stomach churn all over again.

“By the way,” Judith said, “that phone number that showed up on Josie’s phone from that morning, it was for a throwaway cell. The same number called your office later that morning.”

“The hang up after Josie’s message,” Kate said.

“Yeah. That didn’t tell us much, until we found the phone on the Colemans’ coffee table today. It’s another piece of evidence against Mrs. Coleman. And yes, she owns a red knit scarf.”

“So it wasn’t my imagination that I was being watched,” Kate said. “One of the times I had that feeling, there was a woman in a red scarf, turned away from me, staring into a shop window.”

Judith nodded. “Coleman claimed he lured Josie over to his house with a promise of information, then used his wife’s clonazepam to drug her enough that she was out of it, but not unconscious. He took her back to her place, made her take the other pills and wash them down with the vodka. Then he found the page in the journal that would work as a suicide note and cleaned the condo to make sure he hadn’t left any fingerprints anywhere.”

“That’s all probably close to the truth,” Skip said, “but it was Mrs. Coleman, not him, who did all that.”

“Yeah,” Judith said. “I was having trouble visualizing Coleman being so cold and methodical. But Mrs. C? Yeah, I can see her doing it. And now that bogus prescription makes more sense. She worked at that pharmacy, had access to Dr. Kraft’s old prescriptions that were on file. So she steals some clonazepam from there and cobbles together a bogus prescription slip to make it look like Josie had it filled.”

Judith paused, staring hard at Kate. “We got a call at the precinct earlier today from the condo manager at Josie’s building. He asked for Detective Huntington.”

Heat rose in Kate’s cheeks. She opened her mouth but couldn’t think of a thing to say. She gave Judith a sheepish look. “I never said I was with the police, just that I had authorization to see her condo.”

Judith shook her head slightly, then chuckled under her breath. She pulled a piece of paper from the slim briefcase at her side. “The Hartins asked him to make arrangements to get rid of Josie’s furniture. When the movers picked up the desk, they found a piece of paper under it.” She handed the paper to Kate. “This is a copy.”

As Kate started reading, she recognized it as the last entry from the journal.

The little kid inside has taken over again. She’s terrified about confronting him. The adult knows there’s no danger now, but the kid’s not listening.

I still kind of hope that I’m wrong. That’s why I hesitate to write his name, even in this private journal. But I’ll find out today. Maybe I’m being paranoid but it’s too easy these days for information to fall into the wrong hands. And I don’t want to slander the guy if I’m wrong.