Trouble in Big Timber

by B. J Daniels

  As she started to leave the bedroom, she realized what she hadn’t seen. The woman’s purse. She checked the walk-in again. Lots of empty purses, but not one the woman had apparently been using. Nor had she seen one in the living room or the kitchen. As she wandered through the house, she kept looking. At the entry into the kitchen, she called to the techs.

  “Have either of you seen her purse?” Hitch was curious if it was large enough to hold a handgun. Also, if it wasn’t here, then where was it? The sheriff was so sure that no one else had been here. Would a ranch this size have some kind of hired help?

  “Not in here,” one of them called back.

  She turned and headed down past the bedrooms again toward the garage. Living this far from civilization, maybe she’d left her purse in her vehicle. Just as Hitch had expected, none of the vehicles were locked. She opened the first one, a Range Rover that smelled of leather and men’s aftershave. This would have been his car.

  After searching it and not finding much of interest other than a few receipts, which she took photos of with her phone, she tried the next vehicle. It was a BMW convertible and smelled of the same perfume scent she’d picked up in the master bedroom. No purse, though. No receipts either.

  The purse wasn’t in the large SUV or the older-model pickup.

  “You can have the body now,” one of the techs called.

  On her way back through the house, she had a thought and checked the powder room by the door to the garage. The moment she opened the door, she pulled up her camera and took a few shots of the room—and the large designer purse lying on the floor in front of the sink. The purse was made of soft leather and had more than enough room for the .38 now lying next to the body in the kitchen.

  What had caught her eye was where it lay—on the floor as if it had been dropped there. Also, the large zippered compartment was open, the woman’s wallet partially hanging out, as if Rachel Collinwood had been in a hurry and that was why it was open and lying on the floor like that.

  Hitch stared at the purse, imagining the woman coming home from town. It was a fairly long drive. Had she come in, headed straight for the powder room and then heard a garage door open, signaling that she was no longer alone? She would have known it was her husband. Had she dug in the bag for the gun? And for her phone, or both, since both were found in the kitchen on the floor next to the body? She’d apparently picked up the phone after shooting her husband and called 911 for help. Hitch had already photographed the phone, covered with bloody fingerprints, lying next to the body.

  Then hearing him enter the house, had she dropped the bag and followed him into the kitchen with the gun and phone? Or hurried into the kitchen to wait for him?

  After picking up the purse, Hitch spread out a clean towel and dumped the contents onto the counter by the sink. A small box of handgun cartridges tumbled out. She inspected them. They were .38-caliber cartridges, the same caliber as those used in the handgun that had been on the kitchen floor not far from the body—and was assumed to be the murder weapon.

  She put everything back into the purse and returned it to the spot where she’d found it, before going into the kitchen and telling the techs what she’d found. “Definitely want prints on that birth control container,” she said.

  The investigators put the deceased into a body bag and loaded it into a van. One of them would follow her into town to the morgue and return to finish processing the scene.

  “You know who he is, right?” Bradley Mar asked her. She’d worked with the young investigator before on other cases. He was smart, cute and definitely not her type, with his crooked grin and his bedroom brown eyes.

  “Humphrey Collinwood,” she said. “Is that name supposed to mean something to me?”

  “The family is from back East. Old money. The father and grandfather are still powerful politically, and Humphrey was the heir apparent. There was talk that he might one day be president. This case will probably garner nationwide media coverage. Even if she had probable cause to shoot him, I wouldn’t want to be in her shoes right now.”

  Hitch knew what Bradley was saying. Even if it was self-defense, the Collinwoods could probably want their pound of flesh. She was sure DCI had been warned to be especially careful with the evidence in this case. Any mistakes could cost them all their jobs. The DCI unit was always thorough, but with this one, they would make sure they dotted every i and crossed every t.

  Closing the back of the van, she watched the other investigator return to the house. Lori Stevenson was about the same age as Bradley, but much more serious. Hitch hoped that Lori hadn’t already fallen for Bradley’s charm. The young man was a heartbreaker. Unfortunately, Hitch knew the type. It was one reason she hardly dated.

  Climbing behind the wheel of her SUV, she started the engine and drove away from the huge house set against a backdrop of rolling hills and pasture with mountains off in the distance. As she did, she considered how isolated it was. The drive out was a good two miles to the paved highway. From there, it was another twenty miles into Big Timber. That kind of isolation could get to a person, she thought. Anything could have caused the altercation and subsequent shooting.

  In her experience, money was usually the big issue in most marriages. After that it was infidelity. She thought about the rambling house, the two separate walk-in closets filled with expensive clothes and jewelry, the four-car garage with luxury vehicles, the ranch itself with its beautiful vistas.

  For most people, this would be paradise, and yet one of the residents was dead and the other in the hospital facing possible homicide charges. So what had happened?

  The purse on the floor in the powder room bothered her. It suggested that Rachel Collinwood had been somewhere and had just come in from the garage. Was the husband already home? Or had he just entered the house from the garage, not knowing she was in the powder room? Had the wife known her husband would come home angry? Had she felt she was in danger?

  But if the gun had been in her purse along with the .38 cartridges, when had she taken it from her husband’s bedside table? And why would she take the gun and her cell phone and go into the kitchen if she was afraid for her life? Why not get back in her car and get out of there?

  The sheriff had said the man she’d accidentally dialed had heard it all—including the gunshot before the phone call ended. So had Rachel Collinwood attempted to call 911 for help in the middle of the altercation and accidentally dialed Ford Cardwell instead?

  Hitch was anxious to talk to both Mrs. Collinwood and the man she’d called. Her cases often intrigued her, but none more than this one. She tried to put herself in the woman’s shoes in that powder room, knowing it was all speculation at this point. But the wife had been in the powder room. The purse proved it. After returning from town? So where was the husband? Just driving in? Or waiting for her in the kitchen?

  What had been her state of mind? Panic? Or cold-blooded calm? The purse could have been dropped in terror at the sound of the garage door opening. Rachel could have been in a hurry to reach the kitchen before her husband. Had the husband been looking for her as he moved through the house? Had the argument started somewhere else? Where had they been before the argument? A larger question was also more than relevant. Had there been prior abuse? Was that why she had the gun? Assuming it had been in the purse and not hidden somewhere else in the house.

  All simple conjecture until she had more evidence. The real question for Hitch was, what had been going through the woman’s mind when she’d taken the gun from her husband’s bedside drawer in the first place—if she had? If Rachel Collinwood had been terrified of her husband, why hadn’t she simply gone to the garage, gotten in her car and driven to safety?

  In her mind’s eye, Hitch could see her standing in the kitchen amid all the debris from the fight. What had she done with the gun? If she’d had it from the start of the argument, she hadn’t used it. Had she threate
ned her husband with it? Or had she come in, dropped the purse in the powder room and hurried into the kitchen to hide the gun, hoping she wouldn’t have to use it, until she’d felt she had no choice?

  The moment the wife had armed herself, she had made up her mind that she was going to pull that trigger—whether she realized it or not.

  * * *

  AT THE HOSPITAL, Ford waited until the doctor received permission from the sheriff for him to see Rachel. He’d been warned that it would only be for a few minutes.

  “She’s going to be groggy,” the doctor said. “Also, the sheriff has asked that she not be questioned about what happened.”

  Ford thanked him and headed down the hall to where a uniformed guard sat outside her door. Seeing the man sitting there gave him a shock. At first, he’d thought it was for Rachel’s protection. But from whom? Then he realized with a start—the guard was there to keep Rachel here. Had she been arrested?

  He felt sick to his stomach at the thought. But she’d killed a man. And not just any man. A man they had both loved. He couldn’t imagine being pushed that far, and yet he’d heard enough of the fight on the phone to be terrified for her. That was why he had to see her and make sure she was all right. While he wouldn’t ask anything about the incident as the sheriff had ordered him, he desperately needed to know at some point what had happened that the marriage had ended like this.

  As he stopped at her hospital room door, he kept replaying what he’d heard on the phone over and over in his head. He still couldn’t believe any of this was real. The scenes in his head kept overlapping with his own tragedy, blurring the lines.

  He’d thought he’d known Humphrey. He never would have expected this of him. And Rachel... How long had the abuse been going on that she had to stop her husband with a bullet?

  The guard at the door double-checked with the sheriff and then gave Ford a nod. Pushing open the hospital room door, Ford hesitated, not sure he was ready to see the beautiful woman he’d known and loved in whatever state Humphrey had left her.

  After taking a breath, he let it out and stepped in. She lay in the bed, her eyes closed, her face as pale as the pillowcase beneath her head—except for the lacerations, stitches, bandages and bruising that made the woman he’d known almost indistinguishable. The extent of her injuries shocked him. He’d just assumed that the quarrel hadn’t been going on long when he’d first gotten the call. But Humphrey couldn’t have done this much damage in that short amount of time before the gunshot.

  All Ford could figure was that at some point, Rachel had tried to call for help and either dropped the phone after accidentally hitting his number or Humphrey had knocked the phone from her hand.

  The violence he saw mirrored in her injuries made his chest ache. He felt perspiration break out over his body. He grabbed the metal rail of the bed to steady himself as he felt another anxiety attack coming on.

  * * *

  THE RATTLE OF the bed rail awoke her with a start. Rachel let out a cry. She’d forgotten for a moment where she was. She shrank back from the dark figure beside her bed.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to frighten you,” Ford said as he quickly took a step back.

  She recognized his voice. It was low and soft and soothing, always had been. As her gaze focused on him, she tried to smile, but her cut and bruised mouth hurt too much. “Ford.” His name came out a whisper. She felt tears rush to her eyes at just the sight of a friendly, familiar face in the middle of all her pain.

  As she held out her hand, he moved closer and took it in his two large, warm palms. It had been years since she’d seen him, so she shouldn’t have been shocked that he’d changed. His body had filled out from the lean college boy he’d been. If anything, he was more handsome. She’d heard what had happened to him during his time in the military and wondered how an experience like that would change a man like Ford. She could see now that there was a hardness to him that was only partially due to muscle and physical strength. There was also a darkness in his pale blue eyes.

  “Ford? I’m so glad to see you, but what are you doing here?”

  “I heard what happened to you,” he said. “Are you all right?”

  She shook her head, tears rushing to her eyes again. “Humphrey.” The word came out choked on fresh tears.

  He nodded and squeezed her hand. As he looked down at her fingers entwined with his, she thought about earlier when two state crime investigation officers had stopped by to take her fingerprints and take swabs of her skin around her hands and wrists. When she’d asked, they’d told her they were checking for gunpowder residue, and that brought it all back. The deafening sound of the gun. The damage the bullet made an instant later.

  But more than anything, what she kept seeing was the shocked, disbelieving look on her husband’s face. She would take that look to her grave.

  Ford squeezed her hand gently. “I’m here for you.” She looked at him, knowing he meant every word of it. She’d forgotten this side of Ford and felt her throat tighten.

  “I can’t believe any of this has happened,” she said, wiping at the tears with her free hand as she focused on his face. To think she had actually thought about marrying this cowboy, she told herself, then pushed the thought away as her pain threatened to overwhelm her again.

  “What about you? Are you all right?” she asked when she gained control again. “I heard about your accident... I’m so sorry.”

  “Don’t worry about me,” he said quickly. “I’m fine. It’s you I’m concerned about. But I’m here for you. Whatever I can do. I’m not going anywhere.”

  At the sound of the hospital room door opening, she glanced toward it and saw a man in uniform and star enter. She swallowed the lump in her throat at just the sight of the sheriff’s grim expression. Only hours ago she’d been standing in her kitchen with the gun in her hand and her finger on the trigger. She closed her eyes but felt fresh tears on her cheeks as Ford let go of her.

  She heard him step away from her bed as the sheriff said, “I need to talk to Mrs. Collinwood. Alone. But don’t go far, Mr. Cardwell. I’ll need a word with you, as well.”

  Rachel smelled peppermint on the sheriff’s breath as she heard him pull up a chair beside her bed. She heard Ford’s boots on the hospital room floor, the slow, deliberate gait of his walk and the swish of the door opening and closing.

  “Mrs. Collinwood, you remember me? I’m Sheriff Charley Cortland. I’m the one who called for an ambulance for you. The doctor said you might be a little groggy, but I need you to answer a few questions if you feel up to it.”

  Rachel opened her eyes, turning her head to look at the man. What she saw made her relax a little. There was kindness in his weathered face rather than accusation. She wiped her eyes and said, “I’ll tell you everything I can remember.”

  The hospital room door opened again. This time a young man came in with a video recorder. He set it up next to her bed. She touched the bandage on her cheekbone and realized she probably shouldn’t be thinking about her appearance at a time like this.

  “Don’t worry—you look fine,” the sheriff said. “We just need to get your statement while it’s fresh in your mind so everyone knows what happened.”

  Chapter Five

  Hitch looked up as a distinguished older man in a suit burst into the morgue. He had a head of salt-and-pepper hair and keen gray eyes with deep crinkles around them. His skin appeared ashen under his tan, and his hand shook as he clutched the doorknob and looked around the autopsy room.

  “Where is the medical examiner? I want to see my son,” he demanded.

  She’d been expecting Bartholomew Collinwood. “I’m the medical examiner. Henrietta Roberts,” she said. “If you give me a few minutes, you are welcome to make an identification for the record.”

  He stared at her in surprise and then what might have been slight embarrassment. He seemed to check h
is anger as she asked him to please wait outside the autopsy room. “I’ll have someone show you where you can have a seat.” She thought he would object. But then he looked past her to where the body bag was being unloaded from the state investigators’ van.

  The realization made him stagger a little before he caught himself and turned back into the hallway, letting the door close behind him.

  She hurried to help roll the body into the morgue. Once she had it on the examination table, she went to find Mr. Collinwood. He was sitting on a bench outside, his head in his hands.

  “If you’d like to come with me now,” she said quietly. She never got used to the amount of grief she witnessed. She hoped she never did.

  It took him a moment to rise from the bench. He was a man who clearly carried himself with unsparing confidence, and she saw that he was now struggling to maintain it. She often saw this kind of debilitating grief and felt it clear to her core. In these rural areas of the state, she was often alone in these duties of telling friends and family of their loss.

  The hardest part was asking them to identify the bodies. Usually, that fell to the local coroner unless she’d been called in on a case.

  If the dead man hadn’t been Humphrey Collinwood, killed by his wife, Rachel Collinwood, then right now George would be doing this, she thought as she led Bart Collinwood into the morgue to identify his son.

  * * *

  FORD WONDERED WHY the sheriff wanted to see him again, but he stayed around the hospital. Down in the cafeteria, he got himself a cup of coffee. At the smell of the evening meal, he realized he hadn’t eaten all day. No wonder he felt weaker than usual. But he suspected he wouldn’t be able to get a bite down right now.