Candidate for Murder

by Lauren Carr

  “Only it wasn’t suicide,” Dallas said to David. “Archie showed me that it couldn’t have been suicide because you can’t drown to death in a toilet. Want me to show you?”

  The doorbell rang.

  “Maybe another time, dear.” On his way to answer the door, David called back to the two women. “Two strangers have dinner together in a hotel, and both of them end up dead—they’re murdered, but the deaths look like suicides. What do you think are the odds of that?”

  Dallas and Archie smiled at each other. “We have work to do,” Archie said.

  David peered through the cut glass in the front door. Seeing Bernie and Hap, he dreaded the interrogation that would surely be coming his way about Gnarly’s whereabouts. Forcing a grin onto his face, David opened the door. “Hello, gentlemen. What brings you here?”

  Bernie cast a glance at Hap, who shoved his hands into his pockets and looked down at his feet. “Uh, Chief, we’re sorry to bother you on your day off”—Bernie had clearly taken note of David’s bathrobe—“but Hap and I have a confession to make.”

  David looked the two men up and down. Hap shuffled his feet. Curious about what they could have possibly done that was so serious that they had to go to the police chief’s home to make a confession, David opened the door and gestured for them to enter.

  Once they were inside, Storm galloped over to check them out. After sniffing their legs, she decided that they were okay and returned to lie down under the kitchen table, where Dallas and Archie were working. Recognizing Bernie and Hap, they greeted the two men before returning back to their work on the Fiona Davis case.

  Looking like a couple of guilty children about to confess to breaking a window, Bernie and Hap hung their heads.

  Unsure of whether he should be worried or amused, David folded his arms across his chest. “Do I need to go get my handcuffs?”

  With a shake of his head, Bernie glanced over at his friend. “Tell ’im, Hap.”

  “Tell me what?” David asked.

  Hap raised his eyes from the floor. Slowly, he pulled his right hand out of his pocket and held the gnarled, weathered appendage out for David to see. Uncertain of what the old man was showing him, David touched his hand. Hap’s fingernails were short. His knuckles were swollen, and his fingers were crooked with arthritis.

  A scratched-up gold signet ring with a blue stone adorned his pinkie finger. Upon examining it, David noticed that the stone had an odd shape resembling a family crest cut onto its face.

  “He can’t get it off,” Bernie said.

  “I’m a police chief, not an EMT.” David went over to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. “Have you tried butter?”

  The two elderly men followed him into the kitchen. “Yeah, but that’s not the problem, Chief. You see—”

  David plunged his hand into a tub of butter and removed it when he had a thick blob on his finger. He then grasped Hap’s hand and worked the butter up and down his pinkie and under and around the ring. “What’s the problem?”

  “It doesn’t belong to us,” Bernie said. “The ring.”

  David stopped with his hand grasping the ring in question.

  At the kitchen table, Archie and Dallas stopped talking about their case to observe what had become a curious situation.

  “What do you mean, it doesn’t belong to you?” David asked. “Where did you get it? Who does it belong to?”

  Bernie cleared his throat and then said, “Bill Clark.”

  Silence filled the kitchen.

  “Bill Clark?” David asked in a soft voice. “This ring belongs to Bill Clark. Am I correct in assuming that he didn’t give it to you?”

  “Well,” Bernie said.

  Hap had slipped his hand out of David’s grasp and was tugging on and pulling at the ring, which was then covered in a thick layer of butter.

  “You see,” Bernie said, “when we heard Bill Clark and you talking the other night, when he said that dogs sometimes just take off, and you never see them again, we thought that maybe he had kidnapped Gnarly to keep him from being around for the election. So Hap and I went to Bill Clark’s house while he was in the town-hall meeting to look around.”

  Seeing that Hap was becoming desperate to get the ring off, David grabbed it and put more butter around it.

  “While we were searching his house, we went into the study, and Hap here went through the desk drawers—”

  “Gnarly is kind of big to fit in a desk drawer,” David said while studying the knuckle that was preventing the ring from slipping off his finger.

  “We were looking for clues,” Bernie said. “Well, Hap saw this ring sitting right there in the top drawer of Clark’s desk, and he thought it was pretty, and the next thing you know—we couldn’t get it off.”

  At the same time that Bernie said the words, David slipped the ring off of Hap’s finger. Both old men uttered sighs of relief. In the next breath, Bernie said, “I guess we’re in trouble now, huh? I’m surprised Clark hasn’t been screaming bloody murder about someone breaking into his house.”

  “Did you break anything when you broke in?” David held the ring under hot running water.

  “No, we were real careful,” Bernie said. “We just wanted to know where Clark was keeping Gnarly.”

  “Clark does not have Gnarly.” David held the ring up to the light to study the design cut into the blue stone. “Gnarly will be back home by next week, and I assure you that he’ll be right back out on the campaign trail with you guys.”

  “We certainly hope so,” Bernie said. “Ever since it hit the news about Gnarly risking his life to run into that inferno to save that momma cat and her thirty kittens, folks all over have been asking to interview him.” He pounded his fist into his palm. “We need to strike while the iron is hot if we want to ride this wave into a win this November!”

  “You can count on Gnarly.” David patted Bernie on the shoulder. “As for Clark, he hasn’t reported any break-ins or missing items. Maybe you’re lucky, and he didn’t notice the ring was missing.”

  “What are you going to do?” Bernie asked. “Are we under arrest?”

  David shook his head. “No, I’ll take care of this. Leave it to me.”

  With enthusiastic thanks, Bernie and Hap left. Studying the signet ring, David strolled back into the kitchen and found Dallas and Archie staring at him.

  “You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Dallas said.

  “More like a revelation.” Spinning around, he ran up the stairs to his bedroom to put on his uniform.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Impatient for his breakfast, Gnarly barked at Jessica and stomped his feet while she prepared three bowls of food. It was as if he were saying, “Hurry up! I’m hungry! You’re not doing that fast enough!” By the time she set the bowls down on the floor so that he, Spencer, and Newman could chow down, Jessica was ready to take her adopted brother home to Daddy. The German shepherd was equally loud while chowing down.

  In less time than it took Jessica to brew a fresh pot of coffee, Gnarly inhaled his breakfast and went about his day. Enjoying the silence that came with the canines’ full tummies, she poured a cup for herself and a mug of green tea for Murphy and went downstairs to what she had started referring to as “Nigel’s office.”

  Whatever it was that had struck Murphy hadn’t let up long enough for him to get dressed. Wearing nothing more than his sweat pants, not even slippers on his feet, Murphy was jotting down one note after another on a notepad while referring to reports on the computer monitor.

  Since Gnarly was squeezed into her chair, Jessica took a seat on the sofa. “Okay, you said you wanted me to do a psychological profile. Who do you want me to do one on?”

  “Lieutenant Frank Watson.” Taking his notes with him, Murphy got up from his chair and went over to sit down next to her. “Remember what Dr. Samuels
said? Many of the men called him ‘Patton.’ You do know who Patton is, don’t you?”

  “I may be new to military life, but I do know my history,” she said. “General Patton was a great general during the Second World War.”

  “Fearless,” Murphy said with a nod of his head. “His men used to call him ‘Old Blood and Guts.’ He was known for leading his troops into the worst places, like Nazi Germany.”

  “Dr. Samuels said that there’s no zone too hot for Lieutenant Watson,” Jessica said.

  “But”—Murphy held up his finger—“Samuels also said that Watson doesn’t just send his men into those situations. He goes himself, which is why the men respect him.”

  “What are you thinking?”

  “I don’t want to lead you in your profile. Just listen.” He referred to his notes. “Watson’s team suffered four causalities on the day Perkins was killed. A couple of weeks before that, there were two others.”

  “They were being tracked by a terrorist cell that was after Agent Hardy,” Jessica said.

  “The tour before that, Watson’s team suffered three casualties in battle,” Murphy said. “In the last six years, the two years before Perkins was killed and the four years after, teams serving under Lieutenant, now Captain, Watson suffered a mortality rate twenty percent higher than that of most other teams.”

  “Did the army suspect that his leadership was reckless?”

  “I suspect that Perkins and Gnarly were sent to serve with Watson’s team because after seeing the high number of casualties, the army wanted to know why his teams kept ending up in situations where his people were getting killed.”

  “During the fight between Perkins and Lieutenant Watson that Dr. Samuels overheard, Perkins said it was going to stop—it being his reckless leadership.”

  “But she was killed before she could report it to CID,” Murphy said.

  She shook her head. “Watson is now a captain.”

  “With more soldiers under his command,” Murphy said. “More lives are at risk.”

  “Would Watson have been promoted to captain if the army had suspected him of getting his team killed?”

  “Hard to say,” Murphy said. “He was brought back stateside. Nigel says he’s due to fly out to Syria in the next couple of weeks. Now, if I’m right about what I think Perkins uncovered—”

  “What?”

  “Dr. Samuels told us that he regularly sees Watson at the hospital.”

  “He thinks that maybe he was wounded and is doing physical therapy,” Jessica said.

  “I had Nigel do a search for Watson’s medical records,” Murphy said.

  “Did he find anything?”

  “No,” Murphy said. “So I asked Nigel to see if he could find a record of any regular prescriptions under Frank Watson’s name that he hadn’t submitted to his health insurance. Nigel found Tetrabenazine.”

  “That’s a dopamine-depleting agent,” Nigel said. “I also found a prescription for a neuroleptic, which is a dopamine-receptor antagonist. Together, the two are used to treat the symptoms of Huntington’s disease.”

  “Huntington’s disease?” Jessica said. “That’s a neurodegenerative disease. There’s no cure for it. If Lieutenant Watson has Huntington’s disease, then—”

  “He should’ve been given a medical discharge,” Murphy said with a nod of his head. “He would not be serving overseas—no way would he be able to lead a unit in Syria.”

  “Huntington’s is hereditary,” Jessica said. “There are tests to determine whether you’ve got the disease long before the symptoms show up.”

  “Exactly. Now, suppose someone in Lieutenant Frank Watson’s family had Huntington’s disease. Knowing that it’s hereditary, Watson got tested. But he wouldn’t have had it done by an army doctor, because then it would’ve gone on his record. The test came back positive, so Watson knows that eventually, this degenerative disease is going to eat away at his body, and he’s going to end up in a wheelchair.”

  “For a strong, gung ho alpha male,” Jessica said, “that would be a bitter pill to swallow.”

  Murphy held out both of his hands to symbolize a scale. “On the one hand, he’d be forced to take a medical discharge from the army and to watch his body fall apart one iota at a time. On the other hand, he’d be able to go out in a blaze of glory on the field of battle serving his country.”

  Jessica sucked in a deep breath. “You think that he’s suicidal. That he’s purposely putting his people in danger to get himself killed in action.”

  Murphy’s eyes met hers. “That would explain why as soon as he gets back from a tour, he signs up to go out again. Perkins must have figured out that he was suicidal. Maybe based on the decisions and calls he made during the gunfight that got four of his men killed. I don’t know. Whatever she’d observed, she called him on it.”

  “And said she was going to put a stop to him risking his soldiers’ lives in order to get himself killed.”

  “But Watson couldn’t let her do that,” he said, “because he wanted to die in action.”

  “Why would he do that?” Jessica asked, “There are a lot of ways to kill yourself without putting men and women whose lives have been entrusted to you in danger. Doesn’t he realize that the rest of his team wants to go home?”

  “Why do some suicidal men kill their whole family and then put a gun to their head and blow out their brains?” Murphy asked with a shrug of his shoulders. “There’s no telling what’s going through his mind.”

  “The symptoms of Huntington’s disease include dementia and behavioral changes,” Nigel said.

  “Lieutenant Watson has a wife and two children,” Murphy said. “His wife is a schoolteacher. Most likely, he’s doing this because he doesn’t want to saddle his family with an invalid. Also, if he is medically discharged, his family won’t get the same death benefits that they’ll be entitled to if he’s killed in action.”

  Agreeing, Jessica said, “Lieutenant Watson could be rationalizing that this is all for the greater good—he’d rather die serving his country than being a burden to his family. If you’re right, we need to stop him before he goes back overseas. Is there any way Nigel could find out for certain if Watson is receiving those meds for Huntington’s?”

  “We’ll start by confirming Perkins’ mission,” Murphy said. “Proving that she was sent to evaluate his leadership would make him an actual suspect in her murder. That may be enough to keep him stateside. Once we tell CO about our discovery of the meds he’s been taking, she’ll report it to the army chief of staff who will order a test to see if Watson does have Huntington’s.”

  “Right now,” she said, “all we have are a bunch of theories based on one witness’ statement and Nigel’s finding records of Watson getting a couple of drugs. How do we move Watson all the way up to murder suspect?”

  He grinned. “You forgot. We have a witness.” He pointed behind her to where Gnarly was resting his head on the arm of her chair. His eyes closed, he was sound asleep.

  “I thought you were taking the day off.” Tonya was so shocked to see David burst through the front door that she almost fell out of her seat.

  “I have a killer to catch.” Without slowing down, he hurried through the squad room to Bogie’s corner office, where he slammed the door behind him.

  “Just like his father,” Tonya said while returning to what she’d been working on.

  “What’s got your shorts in a knot?” Bogie asked David, who was standing before his desk with a wild look in his eyes.

  David yanked the blue ring out of his pants pocket and thrust it out for Bogie to see. “Recognize this?”

  Bogie put on his reading glasses and then took the ring. Squinting, he adjusted his glasses on his nose to bring the shape cut into the blue stone into view. “I’m not sure.” He lifted his eyes to look at David over the top of his glasses
. “Should I?”

  “You knew Bill Clark’s dad.”

  “Yeah.” Bogie examined the ring again. “I knew Harvey Clark. This could very well be his ring—the one he always wore on his pinkie.”

  The deputy chief took a magnifying glass out of his desk’s side drawer and used it to examine the inside of the band. David moved around Bogie’s desk to see what he was looking at. The inscription inside the ring read, “With Pride and Honor to the Patriarch. Clan of Clark.”

  Bogie set the ring down in the center of his desk. “That’s Harvey’s ring all right. Where’d you get it?”

  “Someone turned it in to me,” David said.

  Bogie’s bushy silver eyebrows rose up on his forehead.

  “Bernie and Hap broke into Bill Clark’s house to look for Gnarly and found that ring in his desk drawer.”

  “Why were they looking for Gnarly in Clark’s desk? One, Clark’s so scared of Gnarly that he won’t go near him. Two, Gnarly’s too big to fit in any desk drawer.”

  David waved his hands, indicating that Bogie should be quiet. “Fact is, Lisa, Bill’s sister, told me that her mother gave their father’s ring”—he held up the ring for Bogie to see—“to Leroy, their younger brother.”

  “The one who got drunk and drove his truck into the lake,” Bogie said.

  “Bill was furious because this ring was supposed to go to the firstborn,” David said. “Lisa told me that Bill was so upset that he got into a fight with Leroy at their father’s funeral.”

  Bogie was nodding his head. “I remember the two of them getting into a scuffle over something, but I didn’t think anything of it. Those two were always fighting.”

  “Because their mother had given the ring to Leroy, who was her favorite,” David said. “One could say that symbolically, she was passing Bill’s rightful birthright as the firstborn to his younger brother.” He pointed to the inscription. “This ring is supposed to go to the patriarch, the head of the family. Then, after their mother died, Leroy sued Bill, the executor of their mother’s will, because Bill was cheating him out of his half of the estate.” He tossed the ring to Bogie. “But that suit was conveniently dropped after Leroy drove his truck into the lake.”