by Laura Snider
“Does she have red hair, freckles, and a hot temper?”
“Yup.”
“That’s her.”
“I’ll notify both police departments and speak with Ms. Mickey when I finish my rounds. Are you two friends?”
Ashley nodded. “Most of the time.”
“Most of the time?”
“Sorry,” Ashley said. “Not like that. She wouldn’t ever in a million years hurt me. We work on opposite sides of the law. Right now, we are in the middle of a contentious case. We keep our distance during cases like this one. To, you know, avoid arguments.”
“Rachel Smithson’s case,” Doctor Malloy said. It was a statement, not a question.
“How’d you know about Rachel?”
“I watch the news. That’s where I saw evidence of at least one of your previous nose bleeds.”
Ashley remembered it all too well. It was right before Rachel’s arraignment. Her nose had gushed blood right in front of all the cameras. Several of the more conservative news stations had claimed it was likely due to heavy cocaine use, which was an outright lie.
“I suppose it is safe to assume there are also potential culprits stemming from your representation of Rachel?”
Ashley nodded. Working with Rachel meant a seemingly endless field of potential perpetrators. Ashley wasn’t well liked, thanks to her job. Death threats were a common occurrence, especially while cases like Rachel Smithson’s were pending. Emotions ran high when cases had child victims. Her attacker could be anyone. The question then became, when and how would they strike again?
21
Katie
It was early afternoon and Katie was alone in the hospital waiting room. The area had been bustling with others only a few hours earlier. She hadn’t spoken with anyone other than Josh, but she took solace in the others’ presence. It lent meaning to the phrase misery loves company. But then Josh was called back to the station and everyone else had left, one by one, trickling down the hall to see their loved ones.
But not Katie. She was left alone. Was it because Katie’s loved one had died? She didn’t know. She had no experience in the area. That was primarily because she had spent her entire adult life keeping everyone at a distance. She had no siblings, and her parents were horrible human beings. The only person who had been able to truly break through her exterior was Ashley. And now that one thread of friendship was possibly gone.
Katie’s phone began buzzing in her pocket, pulling her out of her thoughts.
“Yes, George,” she said, bringing the phone to her ear.
“Where are you?”
Katie blinked several times, confused. She was off duty until Monday. It was her first weekend off in as long as she could remember. She had planned to spend it holed up in her basement drinking red wine, ordering pizza, and watching a steady stream of vintage thriller movies, but that plan hadn’t come to fruition for obvious reasons.
“What do you mean, where am I?” Katie growled in a sudden burst of fury. He had no right to talk to her like that. “It’s my weekend off and I don’t answer to you. You aren’t my boss. Chief Carmichael is. And it’s none of your damn business where I am.”
“Okay, okay.”
His placating tone did nothing to ease Katie’s fury. He was acting like he was the ringmaster, trying to tame his beast. Her nostrils flared. “You called me, remember? You have two seconds to tell me what it is that you want or I’m hanging up. I’ve had a rough enough night without dealing with your bullshit.”
Katie didn’t habitually speak to her coworkers in such a gruff manner, but she was emotional and running on fumes. No sleep. Little food. Constant stress. Three conditions that added up to a disaster for even the tamest of individuals. And Katie, by nature, was anything but tame.
“I just…” He paused. “Something is happening around here.”
“Really?” Katie said, now beginning to pace from one end of the waiting room to the other. “Well, something is happening here, too. I’m at the hospital. Waiting to hear if my friend Ashley is dead or alive. That’s a pretty important something. Is your something more or less important?”
“Jesus, Katie. You don’t have to rip my head off. I’m doing you a favor. I just wanted to tell you that Forest Parker got the other two city councilmen to agree to his proposed budget cuts. They voted last night.” He lowered his voice to a near whisper. “Chief Carmichael is in an uproar, but there’s nothing he can do. He’s going to have to cut a position.”
“Okay.” Katie appreciated the heads-up, but she didn’t quite understand the urgency behind it. She was far from the most recent hire.
“You should get back here.” His voice dipped even lower, and it sounded like he was cupping his hand around the receiver.
“Why?”
“Because you don’t want it to be you.”
Katie was silent for a long moment, mulling over his statement. When she finally spoke, her words were dripping with sarcasm. “Oh, I see. Seniority doesn’t matter. My vagina is what places me on the chopping block.”
“I didn’t say…”
Katie cut him off. “It doesn’t matter that I’ve been working tirelessly for six years. Or that I’m in the Des Moines area—on my day off, mind you—to tie up loose ends on the Smithson case. No. None of that matters when I’m the only vagina in a dick world.”
“Katie…”
Katie hung up the phone before she could say anything more.
“That was quite the rant.”
Katie looked up to see a female doctor a short distance away, looking at her approvingly. “Yeah, well, he deserved it.”
The doctor had short blond hair, cut into a pixie style. Her expression was wary, but she had kind, gentle eyes. “I get it.” She gestured to her white coat. “I know what it’s like to be a woman making her way in a man’s world. I’m constantly reminded when I am working with a male nurse and the patients refer to him as doctor. Every. Single. Time.”
A reluctant smile twitched at the corner of Katie’s mouth. “Thank you,” she said, pocketing her phone. “It’s been a long day. But I assume you aren’t out here to discuss the issues I have with my colleagues.”
“I am not.” The doctor rocked from her heels to her toes. “I don’t suppose you would happen to be Katie Mickey?”
Katie nodded. “Yes. How did you know?”
“Ashley told me to look for a redheaded cop with a quick temper.” She shrugged as if to say and you fit the bill. “I’m Doctor Malloy, by the way. Doctor Ruby Malloy.” She extended her hand. Katie took it. They shook hands, both with an equally firm grip.
“Nice to meet you, Doctor. I presume that Ashley must be all right if she’s back there telling lies about me.”
“Well, yes. To a degree.”
“A degree,” Katie repeated, trying to interpret what that meant.
“My conversation here with you is as an officer of the law, not as a friend to the patient. Do you understand?”
Katie’s heart started pounding wildly. “What is it? Is she…” She swallowed hard, unable to finish the thought. Her mind had a way of jumping to the worst possible conclusion.
“No, she’s alive. But I have determined that a crime has occurred.”
“A crime? Like what?”
“We had a hard time pinpointing the cause of Ms. Montgomery’s condition,” Doctor Malloy said, shoving her hands into the pockets of her lab coat. “She was not responsive when she arrived, so we were not able to get a patient background from her. Do you know if anyone lives with Ms. Montgomery? Or potentially has access to her food?”
“Umm, no,” Katie said, shaking her head. “Her boyfriend usually visits on the weekends, but I don’t think he’s been around for a couple of weeks.”
The doctor’s eyebrows knit together. “Do you know if Ms. Montgomery has eaten anything strange? A food given to her from an unknown person?”
“I doubt it,” Katie said. “Ashley is a defense attorney in a small town
. She has had death threats on more than a few occasions. I don’t think she would eat anything if she didn’t know where it had come from.”
“Yes. That’s what she said.” Doctor Malloy shrugged. “But it’s always best to double check.”
“Why do you ask?”
“Well, like I said, we couldn’t initially pinpoint the cause of Ms. Montgomery’s distress. She was anemic. Her hemoglobin at a four. Yet her blood pressure was low. We gave her blood, which helped, but her international normalized ratio, or INR for short, was very high.”
“I’m not sure what all that means,” Katie said, shaking her head.
“When someone’s INR is high, it usually means that they are taking a blood thinner of sorts, like Coumadin. Ms. Montgomery’s regular physician is a doctor within our network, so I have access to her prescribed medications. She is not taking a blood thinner. Or, at least, she isn’t supposed to be.”
“Ashley wouldn’t take medication unless it was prescribed. She hates medicine. She won’t even take ibuprofen on a bad headache day.”
The doctor nodded. “I assumed that. Blood thinners aren’t usually something people take recreationally. So, we believe that it was given to her. Without her knowledge.”
Katie quirked an eyebrow. “Come again?”
“She was poisoned. Most likely with rat poisoning.”
“Wait, what?” Katie said, taking a step backward. “I don’t think I am tracking what you are saying.”
“We gave her vitamin K to reverse the effects of the poison. She is responding well. But I assume, Officer, that you will want to open an investigation.”
Katie nodded, dumbfounded. Only one thought came to mind. Here we go again. It had only been a year since the last time someone had tried to kill Ashley.
“I’ve ordered a hair stat analysis as well. There is reason to believe that this isn’t her only exposure to the poison.”
Katie shook her head, unable to process the information dump. “So you think Ashley was poisoned multiple times.”
“The most recent one seems as though it occurred in Waukee, Dallas County,” Doctor Malloy said, nodding. “But I also suspect that she ingested the same poison several other times while in Brine.”
If true, it meant that multiple counts of attempted murder would be brought in Brine County and one in Dallas County. That was if they could find the culprit.
“What’s all this?” Josh said, coming to Katie’s side.
“Oh.” She whirled. “I didn’t know you were back.”
“Just got here. We got a call to talk to a doctor about a poisoning.”
Doctor Malloy turned to Josh. “Are you from the Waukee Police Department?”
Josh gestured to his uniform. “The one and only.”
“I get it that you’re in uniform,” Doctor Malloy said with a note of irritation, “but one can’t ever be too careful these days.” She was not amused.
“I understand.”
“Do you happen to have a last name, Officer Josh?”
“Officer Joshua Martin,” Josh said, holding up his badge.
Doctor Malloy glanced at the clock mounted above the nurses’ desk. “I must get back to my patients. Ashley is resting for now, but you can speak with her when she wakes up. Will you be around?”
“Absolutely,” Katie said without hesitation.
“I trust you will fill Officer Martin in on the details.”
“Yes,” Katie said with a nod.
Katie watched Doctor Malloy disappear back down the hallway, her head brimming with questions. Ashley had been poisoned. But by whom? She didn’t know where to start. There were so many possibilities. Ashley had received at least thirty death threats and creepy love letters in the last year, and those were only the ones Katie knew about. The mail had likely ratcheted up with Ashley’s representation of Rachel Smithson.
“What was that all about?” Josh asked, pulling Katie out of her thoughts.
“Ashley was poisoned.”
“How? And where?”
“The doctor said it was something she ate. But where…” Katie shrugged. “Maybe Brine. Maybe here. Probably both.” That was the thing about food. It could be consumed in one place, which would be the location of the crime, but the person might move around in the meantime. Even cross county lines. “Doctor Malloy has ordered a hair stat test to see how far back the exposure began, but I doubt we will know the results of that for another couple of days. She believes the most recent attack was in Waukee.”
Josh quirked a smile. “Looks like we are going to be working together on this one, eh, Officer Mickey.”
Katie tried to feign irritation, but this overly friendly officer was starting to grow on her. “So it seems.”
22
Katie
62 days before trial
“What is it, Katie?” Tom said. He was on the phone, but his voice sounded distant somehow, with an edge of frustration and potentially desperation.
“Where are you?” Katie must have called him one hundred times by now.
She’d been trying to reach him since she arrived at the hospital. It was strange that he wasn’t there, and that she hadn’t heard anything from him. It was possible that he didn’t know about Ashley’s hospitalization, but shouldn’t he be trying to track Ashley down by now? And Katie would be the first person he would have called. But she’d heard nothing from him.
“You are a terrible boyfriend.”
“Boyfriend?” Tom said with a snort. “Ashley broke up with me. And she won’t answer my calls.”
“Did she now?” Katie said, moving into investigation mode.
She had spoken to Chief Carmichael last night. Dispatch had received a call to the non-emergency line from Doctor Malloy, outlining her suspicions and requesting that Chief Carmichael assign an officer, specifically Katie, to the investigation. He had given her permission to remain in the Des Moines area as long as necessary to complete her investigation. Staying away from Brine didn’t bode well for her if her job was truly on the line. Out of sight, out of mind. But she wouldn’t worry about that now. Ashley was her priority.
“Yes.” Was there a note of bitterness in his tone?
If Ashley hadn’t contacted him, then Tom didn’t know about her hospitalization. But Katie wasn’t about to tell him. Doctor Malloy’s notes had identified the “ex-boyfriend” as a potential suspect. At first, Katie hadn’t wanted to believe that Tom had it in him. But his behavior now was outright hostile, like he was hiding something.
“Why did she break up with you?”
“She thinks I cheated on her. She wouldn’t even let me explain. Some relationship, huh?”
In normal circumstances, Katie might be inclined to agree with him. Tom wouldn’t cheat on Ashley. At least she hoped he wouldn’t. But she didn’t know what to believe anymore.
“I need to talk to you,” Katie said.
“Okay. Then talk.”
“In person.”
Tom sighed, suddenly sounding exhausted. “This isn’t high school, Katie. You can’t fix my broken relationship with Ashley.”
Katie couldn’t believe he would even think she would insert herself in such a way. She had to fight the urge to scoff. She didn’t want him to know that something was off. It was better that he believed her visit had to do with something else.
“I just want to talk to you. Can I stop by your place sometime this morning?”
There was a long pause. “You’re going to drive all the way out here?”
“I’m in the area.”
“All right,” Tom said, “stop by in an hour. My roommate will be here, but she’ll stay out of our way.”
A roommate? Tom had led everyone in Brine to believe that he was living alone. If Ashley found out that Tom had been lying about a roommate and that the roommate was a girl, well, it wasn’t surprising that she had ended things. Lies about other women never led anywhere good.
“Right,” Katie said, looking down at her watch. �
��I’ll be there at 9:30 on the dot.” Then she hung up the phone.
“Where are you going at 9:30?” Josh said as he handed her a Venti-sized Starbucks cup.
Katie accepted it. “Thank you. I need something to keep me awake. I’ve slept like shit the last couple of nights.”
“You could stay at my place,” Josh suggested.
Katie narrowed her eyes.
“Whoa.” Josh raised his hands in surrender. “I meant that you can have my bed and I’ll sleep on the couch. I’m not going to jump your bones.” He paused, chewing his bottom lip. “Unless you want me to.”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it,” Katie said.
“Which bridge? The hooking-up bridge or the me-on-the-couch bridge?”
“I’m going over to Ashley’s ex-boyfriend’s house in an hour,” Katie said, changing the subject. Josh looked like he was on the verge of a mutiny, but he kept his cool. It was kinda hot.
“Okay. Do you want me to go with you?”
Katie shook her head. “No. I don’t want to tip him off that he may be a potential suspect.”
“Hmm,” Josh said.
A noncommittal response. He would be coming with her whether she liked it or not. To be fair, he had his own investigation. Katie opened her mouth to insist that she go alone, but she was cut off by a familiar voice calling her name.
She swung around, coming face to face with Forest Parker. “Forest,” she said, tucking her phone into her back pocket. “What are you doing here?”
“Ashley called me.” He paused for a long moment, as though he was thinking. “And I knew you’d be here. You know, since you two are friends. I thought you would probably be alone.” His eyes darted toward Josh, then back to her. “I thought I’d, um, check on her and offer you a little company.”
She could tell by the way he continued looking at the Waukee police officer that Forest wanted Katie to explain Josh’s presence, but she wasn’t feeling kind toward the city councilman. Not after he’d convinced the other two councilmen to go along with his ploy to slash the police department’s budget even after their conversation about their fathers. She’d thought they were working toward some kind of understanding. Hadn’t he said something like you’re fine or everything will work out? Apparently he hadn’t meant it.