Dying For Revenge (The Lady Doc Murders Book 1)

by Barbara Golder

  No time like the present.

  “Tom, there’s more than this. Lucy did the ballistics on the bullet from the Hummer yesterday. Same kind as the one from Cosette Anira, but different markings. A different gun.”

  Two shooters, I thought. A tag team, the worst kind because it meant there would be a lot of conflicting evidence before we sorted out enough to get an idea of who we were looking for.

  Tom’s face brightened immediately.

  “Not from the same gun? Good. Lots of .22 rifles around here, people use them to shoot varmints. Without a match, those accidents are just accidents.”

  I could tell he was relishing the idea of pulling the rug out from under Wilson.

  “There’s that bullet in the x-ray of Kip Cooper,” I reminded him.

  “You think it’s a bullet. Until we get it in hand, you can’t be sure. Could be debris from the explosion. I’m not asking for an exhumation on that basis. Not without more.”

  “You know I can’t get more without the exhumation, Tom, and I’d stake my life on that being a bullet.”

  “Go ahead. As far as I am concerned, we have only three deaths—not that that is a big improvement. Cooper, the car wrecks, all accidents. Come to think of it, Webster might be too.”

  “With a shot to the back?” I was open-mouthed at the thought.

  “Lots of varmints in Ophir. Might have been an accident there, too. I can’t believe someone would actually be able to pull that shot off.”

  He was warming to his topic, I could tell.

  “Accident. That just leaves me with two, both in town. Nicer pattern, makes more sense. Just two. One shooter, one gun, two deaths. Bad enough, but it’s not a long string of murders that I—that you,” he added with a glare for emphasis “missed.”

  “Interesting appraisal,” I finally said. “Best take a tack and stick to it, Tom. Have fun.”

  I was furious; I held my voice calm and hoped he heard the underlying and unspoken threat. I would not be threatened, and I would not be maligned. And I know how to get my own recompense, if need be.

  “Damn right I’ll have fun. I’ll have fun telling Wilson how hard it is to run a decent investigation when the M.E. in charge can’t keep her mouth shut!”

  I counted to ten in Greek to control the urge to shout at him, my composure making a rapid retreat. I counted quickly, because Tom had grabbed the newspapers up and was stomping toward the door.

  “Tom, it really doesn’t matter where they got the information.”

  The tone of my voice, not quite what I wanted but not far off the mark, made him slow his step and then turn back to me when he got to the door. His big frame filled the space, he still glowered, and the muscles in his jaw still worked for a long moment. I waited and counted again, my version of patience and the only one that works for me. In Russian, Italian, French, and Spanish. I was up to six in Hebrew when he finally spoke.

  “You’re right. Dammit, you’re right.”

  He wadded the paper up and thrust it toward the wastebasket by my desk. It rattled the rim but dropped neatly in. He walked back into my office and plopped down on the sofa with a sigh and ran his hand through his hair. “This town is so damn twitchy, I’m afraid it will explode. These people are losing their minds. They already see a murderer behind every bush, what’s this going to do? I got nothing. Nothing,” he sighed.

  I got up from my desk and took the easy chair opposite him. We both put our boots on the scarred coffee table, then stared at each other for a few minutes. Tom spoke first.

  “Did you know that I’ve had more than a dozen applications for concealed carry permits in the two days since the shooting in Town Park and that damn news story on TV? And that the local dealers have had a run on handgun purchases — all from Telluride?”

  I furrowed my brow. “From this town?” I was incredulous. “Telluride is as anti-firearm as any community I’ve ever seen. They are actually buying guns?”

  Tom nodded. “Lots of them. If this were anywhere else I’d take that as a good sign. Crime tends to go down when the local populace is well-armed—ask the Swiss. The thought of being blown away has a chilling effect on criminals. Problem is, most of these people haven’t got the first clue about handling guns, and they’re nervous as cats. Forty-eight hours and we’ve already had one surly German shepherd, one innocent potted plant and two front doors shot. Only a matter of time before some nitwit shoots his best friend or, worse yet, one of my boys.”

  I tried to suppress a laugh at the image of one of Telluride’s citizens plugging a front-hall ficus. Sometimes, in my line of work, things are so bleak the only possible reaction is to laugh. I rubbed my brow, pinched my nose and snorted in sequence and increasing intensity. It didn’t work. I started to giggle in spite of myself. I managed to choke out, “Has the state’s attorney decided whether to charge plantslaughter?” before I dissolved in outright laughter. But it was the laughter of frustration and fear, not good humor, and Tom Patterson knew that. Still, the edges of his mouth curled up for an instant as I composed myself. It was a Herculean effort.

  “Sorry, Tom,” I said as I wiped a tear from the corner of my eye. “Nothing funny about it.”

  “Nope,” he drawled. “But it’s ironic as hell, that’s for sure. And dangerous. And that article doesn’t help at all.”

  I cleared my throat, the last vestige of a laugh banished, the cold fear remaining. I’d had a sobering thought in the middle of my breakdown. There was one plausible explanation for the leak, and I dreaded pursuing it. Ben was the one who had put all that together, and I had often seen him with Pete Wilson. For reasons I could not explain, my son liked Wilson and enjoyed his stories of the crime beat in Chicago.

  I changed the subject. “It could be worse. Wilson obviously doesn’t know about the ballistics on the slug from the wall at Mitch Houston’s. Puts Marla Kincaid in the clear, I think, but leaves us with another unsolved murder.”

  “Does, doesn’t it? I spent the first part of the morning arguing with the state’s attorney about that one, too. If it’s not Marla Kincaid, who is it? Nobody else there.”

  I thought for a moment, something rattling about the edges of my brain, something Isa had told me when I was making photographs of her bruises. I went still for a moment, eyes closed, in hopes the thought would settle where I could find it. It did.

  “You better talk to Isa Robles again,” I told Tom. “She was there that night, and she says she saw a tall man standing in the shadows by the back door as she left. Big guy, too, according to her.”

  I expected swearing, but all I got in reply was a tired sigh.

  “Great. Another bushy-haired stranger,” he said, harkening back to the staple of murder mysteries and defense lawyers. “Still, it makes as much sense as anything.”

  He stood up to leave, in a better mood than he’d come in but still frustrated by an abundance of crime and a dearth of explanation. If Pete Wilson were smart, he’d avoid the good sheriff for a day or two.

  I spent the rest of the morning trying to run Ben to ground. I knew his trip to Montrose to get the oil changed and the tires replaced on the 4Runner put him in questionable cell range, but it didn’t matter. I wanted to talk to him, and I wanted to talk to him now. I used up all my available languages counting to ten between calls. In the end, I had to wait patiently until he returned to the office, whistling a now-familiar tune with increasing skill as he dropped the keys on my desk.

  “All done, Mom. Good as new. And I ran it through the car wash and filled it up on the way into town.”

  I picked up the keys and pocketed them.

  “Thanks, Ben. “

  “Sure thing.”

  He smiled, picked up a cookie I had left from lunch, and started out the door. I hesitated, wondering how to approach the subject at hand. The schoolmarm in the back of my head reminded me he was my employee within these four walls, not my son.

  “Ben. Wait a minute. There’s something we need to talk about.” />
  My offspring have enough experience to read my tones, and this one said I meant business. Ben turned around with a wary look on his face and cocked his head. He stayed in the doorway but answered me in a cautious voice.

  “Sure. What’s up?”

  Another hesitation. Should I try diplomacy or cut to the chase? I cut.

  “Have you been talking to the press about the murders?”

  His face went pale, then bright red. “No, Mom! I haven’t! I know better than that! All I ever heard was how sneaky reporters are and how hard they make your job. No, I haven’t been talking to them.”

  A lifetime of maternal experience was not enough to divine whether this particular child was telling the truth. It isn’t that Ben is a habitual liar or even a very good one; it’s just that he doesn’t have any reliable tells. His face could just as easily have been a result of his anger at my question as the run up to prevarication.

  “I know you like to chat with Pete Wilson.” I made it as neutral a statement of fact as I could, and forced my tone to follow.

  That red face again, this time definitely anger.

  “So I like talking to him. He has interesting stories. I like that. I like hearing about all the stuff he’s done. It’s really interesting. Kind of like what you do but without the science. He puts it together with words.”

  I nodded my head, considering. “Fair enough. What do you talk about besides his stories?”

  “Nothing much. The food at Baked. Bluegrass, jazz. Movies. How I like town.”

  “Nothing else?”

  “Nothing else. I swear I didn’t tell him. Swear it!”

  His words were forceful, and he punctuated them with a punch to the door frame. “I’m not the only one who knows about the wrecks and the explosion.”

  “I didn’t tell you what I was worried about.”

  “Mom, do you think I am a complete idiot? I read the paper before I left for Montrose. I...” Ben hesitated and then said no more, his lips in a determined line and the muscles in his jaw working like Tom Patterson’s had for a moment before he regained control of his temper and went on.

  “I know better than that, Mom. I’m not a baby. And I’m not stupid.”

  I folded my hands and rested my chin against them, thinking for a moment. “Ben, there aren’t too many of us who know about all this, and it says it is a source from our office. If it wasn’t you — and I believe you,” I hurried to add, seeing the temper flash in his eyes, “then who? How? Did you talk about it with anybody?”

  “Just you and Lucy because she was running all the tests, and Norman, and maybe Eoin.” Flush again, this time guilty realization of his mistake.

  “Eoin?”

  I wasn’t sure what irritated me more, the fact that my son had, in fact, carried tales out of school or the fact that he’d carried them to Eoin Connor, who apparently had become his buddy. Ben was right about one thing; he didn’t talk freely with people he didn’t like. He was like me in that, at least.

  “Yeah. Remember, yesterday I couldn’t make copies of the file for him, and I had to take it by his place later? Right where that girl was shot? Anyway, we just got talking and I may have…um…mentioned that I had found some interesting new information.” Ben's voice trailed off; he knows that when in a hole the first rule is to put down the shovel.

  Eoin Connor, who made a living writing salacious true crime books, who was a much better storyteller than Pete Wilson and no doubt a much more skillful interviewer. It wasn’t a stretch for me to imagine him trading information with Pete Wilson over a couple of beers, nor was it hard to hear his glib tongue proffering Ben as the source. Ben may be naive, but as he says, he’s not stupid. He connected the dots almost as fast as I did.

  “Mom, Eoin would never do that either. He doesn’t like Wilson any better than you do, he said so. There has to be another explanation.”

  I pinched the bridge of my nose for the second time that day, this time out of fatigue touched by despair. The situation in Telluride was getting out of hand, neither Tom nor I had any idea who the killer was, and there was no end in sight to the corpses that were piling up in my morgue. I wanted to cry. Or run away. Or both. When the feeling had passed, I looked up at Ben with weary eyes.

  “Ben, just don’t talk about anything from work with anyone outside this office. Ever. By all that’s right and holy, I ought to fire you. But technically, Eoin Connor isn’t the press, so you’re off the hook. Just keep your mouth shut, okay? Not a word to anyone. Not Eoin Connor, not Pete Wilson, not anyone.”

  I turned back to the work on my desk with a dismissive air. Ben didn’t bother to respond, but the flush was back on his face, and I was pretty sure I knew why. What I didn’t know was who was killing people in my little town and why and who would be next. I fussed with the papers on my desk, but my mind kept going back to the headline. Who was killing the rich young people of Telluride? For that matter, who had killed Mitch Houston? Too many bodies, too few answers.

  *********

  Isa Robles took a deep breath and pushed open the door to the church. They had told her that the priest was in the church when she dropped her son in the daycare. Pablo was so happy in the daycare center. It was safe, the people were nice, and he had children to play with while she went to work.

  She was glad not to be working for the blond woman in Mountain Village anymore. She had fired Isa after the...after Pelirojo. Isa still could not will herself to acknowledge what had happened to her; she simply passed over it and went on with her life. But the woman had been concerned that Pelirojo might come to her house, looking for Isa, and she was afraid.

  No matter. The priest knew several other women in the town, and she went with him when he asked them if they didn't need help keeping their houses. He was smart, that one, and charming. Isa could tell that the women weren't particularly interested in hiring any more help, but after a few minutes discussion with the priest, a story or two, smiles and even some laughter, she had five jobs, one for every day, and she cleaned for the priest, too. The families were nice. Two older couples, two younger ones, and a single woman whose huge house was filled with art, newspapers, and cats.

  It was clear that this gentle Father was able to get almost anything he wanted. Hadn’t he gotten Isa and Lupe and Pilar a place to stay with the lady doctor? At the beginning, it seemed like a bad idea, going from the house where they were in danger to live with this angry, bitter woman. She had told the priest so when he suggested it.

  “She does not like me, Padre,” she had said. “I am just a job to her, part of her work. Why would she want to take me into her house? Why would I want to go?”

  The priest had smiled and taken her hand. This one, he touched people a lot, always offering a hand.

  “I know Dr. Wallace seems unfriendly,” he said, “But she has a good heart. And she needs you as much as you need her. You can’t go back to stay at the house, it isn’t safe. You have jobs now here in town. It makes sense for you to live here, where you can be near Pablo. Please, Isa, trust me. Give her a chance.”

  And so she had. That first night had been terrible. “Illegal!” the doctor had called her, as though she were somehow less than a person because of it. She had stayed the night only because the boy was so kind and because there was no other place to go. The next morning, however, the doctor had showed up at the breakfast table quiet and repentant. She had apologized, in strong words, without explanation. Isa found that odd. People usually made excuses. This peculiar woman did not, offering only her words and asking Isa to stay, please, and to influence Lupe and Pilar to stay, too.

  Isa had done so, and in the days following had come to like the strange woman. Señora Doctora liked Pablo and when he crawled into her lap for a hug or a story, Isa could see her face light up, if only for a moment. Isa had the run of the house; the doctor had replaced everything that Isa and the others had left behind without question or comment and with, it seemed to Isa, even a bit of pleasure. It was clear t
hat she was lonely, even with her son living with her. The women and the children, the children especially, filled up the house.

  She caught sight of the priest, sitting in a pew. The church was an old-fashioned one like the parish church was back home, pews arranged on either side of the altar rather than front to back. The priest was there, bent over, listening to someone sitting by his side. When he leaned back, Isa recognized her, the woman Marla. What was she doing here? She had heard snatches of the doctor’s conversation; she had been in the hospital yesterday because of fear of losing the baby. Perhaps she had; Isa concluded. Perhaps she was here because she had lost her child and was sad.

  The priest said a few more words, made a motion with his hands. It looked like he was pleading from the way he reached forward, hands palms up, cupped and waiting. The woman’s face was hard, anything but sad, no tears and no sadness, just hard like stone, like a statue, only not as pretty. Isa had the sense she was intruding on something she should not. She started to back out and bumped into the votive rack. It swayed and threatened to fall. She reached to steady it but it hit the wall with a great clang. By the time she turned in embarrassment, Father Matt was standing to welcome her, and the woman was gone. Isa heard a door close in the distance.

  “Isa. Buenos días.”

  “Good morning, Father.”

  Isa never spoke back in Spanish to Anglos, and not even to her friends if she could help it. English was the language of opportunity. She wanted practice. She wanted Pablo to speak it well.

  “What can I do for you?”

  He was putting a rosary into his pocket, slipping his hand through the slit in the side of the cassock to do so. Then he sat again, patting the pew beside him in invitation.

  Isa stood where she was, uncertain for a moment, thrown off by what she had seen. She remembered the tall man in the shadows of the big house the night of the murder. Frowning for a moment, she shook her head. This priest is a good man, she thought quickly, then just as quickly, it is the good men that are so easily deceived. Pelirojo, no one takes advantage of him. But men like this?