Miller Avenue Murder: An addictive police procedural legal psychological thriller

by Nenny May

  She pushed his hand away and rubbed a flat palm over the place he’d poked. She didn’t appreciate being touched, especially without her consent. And she’d made sure the scowl on her face depicted that.

  He propped himself up against the egg-white wall, by a wall light, too tipsy to remain on his own two feet without toppling over. How had he intended to make his way out of the Capitol building in that state?

  That didn’t concern her. Whatever night of drinking they had planned could wait. What she had to say couldn’t. She didn’t care that he was the Governor.

  Bernard Sutter was a killer, and she would risk her position as District Attorney to see that he is brought to justice.

  She had too many people counting on her. It wasn’t just the people of Tillamook, it wasn’t just the Detectives and investigators that had already invested time, energy and funds allocated from her office, it was Christian who couldn’t seem to stop asking about the Campbell case since it happened. It was Lisa Patterson who was in direct contact with the son of the deceased. She could only imagine what he was going through.

  The families were always on the bitter end of cases like this.

  If she couldn’t get Governor Sutter to reconsider, everything they’d worked for, would be buried with the body of Blake Campbell.

  Her nostrils flared. She wasn’t going to let that happen.

  She took a step closer to Sutter. She was aware of his scrutinizing, calculated gaze, and not just his, Delaney’s as well. He’d been in a better state of mind than Sutter, sober enough to be perched upright, hands shoved in the pockets of his slacks. She leaned till her lips were inches from Sutter’s fat flabby ear.

  She was Daniel in the lion’s den.

  The difference? This lion could actually take her life without an eyelash batted.

  She could hear her heart barking in her chest.

  “I know who killed Blake Campbell, and I don’t think Delaney would benefit from knowing, the killer is right under his nose…” She pulled away, a hand smoothening down her maroon Balmain skirt.

  She just didn’t want to look at him.

  To give him the pleasure knowing the effect he had on her.

  She was threading a thin line. If indeed he was the man, she painted him to be, she ought to sleep with one eye open.

  Regan didn’t need to doubt it, she’d come across the articles, the cases he’d paid to have forgotten.

  His last victim, Miranda Anderson hadn’t had the media on her side, protesters ready to take to the street and howl for the authorities to avenge her name. Blake Campbell did. And Regan was going to stop at nothing till her assailant was rotting in a prison cell for the rest of his life.

  Before, she had the element of surprise, she’d lost that.

  Bernard Sutter knew that suspected him for the murder. The ball was in his court, to kill her like he did Blake Campbell, or dance to her tune.

  Whatever the case, he seemed to have sobered up at her words, if the daggers he shot at her from his eyes was any indication.

  “Delaney, Sinclair, my office.” He straightened, a hand tugging at the hem of his blazer. When none of them made a motion to move, he added, rather roughly; “Now!” Johnson Delaney had blinked and clicked the elevator doors apart. They shuffled into the spacious mirrored box.

  The Capitol Building being the third to house Oregon’s government after a fire claimed the first two fifty-years-apart-from each other, had been rebuilt with an improved security system, and a modern architectural construct.

  The doors slid apart, and Sutter was quick on his short sturdy legs. He’d led them to his office, past his assistant’s vacant desk.

  She didn’t expect anyone to be at the office at this time, nearing 10:00 P.M. He pushed through the door above which hung a bronze plaque titled Governor. On the wood of the door was a smaller sign that read; Tillamook.

  His office in Salem was twice the size of what she had in Tillamook. The layout was simple, a marble desk in the middle of the room, on top which stood a near empty bottle of Remy Martin. Another table had been pressed to the wall by the right. The chair from which had been pulled to the marble table. Two American flags stood at either side of a grandfather clock pressed behind Sutter’s desk chair. There was little else in the room aside a stone sculpture of a man; head and shoulders against a stone platform by the only window in the room.

  “Unless this has to do with a state of emergency, I don’t know why we’re letting Tillamook’s D.A. dictate what we do with our night.” Delaney slumped onto the chair that had been dragged to the marble table. Sutter got comfortable in his chair. She was fine on her feet. She didn’t intend to stay long with both men.

  “She’s not dictating our night, but she does have somethings to say. Things I will warn if she doesn’t want to resign early, she would keep to herself.”

  It was her turn to chuckle, softly to herself. She didn’t care if he were going to make her resign—not completely true, she’d come to love her role as District Attorney, and she was barely on her second year and the Governor of Tillamook was threatening to make her resign.

  “Fellas,” She wore a smile, but her eyes were pained. “Now that I have your attention, apologies for this…unscheduled meeting, but Tillamook is in a turmoil, the people are dissatisfied with the murder of a fifty-six-year-old Blake Campbell.” She paced the room as she spoke, making sure to keep her eyes on a single man. The dissatisfied Bernard Sutter. “And my colleagues have been throwing it around that this case, like many others should be left to go cold, not realizing the impact that’s going to have.”

  Johnson Delaney sat up in his seat, intrigued by her words. She had his attention. With the Attorney General on her side, Sutter wouldn’t dare touch a hair on her head. And from what it seemed; Sutter hadn’t conveyed his intentions to Delaney.

  Yes, luck was on her side.

  But for how long?

  “We’re going to see statewide protests, larger than the gathering of the LGBTQ community. We’re going to welcome riots, and blood that would stain the streets from this gathering alone.” She steepled her hands and took a breath, “We can prevent this.”

  “We just need to find a killer,” Delaney finished for her.

  Bernard Sutter’s features had been scrunched up behind his desk.

  He wasn’t happy.

  She could only hide behind Delaney for so long before he got his hands on her. Until then, she was going to keep Blake Campbell’s case open.

  ◆◆◆

  Annabelle Dawson’s last interview on the Campbell case had been with the owner of Mocha on the Rocks, a café on 6th Street. Mere minutes from finishing with the little blue house on 6th, she’d convinced her team to kill two birds with one stone.

  The night wasn’t a threat to Annabelle Dawson if her career had taught her anything, it was that she could schedule appointments and work through the darkness outside.

  The woman she’d called at the last minute had been a workaholic much like Annabelle.

  Gina Laval had been by her desk in her petite white office in a back room in her café when Annabelle and Amanda had let themselves in, Frank lingering by the front of the counter to set up.

  “Thanks so much for agreeing to speak with us,” Annabelle shook the woman’s hand. Gina was old, not nearly as old as Faith had been, but Annabelle saw the salt hair peeking out from the die.

  “No problem. I think you’re going to benefit from speaking to me,” The woman returned to her seat, a radiant smile on her round face.

  “How so?” Amanda wanted to know. She’d let her hair loose from the tight ponytail it had been in at the little blue house on 6th.

  “This isn’t going to be like any of your other interviews,” That sentence had adrenaline surging through Annabelle’s veins. If there was anything she needed for her last interview, it was tension.

  “You’ve seen our documentary?” Annabelle was wide eyed and jittery, and she was forty percent sure it had little
to do with compulsively snacking on sugar-doughnuts on the ride over in their Channel Six news van.

  “Who hasn’t! You guys are great!” Annabelle grinned. She couldn’t wait to tell Chase. The people of Tillamook knew who she was, knew what she did!

  “Alright, if you’re done here, we would like to begin this interview before it gets any darker outside,” Amanda instructed letting herself out of the woman’s office.

  Annabelle escorted the woman to where Frank had his lights and camera stand erected.

  She had to commend the guy; he was able to turn any setting into a miniature studio in minutes. That took skill.

  Getting into place by a table for three, she gave him the signal to begin rolling the tapes. This was it, their final interview.

  “We all know Blake Campbell was a schizophrenic, well, I think this interview is going to paint a picture of how it all started…” Gina said confidently once she acknowledged the red light on the side of the camera.

  ◆◆◆

  Richard Dean’s death had been ruled as an accident, at an intersection somewhere on 5th Street. His smug face had been plastered over the papers. But that hadn’t been where Blake Campbell had learned about his death initially.

  The morning after the banquet, she’d found herself in a familiar setting. A café on 6th, Mocha on the Rocks. The petite room of tables and chairs, of people bustling about their day from the front counter to their table to the papers scattered before them, was medicinal to Blake Campbell’s rattled nerves. Seated, her phone in her hand, in wait for her friends to pick up her calls, she’d opened the drawer to a whirl of bitter recollections.

  Gina who’d been behind the counter had been intrigued by Blake Campbell’s presence.

  She knew of Christopher Campbell’s death, his battle with coronary heart disease, a story that had made the headline on Tillamook Times. Blake Campbell had opened up about his death, how he hadn’t just died in their home all of a sudden. It wasn’t something she didn’t see coming. She did. He hadn’t died of natural causes, age. He was ill for much too long. She’d told the newspaper that he’d kept the diagnoses to himself for the first few years of their marriage, but it wasn’t the kind of thing he could hide forever. The hospital visits were piling up and her questions had been insistent. He was never a good liar. He didn’t have much time.

  “…I’m dying,” She told Tillamook Times that she would have been able to choke it down if her new husband cheating, she’d already been suspecting it… For God’s sake, she would have been able to stomach learning that he had another family tucked away somewhere… she hadn’t been ready to face the reality of marrying a man thirty-years older… He didn’t have as much time as she did. He would never have as much time.

  What else could she have done aside pulling him into her warm embrace, besides sticking by him through sickness… she couldn’t hope for health… the chances of surviving coronary heart disease were slim and she’d made peace with that.

  And even though she hadn’t wanted one in the first place, she confessed in her interview, her greatest joy, was being able to give her dying husband a son before he passed.

  “I can’t thank you enough for that kid,” A familiar breathy, tired voice said. She looked up from her phone. Green eyes stared back at her. Chapped pencil thin lips had been set in a hard line, his salty beard hair was overgrown, the lines and wrinkles on his features had been defined with time.

  “You could try,” She returned her attention to the device in her hands. Gina couldn’t forget hearing Blake Campbell say, returning her attention to the device in her hands. Who the hell was the woman speaking to?

  “You never wanted me to have one of these,” She slid it over to her late husband. It wasn’t the first time he’d come to her since his passing.

  “And I had my reasons, you just never cared to listen.” He didn’t sound as offended as she’d assumed, he would be.

  “I was always so stubborn when it came to listening to you,” He chuckled. It was a gruff hefty sound, one she’d missed. His lean fingers still wrapped around his generous stomach as the sound simmered down.

  He’d been staring at the sad smile on her long face.

  “One of the things I loved about you.” He placed his hands on the table. “Look, Sweetie, I know your heart is in the right place. I know that you’re willing to do anything to give our son the life he deserves,”

  “Prostitution?” Her disgust was written boldly on her features. Her nose had scrunched, her eyebrows furrowed and lips pursed. Something in the air made her nauseous.

  “If I were here, Darling, I wouldn’t allow you. Hell, I would make sure the scumbag that did this to you died a more painful death,” She had a bitter taste in her mouth.

  “Richard is dead?” To her question, Christopher rose a trembling finger to the newspaper that had fallen to floor by her feet. Richard Dean’s smug face had been plastered over the front page, the headline in bold black ink reading ‘Business mogul Richard Dean confirmed dead in a car accident on 5th Street’.

  Guilt sunk it’s claws into her tender flesh. “I didn’t mean it when I said he should go to hell… I…” She ran a quivering hand through her hair, bottom lip between her teeth and eyes soaked.

  “He got what he deserved.” Christopher assured her.

  “He didn’t deserve to die. No one deserves to die.” She leaned forward, her voice faint, cracked.

  “News flash, I died, Honey.” She sunk back into her seat. “Paul deserves the best, Blake. And that means doing whatever it takes.”

  She didn’t want to do whatever it took. She didn’t want to sell her body to old men for money.

  “There has to be another way, can’t I market Campbell’s Antiques?”

  “The life Paul deserves lies behind a very difficult decision, Sweetie. And…” He took her hand in his boney, wiry ones, a tear ran down her cheek. “I know you won’t let me down; you won’t let our son down…”

  He was gone as quickly as he’d appeared.

  He’d given her permission to enter a world of sex and drugs. She didn’t know how to feel about that.

  “I was certain the woman was crazy, the problem was, my café was empty and no one else got to see it!” Gina admitted to the camera. Annabelle wished someone could corroborate the woman’s story.

  She wasn’t that lucky.

  Lisa Patterson hadn’t let them take Paul Campbell away to a ward. She couldn’t let that happen. She knew what that entailed.

  He wouldn’t just be strapped to a bed, sedated, and left to wither away like the rest of their condemned patients, their bank accounts drained until they could no longer afford a treatment with the center. No, with who he was, he would be a target.

  He couldn’t leave her office. Not with them.

  She was trembling and the tears that stained her cheeks were barely dry when she’d heard her voice, hoarse and small, moan. “Don’t take him.”

  Her gasps for a breath filled the air in the room. Her chest had yet to stop rapidly rising and falling.

  Both his hands had been restrained by night nurses, and he’d let his head hang low on tired shoulders. His legs hadn’t given away. He was conscious. Listening.

  She’d managed with her frightened screams to gathered two nurses and Bridget by her door, by Paul Campbell.

  She placed the receiver of the phone that was still in her hand back where it belonged.

  At least she knew she could count on her colleagues when push came to shove.

  “What do you mean don’t take him? He needs observation, Lisa.” One of the nurses chipped in. Lisa knew her from her ward rotations. She was Debby Jane Alan, Debby-Jane to her colleagues. Debby was a generous sized brown woman much like Lisa but inches shorter and had luscious full lips that defined her round face.

  Lisa didn’t try to talk, too frantic to utter a reasonable sentence. She needed time to soothe her nerves.

  She needed the one thing she didn’t have.

&
nbsp; But she couldn’t let them take Paul away from her. Their sessions needed to continue. She needed a confession. He’d done this. She no one could convince her otherwise. He wasn’t stable. How else could he have gotten away with it?

  He’d assumably had an episode, one that cost him the life of his mother. And the wedding dress? A taunt by the son of a woman of the night. She couldn’t imagine what had been going through his head that night.

  She didn’t want a mental picture.

  What she longed for, was a confession.

  Proof that she could take to the Sherriff’s department and file a complaint.

  Lisa Patterson didn’t have that yet and until she did, she needed to spent a little more time with the man that put a hole through her office door.

  Shit!

  It was still the better option.

  If the board of directors were to find out about him, their sessions, everything would be snatched, like a carpet pulled from underneath her. He would become their lab rat. Not only would they interrogate him and push him farther away from reality, but they’ll accost her for her unrecorded sessions, not only would she have a cell waiting for her, but she wouldn’t have a job to return to upon her eventual release.

  Yes, she was selfish, she had a motive for keeping Paul Campbell around, to satisfy her ceaseless need to be right.

  And to what end?

  She couldn’t say that desire, had her cowering. She was avenging a woman who didn’t deserve the brutal end she met at the hands of her son.

  How was that to frighten her?

  She shook her head, and repeated. “Don’t take him.” And with palms pressed on her scattered desk, with arms that wobbled like wet spaghetti, she forced herself off her chair to her feet. “He’s not a patient, he’s fine we just had a little… disagreement.”

  Lying had become too easy for Dr. Patterson.