NO OTHER WAY (Harry Hunter Mystery Book 3)

by Willow Rose

Was none of it real?

  Once we started the process of the divorce, we’d have to figure out all those things. Did we keep the house? Did I simply buy her out and stay here with Josie? Or did we sell it and split the money? I still loved this house, and it was Josie’s childhood home, but after tonight, I wasn’t sure we’d ever be happy here again.

  Especially not if Jean wasn’t our neighbor anymore.

  I also wondered what would happen to Camille. I was going to bring Agent Jackson to her tomorrow so she could tell her story to him and give him the information he needed, especially the names. The FBI would most likely cut a deal with her if she promised to testify against them. But would they try to kill her again? And would she have to serve time herself?

  Probably.

  I sighed and thought about Josie and how she’d once again have to miss her mother. We’d share custody, so that once she got out, Josie would be with her half of the time, if Josie wasn’t an adult already and could choose for herself when to see either of us. The thought terrified me. How would she ever survive in this brutal world? Would it eat her up like it had her mother?

  I shook my head and decided I didn’t want to think about it. Instead, I thought about my visit with Nick Taylor and then his father, Andrew Taylor, and how angry he and been when addressing me. Why did the boy tell me to ask his new wife? Was he just a typical angry teenager trying to get his new stepmom in trouble? Because he hated her? Or what did he mean?

  I sat down at the computer, then did my research. It didn’t take me long to find tons of information about Andrew Taylor, the State Attorney.

  As I scrolled down all my hits, I came across a picture from his wedding with his second wife. I couldn’t believe what I was looking at. I couldn’t believe who I was looking at. But seeing this, everything suddenly made a whole lot of sense.

  I had finally found my missing piece.

  As I pondered this new information, my phone buzzed in my pocket, and I pulled it out.

  An unknown number usually meant it was Al.

  Chapter 36

  I was waiting outside of Fowler’s office as he came to work the next morning. He stopped when he saw me, jaw almost dropped.

  “Hunter? Are you okay? I heard what happened last night. What are you even doing here?”

  “I had something important to tell you. I’ve solved the murder of Kate Taylor.”

  Fowler lifted his bushy eyebrows. “That old thing? It’s ten years old, Harry.”

  “But never closed. I know who did it. Let me show you.”

  We walked inside, and I didn’t sit down for once. Instead, I spread out all my papers, opened all the files, and started to explain it all to him, going into each and every detail. I told him my plan and how to take down the killer, then left in a hurry. I drove to the hospital, where I met with FBI Agent Jackson outside in the parking lot.

  We shook hands, then walked inside, where I showed him to Camille’s room. I listened in as she told him everything, every little detail about the trafficking ring and her own part of it, making sure she got it all out, even how deeply involved she had been. The agent recorded everything and took notes while she spoke. I was very pleased with how thorough she was. Most of the names she threw on the table were no surprise to me, but some of them most certainly were.

  “And you’ll testify to all this?” Agent Jackson said as she had finished.

  She nodded. “Yes.”

  “And you do realize this means you’re incriminating yourself as well, right?” he asked.

  Camille closed her eyes and nodded again.

  “Yes.”

  “We can probably ask the DA to look for a reduced sentence and get you a good deal,” he added, “if you show up in court and tell them these things you’ve told me today.”

  She swallowed. She was exhausted, but the doctor had said she was well enough to do this. I wanted to strike while she was still willing to talk, fearing she might regret it if we waited too long.

  “We could also apply to get you into the witness protection program,” he said.

  Camille’s eyes landed on mine.

  “But…Josie?”

  “You wouldn’t see her again,” I said.

  “Or she’d have to go with her,” Agent Jackson said.

  I shook my head. “I am not losing my daughter too.”

  “You are married. You could both go,” he said. “You could start over in a safer place.”

  The thought was appealing. It really was. Right now, there wasn’t anything that made me want to stay in Miami. But I couldn’t leave my job, and I couldn’t move somewhere else and start a new life with the wife I didn’t love anymore. It was simply not possible.

  Agent Jackson gathered his things and rose to his feet. “Think about it…both of you. Once this is over, you’ll have made a lot of enemies. It might not even be a choice anymore. It might be a necessity.”

  ONE WEEK LATER

  Chapter 37

  “You ready for this?”

  Fowler looked at me. He was wearing his Kevlar vest the same as I was, along with a helmet. We both had our weapons in our hands.

  “It’s not every day you get to take down a murderer,” he continued.

  I nodded, feeling satisfied, yet still nervous, as was typical in the situation. We had no idea what the outcome would be. Hopefully, we’d get the killer, and no one needed to be hurt.

  But that wasn’t always how these things panned out, unfortunately.

  “I’m ready.”

  Fowler grinned. “Then, let’s do it. Perimeter is set up; we have the house surrounded. Let’s go.”

  Fowler went in first, and I followed. We found him in the living room.

  “Police!” Fowler yelled. “Hands where I can see them.”

  Andrew Taylor was on the floor fast, arms over his head, wearing his PJs. A cup of coffee was on the floor and had spilled the black substance in a puddle, ruining the nice beige carpet. It was Saturday morning, and he had probably thought he’d be able to enjoy his morning coffee in peace and quiet.

  I wasn’t sorry to have ruined that.

  “Andrew Taylor,” I said. “You’re under arrest for the murder of Kate Taylor. You have the right to remain silen…”

  “What’s going on here?”

  The woman at the top of the stairs looked down at us, her eyes were petrified. I smiled and pointed my gun at her.

  “Just the person we were looking for. Would you please come down here, ma’am? Slowly and keep those hands above your head, where I can see them, please.”

  “But…”

  She did as she was told and walked down with her hands stretched above her head.

  “What are you people doing here? What are you doing to my husband?”

  As she approached me, I smiled again. “We’re arresting him. For the murder of his ex-wife. Or rather for conspiracy to. Because he didn’t exactly kill her himself, did he? You did that.”

  Her eyes met mine. I saw confusion in them and defiance. “I…”

  “Save it,” I said. “We know you did it.”

  “Don’t say anything, Joan,” Andrew Taylor said.

  “I don’t intend to,” she said, walking closer to me, looking into my eyes.

  Those were the last words said before we dragged them away. We let them sweat it out for few hours before they were taken into an interrogation room, Fowler and I doing the interrogation together.

  “I didn’t do anything,” Andrew said. “I had nothing to do with it.”

  “Okay,” I said, placing the files on the desk in front of them, then taking out the pictures of Kate Taylor from when she was pulled out of the water. I placed them so they couldn’t avoid looking at them. “Then tell me about Kate. I’d like to hear about her from both of you.”

  Neither of them said anything. Not that it was a surprise.

  “Okay. Let’s do this another way. I tell you how I think it all went down, and then you can stop me if I got it wrong, okay?�
��

  I looked first at one, then the other. No one said anything.

  “I need my lawyer,” Andrew Taylor said. “I’m not saying anything until he gets here.”

  “Of course not,” I said. “Until then, I’ll just talk a little bit if you don’t mind. You can always correct me if I get things wrong.”

  They didn’t make a sound.

  “So, when did you two start seeing one another?” I continued. “When did you fall in love? When did your affair start?”

  Still nothing.

  “See, I have a feeling you planned this for a very long time, didn’t you? Because you had fallen in love, you and Andrew. But Kate didn’t want to give you a divorce, am I right? So, you wanted to get rid of her. It was easily planned once you got started. Joan invited her to celebrate her birthday with your third friend, Kristin, thinking it was a great alibi. Especially since you chose a weekend where Andrew was at a conference in Atlanta, providing him with a rock-solid alibi, and he would be the first suspect. We all know that. And it went down perfectly. No one suspected foul play from her good friends. But what got to me first was the fact that no one had seen Kate with you down there. When interviewed afterward, the bartender said he remembered seeing both you and Kristin, but not Kate. Now, the investigation was mostly focused on that guy, Matt, and finding him, and no one had seen him either. None of the guests in the bar or anyone working there had seen them. Not Kate nor Matt. And it took me a while to figure it out, but I realized that Matt doesn’t even exist. Kristin panicked, didn’t she? When she was interviewed by the police, she thought she should come up with something better than what you had planned. So, she made up some guy Kate might have met, someone the police could focus on investigating, a possible killer. But since it wasn’t planned, you didn’t talk about him until the detective mentioned him, realizing Kristin had to have talked about him. During the rest of the interview, both of your stories were a complete match, a little too much, to be honest. Using the same sentences, like she needed to blow off some steam, or she wanted to disappear, she was bummed out about her marriage, stuff like that was the same, word for word. And that smells like you two talked it over beforehand, getting your stories straight. But Matt was only in Kristin’s memory because she made him up while sitting there at the sheriff’s office, thinking it would be better, it would be more plausible if she painted a picture of Kate as being loose, as wanting to sleep with another guy, and then maybe he could have killed her. It was a better story than her simply vanishing out of the blue like you first planned, hoping they’d think it was suicide. But the fact was, no one had seen Kate in Key West because she wasn’t there. She was somewhere else, wasn’t she? She was suffering a slow and painful death.”

  Chapter 38

  The room was eerily quiet. The two of them didn’t even move, barely blinked. Not even a raised eyebrow.

  “Anyone have anything to add?” I asked, sipping my cup of coffee, praying their lawyer wasn’t going to burst in anytime soon. Fowler was staring at them, leaned back in his chair, letting me run the show.

  “No? You don’t have anything to say for yourself?”

  I put the cup down, my eyes lingering on both of them.

  Finally, Andrew Taylor lifted his eyes and met mine. “It wasn’t like that. You don’t understand.”

  “Oh, really? Then tell me. What did I miss?”

  A look from Joan made him lean back and clam up.

  “Okay,” I said. I placed my fists on the table and leaned forward, getting close to Andrew Taylor.

  “Then, let’s try this. She hurt your son. That’s why you did it.”

  The look in Andrew’s eyes told me I was on track.

  “See, at first I assumed it was you who did it, that you had abused Nick. But then I realized that it stopped. There were no more reports, and when I called the school, they said it had stopped after DCF was put on the case. After that, Nick never had bruises again. Because his mom was dead. Kate was the one who tortured your son, wasn’t she?” I continued. “And you knew you could never get her out of your life otherwise. DCF had been involved, but they dismissed the case. How could you make anyone else understand what was going on if they wouldn’t? They’d only think you were the one abusing him because let’s face it; it’s more likely the father would do such a thing.”

  Andrew leaned forward. “I didn’t know how bad it was until DCF told me what Nick had said. The details of how she made him lick the toilet and cut himself were unbearable. I had to do something at least. After DCF dismissed the case, I tried to solve it myself. I kept an eye on her when she was alone with him. I went out of my way to make sure they weren’t alone. One day, I walked in on her as she pushed his head into the toilet bowl and flushed. That’s when I knew I had to do something. But I didn’t have the guts. Not till I asked Joan for help and told her about it. She suggested it; she suggested we get rid of her.”

  Joan let out a small angry snort, and Andrew gave her a look, then bowed his head. “They know,” he mumbled. “It’s not like I’m telling them anything they don’t already know.”

  “Just stop,” she grumbled.

  I continued. “So, she came up with how it could be done. Because after her divorce, Joan had gone back to working again, back at the hyperbaric treatment clinic where she worked before she married her first husband, who didn’t want you to work, am I right? That’s where I met you when I brought in Camille. But your name is Joan Kendrick now, not Joan Smith, like the woman in the files, the one who reported her best friend missing. You took your maiden name after the divorce. And you never took Andrew’s last name since you tried that once when you were married before, and it was too much trouble to change your name once again. That’s why I never made the connection. Not until now, at least. So, here’s what I believe happened. You chose a weekend Andrew would be away at a conference in Atlanta, and his alibi would be solid since he would be the first one they looked at. You don’t have to watch a lot of crime shows or even be the State Attorney to know this. You brought Kristin along. She was your best friend. You could trust her. You told Kate you could help her with something she had trouble with. I found her medical records and realized she was diabetic, and she had a foot ulcer that wouldn’t go away—a type of condition many people came to your clinic and received treatment for. You promised her free treatment if she came on the weekend, out of normal operating hours. She crawled inside the chamber, and you turned it on. And then you simply just left her there, knowing no one else would come in all weekend when the clinic was closed. I read the autopsy, and that’s when it occurred to me that she hadn’t drowned. Her eardrums were popped, and there was permanent scarring, called fibrosis of the lung tissue, a symptom of oxygen toxicity that can lead to death, as you yourself have taught me. You also taught me that it is one of the side effects of being inside a hyperbaric chamber for too long. It was a risk, you said. So, I thought, what about an entire weekend? What if she was left in there for two whole days? Knocking on the sides, suffering, screaming for help, but no one hearing her? Unable to get out? After that, you could have taken her dead body out, driven her down to Key West, where you placed her in the water, making it look like she drowned. Then you went to the police station and told them your friend had gone missing, after making sure your stories were straight. What I can’t figure out is why Kristin was willing to go along with it.”

  I saw a hint of a frown between Joan’s eyes.

  “Unless…” I said, scrutinizing her. “Unless she had something…” I flipped a few pages and returned to the initial interview with her. “Kristin wasn’t married. Why was that? Did it have something to do with Kate?”

  Joan’s nostrils were flaring, and I could tell I was getting closer.

  “What did Kate do?” I asked. “What did she do to Kristin?”

  “She slept with him, okay?” Joan said, spurting it out. She was like a pressure cooker that had finally reached its limits. “Kristin had met this sweet guy that s
he really liked, and Kate kept telling her that he’d cheat on her. When Kristin came home and found the two of them in bed together, all she could say was: I told you so. That’s the kind of woman she was.”

  “But that wasn’t all, was it?” I asked. “There has to have been more for you both actually to want to kill her.”

  Joan sighed deeply.

  “What did she do to you? You’ve all known each other since college. What did she do that made you want to kill her to revenge yourselves?”

  Joan swallowed. I could tell she was debating with herself what to say next. She wanted to tell me; I could see it in her eyes. She wanted to justify herself. As I stared into her eyes, it suddenly occurred to me. There was a detail I had missed. Her eyes. Her piercing green eyes.

  “Oh, dear Lord,” I said. “Nick is your son, isn’t he? He’s not Kate’s?”

  That’s when she finally broke down and cried—leaning forward, mouth half-open, her upper body convulsing.

  “Kate couldn’t have children of her own,” I said.

  “Sh-she forced me to give him to her. When I got pregnant.”

  “Because he was Andrew’s child. Because you had an affair with Andrew. Why did you agree to it, Joan?”

  “Andrew persuaded me and told me it was best for the child. I know now he only did it out of fear of Kate. They’d raise the child like it was theirs, they said. I had recently married and didn’t want an affair to destroy everything, so I agreed to it, even though it was the hardest thing I have ever done. I told my husband I was doing an internship overseas for nine months, then left. Kate and Andrew came over and took the baby home. I came back different. I never became the same woman again. And for all these years, I had to watch him grow up with her as a mother. It was pure torture.”

  “And then when you realized that the abuse was happening, you knew you had to get rid of her. But it wasn’t that easy. DCF believed her and not the child, and she refused to give Andrew a divorce. She would take Nick with her, and then you’d lose him completely.”