Witness

by Denise Gwen

  “What if her husband killed her and made it look like a suicide?” Kathryn asked.

  He gazed at her, this gorgeous man, and with the mask covering his mouth, all she saw was his gorgeous blue eyes. “I am going to suggest that, based on the past records of domestic violence, that she definitely died from asphyxiation, but I am going to call it a homicide and not a suicide.”

  “Oh, my goodness,” she said, “oh, Dr. Chase, that’s wonderful.”

  He winced. “My findings may be challenged and there may be a second opinion sought, but I agree with you. I think her husband had something to do with it.”

  “But you can’t prove it.”

  “No, I can’t, and here’s the other thing. I need to confer with Paul, because I may have to end up calling this a suicide primarily, with a possible homicide as the second basis of death. I may not be able to flat-out call this a homicide.”

  “Oh.”

  “I’m sorry, but I just want you to know where I’m coming from. The bruises are indicative of domestic violence, and he certainly beat this poor woman, nearly to death, but he didn’t kill her. She died from a hanging, but I can’t tell, right now, if he did it to her and made it look like a suicide, or if she simply decided to end it all.”

  “I understand,” she said. “Thank you for being so forthright with me, Dr. Chase.”

  He was so kind, so good, and it disheartened her to hear it, but he was the Coroner and his opinion carried more weight than hers.

  “It’s possible that someone killed her, but right now, before I do any further investigation, the most I can call this is a suicide by hanging. Her husband may have been beating her, but the bruises from the days prior, while older than the bruises around the neck, do not support that the same person who had been beating her, then turned around and killed her by making it look like a suicidal hanging.”

  “So, her husband will get away with killing her.”

  “I haven’t finished my autopsy yet,” Dr. Chase said, gazing levelly at her. “And I’m also waiting for something else.”

  “Something else?” she shook her head with confusion. “What else are you waiting for?”

  He gazed at her with his startlingly cold blue eyes. “For you to finish your investigation, Deputy.”

  A few minutes later.

  Dr. Bradley Chase thought his conversation with the cute young deputy had reached its conclusion, but she surprised him by asking, “What further evidence or proof do you need to make a finding of homicide?”

  He leaned back in his chair and considered. “Well, for starters, we’d need more evidence.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well, from other evidence taken at the crime scene.”

  She whipped out a notebook and jotted down notes. “Such as?”

  “How did the techs take down the evidence they collected at the crime scene?”

  “I made everyone put on protective gear, and I directed the taking of evidence.”

  “Good girl,” he said, and winced, but she betrayed no reaction. So much for being the kind of man who supported women.

  “I was there,” she said, her brow furrowing. “But there was a problem right from the start.”

  “How so?”

  “Nobody from the Shelbyville Police Department or the Attorney General’s Office showed up. It was all Rowan County Deputy Sheriffs.”

  “A bit of a conflict, eh?” Brad said.

  “You’re telling me. I told Deputies Lunsford and Billings we shouldn’t be there, processing the scene, and I was basically told to shut the fuck up.” She blushed. “Sorry.”

  “It’s okay. You’re entitled to be angry.” He took his pen, flipped it, caught it, flipped it again. “I don’t understand how he got away with that.”

  “Who?” she asked. “Sheriff Randalls?”

  “Yes, I mean, really? His wife dies, and on the off-chance there might be something wrong with how she died, or the circumstances leading up to her death, or some question concerning the processing of the scene, he sends in his own people? That’s a glaring conflict of interest.”

  “There are times,” she said morosely, “when I feel like the only person who can tell the emperor has no clothes on.”

  “It can make you crazy, can’t it?” he asked kindly.

  “Why’d you say that?” she asked, suddenly bristling.

  “Oh, no reason. It’s just an expression, you know.”

  “You’re not mocking me?”

  “No, of course not. Why would I do that?”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, and he thought she might be, absurdly, on the brink of tears.

  “Are you okay?” he asked, reaching for a box of tissues.

  “I’m fine,” she said, snuffling, but she reached for the tissues and used several to blow her nose. “I spent some time in a sanatorium,” she said. “I just got released, like, a few days ago, and Monday was my first day back.”

  “Oh,” he said. “I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s okay, you didn’t know, after all. How would you know?”

  “That’s very brave of you to tell me.”

  “Maybe,” she said, shrugging. “But you were gonna find out eventually about me. It’s almost the worst-kept secret in the Sheriff’s Office. Everyone calls me Crazy Kathy.”

  “That’s not nice.”

  “Oh, they say it behind my back.”

  “Still.”

  She stirred restlessly, then closed her notebook. Stood up, held out her hand. “Thanks so much for all your help, Dr. Chase. You’ve been a great help to me.”

  He stood up as well, shook her hand.

  “When will you release your results?”

  “I’m going to wait,” he said.

  “Until what?”

  “Until you come back to me with your findings.”

  “Oh, you are?”

  “Yes. I want to see what you can come up with before I make my findings official.”

  “Well,” she said, “all right, then.”

  She walked to the door, opened it, gazed back at him. “Thank you for believing me,” she said, and shut the door behind her.

  He felt a strange stirring rising inside him and he wondered when he’d see the young woman again.

  He wanted to, oh yes, he wanted to.

  36

  Tuesday, March 12, 7:45 a.m.

  Back at the office the following morning, Randy applied himself to finding the newspaper delivery kid. It was growing increasingly important that he find this little brat. He scanned the website for the Shelbyville Times and finally decided the newspaper delivery kid was Harold ‘Hal’ Brandenberg. He noted Hal’s address and home phone number. Huh. His parents kept a land-line? Who knew?

  A few moments later

  He decided to go ahead and call The Shelbyville Times.

  “Do you want to cancel your service, Sheriff?” the woman asked with a solicitous voice.

  “Um, no, I don’t think so,” Randy said, but then it occurred to him, the kid he saw was going to be delivering papers again, probably even this morning, and if he waited, laid in wait, once he got the clearance to return to the house, he just might see the kid again.

  “If you do—and we’re terribly sorry if you do decide to cancel your service—just give me a call and we’ll cancel it for you right away. And oh, by the way, Sheriff, I’m so sorry to hear about your wife.”

  “Well, thank you.”

  “Oh, wait a minute. Was there something specific you wanted to know about the child who delivers your newspaper?”

  “Well, I just wanted to thank him for his service.”

  “Let me look up the child’s name . . . oh, well, you’re going to have to thank her for her service,” the woman said, and laughed. “The newspaper route that Hal Brandenburg was doing, that’s your street, isn’t it, Sheriff? Wells Falls Lane?”

  “Ayuh, that’s my street.”

  “Well, Hal Brandenburg originally ran that route, but when the b
aseball season heated up, he decided to pass his route on to another child, and that just so happened to be a little girl by the name of Ginny Wittenberg.”

  A girl, hm? The kid who saw me two mornings ago was a little girl? My job just got a whole hell of a lot easier.

  “Let me see,” the woman said. “Oh, she’s practically a neighbor of yours. She lives at 2344 Plum Run Road, just down the street from you, as a matter of fact, and would you like her phone number?”

  “Yes,” he said, pleasantly surprised, “I would.”

  A few hours later.

  Randy’s office phone jangled at a few minutes to twelve. He caught it on the second ring.

  “Sheriff, it’s Gil Martin.”

  “Well, hello there, Gil. What can I do you for?”

  After the fuss made at the Rowan County Sheriff’s Deputies being at the scene early in the investigation, and to avoid any further fuss, Randy had called Gil Martin, the Chief of Police for the Shelbyville Police Department, and asked him to handle the investigation, a request that Gil had gladly handled. So now the SPD had taken over the investigation, and Randy was finally hearing from Gil what the investigation had revealed. He sat back and made himself relax.

  “Just wanted to give you an update into the investigation down at your place. The investigation crew has finished its work and the scene’s been cleared and you can go back home.”

  “Oh, well, that’s good to hear,” Randy said with a heartiness in his voice he did not feel.

  “You can go home tonight, if you want to.”

  “Thanks a lot, Gil. I appreciate all you’ve done.”

  “Don’t mention it.”

  He hung up and kicked back in his chair and thought on it. Gil didn’t tell him the results of the investigation, but that was of no matter. Obviously, if they’d had a whiff of conspiracy, or if the SPD had believed he’d done something inappropriate or suspicious, Gil sure as hell wouldn’t be giving him a friendly call to let him know he could return home. No, if the investigation had revealed anything at all untoward, Gil wouldn’t be calling him, Gil would be arriving at the Sheriff’s Office with an arrest warrant.

  No, Gil’s investigation had gone according to plan, and Miranda’s death would be ruled as a suicide or, if they were going for the widest possible interpretation, they’d call it death by misadventure, but certainly not a homicide.

  He could rest easy.

  It was starting to look as if everything really was going his way. He could head back home. The house belonged to him again, not to his bitch wife, and certainly not to her little bitch spawn. It belonged to him.

  Nice.

  Maybe I will head home tonight.

  An hour later.

  Although it made him uneasy to do so, and at Rob’s suggestion, right after lunch, Randy called the attorney general’s office and gave them his blessing to take over the investigation. Paul Manafort, the State of Indiana’s Attorney General, was one of those perfect career politicians; the fella would run for a bread truck if it meant he’d get elected. He once served as a United States Senator, then lost that election; ran for, and got elected to, the Common Pleas Bench in Broward County, the largest county court in the entire state, based in Indianapolis. Then he lost that election, ran for Attorney General, and right now, Paul was chomping at the bit to run for Governor. He’d as much as said so during an interview on NPR, when he was discussing a notorious case in neighboring Broward County, when seven members of a family, including a child and a teenager, were executed in the early hours of morning. Thus far, nobody had been caught, nobody had been named as a suspect, and nobody knew when the AG was going to solve the gruesome murders.

  He’d started his law career in the prosecutor’s office, as a fledgling assistant prosecutor, before running for office and getting elected as Prosecutor. Then followed a stint as an OhioState Senator, then a Member of the U.S. House of Representatives, then Ohio Lieutenant Governor, then a U.S. Senator.

  Now, as the State’s Attorney General, his gimlet eye fixed on the brass ring on the merry-go-round carousel, Governor of the State of Indiana.

  Trouble was, Randy knew a thing or two about the Pepin family executions; some people had said the killers came from Mexico, and they weren’t far wrong.

  At the back of his mind, he wondered if the AG was going to use Miranda’s death as his ride to the governor’s office.

  Uneasy, he hung up with the AG.

  A few hours later.

  “Sheriff,” Dr. Bradley Chase said on the line. “We’ve finished processing the scene. You can go home now.”

  “Good to know,” Randy said.

  And it was.

  It was good.

  That evening, as he drove up to his house, he did something he hadn’t been able to do in quite some time. He drove his Sheriff’s car right up the driveway, tapped the control to lift the garage door, and parked his cruiser in his two-car garage, right next to the ridiculously expensive Mercedes he’d bought her, and which he could now sell, if he wanted, and he walked through the garage door and into the kitchen of his own fucking house, and he didn’t feel like a fucking felon as he did it, either, because he was back in his house, god-dammit, and the civil protection order had terminated with her death, and he was now free to enter his own home.

  Granted, the place felt a tiny bit lonely and antiseptic.

  He stood in the kitchen for a long moment, looking around him, feeling suddenly lonely. He turned on his heel, pushed on the swinging door and walked into the dining room and looked at the chandelier and at the dining table she’d ordered from Italy, and he put his hands in his pockets, and rolled back on his heels.

  At that moment, the cell phone in his front left pocket chirped, the secret phone, and when he checked to see who it was, he smiled when he saw it was his beloved Josie.

  “How are you, Randy?”

  “I’m back in my house.”

  “Oh, honey. Are you sure that’s such a good idea?”

  “The place is creeping me out,” he admitted.

  “Why don’t you come on over to my place?”

  “I think I will,” he said.

  “And pack a bag.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  He hung up and whistled a little tune as he walked upstairs to the empty bedroom and started packing an overnight bag. Who knew? If she played her cards right, she might count on finding herself as the next Mrs. Randy Randalls.

  37

  Tuesday, March 12, 1:00 a.m.

  A white-paneled extra-long van drove south on I-65 from Chicago. On the side of the van appeared the logo, Houser’s White Meats and Fresh Pork Products. It got onto the I-465 interchange outside Indianapolis, drove south, then took the I-74 eastbound exit and drove for twenty miles.

  It pulled off the highway at the Batesville Exit, drove past the Horse-shoe Casino, the newest addition to the southeastern section of the state, and kept on driving past all the pretty lights and music.

  The van drove for another thirty miles, then turned right onto a narrow, paved road. A sign at the intersection said, Houser Farms.

  A hundred yards down the road, the van turned right onto a freshly-paved driveway down to one of the finest preserved Ohiofarmhouses still existing in the state. A majestic house, made of brick, and with a white-painted front porch with a swing, and the driveway was cast in shade from two rows of Sugar Maple trees lining the drive, and casting the van and its driver into a sudden, soothing, shade.

  Someone stepped out onto the front porch and waved at the van, but the driver did not wave back.

  He drove past the house and the smooth, black paved driveway stopped short at a gate. A kid stepped out of the shadows and quickly unlocked the gate and swung it open and the van drove through. Now on a gravel driveway, the van coughed up dust and grit and smoke as it hightailed it past the first barn, where a herd of Simmental cattle were feeding. The van kept on driving, and this time a sharp, ugly odor punctuated the air as the van drove past
the feed lot where the hogs were kept.

  The driver, who’d been wearing a headscarf, now pulled it down over his face so that he didn’t have to breathe the hateful odor.

  He heard a thump in the back.

  “We are almost there,” he called out.

  He kept on driving, and even well past the point at which the hog barn disappeared from the rear window, he continued to smell it.

  Such a hateful odor.

  Finally, at last, he reached his destination. He pulled up into the tarmac driveway of a huge industrial-size barn, built in the modern days, with steel and corrugated steel and iron.

  He tapped lightly on the horn and a huge panel door slid open on its railing and two men stood inside the barn as he drove the van into the barn and then slid the corrugated steel door closed after he pulled the van in and locked the door shut.

  Not until he saw the barn door lock behind him, and he turned off the engine, did Manuel the driver, cross himself and utter a silent prayer.

  Praise the Mother Mary, and the sweet little baby Jesus, one more trip done.

  A few hours later

  Rob got behind the wheel of his cruiser and drove out of the Rowan County Sheriff’s parking lot and headed out of town and got onto the westbound lane of I-74, not stopping until he reached the Sunrise Casino, located near the Benjamin Henry Harrison military base. He drove past the official, fancy-looking entrance, and drove all the way around to the back, to the place where the delivery trucks pulled in to deliver food and alcohol to the restaurants and bars inside the Casino. He pulled the cruiser into a specially marked parking space for security, got out of the cruiser, locked it, and instead of walking into the Casino, walked all the way across the parking lot, to the very back, where the parking lot petered out into a corn field.