Witness

by Denise Gwen

  “I’ll do that,” she promised.

  She hurried outside, grabbed a coverall from the back of the Coroner’s wagon, and hurried back inside the house. She quickly slipped into the protective covering, then walked into the dining room and inhaled sharply at the grotesque sight of the dead woman dangling lifelessly from the chandelier. Her face had turned purple and black and mottled, and her tongue hung out of her mouth.

  Kathryn didn’t think she’d ever forget this image. It was seared into her mind.

  Dr. Chase and his team were hard at work. He’d already set up his equipment and stood looking up at the dead woman’s face, then began taking photos of the poor woman as she dangled there from the chandelier.

  As Dr. Chase took photos, the other techs were hard at work taking samples from the floor, the table and the chairs. When Dr. Chase decided he’d documented the scene well enough, he directed the techs to bag the decedent’s feet and hands in plastic bags.

  “And don’t forget to take scrapings from the rope, and samples from the dining room table,” he said, “and don’t forget to dust the dining table for prints.”

  She longed to just stand there and watch him and admire him, but at the end of all this documentation, he then turned to her. “I need some burly men to help me cut the body down. Will you go get some help?”

  “Yes,” she said, and she returned a few moments later with Deputies Lauder and Billings, and they were instructed to help Dr. Chase bring the body down from the chandelier.

  Billings jumped up onto the table and sawed at the rope until it came loose, and Dr. Chase and Lauder, standing on either side of the decedent’s arms, struggled to hold her and lay her down gently upon the table as the last thread of rope gave way; all three men were sweating profusely by the time they got her down and onto a gurney.

  Dr. Chase repositioned her arms and legs, strapped her arms and legs to the gurney with leather straps, then drew a white sheet over her and secured the white sheet with additional ties.

  “It’s windy out there,” he muttered. “Don’t want people to see her like this.”

  Somehow, with the body shrouded in a white sheet, it looked so much worse.

  “Are there a lot of reporters out there?” Dr. Chase asked.

  “I’ll clear them away,” Billings said, and darted out of the room.

  Dr. Chase turned to look at Kathryn with the most shocking pair of blue eyes she’d ever seen before in her life. He blinked, as if seeing her, perhaps, for the first time. She expected him to say something profound, but instead, he shrugged. “Let’s go, then.”

  “Okay,” she said.

  Billings hurried back into the house. “The Shelbyville PD’s here, and they’re gonna keep the reporters away. We’ve got a clear path to the wagon.”

  “Sounds good,” Dr. Chase said.

  Lauder took the front of the gurney, Billings took the foot, and with Dr. Chase walking alongside with a protective hand on the railing, as if comforting a patient being wheeled into surgery, they rolled the gurney out of the dining room, through the den, into the hallway, and out onto the front porch and down the small steps and then across the yard to the opened doors of the Coroner’s wagon.

  Kathryn followed behind.

  “Please step aside, everyone,” Dr. Chase said politely, and the Shelbyville Police Department held a line to keep the gawkers from stepping up too close to the gurney or to the Coroner’s wagon.

  “Please, everyone,” Dr. Chase said. “Leave us plenty of room.”

  And then Kathryn had to go and open her big, stupid mouth.

  “Doctor Chase,” she said. “You’ll be performing an investigation, won’t you?”

  “Of course, I will,” he said, whirling around to look at her, and again, the intensity of his bright blue eyes struck her with shock. A tall man, slender, with that tousled jet-black hair, he had a way of looking at her that made her feel as if he could see straight through her, straight to her heart.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  Billings and Lauder hoisted the gurney into the van, adjusted it onto the steel rods to keep it secure, then slammed the back doors shut.

  “Do you have any more questions for me, Deputy . . . McGlone?” Dr. Chase asked, looking at her name badge.

  “Um, no, sir, I don’t, thank you, sir.”

  “All right, then,” and he smiled at her.

  She flushed with pride and a curious kind of shame, as Dr. Chase walked to the driver’s side door, got behind the wheel, shut the door, and drove away.

  Billings pulled off his face mask, wadded it up into a ball, and tossed it across the yard. “Wow, McGlone, way to go with that deep, investigative technique of yours.”

  “Oh, Dr. Chase, are you gonna do an investigation?” Lauder said, using a high-pitched, falsetto voice and mimicking her movements.

  Billings thrust his hands on his hips. “Why yes, ma’am, I plan to do a thorough investigation, and I’d like to start with you, on your back, your legs spread wide.”

  Lauder roared with laughter.

  “It’s nice to finally see somebody doing their job,” she said evenly. “Perhaps you might care to take a page from Dr. Chase’s book.”

  Lauder didn’t notice, and Billings didn’t care. They stood there, holding their sides to keep from falling down as they roared with laughter, but it didn’t matter anymore. She’d gotten her way. She’d forced them to do their jobs. For the first time in many months, she was proud of her leadership and her work here at this scene.

  She turned to Billings. “You’re a close friend of the Sheriff. You shouldn’t have even come down here, today, Rob.”

  The smile faded from Billings’s face and he glared at her. “I came down here to make sure you were doing your job, McGlone.”

  “Well, as you can see, I did my job just fine, despite your best efforts to derail me.”

  “Fuck you, Kathryn,” he said, and walked away.

  Lauder stood over by the technicians’ van, laughing and joking.

  Kathryn stood there, wondering what she ought to do next, when Deputy Poling, a new hire who’d arrived shortly before her leave of absence, approached her.

  “Hi,” he said. “I hear you’re new. I’m Michael Poling.”

  She wasn’t the new person; he was, but he was being nice, so she decided to give it a pass. Sometimes it was just too much effort to stand up for herself.

  “Hi, Deputy Poling,” she said, and they shook hands.

  “Are you supervising?” he asked, “Cause I gotta get out on patrol.”

  “Sure,” she said. “Go on ahead and do your patrol. I think we’ve got it all covered.”

  “Oh, hey, the daughter of the deceased?” he jerked his head to the right. “She went over to the neighbors’ house, they live next door. Why don’t you see if she needs anything?”

  Again, technically, she was superior to him in rank, but then again, she’d been gone for six weeks. Perhaps six weeks in a sanatorium counted as coming back as a brand-new employee.

  It sure as hell didn’t count as anything with Billings or Lauder.

  “Nobody’s interviewed the child, yet?”

  “No, I only just found out about it,” he said.

  “Okay,” she said, and Deputy Poling walked away.

  A good idea, for her to deal with the child.

  43

  Monday, March 11, 4:02 p.m.

  Brittany hung up the phone and stood there, her legs trembling, her belly roiling. Bile rose in her throat and she leaned forward and threw up the contents of her stomach, leaving a terrible mess, but she wasn’t going to clean it up. No, let him do it, the asshole.

  He did this.

  She ran back upstairs, looking over her shoulder at the same time, half-expecting to see Randy bearing down upon her, rope in hand, ran into her bedroom and slammed the door shut and locked it.

  Her legs gave out and she fell to the carpeting on her hands and knees. Undaunted, she crawled over to her close
t, scrabbled for her camera at the back, pulled it out and obsessively checked the photos one more time to make sure that, yes, she still had the images, and then, her strength renewed, she climbed to her feet and looked around her bedroom, clutching her camera.

  No way, no way, no way on earth was she coming back here, to this room, to this wretched house, ever again. And she sure as hell wasn’t going to stick around and look at her asshole step-father and in the eye.

  She was getting out of here, right now.

  She stuffed the camera into her backpack and pulled out a suitcase and threw all the contents of her dresser into it. Then she grabbed a duffle bag and ran into her mother’s bedroom, the room she shared with him, and ran into the master bath and swept all the toiletry items on the counter into the duffle. She was taking everything, even things that belonged to him, but she didn’t care; her rage and her grief were such that she wanted everything that her mother had ever looked at or touched or used, and that included the expensive-as-hell razor she bought Randy for Christmas, the ass-hole, and that also included his ridiculously expensive specialty bottles of cologne and eau de perfume. She took his eighty-five-dollar bottle of Ralph Lauren Polo Blue Men’s fragrance, and the even more expensive bottle of Chanel cologne, Bleu De Chanel eau de perfume spray, costing one-hundred and fifteen dollars for a 3.4-ounce bottle, unbelievable; she’d give it all to her dad, or maybe she’d keep it for herself, the stuff did smell nice, and she threw everything in the bag, zipped it closed, and hoisted it over her right shoulder.

  She ran back into her bedroom, grabbed the suitcase, hoisted the backpack with the digital camera onto the left shoulder, and ran downstairs. She grabbed a squirming Chardonnay and ran next door to Sarah’s house, to 2356 Wells Falls Lane, where she’d wait for her dad to come pick her up.

  She was never setting foot back in this house, ever again.

  A few hours later.

  The minute Mama brought her home from the doctor visit, Ginny ran back upstairs to her bedroom and scrambled between the covers.

  She slept for a little while, then stirred when she heard a faint knock on the door.

  “Come in,” she warbled.

  Grandpa walked in, bearing a tray with a bowl of steaming hot soup. Chicken noodle soup, the meal Mama always made whenever she or Evie were sick.

  “Bringing my girl some nourishment,” Grandpa said.

  “Thank you, Grandpa,” she said, hoping she sounded ill.

  As Grandpa set the tray down onto her bedside table, the whine of an ambulance droned past the house and Ginny, with a sudden flush of terror, jumped out of bed and ran to the window to look. A firetruck screamed up the street, followed by two police cars.

  At the sound of chuckling behind her, she turned around to look at Grandpa.

  “What is it, Grandpa?” she asked.

  Grandpa pulled up a chair and sat down beside her bed. “Young lady, you’re not sick.”

  She stared at Grandpa, stricken. What was he going to do? Reprimand her? Punish her? Or, worse, tell Mama?

  As she stood there in an agony of indecision, Grandpa laughed. “Young lady, you look just like the cat that swallowed a canary.”

  “What does that mean, Grandpa?”

  “It means, my dear, your old grandpa was born at night, but not last night.”

  “What?”

  “And I didn’t fall off the turnip truck yesterday, neither. Come on, girl. Fess up.”

  When she continued to stand there, pretending not to understand, he said, “I saw you dumped half your newspaper load into the trash, and I went out and delivered the rest of your route for you so you won’t get into any trouble.”

  “Oh, Grandpa.”

  “And you just proved what you’re most frightened of, young lady. The ambulance is racing to 2354 Wells Falls Lane, the last house on your delivery route, to Sheriff Randy Randalls and his wife. You dropped your last paper at that house and then bolted and ran home and ducked between the covers. You saw something that troubled you, young lady, and I want you to tell me what it is.”

  Tears filled her eyes.

  “Come on, kid. It can’t be so terrible that you can’t tell me.”

  “But it is terrible, Grandpa. Really terrible.”

  “And you’re gonna tell me and unburden yourself.”

  She opened her mouth to speak, tears filled her throat, and she ran to Grandpa and fell in a heap at his feet and wrapped her arms around his waist and burst into tears.

  But she still didn’t tell.

  44

  Monday, March 11, 3:45 p.m.

  “Mom, I’m home,” twelve-year-old Brittany Delacourt announced as she walked into the house at 2354 Wells Falls Lane through the back-kitchen door. She tossed her backpack onto the kitchen table and walked to the empty sink to wash her hands, only half-noticing the saucepan, her mother’s beloved little ceramic dish, and wooden spoon, air-drying on the rack by the sink.

  Oh, that’s right. Mom said she was making tomato basil soup today for her pot-luck luncheon.

  Mom promised she’d hold back some soup for her, and so she walked to the fridge, looking for a small container of the soup, but when she didn’t see anything resembling her mother’s tomato basil soup, she sighed with resignation. Mom must’ve forgotten to leave some behind for her, or perhaps she thought she hadn’t made enough. No matter, Mom would make her some more; Mom was good about doing that; she’d whip up a fresh batch of the soup tonight for dinner.

  She rummaged around for something else in the fridge to snack on, found a fruit and cheese plate, a bottle of Evian water, and walked down the kitchen hallway to the den, where she plumped herself down on the sofa and turned on the television. Mom let her watch an hour of television every day, so long as right after dinner she went upstairs to do her homework. Quite frankly, Brittany liked doing her homework upstairs, in the quiet confines of her bedroom; it kept her out of her step-father’s way. As she munched on the cheese and fruit, she longed for crackers, but Mom had recently gone on a detoxing cleanse, to lose the last five pounds of baby weight she claimed she’d never been able to get rid of—as far as Brittany could see, her mother was skinny and could stand to put on five pounds—but she kept her thoughts to herself.

  But still, her angry thoughts bubbled to the surface, her step-father’s hectoring tone ringing in her ears.

  Look at that ass, I oughta slap a wide-load sticker on it.

  My, my, my, but you do have wide hips, dontcha, Hon?

  Brittany wished she could say something to him whenever he did this, the asshole; it made Mom so unhappy, and it struck her as so terribly unfair, especially when Mom was doing everything in her power to keep her new hubby happy.

  Her show came on, and she watched for a few minutes, lost in thought, but then a troubling worry warbled into her mind.

  Where’s Mom? She should’ve come back from the luncheon by now.

  Mom was usually home by the time Brittany got off the bus, and if she wasn’t home, or running late, she’d text her to let her know where she was. As her thoughts swirled, an edge of worry laced her heart. She pulled out her cell phone and clicked on it, but no text or voicemail message from Mom.

  Hmmm, that’s strange.

  She scrolled through the texts of the last hour or so, and they’d all come from her friends.

  She didn’t know what to think.

  Where the hell was Mom?

  A few minutes later.

  Randy drove out of town, to the Bartholomew Dam, close by the Benjamin Henry Harrison Army Base. A laptop sat on the front passenger seat beside him. He found a secluded spot, plugged the zip drive into the laptop and rested it on his lap. He sat there for a long moment, debating whether he wanted to really listen to this thing. Knew what he’d hear, did he really want to torture himself with it? He looked around the silent park. Perhaps he ought to just toss it away into the creek behind the woods and drive back to the sheriff’s office and get on with his day. Why bother listenin
g to it, when Rob had already taken care of it?

  He had a lot of work to do.

  Gazed back down at his laptop, and a surge of rage suffused him. If Miranda had been sitting beside him, here, in this moment, he might’ve just strangled her all over again. He closed his eyes and counted to ten, and when he finished counting to ten, he was still enraged, but he wanted to listen to that fucking bitch as she called 911.

  He pressed on the cursor to play.

  A few minutes later

  Sitting in the den, with the cheese and fruit tray to one side and the bottle of Evian to another side, a surge of uneasiness wafted through her; her heart started thudding dully, a cold sweat broke out across her brow, her hands felt clammy, and she felt sick to her stomach.

  Something felt wrong.

  Slowly, she got off the couch and stood up. On the television set, the actors in the sitcom rolled their eyes at one another and the studio audience laughed, but a coil of fear wrapped around her heart and squeezed. In her mind’s eye, an alternate reality played on the screen, and something terrible happened, a body flopped onto the floor and everyone stood over it, laughing their asses off.

  She walked out of the den, down the hallway, and into the kitchen.

  She stood in the kitchen and stared at the sink.

  Didn’t it strike her as strange, for Mom to leave the saucepan and the ceramic dish and the wooden spoon on the drying rack? Mom liked a sparkling clean kitchen, and the minute she finished with a utensil, she washed it and put it away in its proper place. She didn’t leave things in the drying rack, let alone in the sink.

  Brittany looked around the kitchen, really seeing it, really sensing it, this time.

  Something felt wrong.

  Quiet, for one thing.

  Too quiet.

  Mom ought to be home.

  If Mom wasn’t at home, Mom would’ve called or texted.

  So, where was her mother?