Murder is on the Clock

by Fran Rizer

  “I don’t know,” I lied, feeling it was excusable under the circumstances. This man obviously killed Josh Wingate. For him to want to hog-tie me the same way Wingate had been tied was too much of a coincidence, and Wayne says there are no coincidences in homicides. I didn’t want to send a killer to my family’s home.

  “Lucy told me Josh had started abusing her,” he said. “When she disappeared, I thought Josh had killed my sister. I tied him up and questioned him. He swore he didn’t know where my sister Lucy was. I stole some sodium pentothal from the hospital. They used to call it ‘truth serum,’ and I thought it would make Josh tell me where he’d hidden Lucy’s body.”

  Luke laughed. “I accidentally gave him too much. He stopped breathing. I bagged him up and planned to take him to the landfill, but I ran out of time and dumped him on Dunbar Road.”

  He cleared his throat. “The next thing I know I’m getting a call that Lucy is at the hospital with a broken leg. I thought Josh did it, but now she says Josh hitting her was a lie. She just wanted an excuse to leave him because he’d gone straight and wasn’t making much money since Philip Anderson took off with his and Josh’s drug profits. Coulda, shoulda, woulda. If I’d waited, Anderson would have caught up with Josh and gotten him for shooting and killing his pregnant girlfriend. If Lucy hadn’t lied and then hid out, I wouldn’t have questioned Wingate. If your brother hadn’t run into Lucy at the gas station and bragged about his new house, she wouldn’t have come up with that crazy scheme to get back with him. Coulda, shoulda, woulda.”

  “So you killed Josh Wingate because you thought he’d murdered your sister?”

  “You don’t understand. Lucy and I are twins. We grew up as close as two kids can be. I couldn’t let that no-good rat get away with killing or even just hurting my twin. Besides, it was an accident.”

  “Lucy swore to me that she came on to Bill when she was hiding out in his Man Cave, but he didn’t respond.” I said, feeling compelled to defend my brother.

  “She told me that, too, but I don’t know. She’s my twin and I love her, but Lucy lies a lot.”

  “Why do you want to find Bill?”

  “Josh didn’t break Lucy’s leg, but Bill might as well have. It’s his fault it’s broken.” He frowned. “If I can’t find him and pay him back for causing my sister to be in the hospital, I’ll hurt you to get even.”

  “Don’t you think you’re even since Josh Wingate died?”

  “He killed Betty Jo Caldwell, so he deserved it.”

  “You know Philip Anderson has disappeared. Did you do something to him?”

  “Not yet. I haven’t been able to find him.” He leered. “You do know that after I’ve told you all this, I can’t let you go.”

  He sounded sad, regretful for what he was thinking, but when he pulled a folded black plastic trash bag from his pocket, I realized he’d planned to get rid of me all long. I expected him to shake it open and shove me inside. I didn’t know whether to hope he’d give me the injection first or tie my feet and hands to my throat. If he did that, all I’d have to do was struggle to end it quickly when the rope tightened around my neck.

  The roll of gray duct tape lay on the bed. He picked it up and cut off six inches or so with his pocket knife. Slapped it across my mouth. I prayed. I didn’t grow up in church every Sunday and I haven’t attended regularly since I became an adult, but I prayed for a quick, painless end. Then I prayed for everyone who cared about me to find peace with my death. I was about to pray that whoever prepped me, whether it was Otis or Odell, would do a good job so my family would be comforted by my memory picture, but then I realized what Luke was doing.

  He removed the plastic gloves and rubbed his hands together, probably to shake off the powder that comes in some gloves. He shifted his weight so that he lay beside me and stroked the front of my thigh with his naked hand.

  His touch was gentle, but what I felt inside was comparable to what I’d feel if he’d hit me with a crowbar.

  “I’ve wondered about you people who work at funeral homes,” he murmured as he kept caressing my leg. “I read about some of them being freaks who have sex with dead people. They called it something like ‘necrophobia.’ I don’t think I could do that, and I’ve never tried bondage in relationships, but I have to confess seeing you like this is making me happy in all the right places.”

  His putting the tape back over my mouth may have saved me because without it, I would probably have yelled quite a few postgraduate cuss words as well as telling him “necrophobia” would be fear of the dead, not desire for the dead.

  Wayne might not believe in coincidence, but I do now. Just as Luke flipped the hem of my T-shirt higher and his hand crept up my thigh, the doorbell rang. He froze.

  “Callie? Callie?” a male voice called from outside.

  Luke put his finger to his mouth in the world wide hush sign, but I couldn’t have said anything anyway with that duct tape over my lips.

  “Whoever it is will go away,” Luke whispered as though he were reassuring me of something I wanted to hear.

  “Callie? Open this door!” I recognized the voice. It threatened, “Callie, if you don’t open it, I’ll kick it down.”

  Luke believed him because he called out, “If you do that, I’ll kill her. I swear I’ll choke her to death right now.”

  Silence.

  What was happening? Had my rescuer called for reinforcements? Would a SWAT team be crashing in to save me? I squeezed my eyes closed so that the last thing I saw wouldn’t be Luke Robinson’s face. The freak was on top of me again.

  “Unh!” Luke grunted. Would the fool continue while someone was outside?

  I opened my eyes just as Sheriff Wayne Harmon seized Luke Robinson from the back and snatched him off me. Wayne pushed Luke to the floor, twisted Luke’s arms behind him and snapped on a pair of handcuffs. He reached to the floor and came up with a length of white cord, or maybe it was a skinny rope. I’m not sure. Wayne pushed Luke’s body out straight, planted a knee across Luke’s legs to immobilize him, and tied the jerk’s ankles together with the rope.

  I looked the other way, conscious of my helplessness. Wayne pulled my tee as far down as it would go and then used his pocket knife to cut the bindings off my wrists and ankles. For the first time, I realized that they’d been tied so tight that they were painful. Finally, he tore the tape off my mouth.

  “How did . . . ?” I began.

  “How many times have I told you not to leave windows unlocked?” he scolded but with a smile.

  “I put the window up to clear condensation off the mirror. Then I forgot it.”

  “Bill went out of a bathroom window. I came in one.” He radioed headquarters and told them, “I’ve got a young woman here who might need medical attention, and I want transport to take a su spect to the jail.”

  He turned back to me. “Did he do anything to you that I don’t know about?”

  “No.” I burst into tears. It only seemed like moments before some of his men showed up. He let them in and they took Luke away.

  “I’ve got a lot to tell you,” I said. “But how did you know to come here?”

  “You promised to call me when you got home.”

  “I forgot.”

  “I assumed that. I came over to ask why you get so angry when Patel doesn’t call when he says he will and then you do exactly the same thing to me.”

  “Why didn’t you just phone me?”

  “I did. You’ve probably got your cell phone on vibrate again.”

  I nodded.

  “When I got here,” he continued, “your rental car was parked in the driveway. Big Boy was inside but didn’t bark like crazy when I stepped on the porch. I rang the bell and you know what happened after that.”

  An ambulance arrived and I had to submit to having my vitals checked after I went into the bathroom, washed my face, and changed into jeans and a sweater. The apartment was warm enough, but I was shivering as though I were freezing. Wayne asked to
hold my VIRGIN T-shirt. I gave it to him, but I didn’t yet realize why.

  “You’re fine,” the EMT said, “except for these marks and bruises on your wrists and ankles. I can put some ointment on them here and give you medication for your lip or we can take you to the hospital.”

  “What I want you to do is check Big Boy,” I said.

  “Big Boy?”

  “The dog,” Wayne said and motioned toward my Great Dane still asleep by my bed.

  “Luke Robinson told me he gave the dog sodium pentothal from that hypodermic,” I said and gestured toward the evidence bag where Wayne had put the syringe. “He threatened to inject me with it and admitted to me that he overdosed Josh Wingate with the same stuff.”

  I could hardly believe what happened next. That EMT dropped to his knees and placed his stethoscope against Big Boy’s chest. “I think he’ll wake up and be all right, but if it was my dog, I’d take him over to the emergency vet’s office.”

  “Could you take him?” I asked. “Maybe use your siren.”

  “I would if I’d get away with it, but that could cost me my job.”

  “I’ll take him,” Wayne said and lifted all hundred and fifty pounds of dog as though he weighed no more than a sack of sugar. The EMT held the doors open. I grabbed my purse and followed them. Wayne placed Big Boy on the backseat of his cruiser and asked me, “Are you sure you don’t want to go to the hospital and get checked out?”

  “Positive.”

  “You know that if Robinson did more than touch your leg, we need a medical report,” Wayne said and the paramedic nodded.

  I laughed. “Wayne, just ask me outright, but I promise you that if I’d been raped, I would be yelling my head off to go get a rape kit done. You’re law enforcement and I’m the next thing to a medical worker. Don’t be so shy.”

  “Shy? I’m not shy. I’m aware that you’ve been through an unreasonable amount of stress the past few days. I assume that if you’d been assaulted, you would have already told me and I would have called in a female officer, but it’s my duty to ask.”

  “He did assault me.” I touched my lip. I could feel that it was swollen. “But he didn’t rape me.”

  Wayne chuckled. “Your father and Ellen will be glad the wedding is postponed for more than a day or so. That lip wouldn’t look so good on a maid-of-honor.”

  “I gave him something to remember me by, too. I bit him,” I said.

  Shock swept across the faces of both the sheriff and the paramedic.

  “You bit him?” Wayne said.

  “Did you draw blood?” the paramedic asked.

  “Yes, and he spit in my face, too.”

  “You’ll need to go to the hospital. Our policy requires me to bring in anyone who has been exposed to blood.”

  “But my dog . . . “ I protested.

  “I’ll take Big Boy to the vet and then come by the hospital and pick you up.” Wayne instructed a deputy to lock up the apartment and drove away with Big Boy sleeping in his backseat.

  The paramedic led me to the back of the ambulance and assisted me in. He insisted I lie down on the stretcher and fastened belts around me before he rapped on the window to let the driver know we were ready to roll.

  11:00 P.M.

  I looked at the clock, it was eleven, ten I didn’t expect what happened then Buh-leeve me. I’d seen enough of that hospital in the past few days. At least, this should be nothing more than a tube or so of blood. I didn’t see why the paramedic couldn’t have just drawn the blood back at my apartment. He’d sure asked enough questions and filled in enough paperwork.

  The good side of my ambulance ride was that since I was here, I might have time to slip upstairs and question Loose Lucy some more. I seemed to have all the answers except why Luke Robinson had been stalking Jane.

  A tube of blood? I had no idea what kind of rigamarole would be involved. The ambulance men insisted on taking me into the ER on a stretcher and whisked me into one of the small rooms sectioned off with beige curtains. They put a sheet over me, but I was glad I’d changed from my T-shirt about loss of virginity before they took me in to check for an STD. I knew the main thing was to test for HIV, standard operating procedure for blood exposure, but I assumed they would do a full panel of tests.

  The paramedic and nurse spoke softly, but I could hear them as they transferred paperwork. “We brought her in for the HIV panel.”

  The nurse looked over at me. “I know her. We’ve seen her here before. She’s the one who works at Middleton’s Mortuary, and she was here a few days ago when her family thought their father had a heart attack.”

  The paramedic wasn’t interested in when I’d been there before or that Daddy’s heart attack had turned out to be a panic attack.

  “Well,” he said, “while she’s here, get someone to take a look at the abrasions on her wrists and ankles as well as her cut lip. None of those are severe enough to warrant bringing her in, but since she’s here for the test, you might as well have a doc see them.”

  They’d been talking softly, and the nurse’s next question couldn’t have been much louder, but to my ears, she was loud enough to be heard all over the building. “Rough sex?”

  “No!” I shouted. “I bit a murderer!” They both glared at me and went away through the curtains. After that, they left me in there by myself for what seemed like hours.

  When she finally returned, I asked, “Did you hear me tell you that I bit a murderer? That’s how I was exposed. I was protecting myself. I bit a murderer.”

  “Homicide suspect,” a calm voice said from behind the curtain and Sheriff Wayne Harmon stepped in.

  “What did the vet say?” I asked and sat up.

  “She says Big Boy will be fine, but she’s keeping him overnight. He probably would have awakened anyway, but she gave him an antidote to Robinson’s drug. Big Boy was drinking water when I left.”

  Another nurse came in carrying a tray. Lined up neatly, the empty syringes awaited the piercing of my arm and passage of my blood into the glass containers. I know that my dislike of needles in medical procedures on myself sounds unreasonable considering where I work, but it’s totally different to stick sharp objects into living beings, especially if I’m that being.

  At least the nurse was able to draw blood on her first stick. I don’t know if it was really watching the blood drain out of my body or a delayed reaction to what happened back at my apartment, but I felt woozy. When all the tubes were filled, the nurse withdrew the needle, put a cotton ball on the injection site, and slapped a bandage over it.

  Dr. Donald came in. He and the sheriff stepped over to the side of the room and spoke softly with each other.

  When the vampire nurse left, another hospital employee arrived—a very pregnant blonde with a clipboard in her hand and a ballpoint pen perched on her ear and sticking into her hair. “Ms. Parrish, I’m Brandy Counts, and I have a few personal questions for you,” she said.

  “The guys in the ambulance got all my personal information,” I told her, thinking about my name, address, and social security number.

  “This is additional info we need.”

  She turned and looked at the straight-backed chair in the corner. “Do you mind if I sit down?” she asked. “I’ve been on my feet all day.”

  I was surprised that neither Dr. Donald nor Wayne moved the chair closer to her. Both of them are generally well-mannered. They seemed totally engrossed in their whispered conversation. The blonde pulled the chair close to the side of my bed and leaned toward me.

  “Whenever we test for HIV, we must fill out an activity report,” she said, removed the pen from her hair, and poised it over the clipboard she’d propped on her crossed legs.

  I laughed. “You won’t have much to put on it. I don’t go to the gym, and I’m neither a walker nor a runner. In fact, in the words of Tamar Myers when she described Magdalena, the only exercise I get is jumping to conclusions.”

  The expression on her face became confused. “I
’m sorry, I don’t know this Tamar and Magdalena.”

  “Just being conversational,” I said. “Tamar Myers is a writer, and Magdalena is the protagonist in some of her cozy mysteries.”

  “I’m not much of a reader. I thought those might be contact names.”

  Now I was as confused as she’d been.

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “In the event your test results are positive, we have to get in touch with your contacts,” the blonde said.

  Now, I should have understood that. My only excuse for the confused look I must have had on my face is that I felt a little fuzzy in the head. It wasn’t exactly dizziness, but my thoughts seemed to swim.

  “Callie, she’s talking about lovers—sex partners,” Wayne said while Dr. Donald grinned.

  The truth was that I was in the midst of a dry spell. I’m not telling whether J. T. Patel and I had, to use another Magdalena phrase, done the horizontal boogie, but we hadn’t seen each other in months anyway.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” Brandy said to me. “We don’t need any bystanders for this interview.” She turned toward the doctor and the sheriff. “I think you two should step outside. This is private.”

  “It’s okay. We’re all personal friends,” Dr. Donald said.

  I shot him an “eat poop” look. Dr. Donald and I had come close several times, but we’d never, as the kids said, “done the deed.” I’d known Wayne my whole life but certainly never as a lover.

  “I should have sent both of you out before I began. I would have if I weren’t so tired and uncomfortable,” Brandy said. “Dr. Walters, you know how HIPA is. Now, shoo! Go!”

  “Just a minute. I want to tell Callie what’s going to happen now,” Dr. Donald said.

  “I know what’s happening. I’m going to have to tell my life story and name names. Then I’m going home,” I said.

  “Not quite. I know that since your work could expose you to blood . . . “

  “No,” I interrupted. “Otis and Odell might come in contact with blood, but I don’t.”

  “Well, I know for a fact that you’ve done removals which put you in contact with bodies before embalming and therefore possibly blood.”