by Jaime Maddox
Even though the evidence was telling, and obvious to her, it was all circumstantial. Murder charges would be hard to prove. For the moment, though, it didn’t matter. They had him on the kidnapping, and hopefully they could hold him in jail while they investigated the suspicious deaths linked to him. Hopefully.
The kidnapping charges had seemed like a slam-dunk, but now her case was looking more like an air ball. Dr. Jessica Benson had disappeared. She was the prosecution’s key witness, and though Mac had talked to her briefly, she needed more information. The preliminary hearing was only three days away. The doctor hadn’t answered her calls and had ignored email and phone messages Mac had sent. A knock at her door had also been futile, and, using her keen detecting skills, she’d determined that no one had seen the doctor for days.
She’d next approached Benson’s father, the sheriff. As a victim of the kidnapping himself, he was proving to be a weak witness. The more Mac talked to him, the more convinced she became that he suffered some form of dementia. His carrying a gun concerned her, and she’d made a few calls about that, but ultimately, that wasn’t her mission. Building a case was, and nothing the sheriff said helped her case. He hesitated before sentences, stopped frequently in the middle of them, and seemed to change his mind three or four times before convincing himself of his own answers. Mac suspected he was confused, but he came across as deceitful. Either way, he could be pulled apart on the witness stand like a piece of cotton candy. She could just see the defense attorney’s smile as he got his client off because her witness was too confused to be of help.
The coroner had seemed a promising witness at first, but now Mac was worried about her, too. Her photographic memory enabled her to recall details that helped the case, minutiae like the mole on Hawk’s left ankle and the ringtone for his phone’s alarm. When Mac had first interviewed her, Wendy was shaky, but her testimony was perfect. As time passed, though, she seemed to become increasingly emotional about the ordeal, and Mac was concerned. When Mac asked her about Hawk at the accident scene, she’d paled. Now, she couldn’t even speak without choking up and seemed to have a difficult time concentrating on Mac’s questions. At the moment, she wasn’t looking very reliable, and Mac’s case wasn’t looking very strong. And without a solid witness giving testimony against him, Hawk could walk.
Mac sipped her coffee and thought about Jessica Benson. They’d tracked her cell phone to the Hartley Clinic, a psych hospital outside Philly. Even if she answered one of those emails, chances were she would be in no condition to testify. When Mac had seen her, she’d looked awful, and after what she’d been through, a case of PTSD was certainly possible.
So if the doctor was unavailable, and the coroner and the sheriff unreliable, she had to find another witness. The DA didn’t need much, just someone to attest that Hawk had kidnapped the three victims. Dr. Ward Thrasher might be the answer. Thrasher had rescued them all, so surely she’d be able to testify. She’d told Mac during a brief interview that she and Benson were friends, but the background check showed they’d lived at the same residence in Philadelphia for more than five years. Benson had just changed her driver’s license address to Garden. Mac suspected a recent breakup, and she figured Dr. Ward was roaming around the mountains so she could stay close to Dr. Jessica.
Fortunately, the cell-phone companies had gotten around to putting a satellite overhead, and she had service. After looking up the number for the Endless Mountains Medical Center, she dialed and held her breath, hoping Thrasher was at work. Her call was transferred to the ER, and Mac was surprised when the doctor answered on the first ring.
“It seems I’m in luck this morning, Dr. Thrasher. I was hoping I’d find you at the hospital. This is Detective Calabrese from the Pennsylvania State Police. We spoke at the hospital in Garden a few days ago, and I need to ask you a few questions.”
She heard a chuckle. Not the typical response she heard when calling witnesses on the phone. “Keeping doctors’ hours, Detective?”
The question startled her as much as the laughter had. She must be losing her edge. Still, she decided to play along with Thrasher. After all, she needed her help. “I think cops invented the overnight shift. You doctors just jumped on the bandwagon after you saw how productive we are at three a.m.”
“You could be right. I tend to get a lot done in the middle of the night. But anyway, how can I help you?”
Mac plunged forward without pause. “I have a theory. The key witness in the Edward Hawk case is missing. Dr. Benson hasn’t been seen for three days. Her father won’t say where she is, but I think he’s protecting her. I think maybe she’s had some sort of mental collapse that she doesn’t want anyone to know about. After all, it wouldn’t look good if a doctor came out and said she was emotionally unstable. I don’t expect you to tell me if she’s just taken off somewhere, or if she’s in the hospital, but I ask you to tell me one thing. In your opinion, will Dr. Benson be able to testify at the preliminary hearing in three days?”
As she paused for a breath, she heard Thrasher clear her throat. “It’s not likely Jess will be testifying.”
Mac shook her head. Just as she thought. It was looking more and more like Benson was suffering from PTSD, and she hoped she’d come around in the year or so it would take to bring Hawk to trial. But if she didn’t find a witness for the preliminary hearing, there would be no trial. “Doc, I need your help.”
“Okay, sure,” she said without hesitation.
Mac explained the situation.
“So you think the sheriff is losing his mind, huh?” Ward asked. “It makes sense. He hasn’t seemed right for the past year. I thought it was just stress over his wife’s illness and then her death. Maybe it’s more, though.”
“I need your testimony at the preliminary hearing, so we can establish the facts of the crime and the DA can get an indictment.”
“I’ll be happy to. Hawk’s insane and needs to be locked up. If I can help with that, I’m in.”
Mac breathed a sigh of relief. Oftentimes, people didn’t want to get involved with something like this, especially when the defendant was a colleague.
“How well did you know Dr. Hawk?” she asked.
“Only by reputation, which is what started all this trouble.” Mac took notes as Thrasher explained how her colleagues had complained about Hawk, eventually raising her own suspicions about his conduct. “So you work for the same company as Dr. Hawk?”
“Yes.” Ward explained how rural hospital sometimes found themselves in need of physicians to staff their emergency departments, and how she and Hawk had both been filling the voids.
“Why are you doing this kind of work? I checked you out. You have an impressive resume. Why’d you leave Philly?”
She heard Thrasher clear her throat again before admitting she and Benson had been domestic partners. They’d come to Garden to care for Jess’s ailing mother. “I’m sorry to hear that,” Mac said. Mrs. Benson’s death explained the trip back to Garden, but not the locum tenens work Thrasher had been doing. “Why’d you quit the hospital in Garden?”
Thrasher was silent. Was she thinking or not wanting to answer the question? After a moment she spoke. “Jess ended our relationship. I thought she just needed some time, so I began working for the locums company so I could stay close by and be here for her.”
“How’s that going?”
“It’s over. Jess is dating again, and so am I. But we’re still friends.”
“And that’s how you ended up in Garden on the night she disappeared? You were looking for her, because she’s your friend?”
Mac didn’t want to sound too abrasive, but it seemed like Dr. Thrasher still had feelings for her ex. That could complicate the investigation and the eventual trial, too.
“Yes, that’s exactly it. I called her around four o’clock to tell her my thoughts about Hawk. Three hours later, she went missing. I was worried.”
“So you went to Garden looking for her.”
“Ye
s. My…girlfriend, Abby, came along. We checked Jess’s house and her dad’s place. Then we stopped at another friend’s house to brainstorm. That friend, Frieda, has a nephew who’s a state trooper. He was able to somehow locate the sheriff and learned that Jess was okay. It was late by then; Abby and I decided to spend the night at Frieda’s, where a phone call from Hawk awakened us.”
“What exactly did he say? This is important for the testimony at the trial. You’ll be one of the only people who can tell what happened. Without Dr. Benson to testify, and without the coroner, Hawk could turn this around and say the sheriff kidnapped him. After all, when the witnesses arrived, Hawk was the one with the bloody nose.”
“Let me start over. Hawk didn’t call me. Or maybe he did. The call came from Jess’s phone, and she spoke first. I remember her asking me where I was. I…it was complicated, our breakup. I didn’t want her to know I’d gone to Garden to look for her. I didn’t want to seem like a stalker. So when she asked me where I was, I balked. I said the first thing I thought of. I told her I was in Philly.”
Dr. Ward didn’t want Dr. Jessica to know she’d been looking for her. This case just keeps getting more and more interesting, Mac thought. “Then what happened?”
“Hawk got on the line, and he said—”
“This is important. How did you know it was Hawk? You only met him once.”
“I just figured it was him. When Jess disappeared, I feared the worst. I’d just told her he was a murderer, and I was sure she wouldn’t take my word for it. I knew she’d check out his cases or confront him. So when I heard his voice, I knew it was him. I said, ‘Hawk,’ and he said something about me being smart enough to figure it all out.”
“So, he never said his name?”
Ward didn’t hesitate but became more excited as she seemed to recall details of their conversation. “No, but I know it was him. Because of our conversation. He told me he was aware I’d been following him every month, and he wanted to know what I knew.”
“He said that?”
“Not verbatim, no. But that’s what he said.”
“Okay, then what?”
“He told me if I wasn’t at the cabin in two and a half hours, he’d kill Jess. And he told me he also had the sheriff, and that if he saw anyone suspicious near the cabin, he’d kill them all. And he told me I knew he would do it. I knew he’d killed already.”
“So how’d you come up with this idea for a posse?”
Ward told Mac her fears about calling the police, that Hawk had nothing to lose by killing everyone, and how she knew some local guys with Quadrunners who could help her with the mountain rescue. “When you got to the cabin, what exactly did you see?”
“The sheriff had his gun pointed at Hawk. Hawk was on the floor, with blood pouring out of his nose. It was on his shirt, his pants, his hands. He was trying to hold pressure with one hand, and he held the other underneath to catch the blood. Jess and Wendy were taped to the kitchen chairs, and they both had strips of tape over their mouths.”
“Did anyone else see them tied up? Or did you free them before the posse arrived?”
“Let me think. Abby was right behind me. I can give you her contact information if you don’t have it. And Frieda was right there behind us. I’m sure they both saw the girls the way I did. I pulled the tape from everyone’s mouth, so I don’t think it was there when the guys arrived. It took them a minute to get up to the cabin. We had to cut their arms and legs free, though, so I think probably everyone saw them tied up.”
“Good. That’s good information, Doc. I think you’ll be a powerful witness. Are you ready to testify?”
“Yes. Hawk needs to be put away. What about the murders at the hospitals? Are you looking into them?”
“Good question. I wish I had an easy answer for you. These murders, if they were murders—and I don’t think we’ve proved that yet—occurred in at least three or four different counties. Those are just the ones we’re aware of. That means multiple jurisdictions are involved. Someone from my team is looking at this, but I’ll be closely involved. Have you talked to someone from the state police in Tunkhannock yet?”
“Someone was here and spoke with Abby. She’s the CEO of the hospital. And they took copies of all the records we flagged. I didn’t talk to anyone, though.”
“You will, don’t worry.”
“Yeah. I didn’t think I could avoid that one.”
“I’m just curious, Doc. What made you look into Hawk the way you did?”
“You know what, Detective, I can’t really take credit. It took a whack over the head to make me see it. When I calculated it, I realized the odds of these murders being coincidence were just impossible.”
“But your evidence is all circumstantial.”
“Doesn’t that count? I mean, really, his patients die at a rate about five times more frequent than anyone else’s. He’s gotta be killing people. It’s the only explanation.”
Mac sighed as she leaned back and looked at the lake. Over the distant mountains, she detected a faint glow that heralded the sunrise. The birds were chattering away, and a few campers were making noises that were unmistakably human. It was all so perfect, except the circumstantial evidence made for a weak case.
“Let’s focus on getting Hawk on the kidnapping charges. The murder investigations will come next.”
Mac told her what time to be in court, and she closed the phone after thanking her for her time and effort. She leaned back and thought through her case again. Would it seem suspicious to the defense if the DA failed to call any of the kidnapping victims to the stand? Thrasher was an outstanding witness, but shouldn’t one of the three victims testify? She supposed it didn’t matter. The sheriff was crazy, the coroner was on her way to crazy, and the doctor was in exile. She didn’t have any choice.
Her short hair was easy to manage, and Mac covered her fingers with some gooey stuff before arranging her thick, blond strands into a perfect bed-head coif. She smiled at her reflection. Perfect. Her blue eyes didn’t appear tired, but the bags under them suggested she’d packed for an overnight trip. At least she didn’t look like she’d been on a ten-day cruise. After brushing her teeth, she changed into her standard Brooks Brothers suit and headed to her office.
Guiding her Crown Vic through the unpaved roads of the camp with just her parking lights had become a rather simple effort, and a few minutes later, Mac was going full speed on the paved country road that led to the barracks and her personal office. A pile of reports greeted her, and she leafed through them, finding some things she’d been waiting for from the lab, new things that would need her attention, and phone calls to return. It amazed her how many witnesses called her late at night, or early in the morning, suddenly remembering details they’d forgotten.
Would another call to Jessica Benson help? If Jess was really sick, nothing might work. But how could Mac not try? Look what was on the line. Yes, all of the evidence against Hawk in the murder cases was circumstantial, but it still added up to serial killer. Mac couldn’t let him walk. Men like him didn’t tend to stop. It was a hunger, like the need for food, or air, or sex.
Mac needed to stop Hawk now. If she didn’t, she wouldn’t have a second chance.
That meant she needed to reach Dr. Jessica Benson.
Mac had worked with battered women in the past. Closely, in fact, as she taught self-defense to women from the shelters in local counties. They’d experienced terrible traumas, and she tried to be the one who eased their burdens. She didn’t intend to make their lives harder, but sometimes, she had to do the difficult thing. If these women didn’t testify, if she didn’t cajole and coax and coerce, the perps who’d beaten them and raped them and robbed them would go free. And they’d do it again to someone else. It was hard to face someone who’d hurt you, a man who’d stolen your dignity and your power, and testify against him. But it had to be done. It was the only way the system could work.
Her decision made, Mac dialed Jessica’s number
. She wasn’t surprised when it went to voice mail, just as the prior half dozen calls had. She had her speech ready when the tone sounded. “Dr. Benson, Detective Calabrese here, again. I know you’ve been through a terrible ordeal because of Dr. Hawk. Testifying against him is probably a scary prospect. Even the thought of seeing him again must be terrifying. But if you don’t testify, Dr. Benson, Hawk could go free. And we both know if he does, he’s not coming back to face any more charges. He was ready to leave the country when we caught him, and he’ll be gone as soon as we give him the chance. I don’t know where he’ll go, but we both know what he’ll do when he gets there. He’s going to kill innocent people. If you can gather the strength and the courage to face him and tell your story, I guarantee you he’ll go to prison for a long time. He won’t be able to hurt anyone else again. The hearing is in three days. The county courthouse, one o’clock. I hope I see you there.”
Mac ended the call and refilled her coffee, then went back to her desk to review the reports of other active cases in the department. It looked like the little bags found at the triple fatality in the SUV indeed contained heroin. Shultz and his colleagues had recovered seven thousand dollars in small bills and two stolen handguns from the scene. It was likely the three dead teens had already made a stop or two before their fatal crash. The accident-reconstruction team had finished their report in short order, and Mac reviewed that. High speed was the ultimate cause. The experts estimated the vehicle was going nearly seventy miles per hour on a winding road when the driver lost control. The tragedy infuriated Mac, and she signed the report and put it aside, happy to move on to other matters.
When her stomach growled hours later, she called in an order for a pizza. When it began grumbling again that evening, she looked at the clock and decided to head home for the night. She deserved at least one home-cooked meal in a day, and she planned to grill some veggies for a wrap to eat along with the fresh corn she picked up from a farm stand beside the road.