Dead To Me (Cold Case Psychic Book 5)

by Pandora Pine

  “It’s about damn time. I guess it took a psychic to figure out where I hid the damn thing, huh?” Shannon laughed, but there was no warmth in the sound. “Kayla was a sharp child. I needed to hide the journal in a place she’d never be able to find it. If she did, she would have destroyed it. Would you believe it took me a solid month to pry up that floorboard in my bedroom? I didn’t start writing the journal until I had a safe place to put it and even then, I’d lock myself in the bathroom in case she woke up and tried to barge into my room. Discussions about personal privacy fell on deaf ears. My daughter was willful and wanted what she wanted, when she wanted it.”

  “We got that impression loud and clear from your words.” Tennyson had read over all of Greeley’s notes after dinner last night.

  “What other impression did you get?” Shannon turned away from the baby to face Tennyson.

  “I got the idea that you were a mother who tried everything in her power to make her child happy. For whatever reason, your own daughter hated you, maybe even resented you.”

  Shannon smiled. “You’re good. No one ever believed me. Kayla had this way about her that made everyone think she was sugar and spice and everything nice and made me look like I was crazy. After a while, I started feeling like maybe I was. I tried taking her to psychologists, but she passed their tests with flying colors. I stopped trying to get her help when the last two doctors suggested that I was the one who was in need of their services.”

  “I don’t think you were.”

  “That’s small comfort now, isn’t it?” Shannon huffed a rough laugh.

  “What happened the night of your murder?” Ten asked gently.

  Shannon shot Tennyson a look that asked if he was being serious. “You already know, Tennyson.”

  He did. When Ten shut his eyes, he could see the murder playing out as if he were watching it on a movie screen. “Tell me. I’m going to need to tell my partner all of the details. The only way this evidence will stand up in court is if we get a confession from your killer and the details you give us will count when we’re trying to extract it. I wouldn’t ask you to relive those moments if it wasn’t vital to our case.”

  Shannon nodded and turned back to the infant. Jenny was still sleeping soundly on her back.

  “We’d had chicken nuggets and French fries for dinner. I was so damn sick of that meal, but Kayla loved it and keeping the peace was all that mattered. It was Thursday night and Stephen would be home by dinnertime on Friday. I hadn’t told anyone, but I was done. Done with my daughter. Done with my husband’s empty promises to be home more. Done with it all. All I had to do was get through to Friday and I was going to pack a bag while Kayla was at school. She had her own key. I was going to leave a note on the kitchen counter saying goodbye and just be gone when she got home from school.”

  There had been no mention of this in the journal, at least no mention that Greeley made of Shannon’s intention to leave. “Did anyone know about this?”

  Shannon shook her head no. “I’ve had ten years to wonder about that. The only one who knew about my plan was me. I didn’t do anything out of the ordinary. The laundry was still piled up near the washer. The suitcase I planned to use was still up in the attic. I hadn’t even written out a packing list. The plan was entirely in my head.” Shannon touched a finger to the side of her temple.

  “Children can be sensitive to psychic phenomenon,” Ten said gently. “She could have read your thoughts or figured out your intentions through your body language or passive attitude.”

  “Well, whatever it was, she knew. Somehow, she just knew.” Shannon paced away from the crib. She wrapped her arms around herself, as if she needed a hug. “I was doing the dinner dishes and was lost in my own thoughts. I’d never been a fan of Kansas and was daydreaming about where I wanted to start my new life. I thought maybe San Diego because the weather is always sunny and seventy-five degrees or maybe Florida because I love the manatees that live off the coast. I could picture myself living the second half of my life in flip-flops.” Shannon smiled.

  It was the first real smile Tennyson had seen since he’d entered the nursery. He knew what it was to dream about a better life for yourself away from your family. He’d done it at the beginning of his adult life rather than in the middle of it. His heart broke for Shannon and the dream for her future that she never had the chance to realize.

  “I was washing a handful of silverware and thinking about what it would be like to live close enough to the beach to be able to walk on it every day, when all of a sudden there was this sharp, searing pain in my back. There was no warning at all. No feeling of doom or a sense like I was being watched like you see in those slasher movies. One minute I was washing forks and butter knives, and the next, my back was on fire.”

  Tennyson knew there were times when our brains were capable of overriding our bodies own instincts. In this case, it had cost Shannon Bradley valuable seconds she could have used to formulate some kind of plan to ward off her attacker, or time she could have used to grab for a weapon of her own. “What happened next?”

  Shannon looked up at Tennyson. Her blue eyes were swimming in tears. “I managed to turn around and saw Kayla holding a knife stained with blood. I remember touching my back and my hand coming away wet and warm. I held it up to my face and it was bloody, just like the knife. In that moment, it occurred to me that the blood on the knife was mine. It was like I was somehow removed from the whole situation until that realization struck me. It was also when the pain kicked in. I guess up until that moment I must have also been in shock.” Shannon shook her head, causing her tears to fall down her face. “I didn’t even try to run. I just stared at my daughter. I asked her why, and she smiled at me. She looked at the blood on my hand and then at the knife and started to laugh. She told me she hated me.” Shannon shrugged.

  Tennyson supposed “hate” was putting it mildly when you’d just stabbed your mother in the back with a kitchen knife.

  “I guess that’s par for the course when you’re holding a butcher knife stained with your mother’s blood, looking all Norman Bates. She took a step toward me and I guess that’s when my lizard brain finally kicked in and I turned and tried to run. My feet tangled in each other and I fell to the floor. Kayla laughed before she stabbed me again. That one went through my right lung. I started coughing up blood. She bent low over my body and started whispering to me. Some of the vilest words I’d ever heard in my life. I mean, I knew my daughter hated me, but I had no idea this was why.”

  Tennyson tilted his head to the side. There were a lot of reasons mothers and daughters didn’t get along during the formidable teenage years. “What did she say?”

  “She was saying that Stephen was hers. That I’d never touch him again. That I’d never have him again.” Shannon shivered, as if she was having a visceral reaction to her daughter’s words all over again. “Those words did something to me. It’s like they broke something inside of me. I guess I found my fight then. I managed to buck her off my back and rolled over. I started kicking and punching her. I managed to tell her that I was leaving. That I was out the door on Friday. Kayla laughed harder. She told me she knew and that’s why I had to die. She said I didn’t deserve a new life in the sunshine. All I deserved was a coffin under six feet of dirt.”

  As Tennyson listened to the devastated mother recount the last few moments of her life it struck him that even with as much hate as Kaye and David held for him after he’d come out to them, Ten had never once considered murder as the final solution to his problem. Things in his house had been bad, but they had never been that bad.

  “I kept trying to fight Kayla off, but I was losing a lot of blood. I felt the knife enter my chest and knew it pierced my heart. I saw my mother hovering above me and knew my time was running out. I whispered a prayer for my soul and the next thing I knew, I was floating above my body watching as my daughter continued to stab me.” Shannon looked up at Tennyson. She wiped away her tears and turned bac
k to the infant still sleeping peacefully in her crib.

  “I’m so sorry, Shannon.” Ten held his hands out to the spirit.

  Shannon didn’t hesitate to reach out to Tennyson. “My mother and I watched quietly for a few more minutes while Kayla continued to attack my corpse. She kept up her running monologue of hatred and her plans for her father now that I was finally out of the way. When she finished, she sat back on the floor and seemed to be thinking. I wondered if maybe she was feeling guilt or remorse for what she’d just done, but that didn’t seem to be the case at all. She started cleaning herself up, taking care not to leave the vicinity of my body until she was naked and all the blood was wiped off herself. She used her pajama top to wipe off the handle of the knife and then she put her bloody pajamas into a plastic shopping bag. Stephen hated that I didn’t recycle them, but my carelessness served Kayla well that night.”

  Tennyson knew there was never any bloodstained pajamas recovered from the Bradley house after Shannon’s body had been discovered. “What did Kayla do with the bag? This could be the one piece of evidence that could convict her.”

  Shannon smiled. This time it was full of revenge. “While my mother stayed with me we watched Kayla clean up. She told me what my role would be here in the physical world. She was the one who gave me your name, Tennyson. She told me it would be my job to watch and to wait. That I would be my family’s secret keeper. I had no idea it would take ten years. I had no idea there would be another secret worse than my own murder that I’d have to keep. I’m so sorry that you’re the person that was chosen for me to unburden my family secrets to. You seem like such a nice man.”

  Tennyson felt a shiver rip through his entire body. What the hell could be worse than a daughter murdering her mother so that she didn’t have to share her with her father? Ten found that he didn’t want to know, but he had to. “Tell me.”

  Squaring her shoulders, Shannon took a deep breath and started to speak.

  32

  Ronan

  Ronan found himself looking at a wall of Bradley family photographs in the dining room. There were pictures of Stephen and Kayla together from the time she was an infant through today. Oddly enough, there were no pictures of Shannon anywhere on the wall.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Stephen said from behind Ronan. Kayla was in the kitchen getting drinks for everyone.

  Ronan turned to look at Shannon’s widower. Time seemed to have been kind to the man. He didn’t look a day over forty when Ronan knew for a fact that he was in his early fifties. He didn’t see a single grey hair and his brunette locks were definitely courtesy of good genes and not out of a bottle. “Okay, what am I thinking?” He didn’t mind playing this game. Letting Bradley speak would save Ronan the hassle of trying to draw him out of his shell.

  “You’re wondering where the pictures of Shannon are.” Stephen pushed his hands into his pockets and rocked back on his heels.

  “And I thought Tennyson was the psychic.” Ronan turned back to the wall. “You can tell that Shannon was originally in a few of these pictures.” He pointed to one of Kayla and Stephen together on Christmas Day. He could see the arm of another person in the picture. The arm of someone who’d obviously been cropped out.

  “Kayla put this wall together. I left all of the decorating to her.” He shrugged as if he had no say in the matter.

  “Does it bother you that your murdered wife is nowhere to be found in this house?” Ronan didn’t need Tennyson’s gift to know that there were no pictures of Shannon anywhere under this roof. The only possible exceptions were in boxes up in the attic.

  Stephen shrugged. “She’s in my heart and that’s all that matters.”

  Ronan stepped away from the photos and took a seat at the dining room table. It was easy to see where the members of the family sat. There were placemats in front of all four chairs at the table, but Stephen’s wallet sat next to the mat at the head of the table. The high chair was settled in between the head seat and the one next to it, leading Ronan to assume that Kayla sat in the one next to his.

  “You were in Topeka the night Shannon died.” It wasn’t a question. Ronan left his statement open ended so that Stephen could take his words in any direction he wanted to go.

  Stephen nodded and took his own seat at the table. “I had spoken to her and Kayla earlier that night while they were making dinner. We had made plans to go out to dinner at Kayla’s favorite restaurant when I got back on Friday night. Kayla sounded excited about that and Shannon sounded like her usual self.”

  Ronan wondered what Shannon’s usual self sounded like. Was she sad? Depressed? Putting on a good face? He had a feeling it was the latter. Mothers always put on good faces even if their souls were suffocating on the inside. “Did it bother you that there were never any viable suspects in this case?”

  Stephen looked away from the detective. He picked at a hangnail on his thumb. “Shannon was a good wife and a good mother. She wasn’t having an affair. She wasn’t doing drugs or leading a lifestyle that would put her at risk for being murdered. The detectives never found any clues that there was someone else in our home that night. They did the best they could with the evidence they had.”

  Ronan raised an eyebrow. “So, if they didn’t find any clues that there was a stranger in your house, then the only person who could have killed your wife was your daughter.” It wasn’t a difficult leap to make. It had been Ronan’s suspicion all along that Kayla killed Shannon. It had surprised him that Walsh and Janowitz hadn’t made that leap in their original investigation.

  Matricide had become a more common crime since the Menendez brothers killed both of their parents and the trial was splashed all over the media. Granted, the brothers been in their late teens and early twenties when they’d committed the crimes, so maybe it was a harder deduction for the veteran deputies to make thinking that a thirteen-year-old girl was capable of this kind of bloody crime. Not to mention the fact that women very rarely commit murder with knives.

  Stephen sighed. He didn’t make eye contact with Ronan. “She was thirteen. There was no way a child that small could have overpowered a grown woman.” Something in his voice didn’t sound entirely convinced.

  “Shannon was standing at the sink doing the dishes. The water was running and her back would have been to the kitchen door. It would have been easy for the killer to sneak in and get the jump on her. The first wound, according to the medical examiner was to the back. It would have put her in a considerable amount of pain and could have forced her to the floor quickly. Fighting off an attack from a prone position puts anyone at a disadvantage.”

  “Why would my daughter kill my wife, detective?” Stephen looked tired.

  “It’s a question you’ve asked yourself every day for the last ten years, isn’t it?” Ronan didn’t mean to be a dick by answering a question with a question, but it was time for Stephen to face the cold hard reality that had been staring him in the face for the last decade of his life.

  “I think I’ve heard about enough of this. I agreed to let the two of you come out here as a courtesy to Sheriff Reed. He’s been torn up something awful that he can’t seem to close this case after all these years.” Stephen stood up.

  Ronan knew he was about to get thrown out of the Bradley house. He didn’t have a lot of time left to convince Bradley to open his eyes to the murderer living under his own roof. “You know that’s odd of you to say.”

  “What’s odd?” Stephen sounded more tired than he did curious.

  “You said that the sheriff is torn up that he can’t close this case after ten years. It was your wife that was murdered, Stephen. Why aren’t you torn up that Shannon’s murderer hasn’t been arrested and brought to justice?”

  “What are you saying?” Stephen fisted his hands on his hips. His eyes bore a confused look.

  “I’m saying that you know damn well who killed your wife. What I’m trying to figure out now is if you put your daughter up to it or if she did it all on
her own.”

  “That’s it! Get out of my house!” Stephen bellowed. “Both of you! Get out!”

  “What’s all the yelling about, Daddy?” Kayla asked. She ran into the dining room from the kitchen.

  As Kayla continued to shout, Tennyson walked down the stairs calmly. His cell phone was in his left hand. He walked to Ronan and pulled him aside.

  Ronan held his breath as Tennyson whispered in his ear.

  “What the hell is going on, Detective O’Mara?” Stephen Bradley looked back and forth between Tennyson and Ronan.

  “It seems my partner had a nice little chat with your dead wife, Stephen.” Ronan smiled, happy, at last, to finally have the upper hand.

  “That’s such bullshit,” Kayla scoffed. “You can’t possibly believe in that shit, Daddy.”

  Tennyson grinned at Kayla. “The night that your mother was murdered you had chicken nuggets for dinner. The nuggets were shaped like dinosaurs and the French fries like smiley faces. You wore your butterfly pajamas, the ones that your father had given to you for your thirteenth birthday two months before the murder. They were pink and orange. The top was a tank which made you feel like a young lady since it reminded you of something a teenager would wear.”

  Kayla made a face at Tennyson, but it was obvious Ten was dead on. “Anyone would know that. It was in the police report.” She turned to her father, threading her arm through his. “See, Daddy. He’s a fraud. Kick them out.”

  “Actually,” Ronan said, “none of that was in the police report. According to what I read, you were wearing Jonas Brothers pajamas when the Union Chapel Police responded to your 9-1-1 call.”

  Stephen stiffened and turned a shocked look to his daughter.

  “It was ten years ago, Daddy. How the hell could I remember what pajamas I was wearing when mom died?”

  “I remember everything about that morning as if it happened yesterday. When the deputy called me, I was in the middle of a sales presentation at the Walmart on 165th street in Topeka. It was 10:17 am. I was wearing a blue suit with a blue and white pinstriped shirt. Your mother had given me that shirt for Christmas the year before. I was wearing a solid blue tie that I never wore again after that day. There was a large sunbeam that hit the table in the conference room just as the deputy told me Shannon was dead. I remember thinking that the sun would never shine as brightly again as it had the second before he’d spoken those words.” Stephen shook his head as if to clear the memory of that horrific day from his mind’s eye. “How do you not remember every detail?”