Bleeding Through: A Rachel Goddard Mystery (Rachel Goddard Mysteries)

by Parshall, Sandra

  “Hey, Rita,” Tom said.

  “What is it now?” She stabbed a plastic clothespin onto the line to hold a corner of the towel. “Don’t you think it’s a little early in the day to be pestering people?”

  Mrs. Jankowski narrowed her eyes at Tom and pressed her lips into a grim line, as if backing up her daughter’s demand that he explain this intrusion.

  “I need to ask you a few more questions,” he said to Rita. “Can you give me your attention for five minutes?”

  “Oh, for god’s sake.” Rita had grabbed another towel to hang on the line, but now she flung it back into the yellow plastic basket. “What is it? Why are you bothering me?”

  Tom looked pointedly at Mrs. Jankowski. Her return gaze said clearly that she wasn’t going away. Tom hoped she would at least keep quiet. Looking around the small yard, he saw a set of aluminum chairs and a table on a square of concrete outside the back door. “Can we sit down over there and talk?”

  “I’m busy.” Rita plucked the towel from the basket again. “I need to get this done before I go in to work.”

  “All right then,” Tom said. “We’ll talk here. Did you see Jordan Gale the night Brian was murdered?”

  The wet towel slipped from her fingers and landed on the ground. “Shit,” she muttered, stooping to pick it up. She shook it, obviously her idea of getting it clean again. “No, I didn’t. And why do you keep raking up ancient history?”

  “Jordy Gale,” Mrs. Jankowski put in, “is nothing but a waste of space on this earth.”

  The remark jerked Tom’s attention back to Mrs. Jankowski. Jordan’s quiet and mild-mannered personality couldn’t have provoked that harsh judgment from the woman who had once been his mother-in-law for a few months. She was probably condemning his drug use.

  He started to ask, but Rita cut him off with a groan. “For god’s sake, Mama, will you shut up?”

  “Don’t you be disrespectful to me!” Mrs. Jankowski sounded more like a peeved child than a parent.

  Tom could imagine how his mother and father would have reacted if he’d ever told one of them to shut up. Regardless of his age, a lecture would have followed, leaving Tom thoroughly ashamed. Rita appeared unrepentant for saying something she probably said every day, and her mother didn’t push for an apology.

  “I keep raking all this up again,” Tom said, “because somebody’s not telling me the truth. You say Jordan wasn’t at the concert that night. He says he wasn’t. But I’ve got a newspaper picture that shows him in the audience.”

  “That picture Shelley was waving in my face?” Rita sneered. “I told her, it’s not him. I don’t know how anybody can look at that and say for sure who’s standing way in the back in the dark.”

  “We can get the original and enhance it.” That wasn’t going to happen, but Tom might as well try to get some mileage out of the threat. “If it’s him, we’ll be able to tell.”

  “But why? Why do you care so much about whether Jordy was there or not?”

  “I’m more interested in why he’s lying about it. When people lie to me about things that don’t seem to matter, I start thinking maybe they do matter after all.”

  Rita didn’t answer, but hauled a wet bed sheet out of the basket and draped it over the line. Tom grabbed a corner that threatened to graze the ground. Together he and Rita tugged the sheet straight on the line while her mother stood idle, looking on.

  “If Jordy’s been withholding evidence all this time,” Tom said as they arranged the sheet, “the sooner I find out about it, the less trouble he’ll be in. The same goes for you. Think of yourself, Rita.”

  Mrs. Jankowski gave a short, harsh laugh, but Tom wasn’t sure what had provoked it.

  “Be quiet,” Rita snapped at her mother. Her fingers curled into a tight ball around one edge of the hanging sheet, squeezing free a drop of water that fell and disappeared into the grass. She looked at Tom, her face screwed up as if she wanted to cry. “I’m not going to let you drag me back into that mess. You know how people have been treating me ever since it happened.”

  “You reap what you sow,” Mrs. Jankowski said, nodding as if she’d uttered a nugget of profound wisdom.

  Fury sparked in Rita’s eyes, and her expression hardened into defiance. “No, I didn’t see Jordy at the concert that night,” she told Tom, “and I don’t know why it would matter if he was there. Everybody heard Brian and Vance arguing. Everybody knows Vance killed him. Seems to me your dad already solved that murder. Why don’t you stick with solving the one that happened on your watch?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to do. I’m on my way to see Vance. Want me to give him a message from you?”

  For a second Rita’s lively face went slack, her reaction unreadable. She turned back to her chore. “No, I don’t have any message. Now I’m done talking. Leave me alone.”

  Tom had no choice but to give up for the moment. Returning to his car, he had the strong feeling he’d heard nothing but lies, and the uneasy sensation that the ground he was treading on might break open any second and reveal a chasm he hadn’t suspected was there.

  Chapter Thirty-three

  The tabby kitten cringed in terror as Rachel peered into his ears through an otoscope, but he didn’t try to escape. A family named Williamson had found the starved, flea-ridden little creature stuffed into their roadside mailbox. They’d dubbed him Lucky, which Rachel thought was fitting. He couldn’t have landed with more caring people.

  She tried to ignore the noise of a commotion elsewhere in the clinic—somebody’s dog causing trouble, a cat eluding capture after escaping from its owner? Then she heard a scream. She dropped the otoscope on the steel table, flung open the door, and sprinted toward the sound.

  Holly, Shannon, and two vets had gathered around Michelle in the hallway outside Rachel’s office. Michelle covered her mouth with one shaking hand and groped at her trouser-clad right leg with the other. But Holly was the one who had screamed. Pointing into the office, she cried, “A diamondback! I saw it too. That’s what scared her.”

  “A what? A snake? Close the door.” Nobody moved. “Will somebody close the damned door before it gets out?”

  One of the vets, Diane Davis, leaned into the office, grabbed the doorknob, swung the door shut.

  Rachel gripped Michelle’s shoulders, momentarily disoriented by the sensation that they had become children again and Rachel was trying to reassure her silly sister that the creature she feared most couldn’t hurt her. “It’s okay. It’s trapped in there. We’ll get rid of it.”

  Michelle’s eyes appeared unfocused, and she seemed not to hear. Rachel almost shook her, but that seemed superfluous when her sister’s body was already trembling from head to toe. “Michelle? Look at me. Michelle!”

  At last Michelle’s blue eyes fixed on Rachel’s face. She reached toward her leg again. “I moved my feet—I felt something, my foot hit something—I heard a strange noise and I looked down and it—I think it bit me.”

  Horrified realization flooded in. “Oh my god. Where did it bite you? Show me.”

  Hoping fervently that her sister, in her phobia-fueled panic, had imagined the bite, Rachel stooped to look where Michelle pointed. She pulled up the leg of Michelle’s linen slacks, rolled down the thin trouser sock. Blood seeped from two puncture wounds just above her ankle. The skin around them had already begun to redden and swell.

  “Oh, no,” Rachel said. “Shannon, call an ambulance. Tell them it’s a diamondback rattlesnake bite and she’ll need antivenom serum the second she gets to the hospital.” As Shannon rushed toward the front desk to make the call, Rachel added, “Then call the hospital and make sure they’re ready with it. We have some here, but it’s for dogs and I don’t know what the dose would be for a person.”

  Michelle had begun to sag, and Rachel had to put both arms around her to hold her up. “Somebody get her a chair and bring me a pan of warm water and some soap and a fresh pair of gloves. Hold on, Mish. Don’t you dare go into shock.�
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  In two minutes Michelle was sitting in a wooden chair fetched from an exam room. Her face had gone dead white and perspiration stood on her forehead and upper lip. “It hurts,” she whispered, looking up at Rachel with frightened eyes. “This could kill me, couldn’t it?”

  “You’re going to be fine. Just stay calm.” When Holly brought what she had requested, Rachel pulled on latex gloves and stooped in front of Michelle. “I’m going to clean the wound. We have to keep your leg below your heart and you need to keep absolutely still. The more you move around, the quicker the toxin will spread.”

  “Okay. Okay.” Michelle breathed in quick gasps, and her whole body went rigid.

  “Relax, breathe normally. You’ll be okay. The snake had to bite through your pants leg and your sock, so it might not have injected a full load of venom.” The angry wound, though, made Rachel think Michelle had taken in enough poison to do serious damage.

  With as little jostling as possible, Rachel rolled up Michelle’s trouser leg, slipped off her shoe, and removed her sock. By the time she had washed the wound, the ambulance medics were in the building. They elevated the head of the gurney and shifted Michelle onto it while Rachel held her foot to minimize movement of her leg.

  “You’re coming with me, aren’t you?” Michelle reached for Rachel’s hand.

  Rachel squeezed Michelle’s hand and brushed strands of hair off her perspiring brow. “I’ll be along in a few minutes. I need to catch the snake first, okay? You’re going to be all right, Mish.” You have to be all right. I love you so much. On impulse, she leaned down and kissed her sister’s forehead.

  Tears welled in Michelle’s eyes. “He did this. He wants to kill me.”

  “Don’t think about that. Don’t upset yourself. I’ll be with you soon.”

  After the ambulance left with Michelle, Rachel heard a buzz of voices from all directions. Everybody in the place, employees and clients, chattered with excitement, and several small dogs added their high, sharp barks. She asked Dr. Davis to finish examining the cat named Lucky and give her the necessary vaccines. “I have to get something to catch the snake with,” she told Holly, “and something to put it in. Stay right here, and don’t let anybody open that door.”

  “Oh, I’m real sure nobody’s gonna try to,” Holly said. She gave an exaggerated shudder. “I can’t abide snakes. It scares me just knowin’ it’s in there.”

  Hurrying down the hall to the basement door, Rachel seethed with anger and frustration and worry about Michelle. How the hell did somebody get into the building to leave a snake in her office? She ought to call the locksmith over here and dump the rattler at his feet and tell him to deal with it. Had she wasted the money she’d paid for those supposedly tamper-proof locks?

  She flipped on the basement light and headed down the stairs to the equipment storage area. Somewhere down here she had a snake hook and a pincer tool, but she couldn’t recall the last time she’d used them or where they were stored. She moved to the outer wall where loops of various sizes, attached to poles, hung on a row of hooks. There they were, the two snake-catching tools, hanging together.

  As she reached for them, the basement window caught her eye. Something didn’t seem right about the window, high on the wall at ground level at the rear of the building. Rachel walked over to examine it. She could have sworn it had a screen on it. Where was the screen now? She looked around, didn’t see it. Who had pulled a metal cabinet from its normal place against the adjacent wall and pushed it underneath the window?

  Frowning, Rachel examined the window more closely. The simple twist lock was in the open position. It had a keyed lock too, and that should be providing the real security, but when Rachel tugged on a section of the window, it slid open sideways.

  “Damn it!” She felt like slamming a fist into the concrete block wall. She felt like kicking herself. How could she be so stupid? All the time she’d been worrying about the locks on the front and back doors, this little window in the basement was available to anybody who wanted to get into the building at night. She turned the twist lock into the closed position. The small key to the other lock was probably on the key ring she kept in her desk drawer, the one that also held an assortment of cabinet and drawer keys.

  She would worry about the lock later. Right now she had to remove the snake from her office and get over to the ER to be with Michelle. She grabbed the tools she needed and looked around for a secure container to put the snake in. Rummaging through the supplies on the shelves, she found a plastic box with a snap-on lid that should be large enough. She dumped the container’s contents, dozens of bags of syringes purchased in bulk, onto the shelf. Next she located elbow-length gloves of thick leather and pulled them on.

  Upstairs at her office door, she realized she had an audience of staff and clients crowded together at a safe distance to watch. “I want all of you to move back,” she told them. “If I can still see you, you’ll be too close.”

  They seemed reluctant, but they dispersed.

  Clutching both the snake hook and pincer tool in one hand, Rachel pushed the door ajar, moving cautiously in case the snake waited just inside. Although she wouldn’t say she was afraid of poisonous snakes, she had a healthy respect for their cunning and the damage they could do. Knowledge and common sense should protect her, yet she felt her heartbeat speed up and her breath quicken.

  She poked her head into the office, her gaze sweeping the floor. She saw nothing. If she couldn’t locate it, she would be vulnerable to attack from any angle. She grabbed the plastic container, stepped into the office, and kicked the door shut behind her.

  “Come out, come out,” she whispered, “wherever you are.”

  A faint sound of movement, something sliding on the floor. Under the desk?

  Drawing a deep breath, she told herself to stay calm. She pushed the plastic container ahead of her and removed the lid.

  “Okay now,” she murmured. “Come on out and let’s get this done.” Leaning down, she peered under the desk. What she saw made her jerk back. A rattler at least four feet long lay coiled on the floor in the open center space under her desk. The snake raised its head in her direction, and its muscular body, covered with gray and black blotches and ending in a black tail, began to contract, pulling itself taut as if preparing to strike. As Rachel stared into its cold, unblinking eyes, the snake’s tail lifted and began to vibrate, producing a soft rattle. This was a male, she noted, with a long, thick tail that tapered gradually to the black tip.

  Rachel ran her tongue over her dry lips. The instant she went for him, he would go on the offensive. He was big enough to get at her beyond the protective gloves.

  She didn’t want to get down on hands and knees because she couldn’t move out of that posture quickly. Bending from the waist, she stuck the snake loop tool under the desk, slow and easy. The rattling grew louder. She felt the end of the pole make contact with the snake’s body.

  The snake’s head shot out, mouth agape, fangs going for Rachel’s hand. She gasped and jumped back out of the way, and the snake hit the pole hard enough to knock it out of her grip. Then the snake took off, slithering out from under the desk, its body writhing rhythmically, propelling it across the tiled floor. It aimed for the space between the wall and the back of a filing cabinet.

  Standing, trying to catch her breath and slow her heartbeat, Rachel watched the snake wedge its head into the space. “Good luck with that, pal.” She swiped perspiration off her upper lip with the back of her hand. “You don’t seem to know how big you are.”

  The snake worked the first foot of its body between the cabinet and the wall before it got stuck.

  Rachel watched for a couple more minutes to make sure it wouldn’t decide to back out. But it curled its lower body into a loose spiral and lay still, apparently feeling safe as long as its head was hidden. Rachel approached cautiously. Starting at the tail, she worked the loop up over the snake’s body as far as she could and tightened it. She held the pinc
er ready in her other hand as she slowly pulled the rattler out of the narrow space.

  When its head came free, the snake twisted to strike, but Rachel clamped the pincer on and immobilized its head. Holding the snake’s thrashing body with the hook and pincer, she lowered it into the plastic container. By the time she got the front half into the container, the rear half was out again. She worked with the hook until all of the snake was inside. Hanging on with the pincer until the last second, she pulled off the loop and lowered the lid onto the container. Holding the lid down with one foot, she shuffled it closer to the desk. Her copy of Merck’s veterinary diagnostic manual looked hefty enough to match the snake’s strength. She grabbed it off the desk and dropped it onto the lid.

  Leaning against her desk with her face in her hands, she felt every drop of adrenaline abruptly drain from her body.

  The snake changed everything.

  She knew who had put it here, she knew it wasn’t an anonymous stalker, and she knew Michelle wasn’t the target.

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Total silence in the cruiser for ninety minutes felt like a blessing to Tom, and the spring landscape of mountainsides dotted with blooming dogwoods and rhododendrons was a bonus. Out of radio and cell tower range, he didn’t have to answer questions, respond to demands, issue any orders. He let himself relax for the first time since he’d seen Shelley Beecher’s plastic-wrapped body lying in a ravine on Saturday.

  The respite didn’t last. Without distractions, he had to face his own bedeviling questions about the case. If he blamed Shelley’s murder on her attempt to prove Vance Lankford innocent, he had to ask who would be willing to kill her in order to stop her. If Vance didn’t kill Brian, Hadley’s murderer was still walking around free, and desperate to avoid suspicion. That was as strong a motive for killing Shelley as Tom could ask for—but to believe it, he also had to believe his father had arrested the wrong man in the Hadley case six years before and helped to put him behind bars for life. John Bridger hadn’t been perfect, he’d made mistakes, but he was a fair-minded investigator, and Tom couldn’t accept a mistake of these proportions without rock-solid proof.