If It Walks Like A Killer (The Carolina Killer Files #1)

by Kiersten Modglin

  Hampton stood from his chair, getting on his knees in front of Rachael. He grasped her hands in his and looked at her firmly. His breath smelled of coffee and spearmint gum and the whiskers on his chin had a few gray places Rachael hadn’t noticed before.

  “Rachael, if you tell me there’s nothing to find I’ll believe you. But if you believe, even just a tiny bit, that it’s possible, you need to tell me. I know she’s your best friend, but I also know you didn’t commit murder and I don’t want to see you in prison for it. Your children deserve to have their lives with you. They deserve days at the park and picnics. I want you to help your daughter dress for prom and dance with your son on his wedding day. I don’t want to see Caide steal that away from you. Unless you allow us to help you, you’re giving up. Unless you help us, you’ve let him win.”

  He brushed a piece of hair from Rachael’s face and she let herself daze off in his eyes. He’d put it in a way that she could no longer see any way around it. For years now, she’d kept the secret that could ruin the life she’d built, but in that moment, his thumbs rubbing the backs of her hands in an attempt to ease her fears, she found herself remembering that night. The night everything changed. She sat still, anchoring herself in his gaze as if afraid that if she were to blink she’d drown in a sea of lonely misfortune, and then before she knew what was really happening she heard herself begin to speak.

  “I don’t know when it started. Probably in college, but I never suspected it back then. I mean, they hated each other. I always thought maybe they were just jealous of the time I spend with the other, I don’t know. After we got married and moved back, Audrey stayed in Chapel Hill. We kept in touch, not like we used to, but a phone call every week or two. She told me she’d met John and that she was falling in love with him. He proposed before Brinley was six months old. A few months after their wedding, Caide’s job started and he, almost immediately, started having long business trips that would take him out of town.”

  She frowned, squeezing his hands for comfort and making sure they were still there. “On Brinley’s first birthday, Audrey told me they were moving home. My brilliant, free-spirited, ‘never coming back to that dump of a town’ best friend was moving home of her own free will. Still, I thought nothing of it. I was just excited to have her home. Once she was here for about a year, she told me they were trying for a baby. They’d been trying for a while and she was beginning to worry. A few months after that, she called me in hysterics. She told me that John was sterile. They started having a lot of problems after that. We didn’t realize how serious the problems were until she showed up alone to Thanksgiving. We never even talked about it, I was so scared to say the wrong thing or to hurt her worse somehow. That night, after dinner I sent her home with half of the leftovers. Caide walked her outside, I stayed in with Brinley. I was going to get her ready for bed when I noticed Audrey had forgotten her part of the apple pie. I picked it up to walk it outside to her and that’s when I saw them.”

  She swallowed hard, looking away from him for the first time. “Her arms were thrown around his neck. I thought they were hugging at first. Then I saw him pull away, he held onto her face like they were teenagers. I watched her run her hands through my husband’s hair and I watched him rubbing his hands all over her like it was nothing. Like they’d been doing it for years. Like they weren’t standing out by our porch light, just feet away from me catching them.”

  She paused, remembering that night. She recalled how painful it had been, like a slap in the face. She remembered how disrespected she’d felt. “It all made sense then—how his business trips had stopped occurring after she’d moved home, how their playful banter could turn cool and hateful with no notice at all, how I’d come home from the studio and find them there together watching TV or cooking supper. John was never there. It all fell into place. I should’ve done something. I should’ve screamed, should’ve thrown something, kicked her out, or hell, even kicked him out. Instead I snuck quietly back into the house, like I was the one doing something wrong. I put Brinley to bed and cleaned up the kitchen. He came back in a few minutes later, offering no excuse as to why he’d been outside for so long. He kissed the side of my head, I remember holding my breath, I was so afraid I’d smell her perfume and that would break me.”

  Hampton rubbed her arms gently, inching closer to her.

  “I never saw them together again. That spring, she told me she was pregnant. I pretended to be happy for her, but I knew what it meant. I’d started stashing money after that Thanksgiving. I’d told myself if I caught them again I would leave. I don’t know if I actually would have, but it made me feel better to believe it at the time. What kind of a weak woman stays after that?” She looked at Argus, back to the present for just a moment.

  He placed his hand on her shoulder, merely inches from her face now. Shayna’s presence was nearly forgotten. “Go on.”

  “So, I used cash to buy a car from out of town. I put a suitcase and a car seat in it. It was our little getaway plan, just me and Brin. I bought a paternity test. I was going to make her take it. If the baby was Caide’s, we’d leave. I would take my daughter and we’d sneak off into the night, never to be heard from again. Caide’s big on what people think of him, that’s what he cares about more than anything, I think maybe that’s why he never left me. He’d be terrified to be the man who left his wife and child. Anyway, I kept saving, kept planning for the baby to be born, for my question to be answered. Then, when she was eighteen weeks along, Audrey miscarried. We went to the hospital with her, cried with her. I hated myself for being glad it was over, but that didn’t stop the relief I felt. I’d never have to look at that awful paternity test ever, ever again.”

  She dropped Hampton’s hand then, rubbing a tear from her eyes. He backed up slightly. “That night, I made love to my husband for the first time in nearly a year. He was so full of hatred and passion that I was sure he was going to just die right then. I wasn’t sure if I should tell them what I knew, after waiting so long, so I continued to put it off. Six weeks later, the morning sickness hit me. It was so much worse than it had been with Brinley. When I broke the news to Caide, I think it was what he needed at the time. Those nine months were the happiest we’d ever been, the happiest we’d ever be. I locked up the money and the test and I hid it away where he’d never find it. Once our pregnancy was announced, Audrey and John moved away, back to Chapel Hill. As much as it hurt, as pissed as I was, I could never bring myself to tell them. Audrey is my best friend, she’s the only person who’s always been there for me. I can’t imagine being truly mad at her. I can’t believe she’d do something like this.”

  Argus rubbed her hands once more before moving back to his seat. “Rachael, when did Audrey come back home?”

  “Recently.” She thought back to the day Audrey had shown up and gasped. “The day of the murder. She visited me a few hours before it happened.”

  Shayna pressed her lips into a fine line, a worried look filling her face.

  “You don’t think they planned this, do you? She comes over to check up on me? They couldn’t have.” Rachael shook her head in disbelief.

  “We know this doesn’t make sense to you, but you have to look at the fact that it does make sense. Audrey comes back into town the day Blaire’s murdered. Caide is the prime suspect until suddenly they have a tape proving you were there, even though this tape goes against any logical time frame. Caide supports you in court, hires me, and plays a doting husband while he thinks you are just a prison time bomb, but then when we suddenly have something that could vindicate you, he gets mad. He refuses to pay me and then when I continue to work your case, he publicly withdrawals support. If one thing’s been made clear here, it’s that if Caide doesn’t believe you’re guilty he certainly wants everyone else to.”

  Rachael felt fury in the far corners of her body. If Argus was right, she’d been betrayed and this was not going to be an easy fix.

  “So how do we find out for sure?”
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  Argus looked to Shayna before speaking. “Well, first of all, we have to hear it from you. Is Audrey capable of altering a tape like this?”

  Rachael mustered a deep breath. “If you’re asking me if I believe my best friend, the girl who helped me get ready for my first date and pick out my prom dress, the girl who cried with me when I found out I was pregnant, who held me at my dad’s funeral and made me soup when I got mono, if you’re asking me whether I believe she could’ve framed me for murder, whether she could sleep at night knowing I’m rotting in a cell for something I didn’t do, just so she could have my husband, I can’t answer that. Not now, not like this.” She paused, hating herself for what she was about to admit. “But if you’re asking me if Audrey is talented enough to alter a tape, or to even create a tape, given the right amount of time, the answer is yes.”

  Argus nodded. “Then you need to know, we don’t have the time or resources to investigate this tape or have it sent off for analysis before your trial. The judge won’t allow it and frankly the police may not hand it over. That being said, we have no other choice but to have it be our word against theirs.”

  “Just like that?”

  “You’re a cheated wife, Rachael. The jury wants to side with you. The world wants to side with you. If we give them our evidence, they’ll take it and run with it. We just have to give them a solid reason to believe us.”

  Shayna spoke up. “Rachael, you know what this means, right? You’ll have to go up on the stand. You’ll have to testify against them. You’ll have to admit you knew about their affair.”

  “Based on what? A theory? We have no more on them than they have on us. You want me to ruin their lives even if they’re innocent, just to save mine? How can you ask me to do this? After all that I’ve been through? You want me to do it to someone else?”

  “Not if you don’t believe it. Notice I said don’t believe it, not don’t want to believe it. We won’t ask you to lie on the stand,” Argus said.

  Rachael was silent once more, thoughts and emotions rattling through her.

  Shayna sighed. “Rachael, either way, I’m going to have to testify that you tested negative for DID. I have to tell the judge and the jury that you’re of sound mind and that I don’t believe you could have blacked out during Blaire’s murder. I’ll be signing your one way ticket to prison, you realize that? Federal prison. For life. We believe you’re innocent, if you believe in yourself like we do, then you know that someone out there did this and someone out there is about to get away with it if we don’t stop them.”

  “Theory or not,” Hampton added, “we have a damn good case against them—one that stands a chance in any court. Shayna’s right, now, we can either bend over and let them take you off to jail with our tails tucked or we can fight like hell to get your life and your freedom back. The choice is yours.”

  Rachael sulked. “This is just a lot. I think I just need some time to process.”

  “Of course,” Shayna said.

  Argus nodded, almost grumpily, but agreed. “We need to know though. Sooner rather than later so we can prepare.”

  Rachael nodded, resting her head on a pink pillow beside her. With Shayna and Argus both staring at her, she closed her eyes, hearing the clock on the wall tick as she, for once, counted down the minutes until she could go back to jail.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Pamela Underwood

  Out of her entire fifty two years of living, Pam Underwood had very few memories that weren’t blurred by alcohol or drugs. She remembered her first day of fifth grade, how the new pants her mother had gotten her from Goodwill had someone else’s name written on the pocket, and how no matter how hard she tried she couldn’t convince her classmates that Jessica Stewart was a famous designer, not the previous owner. She remembered her seventeenth birthday, her first “real” date and how he’d tried to feel her up before they even got through dinner. She remembered how on the way home he’d told her that she shouldn’t dress like a slut if she wasn’t going to either put out or at least pay for dinner. She remembered the day she went into labor, fourteen hours of excruciating pain, all for a little pink ball of skin who kept her up all night for the next two years. She remembered the first time she’d held her daughter, how the nurses had ooh-ed and ahh-ed over the little bundle of joy. She remembered looking into Blaire’s face and thinking only ‘This is what all the fuss is about?’ To say Pam had been a bad mother was a bit of an exaggeration, mostly because she was never much of a mother at all. She’d worked two jobs most of Blaire’s childhood. She’d never been one for crafts or bake sales and she wasn’t the type of parent that the school asked to chaperone school functions. Though it’d been rough and she’d never really cared much for her daughter, she’d always tried to do the best she could for her with what little they had. Of course, as Blaire grew older and more headstrong, Pam saw Blaire’s actions as less of a good thing and more of an insult to Pam’s simple way of life. She hadn’t spoken to her daughter in over five years and hadn’t seen her in eight, yet somewhere in the back of her mind she’d always figured her daughter would eventually come to realize that the city wasn’t the place to live and she’d come home. She’d always imagined that one day they’d build a relationship.

  Of all her memories, even the clear ones, none was clearer than the night Pam got the phone call telling her that her chance for a relationship with her daughter would never come.

  She’d been on the couch after a twelve hour shift at Whitlocks’s Pub, when her phone started to ring. She’d picked it up with dread, instantly fearing she’d be called back into work.

  “Hello?”

  “Is this Mrs. Pamela Underwood?” he asked, his voice nasally.

  “Who’s asking?” Damn bill collector.

  “This is Sherriff Al Markowitz with the Farthington County Police Department. I need to speak with Mrs. Underwood immediately please.”

  If Pam hadn’t been trying to figure out if she’d recently committed any crimes, she might’ve noticed the sadness in his voice. Instead she said, “I ain’t ever heard of no Farthington County. You got the wrong number, mister.”

  “Are you Blaire Underwood’s mother?”

  She was silent for a second, wondering whether she should lie. “Yeah, why?”

  “Ma’am, I’m so sorry to do this over the phone, I really am. Your daughter, Blaire, was found dead this morning.”

  Losing a child, even if you didn’t think you really liked them that much is a pain unlike any other. The icy cold fills up your soul, leaking out your eyes in the form of tears. Pain grips your insides, physical pain that makes you unable to move or talk or do anything that would make it seem real. Pam was unable to hear the officer’s voice, though she was sure he was talking again. She was sure she’d dropped the phone at some point, yet she could still feel the hard plastic there in her hand. She let her brain float away, swimming somewhere far from herself, refusing to believe any of this was anything but a sick, sick dream.

  Finally, when words found her, punching her stomach like an air bag, she let out a noise somewhere between a sob and a scream.

  “Where is she?” she meant to say.

  “Ma’am?”

  “Where is she? Where is my daughter?”

  “We’re transporting her body to the morgue now, ma’am. You’re welcome to come say your goodbyes there. Is there anyone else I can call? Someone to bring you here? Someone close to your daughter?” He spoke with the quiet professionalism of someone who’d been doing this job a long, long time. This was just another case to him, another body.

  “There’s no one else. Where is she?”

  “Ma’am, I know this is a lot to take in, especially over the phone. Whenever you get into town, you just come on over to the station and I’ll take you to the morgue myself. I sure wish you’d get someone to bring you. You really shouldn’t be driving by yourself right now.”

  “No, I mean, where is she? What city are you in?”

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sp; “Oh, um.” He paused, obviously thrown off by the question. “Well, we’re in La Rue, ma’am.”

  “La Rue, right.”

  “North Carolina.”

  “I knew that,” Pam snapped, wondering if detectives could detect lies over the phone, while she searched for a pen and paper.

  “Right. Well, again, I’m so sorry for your loss. If you have anything else we can do for you, you just let me know.”

  “Right, okay.” Pam wondered why she could never find a pen when she needed one. Before she realized the conversation was over, she’d heard a sharp click on the other line. She gave up looking for a pen and instead headed for her bedroom to pack, wondering how long she’d be expected to stay after the funeral. She silently cursed her daughter, scolding her even in the grave.

  You should’ve listened to me, she thought, I told you not to move to the city.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Caide

  Caide heard a knock on his door, interrupting his thoughts about the contents of Rachael’s box. He rushed toward the door, passing his children who were playing quietly. He made no move to acknowledge them. As he got to the door, the sinking feeling in his stomach that he’d become so accustomed to was back.

  “Audrey,” he said, walking out and closing the door behind him. “What could you possibly be thinking showing up here?”

  “I had to see you. How are you?”

  He looked at her in disbelief. “That’s a bit of a stupid question, don’t you think?”

  Audrey shook her head. “Probably. I don’t know what to say to you. After everything we’ve done, how do we even move forward? Where do we go from here?”

  “I can’t have this conversation. Not now. This is the last thing I need.”