by Harry Kraus
“Slow down, Bill. It’s not Wally on the tape. He made the call and caught his daughter doing the talking. This wasn’t mercy killing, Bill. This is vengeful, premeditated murder.”
“I need to hear what you’ve got. You’re sure it’s Claire’s voice?”
“Sure as I can be without a voice analysis. So I’m going to need a little cooperation from your client.”
“Tape her? Absolutely not.”
“A judge will make her do it eventually.”
“I need to see what you’ve got first.” Fauls stopped and squinted at the politician. “You didn’t come here to give me advice. You came to gloat.”
Garland set down his cup. “I sure didn’t come for the coffee.” He paused, retrieving and tapping the cigar tube like he was bumping ashes from the tip. “I need you to talk her into cooperating with the Tyler Crutchfield investigation. Helping prosecute the slayer of such a high-profile serial rapist is only good for my office.”
“His death was likely self-defense.”
“So you’ve talked to the ME?”
“Of course. But my client had nothing to do with it.”
“That’s what she told you, I’m sure. But that’s what she said about her father too.”
“I don’t see what I’m getting out of this deal. You want our cooperation. What does my client get?”
“Let her tell her side. I’ll make sure she doesn’t get prosecuted for murdering Tyler Crutchfield.”
“You’re insane. This conversation is over.”
“I thought you talked to the ME.”
Bill Fauls gulped the rest of his lukewarm coffee. “I did. Everything points to self-defense.”
“So why didn’t she come forward?”
“She didn’t need to come forward. He didn’t attack her.”
“Call the ME again. Her hair was inside his shorts.” He stood, sliding the cigar tube back into his pocket. “Claire McCall was his last victim.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Friday night John gathered around the McCall kitchen table with Della, Margo, and Kyle. Dishes were pushed aside and coffee the beverage of choice. The mood was sober and heading south when William Fauls called for John. John’s disbelief was obvious. When he finally set down the phone, all eyes were on him.
John slumped into his chair.
Della leaned forward and touched his arm. “What was that all about?”
“I don’t get it. Mr. Fauls talked to the prosecution today. He was able to get some more information,” John said, scratching his head. “He said part of the evidence against Claire is a 911 tape. He wants us to listen to it, see if we think it’s Claire.” He shrugged. “He’s on his way over here now.”
“I don’t understand,” said Margo. “A 911 tape?”
“Evidently, a call was made to 911 on Saturday morning. They think it came from Wally’s room, as if Wally was able to make the call right as he died.” He lifted his coffee cup and started to pace around the kitchen. “There’s more. He said the ME did a quick analysis of Tyler Crutchfield’s body. He said it was apparent that the pattern of injury is consistent with some sort of fight preceding death, fingernail scratches, that kind of thing.”
John continued in a mechanical monotone reciting the report without emotion. “He also said it looked like he had had recent sexual intercourse.” He walked to the window and stared.
Della spoke. “John, what is it?”
“He said the ME found Claire’s hair mixed in with Tyler’s.” He felt his stomach tightening. He didn’t want to repeat it. “Inside Tyler’s boxer shorts.”
Margo shook her head. “What are you saying? That this creep raped Claire? How could they know the hair is hers?”
“I asked the same thing. He said they have Claire’s DNA study for confirmation from the test they did at the Brighton genetics lab. They took DNA from the hair follicles found on Tyler’s body and did some rapid polymerase test or something.”
Della pushed her cup away. “This makes no sense. They’re suggesting what? That Claire was raped and then killed this man in self-defense? She would never do that without telling someone.”
“She wouldn’t hide that from me,” John said.
Margo nodded. “Unless — ”
John turned around to face the table again. “Unless what?”
Margo held up her hands. “Unless she was afraid to tell you that she’d been raped on the day she was to be yours.”
“Ridiculous,” John huffed.
“How do you explain the evidence then?”
“I don’t know. They’re wrong,” John said. “She wouldn’t deceive me. She wouldn’t hide something like this from me.”
Kyle seemed to be studying his fingernails. “Maybe she snapped.”
Margo shushed him. “Don’t say that.”
“I’m not makin’ accusations,” Kyle said, raising his voice. “I’m just saying that the evidence doesn’t lie.”
“Claire’s not crazy.”
Kyle slurped his coffee. “Maybe HD has affected her somehow.”
John clenched his fist. “HD doesn’t make people suddenly become violent, and it wouldn’t make her deceive me.”
“Don’t blow up at me. I’m just voicing what all of us fear, that this might be the first of some ugly personality changes that HD brings.”
Margo’s jaw sagged. “I’m not believing this, Kyle. HD isn’t like that.”
Kyle returned to silence and sulked.
An uneasy tension hovered between them as they waited. In fifteen minutes William Fauls joined them and set a small handheld recorder on the table. “It’s a copy, so it’s not the greatest. This call came in from Pleasant View Home on the 911 line right at the estimated time Wally died. Garland Strickler is pressing me to have Claire’s voice recorded for voice analysis. That’s something I want to prevent if possible, but I wanted to play this for you all first to see if you think the voice is Claire’s. If there’s any chance this is Claire, it could be pretty incriminating for our side.”
Della poured a cup of coffee and set it in front of the attorney. “I don’t understand yet. Garland thinks that Wally called 911?”
Fauls nodded. “Yes. Garland thinks he has the voice of whoever killed Wally.” He reached for the recorder. “Just listen.” He pushed the play button.
“I remember you in my room. You touched me.” The group leaned in to listen. “You hurt me.”
Della and John traded looks as they listened to the sound of a woman crying. “You abused me. I was drunk. I couldn’t defend myself. You —You — ”
John felt like someone squeezed him, the grip on his stomach an angry clenching fist. He couldn’t find his voice.
“No,” Kyle whispered, shaking his head. “No! No!”
Margo’s hand covered her mouth. “Oh, Claire.”
It was obvious without asking. The voice on the tape belonged to someone spewing venom, poison from deep pain. The voice belonged to Claire.
For days they’d functioned within the safety of their assumptions, firm walls made up with assurances that Claire McCall could never behave unkindly toward her father. If she’d acted at all, it was an understandable mercy. Della began to cry, as the hurt in her daughter’s words speared the walls of disbelief they’d constructed. With her assumptions rattled, Della’s sobs broke the silence of the trance that held them.
William Fauls looked at Della, then to John, his eyes reflecting a dawning of understanding.
John nodded at the attorney. “No question. It’s Claire.” He shook his head and turned away, no longer able to view the pain as it found its expression on the faces of each of Claire’s family. “I just can’t believe it.”
Kyle stood and mumbled an audible curse before Margo began to say his name. “Don’t shush me,” he said, pulling violently away from her hand on his arm. As he jerked free from his wife, he toppled the kitchen chair to the floor behind him.
The noise seemed to infuriate him even more.
With his face flushed, Kyle kicked the downed chair against the cupboard and cursed again before fleeing out the backdoor, allowing it to slam in his wake.
John stared at Margo in disbelief. “What’s up with him?”
“I – I don’t know.”
They listened as gravel spit from beneath an accelerating car. Margo shook her head. “He left me here. Just like that.”
William Fauls picked up the recorder and moved quietly toward the front room. His demeanor spoke for him. He was an unwelcome invader in the middle of an intensely personal family crisis. He caught
John’s eye as he picked up his briefcase. “We’ll talk soon,” he said as he turned to go.
Mother, sister, and husband studied each other for a moment without speaking. John sat again at the table. Linked in space. Linked by the love of a woman, each in the turmoil that grew from that same love. That love had exposed a raw wound that words could not touch, and that needed, in that moment, only the presence of another to feel the same pain. And so they sat in the kitchen with only the sounds of grief as communication between them, the sniffs, sobs, and sighs of brokenness enough for the moment.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Margo sat in the passenger seat of her mother’s car looking out the window at the passing countryside. Daffodils were in bloom and the scent of spring drifted in, but didn’t lighten her mood. Kyle had been moody for months, but never openly this hostile. She’d put up with his insecurity and forgiven the affair it had spawned, but he had reacted by pulling away as if he couldn’t or wouldn’t forgive himself.
Della sighed. “Let me take the girls tonight,” she said. “We’ll have a slumber party.”
“Mom, you don’t need to — ”
“This is exactly what I need,” she responded, obviously trying to steady her voice. She sniffed. “I need my granddaughters to take my mind off of everything.”
Margo stared at the passing pine forest. She turned to face Della only when she felt her mother’s hand on her arm.
“I don’t blame you for being angry.”
“He makes me so furious sometimes. And he always chooses your house as the time to act like such a jerk.”
“Something is setting him off. A wise woman will help him discover what it is.”
“He knows what it is. That’s what’s so frustrating. I try to talk to him, to get him to open up, but he just shuts me out. He won’t go with me to church.” She pulled away from her mother’s hand and wrapped her arms around her chest.
They pulled in the driveway and Della pranced about in an attempt at cheeriness that galled Margo and delighted her daughters. After a few minutes, with pajamas and sleeping bags in hand, Della ushered the girls off to Grandma’s.
Margo found Kyle slumped over his desk with an open bottle of Jack Daniels and an empty glass. She didn’t feel gracious. She was angry and embarrassed by his earlier behavior. “Is this where you go with your troubles now, Kyle? Why Jack and not me?”
He lifted his head and looked at her with empty eyes. “Jack gives me courage.”
“Courage?” She wanted so badly to avoid the easy patterns of hurting each other they’d fallen prey to. But everything in her wanted to scold him for the spineless way he shrunk from his own pain. “Would you like to explain your behavior? You had to have a temper tantrum at Mom’s, didn’t you? And then you dare to strand me there?”
Kyle stood up. “I don’t need this anymore.” He looked at his watch. He kissed Margo’s cheek. “Good-bye, Margo. It’s been nice.”
He headed for the door. She trailed him down the hall and across the den. “Where are you going? You’re leaving me?”
“I’m leaving everyone.”
“Where are you going? Kyle, talk to me.”
He threw his hand back toward her without turning around. “Almost time for the seven-forty.”
She understood he referred to the train that crossed Macon Road between Fisher’s Retreat and Stoney Creek. It always came at 7:40. But what did that have to do with anything?
“Kyle, don’t go. You’re drunk.”
He slammed the door. She knew she couldn’t restrain him. She turned around and threw up her hands. So much for an evening of restoration without the kids. She plodded back to his study, unsure what to do. Should she call the police? What would she say? My husband’s driving intoxicated down Macon Road, please stop him?
She capped the Jack Daniels as her eyes fell to the desktop. Her heart quickened as she lifted the unfinished note. “I love you, Margo. But it’s all my fault.”
She shook her head, not wanting to believe where her mind was spinning to. This is a suicide note. She gasped and looked at the time: 7:32. Instantly, she understood. Kyle was heading for the 7:40 train.
There wasn’t time to call the police for help. Her husband would be at the train crossing in a few minutes. She grabbed her keys and ran for her minivan. With her mind racing, she pulled her vehicle onto the county road and shouted an SOS prayer. “Help me, God!”
She stomped the accelerator and chose the middle of the country road, rocking the van over the small hills and willing her heart to understand. She crested a small hill and felt the van’s body lift. A fraction of a second later it dropped hard and she wrestled to keep it on the road.
She slammed the brakes to regain control but found it harder to steer. The right wheels skidded onto the gravel shoulder and back on the blacktop again with a thud. She gasped and pressed the accelerator again, as her own doubts began to whisper. What if I’m wrong? I’m driving like a fool.
When she crested the next hill, she looked across the fields, fresh plantings of corn. There, in the distance, she could see her husband’s red Corvette, and above it, the telltale railroad crossing sign. She looked at her watch as in the distance she heard the first of a long warning whistle from the approaching train. It was 7:38. She had two minutes.
She knew the whistle would sound its long repeats at Bard’s Road a mile to the east, and pick up again its warning within a quarter mile of the Macon Road crossing.
She approached quickly and stopped behind Kyle’s Vette. She wasn’t sure what to do. Instinctively, she went to the passenger side, figuring that if she was in the car, he may not follow through with his plan. The door was locked. She pounded on the window, but Kyle ignored her, looking straight ahead. “Kyle!”
The train whistle started again. She looked up to see it approaching in the distance. She scrambled to the driver’s side. “Kyle,” she pleaded, “Listen to me.” She began to cry. “What are you doing?”
She studied his face, which was red and glistening from sweat and tears. “Kyle,” she said. “Don’t do this. I love you. We need you.”
He shook his head and looked down the tracks in the direction of the train. “No. I’ve screwed up my life. You’re better off this way.”
He depressed the clutch and shifted the car into first. She slapped the window in frustration and tried the latch on the door. “Kyle, don’t do this!”
He revved the car as the train sounded another warning whistle.
“No, Kyle, no!” she cried. “What’s wrong? I’ll forgive you!”
He shook his head.
The train was five hundred yards away and closing fast. Margo ran to the front of the car and leaned on the hood. “You’ll have to kill me too.”
“Get out of the way, Margo!” he screamed.
She stood her ground. “No!”
He revved the engine again and she felt the vibration. “Get away! Now!” he yelled. She looked over at the approaching train and screamed.
The Corvette lurched, knocking Margo backwards. She tumbled toward the tracks as the deafening sound of the train whistle enveloped her. She felt pain. And then nothing.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Margo opened her eyes to the sound of Kyle’s voice. “Margo, Margo,” he cried.
She reached for him, hugging him tight as the last half of the train rushed by.
Aft
er it was gone, she recognized a sharp pain in the back of her head.
“I thought you were dead for sure.”
His face blurred through her tears. “Take me home.”
He touched the back of her head, gently exploring a fresh goose egg swelling. “You hit your head on the road beside the track.”
“I’m alive, Kyle.” She hugged him again. “You’re alive. That’s all that matters.”
“Can you walk?”
She nodded as he helped her to her feet. He assisted her into the Corvette and turned his car toward home.
“What were you thinking? I saw your note.”
“Wally’s death,” he said numbly. “It’s all my fault.”
“Talk to me, honey. I don’t understand. How could any of this be your fault?”
She watched as he withdrew, his upper lip tightening into a line and his head shaking. “I’ve been such a jerk. I — ” He halted.
They drove in silence except for his attempts to start an explanation. Several times he grunted only “I” before stopping again and shaking his head.
Margo waited and prayed, thankful that for now, his suicidal notion had been diverted because of his concern for her safety. Once home, he slid his arm around her waist and walked her into their den. There, she sat on the couch across from his favorite chair. She leaned forward to capture his eyes. “Pastor Phil taught me a verse from First Corinthians. Love bears all things,” she said. “I don’t care what you’ve done, Kyle. Love will help us make it.” She paused. “Tell me, Kyle. I won’t love you less.”
“I let Claire believe a lie,” he began tentatively, like a child sticking his toe into a cold pool.
She stayed quiet, praying that she could absorb whatever came.
“Now she’s acted on the lie, and she’s going to pay a huge price. I’ve ruined Claire’s life.”
“What do you mean? What lie did she believe?”
“That Wally was the one who abused her.” He looked down. “It was me.”
Margo closed her eyes and braced her soul against the temptation to lash out. She took a deep breath and said, “Tell me what happened.”