The murders began, p.1
The Murders Began, page 1
The Murders Began
A Nicole Long Legal Thriller
Book 3
Aime Austin
The Nicole Long Series
Outcry Witness
Major Crimes
Without Consent
The Murders Began
His Last Mistress
Also by Aime Austin
The Casey Cort Series of Legal Thrillers
* * *
Judged
Ransomed
Caged
Disgraced
Unarmed
Kidnapped
Reunited
Contained
Poisoned
Abused
“When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”
~Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
One
Anna Moretti Pope
May 9, 1953
“Doctor Hicks,” the man in the pale blue suit announced as he strode in to the office. He patted me on the shoulder with an ink-smudged hand, then cast an eye toward Rainey. She’d run to the floor-to-ceiling window and had been staring out since we’d come into the empty room twenty minutes earlier. “What brings you and your daughter in today?” Hicks asked. “I don’t see a referral in the chart.”
My right hand had been extended waiting for an introduction. Instead of letting it flop about like a dying fish, I pulled it back, put it behind my back, straightened my spine.
Dr. Henry Hicks was a pediatric psychiatrist at the Cleveland Clinic. I hadn’t gotten any kind of referral to his office. Over the last few months, when my husband, Frank, was on the beat, I’d made a lot of phone calls that had gone nowhere.
Fortunately, a couple of kind nurses thought this doctor would be able to help. So I’d made an appointment, then driven all the way over to the clinic with my daughter. From the parking lot, through the lobby, and up to this fifth floor smelling of disinfectant, I’d tried to take deep breaths to push down the panic that he too would dismiss me out of hand.
When no one, especially Rainey, was looking, I’d shaken out a Miltown and swallowed it dry. Except for a cigarette and few tablespoons of oatmeal Rainey hadn’t finished, I hadn’t eaten since last night. In the minutes between taking the pill and meeting Dr. Hicks, I could feel my pulse coming down.
“I went to the library, did some reading,” I offered to the doctor’s skeptical face. “I think you can help Rainey.”
“Hi, Rainey, is it?” He walked to the window. Gently turned her around. He tried to meet her eyes. My daughter looked everywhere but at him. “I’m Doctor Hicks. How are you?”
“Fine. Kind of tired. Mommy made me get up early and take a bath and wear these clothes. I’m hot.” Rainey started pulling at the long-sleeved shirt under her bibbed overalls. I’d tried to get her into a skirt, but that had been a losing battle. In a carbon copy of my daughter’s body language, Dr. Hicks looked out the window.
“It is warm outside. Supposed to be in the nineties this weekend. The hospital won’t turn off the heat quite yet, though. Cleveland could give us another snowstorm before summer.” Then Dr. Hicks turned to my daughter, knelt down to her level. “Rainey. I have a wonderful nurse outside. She’s got some toys and a puzzle you’d like. Can you walk out the door and say hi to her?”
“What if I don’t like her toys?” she asked, her face the picture of mutiny.
“She has a Mister Potato Head.” Dr. Hicks tried to make it sound like the best toy ever.
“That’s stupid.” Rainey stamped her foot. She wasn’t having it.
“Rainey! Can you please go with the nurse.” I could hear that my voice was too loud for this all-gray office with its fancy flocked fabric wallpaper. Said nurse had opened the door and come in. There were a series of buttons and lights on Hicks’ desk and I had to hope that was how he’d summoned her, and that she hadn’t come in to put me in a straightjacket.
“Okay, Mommy,” Rainey said, then turned a smiling face to the doctor. When she passed me, she hissed, “You’ll be sorry.”
After the door closed, I turned to Dr. Hicks. “Did you hear that?”
“What?” He cocked his head to the side like a dog trying to pick up a sound miles away.
“Rainey. She just told me I’d be sorry.”
“Is that the kind of thing you hear her say often?” He asked like I had voices in my head. I’m not sure why everyone thought girls were made of sugar and spice and everything nice. My daughter had something else going on inside, more like snips and snails.
“Even when she doesn’t say it out loud,” I elaborated, “her face turns into something horrible.” I’d tried to get a picture of Rainey’s sly face with the Brownie. But when I’d gotten the pictures back from the drugstore, the ugly face was gone and replaced with a sly smile.
“Tell me about your family,” Dr. Hicks sat in an upholstered armchair, then picked up a clipboard with the intake form I’d filled out half an hour ago. Gestured to a couch. I took the cue and sat, making sure my own Sunday church skirt was tucked under my thighs.
“There’s only one child, Rainey.” I ticked on my extended index finger. He scribbled a note with his left hand.
“Are you planning another?”
“She’s a handful enough right now.”
“What does your husband do?”
“He’s an officer with the Cleveland Police Department.”
“Got a great job, then.” Dr. Hicks wrote some more, then slid his pen behind his ear. Put the notepad down in the crease of the seat. “Sounds like a lovely family you have. What brings you all the way over to this side of town?”
“I’m concerned about Rainey.”
“Concerned, how?”
“She’s…her behavior isn’t quite right. I come from a big family. I’m the fourth of six kids, two older sisters, one older brother, and then two younger brothers. I practically raised the last two. They’re boys’ boys. They ran around, broke everything that was breakable, kicked everything that was kickable, but they were just…normal, you know. I don’t want to say it out loud, but I have to, I think.”
I took a long, deep breath while I gathered up the bits of resolve I’d been banking between the weeks I’d made this appointment and now. Let some air out of my mouth. Forged ahead.
“Rainey…” Despite gathering up courage, I still found it hard to get out what I needed to say. Finally, I blurted something I’d concluded after the last five years. “She’s not normal. Something’s wrong. I think you could talk to her and tell me what it is, maybe.”
“How is she different than the other children you’ve observed?”
I paused to really think about his question. With other doctors, like her pediatrician, I’d minced words. The worst example came to mind, and I shared it.
“She tried to jump out of her bedroom window. It’s on the second floor.”
“Tried, how?” Dr. Hicks reached for a thick blue pad, but not his pen.
“I was talking to her about making her bed, or moving her toys, or something like that and she was just standing in the middle of the room. It was like she’d tuned me out. Wasn’t listening to anything I said. She was rubbing the windowsill. I told her to stop flicking at the paint otherwise it would peel. She asked if she could fly. I told her no, birds fly, people don’t. Then as bold as you please, she pushed at the screen, lifted her little leg over and said she was sure she could fly.”
“What did you do?”
“Grabbed her back, obviously. Spanked her bottom. Told her she’d die if she did that.”
“Anything else?” His eyes were hooded. I wasn’t quite sure what he was asking. I tried to explain the scope of her behavior, but the Miltown had slowed my thinking.
“She doesn’t throw tantrums.”
“Isn’t that a good thing?” Dr. Hicks lifted his wool-clad shoulders in a small shrug. “I’ve met dozens of mothers who’d like a tantrum-free life.”
“When she’s angry or frustrated, she’s icy. Won’t look at me in the eye. Won’t talk to me. She can keep it up for days.” What toddler perfected the silent treatment? My parents never allowed it in our house. They said it was the meanest thing to do to another person.
“How old is she again?” He glanced at the door where Rainey’s laugh was coming through from the other side.
“Almost three and a half.”
“Kids grow out of these kinds of things. They have no sense of danger. They don’t know how to handle their emotions. That’s all part of growing up. You said that you’re not working on a second baby. How are you doing?”
Here was the tightrope I was always trying to balance upon. Perfect motherhood was impossible to achieve. By asking for help, I was obviously failing at my God-given job.
“I keep house, of course. I make breakfast and dinner for Frank, lunch for Rainey. Sometimes my sisters come by with their kids or I go over to theirs.”
“What do you do to relax?”
“My doctor gave me some pills,” I admitted. I snapped open my purse, tilted it toward him so he could see the brown bottles. “These are if I’m wound up. He gave me others if I’m tired.”
Dr. Hicks stood up to take in the prescription labels. Shook his head, finally picked up his pen. Scribbled something on the pad.
“Those are strong drugs.”
“Everyone’s taking them.” My doctor had offered one. My sisters had suggested I ask for the other.
“That may well be. Let me say that one of the sid
Two
Anna
February 28, 1954
“Why am I here?” I asked my husband. Frank Pope’s face wasn’t the mask of sympathy it should have been. I was in a white bed in a white room that was as quiet as a church on Sunday. What was scarier than my husband’s face, was the fact that I didn’t fully remember how I’d gotten here.
“You’ve had a nervous breakdown, Anna. You wouldn’t stop ranting about Rainey killing Francis Junior. Not until the paramedics sedated you.”
The minute the words left his mouth, it all came flooding back to me. How I’d found out I was pregnant a couple of days after meeting Dr. Hicks. Frank had been overjoyed. I’d been scared to death that I’d birth another child like Rainey. Scared there was something wrong in my genes. Scared that my daughter would do something horrible….
“She did.” I shook my head because I knew he’d never believe me; not because I didn’t believe it. “Our daughter put her hand over her little brother’s mouth until he stopped breathing.”
“Frankie died because of you, Anna. His breathing was depressed because of the pills you took while you were pregnant and continued to take while you were feeding him. The doctors said he had an addiction to barbiturates. An addiction! No baby should be born on drugs.”
“They were prescribed, Frank.” My voice was weak with guilt, with resignation. “I did what the doctor said.”
“You were supposed to stop taking the pills when you found out you were pregnant.”
“I tried. I really did.” I’d woken up every morning vowing not to swallow another pill. Rainey would do something, and by lunchtime I was in the bathroom with a Miltown and a Dixie cup. “I didn’t think they’d hurt the baby.”
“But they did.”
“Aren’t you sad?” I asked because I couldn’t stop the tears that were dripping from my lashes or coursing down my cheeks. “I’m very sad.”
I saw the briefest flash of grief on my husband’s face, but it was gone before I could really register it. Maybe Rainey had gotten her coldness from him. Maybe I wasn’t the broken one.
“That’s why you’re here. To get better.”
“When am I coming home?” I looked around. Nothing about this bland place could make anyone happy. “Exactly how long have I been here?”
“Four weeks.”
His answer took my breath away. I’d have figured one, two days at the most. A month was a whole different kind of thing.
“That long?”
Frank had been standing near the bed. He stood and walked toward the door. He was quiet for a long moment. I had a weird premonition that he was going to leave and never return. Tried to shake my head, clear it. The drugs they gave me in here were so strong that I had nightmares and hallucinations. Today was the clearest that I could remember.
“You can talk to the doctors about all this sadness and when you can leave. I’m here to talk to you about something else.”
“Is Rainey okay?” I tried not to panic. Too much emotion and a nurse or orderly would be here in a heartbeat to strap me to the bed. Using my calm voice, I said, “You should take her to a psychiatrist. She’s not right. You have to know—”
“This isn’t why I came here, Anna.”
“Okay, Frank. What is it that you have to say.”
“I filed for divorce.” His voice had gone even colder. He wasn’t here to comfort me. Frank was here to get away from me—forever.
“What?” I looked around feeling like a spooked horse. Nothing was making sense.
“What you’ve been saying about our daughter, about the death of our son. I looked into it, Anna. Really did.” I’d seen his cop voice and demeanor only once. He’d been all business at the Cuyahoga County fair when a drunk man tried to grope me. Patrolman Pope was in full force right now. I didn’t like the look or sound of it. “None of it is supported by facts,” he was saying when I took in the actual words he was speaking.
“I’m not lying,” I insisted, probably sounding like the guys he rounded up on the street.
“No one is saying that you’re lying.” My husband’s voice was whisper soft. I could barely hear him from across the expanse of squeaky clean linoleum. “It’s probably the drugs plus the stress of little Frankie that has you seeing things that aren’t there. That’s what Dot says.”
“I’m not seeing bogeymen.” I was seeing them. But I was pretty sure I could separate dreams from reality.
“You’re making our four-year-old daughter out to be.”
“Does she ever look you in the eye, Frank? She talks about death all the time.”
He shook his head in a way that made me realize we were more than feet apart, there were miles between us.
“These are phases. Kids have them. All of them are little crazy people. We teach them how to be adults. We don’t give up when they act weird or act out.”
“So you admit that she’s weird.”
“Not any weirder than any other kid, Anna.”
“Are you serious about divorce?”
“I left the papers with your doctors. We’re already divorced.”
“What?” I was losing the plot. “How could you do that? I never got any papers. I never went to court.”
“Your doctors accepted them because you weren’t competent. The judge granted it on Friday.”
“Oh my gosh. Frank. I can’t believe you’ve done this.” My brain scrambled to gain purchase. “Can I see Rainey?” I might not like her right now, but I did love my daughter. Truly.
“Not now. The doctors don’t think it’s a good idea that she see you here.”
“When can I see her? Are you taking my daughter away too?”
“You don’t love her, Anna. That’s what this all comes down to. I think she’d be better off without you in her life.”
“Who’s Dot?” I already knew that she was my replacement. He’d married me only months after breaking it off with another girl. Back then I’d thought I was the lucky one. I waited with hope that Frank would give me a different answer.
“Some friends introduced me to Dorothy when you were committed. She’s been helping out with Rainey while you’ve been in here.”
“You’ve already gone and replaced me?” The question was rhetorical. “You think that you’ll have your perfect little family.” I pressed the button next to the bed. A nurse in a flawlessly pressed uniform and crisply starched hat appeared in an instant. “I’m tired. Can you get me a pill? I think I need to rest.”
“You can’t have that without the doctor’s approval.”
I started screaming. It might make me look crazy, but they thought I was crazy already. With Frank’s timeline help, scraps of memory were coming back. Screaming led to instant sedation. I just wanted something to take me away from this world. There wasn’t any reason to be here right now. I had nothing to save. My little baby boy and my family were gone.
“Mr. Pope. You’ll have to leave now,” the doctor said when he came in. My husband…ex-husband walked out without so much as a backward glance.
Three
Loren Logan
September 13, 2009
“Victim’s name?” I hated coming onto a crime scene cold, but it happened when dispatch cut me off after giving me the address.
The uniform picked up a clipboard, skimmed it. “Don’t remember.” He threw his thumb over his shoulder. “Go see Parker back there. She’s the one that made the call.”
Making an effort to keep my eyeballs facing forward, and not visibly rolling to the back of my head at the actions of this obvious rookie took everything I had. This one needed going back to cadet training.
