A Reunion to Die For (A Joshua Thornton Mystery) (16 page)

Chapter Thirteen

The evidence collected from crime scenes was stored away in the state lab in Weirton.

Since the lab was along the way to Joshua Thornton’s hearing, Tad decided to stop in and check on the status of the DNA analysis of the tissue he had collected from Bella Polk’s body.

Such test results could take weeks to get, but not so much for Tad MacMillan, who had become an expert at using his charisma to get his requests brought to the front of the line. The blonde with her hair scrunched into curls working the day shift in the lab had a particular fondness for the handsome doctor. When he walked through the door, he thought this was his lucky day—until he saw that she was with Seth Cavanaugh.

“Hey, Sharon!” Tad said with forced enthusiasm.

“Tad! What a pleasant surprise!” While crossing the room where he waited at her desk she fluffed her hair to make it fuller. “I wasn’t expecting to see you today. I thought you would be at the hearing.”

“I’m on my way there now. I wanted to stop by to see if you got the results from the DNA testing I requested from the Polk murder.” He glanced over her shoulder at Seth who was taking a clear plastic evidence bag from a brown manila envelope.

Sharon tried to hold Tad’s eyes with her own. She didn’t seem to know or care that there was anyone else in the room.

Seth folded up the plastic bag with his fingers.

“Cavanaugh, I expected you to be at the courthouse already.” Tad stepped away from the technician to where he was in the process of slipping the evidence bag into his pocket.

“He’s got a theory for the Henderson murder,” Sharon said to Tad. “He’s re-examining the evidence.”

Tad grabbed the bag from Seth’s pocket. “Where were you taking it to re-examine it?”

“I wasn’t taking it anywhere,” the detective said.

“What’s the theory you are working on?”

“You’ll find out when everyone else does.” Seth handed the manila envelope to the technician and stepped toward the door.

“Cavanaugh!” Tad said sharply.

Forcibly, Seth turned to him.

“You forgot to sign out.” Tad held up the material encased in the bag. “We don’t want to break the train of evidence, do we?”

Seth snatched the envelope from him, scribbled his name on the sign-out sheet, and slammed the door on his way out.

“What was that all about?” Sharon asked Tad, who was studying the evidence envelope to answer that question himself.

The copy of the report attached to the evidence bag identified it as the material from a trench coat caught on the fence over which Grace Henderson’s killer escaped. Witnesses saw the killer climb over the fence before running into the woods separating the high school from the housing development.

On a separate sheet stapled to the report, Tad read that the lab found that a trench coat belonging to William Unger taken into evidence was tested to prove that the material found at Grace Henderson’s crime scene was from his coat. The torn edges of the coat perfectly matched the edges of the material found on the fence.

“Did you send this report to the county prosecuting attorney?” Tad asked her.

“We sent it to the investigating officer. You know that is our standard operating procedure.”

“So Seth already knew that this—” He held up the plastic envelope containing the scrap of cloth. “—came from Billy Unger’s coat.”

“He should.” She took the report and pointed to a date noted at the bottom. “See? This says that the report was sent to him a week ago.”

“Then what is he waiting for?”

“Let me do the talking,” Hank instructed Joshua as they stepped through the door into the lobby of the courthouse.

“Why are you telling me this? I’ve been in court before.”

“Haven’t you ever heard that doctors make the worst patients? It is the same for—” Her observation was cut short when Joshua whirled around, grabbed her by both arms, and pushed her down a short hallway. “What—?”

He peered across the lobby.

She strained to see what excited him.

“It’s Margo Connor,” Joshua said. “And look at who she is talking to.”

Hank recognized Seth.

“What’s she doing talking to him?” Hank asked. “From what little I know about her, she wouldn’t let herself get within a mile of a detective investigating her for murder without her lawyer being present.”

Seth tugged at the collar of his shirt while he looked around.

“Why does he look so scared?” Joshua wondered.

“I recognized Mr. Thornton from television,” Sally Powell said in a soft voice from her seat on the witness stand. She mopped her face and neck with a tissue.

Sheriff Curt Sawyer and Tad were seated in the last row of the gallery. Tad wasted no time in reporting to the sheriff and Joshua about Seth’s attempt to remove the evidence against Billy Unger from the lab. After learning about his detective’s meeting with Margo Connor in the lobby and his lack of action against Billy Unger after receiving the lab report, Curt wondered exactly how crooked his lieutenant was. He called Deputy Pete Hockenberry to do some checking.

In the meantime, since he had an official role in the investigation, Seth Cavanaugh was permitted to remain seated next to the special prosecutor, Stan Lewis, a plain-looking man in bifocals. When Stan came in, he greeted Joshua with a shake of his hand and no smile. “Nothing personal, Thornton. Wish things could be different.”

“None taken,” Joshua responded, but Stan didn’t hear him because he was already on his way to his seat to organize the prosecutor’s table for the hearing.

The hearing began with the judge ordering the prosecution’s chief witness to take the stand.

Sally Powell was dressed up in a fashionable women’s suit for her day in court. Joshua guessed her weight to be close to two hundred pounds, which did not fit well on her short frame. She compensated for her weight by using heavy cosmetics.

“Well . . .” Sally licked her lips. “I was upstairs. Eddie . . . my husband . . . was at work. I’m home alone during the day.” She gasped when her eyes met Joshua’s at the defense table. She turned away.

“Continue, please,” Stan stated in a monotone.

“I heard voices and they were getting louder. It was a man and woman. They were arguing. I looked out the bedroom window and saw him,” she gestured in the direction of the defense table, “and a woman. She was a reporter. I had seen her on TV a few times. Gail Reynolds.”

“Did you hear what they were saying?”

“Parts.”

“What did they say?”

“He told her to stay away from his family. His exact words were, ‘If you come near my children again, I will kill you.’ ”

“And her car was found behind his house,” Stan noted for the judge. To Sally, he instructed, “Go on. What did she say?”

She paused before answering his question, “She said that if he didn’t tell them that she would. Then, he grabbed her by the throat and shoved her up against the car and said something, but his voice was so low that I couldn’t hear.”

“He shoved her,” Stan repeated.

“He scared me watching him,” she threw in. “He was really mad.” She started when her eyes met Joshua’s. She turned her head to look at Stan.

“In your statement, you say that they parted on friendly terms.”

“She was really scared and he had his hand on her throat. Then he kind of smiled—He looked like he was crazy—and started stroking her neck and then he kissed her real hard on the mouth. And they made up. Then, he opened the car door and she got in. He slapped her on the butt when she turned around. Then she got into her car and drove off.”

She signaled the end of her story with a shrug.

Hank rose from her seat to cross-examine the witness. “Mrs. Powell, that is a very interesting story that you have told this court. Now, could you please tell us the truth?”

“Your honor—!” Stan shouted.

Hank raised her voice an octave to speak over the prosecutor’s objection. “How much were you paid to make a false statement implicating Mr. Thornton in Gail Reynolds’s murder?”

“I wasn’t paid anything!” Sally insisted.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes!”

“Are you aware of the penalty for perjury, Mrs. Powell?”

“I’m telling the truth. I didn’t want to get Mr. Thornton into trouble, but my husband said that it was my duty.”

“So you aren’t here because someone paid you to be here?”

“No!”

“Then where did you get the five thousand dollars in cash that you deposited at the Hancock County Savings and Loan this morning?”

Sally’s shriek could be heard outside the courtroom.

The defense lawyer didn’t let up. “Isn’t it true that this morning you opened up a new savings account for yourself, without your husband’s name on it? The clerk remembers you, Mrs. Powell. It isn’t every day that you see five thousand dollars in hundred-dollar bills. Where did that money come from?”

“Your honor, I’m sure—” Stan did not have time to finish his plea for a chance to get a reasonable explanation before his star witness fell apart along with his case.

It started with the tremble of Sally’s hands that went up her arms to her double chin, which quaked up to her lips. Her body shook as the tears spilled from her eyes.

“Ms. Powell.” The judge handed her a box of tissues. “Would you like a minute to collect yourself?”

Unable to speak, she shook her head.

“Ms. Powell,” Stan Lewis asked, “have you accepted a bribe in exchange for making a false statement against Mr. Thornton?”

She blubbered, “I got an e-mail . . . I don’t know who sent it. They said that if I did not call the sheriff and say that I saw Mr. Thornton and Ms. Reynolds fighting outside my house—they even told me what to say—they would tell—I—I have a boyfriend, and they would tell my husband about him! My boyfriend—he said that if that happened he would leave me so I couldn’t let them tell!”

The judge interjected, “Ms. Powell, are you saying that everything you told us today is a fabrication to protect your extramarital affair?”

“After I went to the sheriff I found an envelope in my car with five thousand dollars in it. The note said thanks for all my help!”

“Do you still have that e-mail and the envelope that you received the payoff in?” Hank wanted to know.

Sally rolled her eyes. “I deleted the e-mail and burned the envelope. I didn’t want my husband to see it. He doesn’t even know about the money. I opened the account to hide it. If he knew, he’d want to know where I got it and what it was for!”

“We are going to have to find out who sent you that e-mail and gave you that money,” Stan told her.

Joshua directed his gaze to Seth to find a sign that he knew or was in some way connected to the bribery and extortion. He recalled that the detective had been with him the day of his encounter with Gail outside the Henderson home.

Curt left the courtroom in search of the source of the e-mail sent to Sally.

After excusing the witness with an order to the special prosecutor to investigate and possibly file charges against her for making a false statement, the judge asked Stan if he had any other evidence to question Joshua about.

Sally Powell fled the courtroom in tears while Stan Lewis answered, “Your honor, prosecution has reason to believe that Joshua Thornton once had an affair with Gail Reynolds and fathered her child out of wedlock. His reputation is built on his moral character. If this affair became public, then his political career would be ruined. The investigator tried to question him at the scene of the crime—”

“Which Mr. Thornton came to of his own free will because of his friendship with Ms. Reynolds and where he readily admitted to the investigator in front of witnesses that he had seen the victim on the night of the murder—without being asked. If he had not, your detective never would have known that he was there,” Hank interrupted to tell Stan.

“Her car was behind his house,” Stan said. “Once it was found there, then he had to give it up.”

“Her body was not found until three days after she died. If my client killed her, then he had more than ample time to move the car to a place that would not have incriminated him.”

“He didn’t have the keys,” the detective said.

“He was in her home with her purse and her keys.” Hank laughed at the silliness of Seth’s argument.

“What about his fingerprints and the other assorted evidence that connected him to the victim?” Stan asked the judge. “His fingerprints were found on the scene. That proves their relationship.”

“Where were the fingerprints found?” Hank asked them.

The judge tapped the top of his desk with the tip of his pen while they waited for the prosecutor to dig the crime scene report from a stack on the table.

Stan read out loud to the court: “Coffee table in the living room. A wineglass and bottle—”

Hank interposed, “One wineglass? Not two?”

Seth theorized, “He cleaned his fingerprints off his glass and put it away.”

“He wiped his fingerprints off a glass but left them everywhere else?” Hank cocked her head at Joshua and smiled. She then turned to Stan. “Were his fingerprints in the bathroom? Or how about the kitchen?”

Stan paused to put together the purpose behind the question.

“If Mr. Thornton and Ms. Reynolds were the red-hot lovers you and the media have been describing—if they had an intimate, sexual relationship—why would he not use her bathroom? If he was over there doing the deed, wouldn’t he go into the bathroom if only to comb his hair, if not for other things?”

Seth blurted out, “He cleaned them up before he left after killing her!”

“But he left a wine bottle and one glass with his fingerprints on them?”

Stan’s expression darkened. “Then their relationship was not current, but in the past.”

“Past long enough for her to become a virgin again.”

Stan almost broke his neck turning his head to face her.

“A little fact that you have kept from the media. Gail Reynolds had not had a sexually intimate relationship for a very long time.” Hank told the judge as she stepped forward and handed the autopsy report to him, “It is right in the medical examiner’s report. But Mr. Lewis is saying nothing while the media is ripping my client’s reputation apart.”

In response to the judge’s displeased expression, Stan argued, “That report is not meant to be made public.” He asked her, “Where did you get it?”

“We won’t make this report public unless we have to. Ms. Reynolds was a friend of Mr. Thornton. He wants her killer caught. But he will defend himself and his reputation with whatever means necessary.”