Marcie's Murder (28 page)

Having a kid, though, was something she wasn’t
ready
to think about. It was too far down the road and too
frightening
a topic to lose time on when there were more pressing matters demanding her attention. That’s what she told herself,
but t
houghts of children inevitably led her to thoughts about her mother. Should she have children knowing the
kind of person her mother was and knowing
the potential that
she
herself coul
d
become
the same kind of
person
? And
knowing she could
pass it on to her own
children
?

Her mother lived in a mental institution in Dallas
.
Karen
had to
confront the subject at some point. In particular, she had to discuss it with Sandy before they tied the knot. Make sure he was okay with the scenario.

My mother has what the doctor
s
c
all
disorganized schizophrenia, dear. She can’t live outside an institution and there’s a possibility I could still
go off the rails
m
y
self.
The doctors said
it
generally
shows up
in women
between the ages of 25 and 35. Since
I’m 37
I made it past that one but there’s another
window
between 40 and 45, just before menopause
, so there’s a chance I may flip out on you three years from now
. You okay with that? And oh yeah, it apparently can be passed on to our
kids, if we have any
. You okay with that, too?

Christ. She bit her lip hard, staring out the window. Focus. Hank. Good friend. Talk to him about it. He’ll understand. He understands you better than anyone else, maybe even better than Sandy. Why? Why does he understand you so well? What makes him so special that he can see through you like that? And why does he give a shit?

They reached the off ramp to Harmony
.
Hall slowed the car to a crawl.

“Jesus,
Hall
,
you drive like my gra
m
m
a
on tranks
.”

The blanket of silence covered them again until they walked into the station
.
Hall
went over
to Grimes.

“Bring
Baker
out and put him in the interrogation room.”

“Is there a point to this
?” Karen asked, sitting down in his visitor’s chair. “Your beloved
c
hief’s
starting to
look real good
for it
.”

Hall
fussed
with the computer so that the live feed from the interrogation room was visible on the monitor
.
“
Baker
was there
.
He won’t explain why. He won’t explain who he was going to meet. I think it was Marcie. I think he killed her.”

At that point
a
door opened
and a
short bald man in a brown plaid suit
emerged from the little washroom next to the interrogation room. He
spotted
Hall and made a beeline for him
.

The detective wilted.

The metal door to the cells opened
.
Brother Charles emerged, followed by Grimes. The abbot’s hands were cuffed in front of him and he looked as though he’d missed a lot of sleep. The man in the brown plaid suit
changed course in mid-stride and
hurried over
to the abbot
.

Hall looked at Grimes.
“Why didn’t you tell me
Garrett
was here?”

Grimes gave him a
malicious
grin
. “Oops.”

Karen saw Mollie Roberts shake her head in disgust, her eyes focused on her computer screen.
“What’s going on?” Karen asked. “Who
’
s
Garrett
?”

“Detective Hall,” the man
snapped
, “is it your intention to question my client right now?”

“That’s right, Mr. Garrett,” Hall replied wearily. “Can we just go into the room and do it? I have a few questions I need answered.”

“I’ve been trying to get in touch with the
c
hief
and the
d
eputy
c
hief,
” Garrett went on
.
“I can’t reach anyone. It makes absolutely no sense to hold my client without a scrap of evidence. I demand you release him immediately.”

“I’m not going to do that, Mr. Garrett
.
” Hall
gestured
toward the interview room. “If you don’t mind?”

“Not without some sort of explanation from Chief Askew
.
Where is he? I want to speak to him first.”

“Chief Askew’s been
recused
from the case by the
a
ssistant
c
ommonwealth’s
a
ttorney,” Hall said reluctantly.

“Deputy Chief Branham, then.”

“He’s with the
m
ayor and the
A
CA right now. There’s a press conference going on.”

“Right now?”

Hall glanced at the clock, which
someone had
returned to its place
on the wall
after Askew
had knocked it down when he
slammed his office door
.
“I don’t know. It started at three.”
He took Brother Charles by the arm and led him to the interview room.

As the door closed, Grimes dropped into Hall’s chair, put his feet up on the corner of his desk
,
and picked up the headset. Karen got up and moved around so that she could see the monitor.

T
he door from the employees’ area at the back of the station opened
.
Branham walked in, followed by Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Hatfield.

“Looks who’s back,” Karen said.

“What’s going on?” Branham asked, walking over.

“Hall’s trying to interrogate the abbot,” Karen said. “Lawyer’s with him.
Might be interesting to hear if ol’ sack-o-
shit
wasn’t hogging the audio.”

Branham slapped Grimes hard on the leg to knock his feet off Hall’s desk. Grimes removed the headset, startled.

“Put it on the speakers and go lock the front door,” Branham snapped.

Mollie Roberts followed Grimes with her eyes, her mouth set
, as he shuffled over to the door and locked it
.

As the audio came on,
Hatfield sat on the corner of
the
desk. “I deeply regret,” he said to no one in particular, “that I quit smoking three months, six days
,
and ten hours ago. I could really use a cigarette right now.”

“
Look, I appreciate that,” Hall was saying to Garrett, his voice sounding thin through the speakers on each side of the monitor, “but it’s only
a few questions. We want to know why he drove into Harmony on Saturday night. We want to know who he went there to see.”

“
I don’t see how it’s in my client’s interest to answer anything,” Garrett replied.

Hatfield’s cell phone purred. He took it out, glanced at the call display
,
and
thumbed a button
. “Hatfield.”

He listened for several long moments and closed his eyes. Then he opened them again. “I
assume
it was on the Virginia side.”

He listened again and nodded.

“I appreciate the heads up.
Yep. Thanks.” He
ended the call
and looked at Branham. “Your
c
hief’s been arrested in Bluefield. He’s refusing to talk, refusing to call a lawyer, being a general pain in the fucking ass. That was Johnson.”
Laura
Johnson was the
a
ssistant
c
ommonwealth’s
a
ttorney in Bluefield. “He’s been booked on
two
charges of assault.
They’
re
holding him.
”

Branham closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose.

“So what about it,
Baker
?” Hall asked
in the interview room
. “Who’d you go see on Saturday night?”

“Marcie Askew,” Brother Charles replied uncomfortably.

Branham’s eyes snapped back open and focused on the computer monitor.

“Why on earth would you be meeting with a married woman at a bar on Saturday night? You like the bar scene, do you? Like to mix with married women?”

“Of course not. She called me and asked me to meet her there.”

“Why would she do that?”

“She was meeting someone there and
.
. .
was a little nervous about it. She wanted me to be there with her, for moral support, I guess.”

“Who was she meeting?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?” Hall repeated, incredulous.

“No, I’m sorry, she didn’t say.”

“Okay, why was she meeting this perso
n? She tell you that much, or were you going into the entire thing blind?”

“No, I knew more or less what was going on. She
. . .
uh, was pregnant.”

“And?”

“You don’t seem surprised by that.”

Hall snorted. “Never mind me,
Baker
. I’m not the one suspected of
murder. Spell it out for me. She was going to Gerry’s to talk to someone about the fact that she was pregnant, is that what you’re telling me?”

“Yes.”

“And who would that have been, the father of the baby?”

“I don’t know.”

“Okay, explain why she
called
you. Why’d she call you,
Baker
, o
f all the people she could call
?”

“She was a patient at our clinic. I
shouldn’t
say anything else because of privacy of information concerns.”

Hall patted his jacket and reached inside to pull
out
a folded piece of paper.

“Funny you should mention that,” Hall said, handing the paper to Gordon Garrett. “Her husband gave us
permission
to
get
whatever medical information
we need for
our investigation.”

Everyone sat still for a moment
as
Garrett scanned the document.

“Tell him whatever he needs to know,” Garrett said to Brother Charles.

“I wasn’t involved in her case at first,” Brother Charles said. “Originally it was Dr. Long.”

“Who’s he?”

“Brother Benjamin. Dr. Ben Long. He’s our chief administrator
at
the clinic
,
and he also takes a regular turn with walk
-
in patients. About six months ago
she came to us with a broken wrist. Dr. Long treated her. She told him she’d fallen down a flight of stairs, put her hand out to break her fall
,
and snapped her wrist.
He noticed the absence of bruising on the heel of the hand
which
normally accompanies that kind of fall.
Then about three months ago she came back with a dislocated shoulder. Again, it happened to be Dr. Long who treated her. She told him she was walking a friend’s dog, a Saint Bernard that wasn’t very well trained.”

“I’ll want copies of your records on this,” Hall said.

Brother Charles looked at Garrett, who nodded.

“Then what?” Hall prompted.

“Then two months ago she came in looking beat
en
up,” Brother Charles went on. “Her face was swollen on one side
. S
he had a black eye
,
and
the
x-rays showed a cracked jaw. This time it was another doctor, Dr. Orlov, who was on duty. After looking through her file
,
he told her it would take a while to process the x-rays and called Dr. Long
and myself
.
We discussed it
,
and called Dr. Margaret Huntley, a psychologist in Bluefield who does volunteer work for us on an ad hoc basis. Dr. Huntley wasn’t able to come down but gave us a couple of times
lots
for the following week when she’d make herself available. Then we sat down with Mrs. Askew and got her to pick one of the times for
an appointment with Dr. Huntley
.”