The Prettiest One: A Thriller (21 page)

“
I’m
the real killer,” Caitlin said.

“No, you’re
not
,” Bix said.

“And why do you think that, Bix?” Caitlin asked, her voice suddenly dripping with scorn that she regretted but couldn’t tone down. “Because you know me so well? Hell, the Katie you knew isn’t even real. She didn’t exist before she met you. And she’s been lying to you and keeping secrets for the past two weeks at least. So who are you to say that I didn’t kill anyone?”

“Hon,” Josh said, “for once, I agree with him. You couldn’t kill anyone.”

“Oh, and you think
you
know me?” Caitlin said, turning to glare at Josh in the backseat. “And did you know that somewhere inside the Caitlin you knew all those years, the Caitlin you married, lurked this pool-playing, beer-guzzling woman who could run off and shack up with a guy she met in a bar? Did you know that about me, Josh?”

She was being horrible, saying terrible, hurtful things to people who cared about her, the only two people who knew her at all—though neither of them knew her nearly well enough. She fell silent and sat there, feeling ashamed. She didn’t deserve to have either of these men standing by her side, much less both of them.

“Guys . . .” she began.

“You’re right, Caitlin,” Josh said. “It’s obvious that I didn’t know you as well as I thought I did. But still, I think I know you well enough to know that you wouldn’t kill anyone unless you had no other option. I have no idea if you shot that man, but if you did, I know . . . I
know
. . . you must have had a good reason. I’d bet my life on it.”

And he was doing just that, Caitlin knew. If not his life, then at least his freedom. He was aiding and abetting someone they all were pretty certain had shot a man to death.

“Must be a full moon coming on or something,” Bix said, “because I find myself agreeing with Josh again.” He smiled briefly. “Katie, there’s no way you’re capable of cold-blooded murder. I don’t know what you got yourself mixed up in or how you ended up at that warehouse the other night, but if you pulled that trigger, I’m sure you had no choice. And I’d be willing to bet Josh’s life on it, too.”

Josh grunted, but Caitlin couldn’t help but smile a little.

“Okay,” Caitlin said, “let’s assume I had a good reason to shoot that man. Like I said yesterday, shouldn’t I still go to the cops and let them investigate the case? Won’t they find out the truth, and if it sets me free, fantastic, and if it doesn’t, don’t I deserve whatever I get?”

Bix shook his head. “You’re assuming that once they lock you up, they’ll work the case as hard as they did before they caught you. Human nature, Katie. They’d have you admitting that you think you killed that guy. You’ll probably offer up your bloody clothes and the gun. Why should they even bother trying to look harder into it? They’d have everything they need, gift wrapped and tied with a red ribbon.”

“He’s right,” Josh said. “I have nothing against the police, but it just seems like once they had all of that, they wouldn’t really have a lot of incentive to dig deeper. They may not find a motive, but how badly would they need one if, like Bix says, they have the weapon, the victim’s blood on your clothes, and the next best thing to a confession?”

Caitlin closed her eyes and let her head fall back against the seat. “So what are you guys saying? Do I go on the run? Get fake IDs from Bix’s friend and set up yet another new identity somewhere? I don’t want to live like that.”

“I’m not saying that,” Josh said.

“I am,” Bix chimed in. “And if Goody Two-shoes here won’t go on the run with you, I sure as hell will.”

“I’m not saying I wouldn’t go on the run with her—”

Caitlin opened her eyes. “Guys?”

“Well, are you saying you would?” Bix challenged Josh. “Because that’s not what I’m hearing. But that’s exactly what I’m willing—”

“Whoa,” Josh said. “I never said I would or I wouldn’t—”

“
Guys
,” Caitlin said again, much louder this time, silencing them both. “I’m not going on the run. As I’ve said, I have no desire to live like that, always looking over my shoulder. And I couldn’t drag either one of you into a life like that with me.”

“Either one of us?” Josh asked. “Like there’s a choice? I’m your husband.”

Caitlin sighed. “I know that, Josh. I didn’t mean . . . Look, forget about going on the run. That’s just not happening.”

“Please tell me you’re not going to turn yourself in to the cops?” Bix said.

“I’m not,” she said. “At least not yet.”

“So what
do
you want to do?” Josh asked.

Caitlin took a breath, then another. “Despite the evidence—that is, the gun I had and the blood all over my clothes, and the fact that I woke up near that warehouse, and I saw the murder victim’s face in my dream . . . heck, I even shot him in my dream, sort of—well, despite all of that very compelling evidence, you guys seem certain that I couldn’t kill anyone, at least not in cold blood.” The men were nodding along now. “So I’m selfishly willing to give you both the benefit of the doubt for the moment. But we all have to admit that the evidence seems to indicate that I shot that guy for some reason, right?” The men nodded again, but with less enthusiasm this time. “Okay,” Caitlin continued, “so for now we’ll proceed under the assumption that I was justified in shooting that guy—”

“If you truly did,” Josh interjected.

“If I did,” Caitlin agreed, nodding. “So what we need to do is try to figure out why I might have shot him. If we can figure that out, we can decide the right time to go to the cops.”

“Never,” Bix said. “I don’t care why you did it.”

“Well, I do,” Caitlin said. “If it was cold-blooded murder, I’m turning myself in and you guys won’t be able to stop me.”

“And if it wasn’t?” Josh asked.

“If it wasn’t, if I was somehow justified in killing him, then we’ll take what we know to the cops. They won’t ignore evidence that proves I had no choice but to shoot that man. They can’t.”

“So either way, you’re going to the cops?” Bix said.

Caitlin nodded. “I am. But I’d much rather do it with an armful of evidence showing that I acted in self-defense or something like that. But if we can’t find anything like that, or if we find out that I’m nothing but a murderer, plain and simple, well . . . I’m still walking into that station.”

“I think that’s a really bad idea, Katie,” Bix said.

Caitlin turned to look at Josh again. He had a sad smile on his face. She knew why. He may not have known her quite as well as he thought he did, that she had this other person hiding inside her all these years, but he still knew her pretty well. He knew this was what she ultimately would decide to do. And he knew he couldn’t stop her.

“How long will you give it?” he asked. “How long until you turn yourself in?”

“Hey, don’t get me wrong,” she said. “I’m not in any rush. Let’s work our asses off to get to the bottom of whatever I did, whatever I was doing that led up to whatever I did. I’d much rather find those answers than give myself up empty-handed.”

“And let’s not forget,” Bix said, “the decision whether to turn yourself in might not end up being yours, anyway, Katie. After all, the cops are looking for you. And now that your face is in the papers, how long will it be before someone recognizes you and drops a dime on you?”

That was a good question.

“So what do we do next?” Bix asked. “We can take another look at the list you kept hidden in the box in your closet. Try to figure out how the things you wrote factor in here. We think we know who the Bogeyman is, though not why the monster from your dreams would be on the list. But maybe if we ask around a little, we can figure out who this One-Eyed Jack is. And when we find him, maybe he’ll tell us who the other guy on the list is. What was the name? Bob?”

“Bob, yeah,” Josh said.

“But the address won’t help us, right?” Caitlin said. “That was a dead end. So who’s to say the whole list isn’t a wild goose chase?”

Bix said, “Well, I say we go with it. It’s all we have.”

“I agree we should go with it,” Josh said. “But it’s not all we have. We also have your friend, hon. Janie Whatever-Her-Name-Is. You should call her. See if she can tell us anything. If you two were close, maybe you confided in her, told her something about whatever was going on.”

Caitlin nodded. “Right. And we also have—”

“Martha’s list of employees,” Josh finished for her.

“I
knew
you saw it, too. That’s why you took a picture of it instead of letting me write down Janie’s number. I didn’t see it at first,” she admitted, “but after you took the picture, I read the rest of the names to see if any of them rang a bell, and that’s when I saw it.”

Josh slid his tablet from under Caitlin’s seat in front of him, where he’d stashed it when they’d gone into the pub, then set it on his lap and started typing.

“What did you see?” Bix asked.

“My name,” Caitlin said.

“What about it?”

“Just give me a minute, guys,” Josh said, his fingers tapping away at the tablet’s screen. “This shouldn’t take long. Maybe it’s nothing,” he added, almost to himself, “but maybe it’s not. Maybe it’s . . . something.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

AS DETECTIVE CHARLOTTE HUNNSAKER SAT at her desk scanning a report, she thought for the twentieth time in the last hour how much she hated reviewing tips called in to the department’s tip line. The computer sketches of Vic Warehouse and the mystery redhead had been shown on that morning’s early local TV news, and they had made it into the morning editions of both the
Globe
and the
Smithfield Beacon
. Television viewers and newspaper readers were asked to call the tip line if they had any information about the person in either sketch. Then the fun began, as it always did. As usual, some people called just to talk about the ongoing case, as if the act of dialing the phone number earned them a backstage pass into a police investigation. Other callers, possibly well intentioned but totally off their rockers, called to report valuable information such as the fact that the people in the sketches had been invading their dreams, or they looked like people with whom they attended kindergarten three decades ago. A few folks called to try to convince the police that the people in the sketches looked like their ex-spouses or ex–significant others in the pathetically transparent hope that the police would hassle a former paramour with whom they’d had a falling out. Of course, there were always the high school pranksters who called because their idiot friends thought they were funny. It went the way it always did—calls came in, information got recorded, and reports were generated.

Hunnsaker requested that the reports on this case be sent to her every two hours. Then she would begin the work of separating the cranks from the nutjobs from the callers with marginally promising leads. Armed with a variety of different colored highlighters, she was halfway through the first list of the day. Pink for the pranksters and the crazies, blue for the tips that might be worth checking out, and yellow for the most promising leads. So far, after forty-one calls, she had highlighted twenty-four in pink, nine in blue, and eight in yellow. Two desks away from hers, Javy Padilla was slogging through the same report, using the same color-coding scheme.

Hunnsaker looked over at him and called, “You finished yet?”

Padilla looked up, and for a moment Hunnsaker thought he was having a heart attack. His eyes were squinted shut and his lips were pulled back from his teeth in an agonized grimace. Before Hunnsaker could leap to her feet, Padilla’s face began to relax. “Oh my God,” he said, “I hate this shit.”

Only then did Hunnsaker notice on Padilla’s desk the big, clear, plastic travel cup three-quarters full of a thick spinach-green liquid. On the inside of one side of the cup, the sludgy concoction was slowly receding from the rim, from where Padilla had clearly just sipped.

“I thought you only drank that stuff at home,” Hunnsaker said, “where Elaine can monitor you.”

Padilla shook his head. “I can’t lie to her.”

“I thought you lied to her all the time.”

“Yeah, I do. What I meant was, I can’t lie to her and get away with it. She asks, I lie, and then she says she can tell I’m lying and that I’d better start drinking this crap again. She says it’s for my own good.”

“She must love you for some reason I can’t begin to fathom,” Hunnsaker said.

“She has a funny way of showing it,” Padilla said as he took two deep breaths, then began chugging more of what looked increasingly to Hunnsaker like hazardous waste. Padilla’s features contorted and Hunnsaker grimaced in sympathy. Padilla finished swallowing—not without obvious effort—and looked forlornly at the half-full cup on his desk.

“She’ll know if you don’t finish it?” Hunnsaker asked.

“God only knows how, but she will.”

Padilla seemed to have recovered from his last sip, so she asked, “You done going through the tips so far?”

Padilla looked down at the report on his desk. “Four more to go.”

“How’s it looking to you?”

“Eight yellows and ten blues. The rest is the usual garbage.”

“That’s close to what I have. Probably mostly the same ones. I’ve got a few calls to make, then we should head out and follow up on the more promising leads, see if we get lucky.”

She was getting frustrated with the case. They just didn’t have much to go on so far. Without an identity for the victim, they were unable to run down the kinds of leads that were often so valuable in homicides—family, friends, coworkers, and acquaintances, as well as lifestyle, habits, hangouts, and the like. Forensic investigation had turned up virtually nothing of value. No DNA or trace evidence on the body that didn’t belong to the victim. And the immediate area of the warehouse surrounding the body had been traversed so many times over the years—by employees while the building was in operation and by vagrants, hookers, druggies, kids, and thrill-seekers after it had been abandoned—that the odds of finding anything useful were longer than those of winning the Powerball lottery.