As always, thank you to everyone who has been reading - and a special thanks to those of you who review.
Chapter 7
Still fuming, Jordan pulled an Army knife from her pocket and cut through the large "DO NOT ENTER" police sticker over the Whitaker's front door. Her feet were sandy and she had left her shoes behind, but she was too angry to really care. Besides, the crime scene had already been scoured for forensics, both by herself and by the local investigators; there was nothing left to contaminate. Even though, she wiped her feet over the rug in the foyer out of respect.
In all honesty, she knew that she had only come here to escape Woody rather than to dig around. She still would, of course, but she didn't have much hope of finding anything new. Especially not as distracted as she currently was.
Why had he done something so stupid? So disrespectful toward her? Anger sat heavily in her stomach and she chewed on her lip, wondering what the hell she was supposed to do now.
It had taken a good deal of self-control not to run to the bedroom, pack her things, and call a taxi to get her out of there. But she had stayed. Even as angry as she was - she did still love him. Tears stung her eyes again as the bitterness of their argument rose in her mind. How would she ever be able to trust him again? She had been trying so hard to make their relationship actually work this time. And now... What he did - it was a huge breach of privacy, and the fact that he didn't trust her to be honest with him hurt more than she could have thought.
But at least he told me, a small voice in her head chimed in. And he did it out of fear, not out of a need to be nosy. JD would have done something like that just to spite me.
Jordan sighed and looked around the foyer, trying to push back memories of Pollack as they came forward to tangle with everything else. He and Woody were not the same; thinking about him wouldn't help anything. The marble floor was cool under her feet as she stepped forward. The living room had been quickly cleaned, the blood wiped off of the walls and the entire sofa gone. There were still smears of it on the carpet, though, and she steered clear of the room entirely. Instead, she turned her attention to the kitchen.
It was just as grand as the one she and Woody had been using, only not nearly as practical. There were decorative glass jars on the counter tops taking up far too much space, and the oven did not look like it had ever been used. Holly and her husband had probably never had to cook for themselves - not with money coming out their ears. The room was cold and bland, no sense of personality to be found. There was, however, a large knife block by the stove. Jordan walked over to it, a thought occurring to her. The second largest blade was not there. A quick check of the sink and dishwasher turned up nothing.
"The murder weapon," she mused aloud. "How did we miss this the first time?"
Then she remembered. Stone and Jones had been in charge of searching the kitchen; she and Woody hadn't even been allowed in here that afternoon, instead confined to the living room where the murder had actually happened. That bastard. She scowled. Knowing about this was important to the damned investigation. If she hadn't come back, they probably wouldn't have found out until they actually located the thing. What were those two thinking, hiding things like that?
There was nothing else of interest in the kitchen, so Jordan turned down the hallway toward the stairs and began to make her way to the second floor. A bathroom, two unused bedrooms, and a den with a dusty flatscreen TV. Nothing helpful there, either, except a disgusting display of wealth and a strange Alice in Wonderland painting on a guest room wall. She kept going up to the third floor.
The master bedroom was huge. A king-size canopy bed was centered on the far wall, large mahogany dressers lining another. Two floor-to-ceiling windows let in the bright afternoon sun, seeming to ignite the off-white carpet. Mind wandering again, she peered outside. Their view here was the same as it was from the guest room she and Woody had been sharing. Heart tightening as she recalled waking up in his arms that morning, she noticed that he had left the beach as well. She had no idea where he had gone, and that made her oddly nervous.
Refusing to dwell on it, she turned away from the window and looked around the room again. Nothing up here was out of place. Holly hadn't mentioned anything having been stolen, which pointed to Paul's murder being more personal than a robbery. Only his wedding band was gone. Which, Jordan realized with a start, Holly hadn't said anything about.
Something about this didn't feel right.
Growing concerned now, Jordan went into the large master bathroom and flipped on the light. Everything was a clean and bright white. She took a deep breath. Bleach. Just enough to be noted under the smell of standard bathroom cleansers. The killer had been in here.
Why the hell didn't Stone look up here? she thought furiously, knowing now that her lack of shoes could turn out to be rather bad. Suddenly not caring as much as she should, she went over to the sink and opened the medicine cabinet. Aspirin, first aid things, a woman's razor, some makeup items, creams, cleansers - medications. She stared at the three bottles, hesitating. They were opaque white, and the distributor was not one she recognized. Evergreen Springs. A private clinic?
"Screw it," she muttered, pulling the bottles down without gloves. All three were for the same medicine – a form of clozapine. They had been dispensed for Holly over six months, but the bottles were still full. Jordan pushed the toiletries off of the bathroom counter and opened the bottles, spilling out the pills to do a quick count. Sixty dispensed for each refill, and Holly had only taken a few of them - twenty over the last six months. Jordan looked at the name of the medication again, her stomach dropping quickly.
Clozapine was used to manage schizophrenia.
xXx
Woody stood on the beach for a while after Jordan stormed off. He knew he had made a mistake, but he had horribly underestimated her reaction to finding out. Now she was gone and he was out here alone, all because of his damned worry. She hadn't left left...but how was he ever going to repair this? He could feel her slipping through his fingers, and that terrified him.
A faint buzzing, only just heard over the waves, snapped him from his thoughts. His phone. He took it from his pocket and glanced at the caller ID, recognizing the number immediately. Holly. Grudgingly, he opened it to answer.
"Hello?"
"Detective Hoyt? Is that you?"
She sounded terrified, and Woody immediately stood up straighter when he heard her start to sob. "Yes, Holly, it's me. Is everything okay?"
There was a scuffling sound on the other end of the line, and then she cried out, "No! I think - oh, God, I think someone is trying to break into the house!"
"Stay calm, Holly," he told her, already running across the sand and back into his friend's house to get the keys to his car and his service weapon from upstairs. "Where's your friend? Where's Karen?"
"I don't know!" she wailed. "She's gone, and I'm alone! Please, please help me!"
"I'm on my way. Find a place to hide and call the police. I'll be there soon."
He knew he should call Jordan, or at least leave her a note. But she was so furious she probably wouldn't even answer the phone. Deciding he'd just deal with her wrath at being left behind later, he gathered his things and scrambled into his car.
xXx
Jordan spun back around, pieces slowly starting to fall into place.
She could see the large bed through the doorway, and her gaze caught something dark on the sun-lightened floor next to the closest end table. She grabbed a hand towel and rushed out of the bathroom, leaving the pills out on the counter, to kneel beside the bed. Five small drops of dried blood, and a thin smear of it on the knob of the drawer in the end table. Using the towel to cover her hand this time, she pulled the drawer open and looked inside. It was empty save a folded piece of paper. Excited with the discovery, she carefully picked it up and unfolded it.
"Walrus..." she read softly, studying the single word written in tiny letters across the bottom corner of the page. There was a bloody fingerprint on the other corner, and a faint smile flitted over her lips. Bingo. She repeated the word again, hoping saying it aloud would help her figure out what it meant.
But then her head shot up in realization. Walrus. Like "The Walrus and the Carpenter" - the poem from Alice in Wonderland, and that hideous painting in the guest bedroom downstairs.
Standing so quickly that everything spun around her, she dashed from the master bedroom and flew down the stairs, paper still in hand. She found the guest room again easily and immediately began rummaging through it. Pink bedding, pink walls, paper flowers, a white wicker trunk. That painting. It looked like a child's bedroom, but Holly and Paul had no children. Jordan dropped to her knees and pulled up the bed skirt with her free hand. Nothing. The closet was completely empty as well.
She took a step back and turned her attention to the painting hanging above a small dresser. It was roughly eighteen by twenty-four inches, done with oils. The paint had yet to begin cracking so it was relatively new. There was Alice in her blue dress, the Rabbit beside her. And there, in the background, was the Walrus and his oysters. The whole thing was very ugly and poorly constructed, but...
Acting on a hunch, Jordan dropped the paper and hand towel onto the top of the dresser and took the painting right off the wall. Nothing was behind it, or on the back of the canvas. Not ready to give up, she placed the painting carefully on the floor and instead leaned against the dresser in the hopes of moving it. Surprisingly, it slid over easily - revealing a hole in the wall that looked like it had been punched in with a hammer.
"What have we here?"
Jordan slowly crouched down by the hole and tried to look inside, stunned that she had actually found something, but there was not enough light to see by. Not pausing to think of possible consequences, she reached in and felt around. The hole itself was less than a foot wide, but there was a good bit of space behind the drywall. Perfect for hiding things. Her fingers met a smooth surface, a box of some kind. Holding her breath in anticipation, she pulled it out.
The box was long and flat, made of polished wood with a simple clasp holding it closed. It only just fit through the hole.
Excited, she pulled her phone from the back pocket of her jeans and flipped it open to call Woody. But then she stopped, remembering why she was even there in the first place. "Damn it." She closed the phone again and set it down. There was no point in trying. He probably wouldn't even answer.
Jordan sighed in defeat and leaned forward on her knees. "Guess I'm on my own," she whispered, carefully lifting the lid to the box and peering in to see what had been so painstakingly hidden. It was a book. Not just any book, though, she realized as she lifted it out. Alice in Wonderland. There were some papers under it, but she ignored them for the time being, instead opening the cover and flipping through some of the pages.
Every page was covered in writing. Most of it was unintelligible, having been written over so many times that it was impossible to make out any words. But some words did stick out. Walrus, sun, money, sea, sand - repeated over and over again over many of the pages. This, though...despite the break in the case, this meant very little. So what, if Holly was schizophrenic? Schizophrenia was not a disease that made someone kill people, not like the rap it had been given from Hollywood. It was a mental disorder, yes, but those who suffered from it were rarely violent toward others.
"This doesn't make any sense."
She placed the book in her lap, turning her attention to the other papers. Medical records, most of them. Letters from doctors. According to what Jordan saw there, Holly had been receiving treatment since she was fifteen, right after she hit puberty. Everything had been going great, the treatments were allowing her function well, and she had been living a normal life. She had been under close medical supervision for her entire adult life. What changed?
A new paper caught her eye, a letter addressed to Holly. It was dated six months ago, supposedly from her current doctor. "No need to continue medication," it said. There was no notation that she would be switched to something else, only that she "no longer needed" anything. Not even the visits to the clinic she had been making for twenty years.
That's not right. Schizophrenia was not curable; those affected had to take medication to control it or they would just relapse. There had to be some kind of mistake. If this doctor told Holly to stop taking her medicine and her relapse had led to the death of her husband - then Holly was not responsible at all. Her doctor was. Henry Sonders, according to the typed signature.
Jordan reached down to find anything else from this man, but her fingers touched something else. Paul Whitaker's wedding ring.
"Well shit."
Suddenly the front door flew open downstairs, hitting the wall with a loud thud. "Who's in here? You're trespassing on police property!"
She jumped and quickly shoved everything back into the box, pushing it right under the dresser. It was Officer Stone. Her fright vanished when she heard him thudding into the foyer, replaced by an anger she did not feel the desire to hold back any longer.
"Where the hell do you get off," she yelled, leaving the room and standing at the top of the stairs so that she could see the officer below, "barring me from fully investigating a crime scene?" Stone opened his mouth to rebut, but she barreled over him. "The murder weapon was a kitchen knife! I knew that from my autopsy, but when were you going to tell us that it came from Whitaker's own kitchen?"
"Look, lady, there -"
"No, you listen to me!" Jordan started to descend the steps, and Stone glared at her, taken aback by the abrupt change from the laidback woman he had seen the day before. "There was blood upstairs in the master bedroom! Did you even look there? What about the bathroom? The whole place had been doused in bleach. An entire day wasted, because you can't be assed to do your damn job!"
"There was no need to search up there," he snapped, irked by her chastising.
"No?" She reached the bottom of the stairs and came to stand toe-to-toe with the cop. "Holly killed her husband," she hissed furiously, "because she has an idiot for a doctor. All the evidence was right under your nose."
"Holly? No, you must be mistaken."
Stone took a step back, ready to turn away from her and their conversation, but Jordan just followed him and poked her finger hard into his chest. "It was a horrible accident, but that's what happened. Go talk to her psychiatrist. Henry Sonders from Evergreen Springs. And I want to be there when you interrogate him. Where is Holly right now?"
"At her friend's house," he replied, cowed and finally somewhat listening to her.
"Send someone over to bring her in."
He blinked at that, too stubborn to take a command from someone he didn't even know. "Now look here, Jordan, that's not your call to make!"
"It's Doctor Cavanaugh, you arrogant bastard. Do it, or someone else might get hurt." Jordan narrowed her eyes at him, attempting to reign herself in just a bit with the hope that he might actually do as she asked. "Holly needs help from a competent doctor, and the one she has now should be locked up. It's his fault Paul was killed, not hers. This Sonders - he took her off her meds for a reason. I bet he even gave her the xylazine she used to sedate her husband."
"Why would he do that?"
"I don't know yet, but I do know he's involved in this."
Stone considered her words for a long moment before finally sighing and bowing his head. "Fine. I'll send someone to get her, and this...this doctor. What about your detective? Does he want some part in all this?"
Jordan bit back a scathing remark and just shook her head. "I'll have him drive me over to your station once you get Sonders in custody."
