Captured in Death, page 16
“Yeah, we’re looking into all of that. The electronic forensics guys.” He made a gesture to indicate that they were all working on it upstairs.
Kenzie supposed that, like everything else, this took longer in real life than it did in a one-hour cop show on TV. And there was likely a backlog. Would there be any kind of rush on it now that it had turned out to be an actual murder case? Or would they assume that since the murder had already occurred that there was no reason to hurry the results along?
In the meantime, Rhys had his new phone, so Kenzie didn’t have to worry about his being unable to communicate. But she might ask him again whether he knew anything else that he hadn’t told her. And whether Rhys knew Emily. When he had gone to Zachary about the trouble that Madison had been in when she had been involved with human traffickers, he had known a lot more about her and the people around her than anyone else. People tended to discount Rhys. The fact that he was mute meant that he was not likely to repeat anything that he had heard, so they just ignored him.
But Rhys had ways of communicating what he knew. And maybe it was time to find out if he knew more than he had initially revealed about the picture of the body and where it had come from. He might have known all along that it had originated with Emily and was just trying to keep her out of harm’s way. Emily was concerned about the police giving her trouble, and maybe Rhys was too. Maybe she had talked him out of helping out in any other way, so that the only thing he could think of to do was to show the medical examiner the dead body.
33
When Kenzie returned to her desk, she found an envelope from the archives storage company. She sat down and grabbed the scissors to slit it open. Out of the plastic packet she pulled an old file, dusty, the color of the folder having degraded over time, two-toned where the info tab had been exposed to light, but the rest of the folder had been squashed up against its neighbors.
Salter, Clarence
Rhys’s grandfather. The murder that he had been witness to very early in his life. Five years old. He had been the only one in the house with Grandpa Clarence and the killer. And the killer had been his own aunt.
But the people who had compiled this file had not known those details. They just knew the physical description of the victim, a bare bones description of the scene, and how he had died. When Kenzie started to skim through the description, she only found a couple of lines about Rhys. According to what the medical examiner had been told, he had been in the house, asleep. The police investigation had suggested that Grandpa Clarence had been killed in a burglary gone bad. The burglars had not known that there was anyone in the house. Maybe they had rung the doorbell or knocked on the door before breaking in, but Clarence, hard of hearing, hadn’t heard them.
He had been sitting in his kitchen at the table, eating a bowl of spaghetti. The burglars had stepped in and pulled the trigger, driving a bullet straight into his forehead, killing him instantly.
In Clarence’s case, it had not been a .22 caliber round, but a steel-cased .45, and it had not stopped inside his skull, but had continued on a downward trajectory, through his brain stem and out the back of his skull—as close to being killed instantly as anyone could hope for. If he had looked up in time to see the woman standing in front of him, he might have had a second or two to recognize that she was holding a gun on him and, when she had pulled the trigger, his consciousness had ended.
Not a bad death for Clarence.
Not so great for the five-year-old who had been in the house. The Salters had insisted that Rhys had slept through it and that the trauma he had experienced had just been because he had suddenly lost the grandpa he idolized without understanding what had happened to him.
But as Zachary and Kenzie had discovered, that had been a lie.
When Vera and Gloria had gotten home that day, they had known immediately what had happened. Robin’s violence had been escalating before the murder. Her rage over minor irritants had led to a number of incidents already. However, at that point, her family had been more concerned about hiding what was happening than about getting her proper treatment. Or maybe that was unfair, and it had not progressed to the point where they could have her admitted involuntarily for assessment. Or maybe she had been assessed and released, and the doctors did not consider her a danger to anyone.
But they had definitely covered up the murder. They said it was a burglary, that no one but Clarence and sleeping Rhys had been home. They had moved home electronics into a pile so that it looked like a break-in had been in progress. They said they had found Rhys still asleep in his bed. Vera and Gloria had never changed their story or told anyone what had really happened.
But when Zachary had been helping Madison and Luke to escape from the human trafficking cartel, and Luke had been skimmed across the head by a bullet, it had been painfully obvious that Rhys had seen his grandfather after he had been shot, if not actually witnessed the shooting. He had immediately devolved into repeating the words he had said over and over again after Clarence’s death—Robin’s familiar warning, “Stop it! Just stop that!”
Kenzie had thought that was probably the only evidence they would ever have that Rhys had seen Clarence’s face after he was killed. None of the Salters were willing to talk about it.
But after his MDMA therapy, Rhys’s mouth had again been opened. He had been unable to stop talking and obsessing over the memories. And Kenzie had learned a lot more about that day as the words spilled out like they never had before, and maybe never would again. It had been disjointed, never the whole picture
or sequence at once. Maybe he had only been able to take it in in fractured bits. Or maybe his brain had broken it apart to store the memories separately because it was too overwhelming and terrible to have to see and hear the whole thing as a coherent whole. Or maybe the therapies over the years had helped him access some parts but not others.
Maybe it was the MDMA itself and that was how hallucinogenics always worked. Kenzie had never studied hallucinogenic therapy in detail.
As Kenzie read through the clinical autopsy report, Rhys’s words echoed in her brain, and she pictured the horrific event.
At the scene survey, subject was found to be still seated at the kitchen table where he had been shot.
Grampa eating ’getti. Grampa eating red ’getti.
Attacker entered the kitchen from the living room area after apparently breaking in and gathering electronics to be stolen from the home. On discovering that the homeowner was, in fact, present, the intruder shot the victim in the forehead as he sat.
Grampa, no! Put away! Be a good girl.
The bullet traveled on a downward trajectory, through the brain stem, causing immediate death.
The noise! Loud! Grampa sit. Red ’getti. Red ’getti.
Victim had been eating spaghetti and meatballs with red sauce. Forward blood spatter on table and dishes noted, photographed, and measured, as well as exit wound spatter. No voids, no discrepancies.
Grampa eating ’getti.
Rhys had cried. It was not often that a teenage male would dare show tears to the world, and Kenzie didn’t know if he had cried as a five-year-old when Vera and Gloria had arrived home. But under the influence of the MDMA, he had cried in horrified gasps, the tears pouring down his face.
Grampa! Grampa!
And then a switch from his frantic sobs to Robin’s repeated,
Stop it! Just stop it!
Several times, as he told the story, Rhys collapsed onto the bed and lay in a fetal position after recounting the gunshot, curled up, hands over his head, shaking in terror. When it became too much, he would switch off and talk about the spiders he saw crawling on the walls or repeating other nonsensical phrases, convinced that they meant something, or that Kenzie and Zachary would understand if he just kept repeating them.
It was heartbreaking. Kenzie could picture the little boy he had been, just five years old, terrified by the gunshot. His Grandpa Clarence, previously a central figure in his life, sitting motionless in the chair where he had just been eating, a spaghetti-red hole in his head, red spatter across the table, unresponsive to Rhys’s screams as Robin picked him up and put him back to bed, where he had supposedly been when his mother and grandmother returned home.
The police had taken Vera and the others at their word and written it up as a murder during a burglary. The burglars were never caught. They hadn’t taken anything from the scene, but had fled after firing on the old man. They had left no fingerprints, no hair or other trace evidence that could be used to find them. Clarence was the only one who had seen them, and he couldn’t tell anyone.
34
Kenzie paged through the pictures, and then finally closed the file. Would it do anyone any good to bring the real story to light now? Would anyone other than Vera and Rhys care what had really happened? They already knew. It would be part of their family history forever, no matter how hard they worked to hide it. The killer could never be prosecuted because she was dead. The file could be closed, which might help the police stats a little. But being such a cold case, who would even look at the statistics?
It was a tragic case. She hadn’t really learned anything from the file that she hadn’t known from Rhys’s own mouth. Maybe the technical stuff, like the bullet going through the brain stem. But anything that was important, she had already known.
But she felt like she had needed to see it, needed to read through the dry narrative to pull together all of the pieces of the puzzle into a coherent whole.
She tidied up her desk and put things away. It was a Saturday, so she had no particular schedule she needed to follow. She didn’t officially have to be at the morgue at all. She just liked to spend a little extra time getting caught up on the bits she couldn’t get done during the week.
“Dr. Kirsch,” Nathan, one of the regular security guards in the parking garage, raised a hand to wave at her. “Have a great weekend!”
“Thank you, Nathan. You too. You got some time off after this?”
“I’m working tomorrow. I’ll take my weekend Monday and Tuesday.”
“Well, enjoy your weekend then.”
He nodded, smiling at her. “I sure will.”
He watched her walk to her car and get in, then nodded as she drove off.
Kenzie drove to the Salter home. She had a few things she wanted to talk to Rhys about. She didn’t think that Saul would be able to get anything out of him. If Rhys didn’t want to talk to him, if he didn’t think that Emily would want him to talk to Saul, he would just shut down. He wouldn’t respond to any questions, and there wouldn’t be anything that Saul could do about it. Even if Rhys had been subpoenaed to give testimony in a case, they couldn’t force him to. He had a well-documented psychological condition that prevented him from being able to communicate through any conventional means.
Kenzie wasn’t sure that Rhys’s usual means of communication would even be taken as sworn testimony if he were willing to try. He could give a yes or no head shake to a question, with an unbiased third party interpreting his answers for the court clerk, but how would they interpret dog gifs, photos, and gestures without codified meanings? Would a word or two typed into a messaging app be enough for a judge to agree that his meaning had been clear?
But he would do his best to communicate with Kenzie. He had a bit of a crush on her and never refused to see or talk to her. Kenzie rang the doorbell and was a little surprised when it was answered by Zachary. He laughed at her expression.
“I did say that I might stop by to see Rhys,” he reminded her. “Did you forget that?”
“It seems like days ago,” Kenzie confessed. “Yeah. It completely slipped my mind.”
“So you don’t want to see me.”
“Well…” Kenzie walked in the door. “I always want to see you, but I came to see Rhys.”
“Hello, Kenzie,” Vera greeted, getting up from the couch. “I want to thank you for helping Rhys out with this. I know I wasn’t too positive about it before, but even if it isn’t what I want, I am still grateful to you for helping Rhys.”
Kenzie gave her a brief hug. “Of course. I’ll always help Rhys whenever I can.”
“He’s in his room,” Zachary said. “I just came out to open the door for you because Vera saw you pull up.”
It did help to have a recognizable vehicle! Kenzie glanced out the window at her little red convertible and smiled. She walked with Zachary to Rhys’s bedroom. He stood up from his bed to give her a hug.
“Hey, it’s good to see you. I’ll bet you’re glad to be home,” Kenzie told him.
He released her from the hug and nodded vigorously. When she thought about all he had been through the last few weeks… no kid should have to go through what he had recently. And as a child. He had been lucky to be raised by loving grandparents, which was probably the only reason that he had managed to get through the traumatic experiences he had. And even with that, he had not escaped unscathed. Kenzie wished she could take back the choices that his family had made both before and after Clarence’s death. They had been too afraid of the system to stop the abuses within the family.
They all looked for places to sit down. Zachary had claimed the swivel chair at Rhys’s study desk. Rhys sat on the bed. There was no other chair and not a clear place to sit on the floor. Though she was sure that Rhys and Vera would not have let her sit on the floor anyway.
“Why don’t we go out to the living room?” she suggested. “It would be more comfortable.”
Zachary looked at Rhys, who shook his head. He motioned for Kenzie to sit on the end of the bed, patting it like he was trying to call a cat or dog to jump up. Kenzie sat down. Rhys probably wanted his room’s privacy so Vera didn’t have to overhear what they discussed. As much as Vera loved Rhys and was grateful that Kenzie had agreed to help him, she still did not like the police interfering with their lives.
She would probably not even let Detective Saul come over to interview Rhys. She would tell him no, that she didn’t want Rhys talking to law enforcement about anything.
“So, what have you guys been talking about?” Kenzie asked Zachary, hoping to ease into the conversation gradually.
“Mostly… how he’s feeling about going back to school. If there is anyone he’s interested in. What he likes best about school…”
Kenzie rolled her eyes. “Well, I guess I have school questions too. I hope you haven’t talked him out.”
Rhys made an expansive gesture to Kenzie, inviting her questions.
Kenzie sighed, trying to decide where to start. “I want to ask you questions, but I don’t want to upset you, and some of these things might be upsetting.”
He nodded seriously.
“I don’t want you to think I’m accusing you or anyone else of doing something wrong. Okay? I don’t know much about what happened, and I need you to tell me more about it.”
Rhys nodded again. He pointed at Kenzie. Take it away.
“Was it Emily who sent you the picture? Or someone else?”
He rocked his hand back and forth uncertainly.
“You don’t know who sent it? Why not? Was it sent anonymously?”
He shook his head. He ticked off his fingers as if enumerating a list of points.
“It was sent to you several times,” Zachary said. “I remember you said that. You kept deleting it, and it kept coming back again.”
Rhys pointed at him in agreement.
“Okay, you got it several times. Did you get it from Emily?”
Rhys pursed his lips, then nodded.
“The first time you got it, was it from her?”
Rhys shook his head slowly and shrugged. Not sure.
“Right. You got it several times, and it gets muddled after a while. But you know that one of the times you got it, it was from Emily.”
He nodded.
“Did she send any message with it? Or was she just sending out the picture without any text?”
Rhys shrugged. Kenzie thought he was being intentionally evasive. “Were you and Emily friends?”
He shook his head.
“You didn’t hang out with those kids at all.”
He shook his head again.
“But you knew who she was?”
Rhys nodded. He made a circular motion with his finger pointing up. Kenzie hazarded a guess. “Everybody knew who she was.”
He grinned and pointed at her. You got it.
Kenzie had a feeling that Emily was a person who liked attention. She did what she could to get it. Had that been the only reason for sending around the picture of Mercer? She couldn’t get past the fact that they had been close. It didn’t make sense that she would circulate his death picture just because she hoped it would go viral. Kenzie didn’t think that was her motivation.
“And did everybody know that she was the one who started circulating the picture?”
Rhys shook his head. He pointed to himself and made a slashing movement with his hand.
“You didn’t?”
He nodded his agreement.
“You got it from her, but you didn’t know that she was the one who had started it. You thought she was just one of the people forwarding it around.”
Rhys agreed.
“Did you find out that she was the one who took the picture?”
Rhys stared back at her.
“Was Emily the one who took the picture?”
He shrugged. He frowned and shook his head. Don’t know, don’t think so.
“Did you talk to her about the picture at all?”
A shrug.
“Did you talk to her, message her, ask her if she was okay?”
