Cold Case in Cherokee Crossing (8 page)

Chapter Twelve

Avery had been surprised the rehab facility wasn’t drab and depressing. Instead the sunroom and outside facilities were cheery and relaxing.

But the mental hospital radiated a different feel. The building was housed behind a gate, as if it were a prison. The building was old and weathered, the land dry and parched. Jaxon phoned ahead to ask permission to visit Imogene, and was given an okay, although the nurse in charge warned him that Imogene would probably be unresponsive.

Inside, the hospital walls were painted a dull green, the floors were faded gray and everything from the dingy chairs in the waiting room to the cafeteria they passed desperately need a face-lift.

The doctor in charge of Imogene’s care, a fiftysomething bohemian-looking lady, met them in her office. “I’m Dr. Pirkle. I understand the reason you’re here, but I’m not sure Imogene will be helpful.”

“Just let us talk to her for a minute,” Jaxon said. “It’s important.”

The woman’s sharp eyes darted sideways to Avery. “Her mental state is fragile. She’s making strides, but she suffered a psychotic break, is bipolar and struggles with depression. She doesn’t need a setback.”

“We don’t want to hurt her,” Avery said. “You can be present when we talk to her. And the moment you sense we might be upsetting her, we’ll leave.”

Dr. Pirkle stood, her brows knitted. “All right. Follow me.”

She led them to a room across from another nurse’s station. Dr. Pirkle knocked gently on the door and opened it.

Avery’s heart hammered at the sight of the frail-looking blonde sitting by the window staring outside. She was so thin that Avery wondered if she ever ate, her skin so pale she obviously didn’t get out in the sun much.

She didn’t look at them as they crossed the room, but kept her hands buried in the folds of the blanket on her lap. Unlike her brother, whose anxiety had displayed itself by perpetual motion, Imogene was so still she might have been a stone statue.

Dr. Pirkle laid a hand on Imogene’s shoulder and knelt in front of her. “Imogene, you have some visitors.” She introduced them, but Imogene didn’t show a reaction.

The doctor stood and gestured for them to begin.

“Why don’t you try talking to her?” Jaxon suggested to Avery.

Emotion thickened her throat as she pulled a chair from the corner and situated it beside Imogene. When she sat down, she offered Imogene a smile.

“Imogene, I’m Avery,” she said softly. “We just talked to your brother, BJ.”

Her eyelids fluttered, and she slowly turned her head to look at her. Avery’s chest constricted at the flat, dead look in the young woman’s eyes.

“He’s all right,” Avery said. “He loves you and misses you, Imogene.”

Imogene’s lip quivered slightly.

“He’s sorry that you’re having a hard time and wants you to get better.”

Imogene’s breath quickened slightly.

“I know what happened to you,” Avery said softly. “Because I lived in the house with Wade and Joleen Mulligan.”

Tension stretched in the silence, Imogene’s breath becoming unsteady.

“Mr. Mulligan hurt me, too,” Avery said. “And my brother, Hank, he used to beat him like he did your brother.”

Imogene’s hands dug deeper into the blanket.

“One night after Mr. Mulligan came into my room, he ended up dead. The police thought my brother killed him. You may have heard the story.”

Imogene looked into Avery’s eyes, her only acknowledgment.

“But they were wrong. Hank did stab Wade, but Wade was already dead.” She paused, searching for a reaction.

An odd, eerie smile slowly formed on Imogene’s face.

“We believe someone else sneaked into the house that night. Someone who took a kitchen knife and stabbed Wade before my brother came into the room.”

“You and your brother had reason to hate Mulligan,” Jaxon said. “He forced you to have an abortion. Your brother ran away and started doing drugs.”

“Do you think it’s possible that he broke into the house and killed Wade?” Avery asked.

Dr. Pirkle’s soft gasp of disapproval echoed between them.

“I did it,” Imogene said, shocking them all. “I wanted him dead.”

Her eyes suddenly looked wild, excited, crazed. She lifted her hands above her head, positioning them as if she were holding a knife, and brought it down in a stabbing motion. “I hated him and wanted him dead. I stabbed him in the chest, over and over and over.” Her voice rose, her breath raspy as she continued the motion. “He shouted out in pain, but this time I was the one making him cry. He begged me to stop, begged me to let him go, but I didn’t.” She shook her head back and forth, lost in the moment. “I stabbed him again. Blood spurted everywhere. All over his chest and face, all over my hands.” She looked down and touched her shirt. “All over my blouse. I had a white blouse on that day, but then it was red. But it looked pretty that way. Pretty with his blood on it because that meant he was dead, and he couldn’t ever touch me again.”

She drove her hands down one more time, twisting them around and around as if she were burying the knife inside Wade Mulligan’s body. “And then he stopped crying. Stopped breathing. It was so beautiful.”

Another silence fell over the room as they digested what she’d said.

“So you killed Wade Mulligan?” Jaxon finally asked.

Dr. Pirkle cleared her throat. “That’s enough.”

Imogene closed her eyes and made a soft mewling sound. “I killed him. Then BJ killed him again. Then we dragged his body outside and dug a hole and buried him in it. I threw dirt on his face and laughed and laughed and laughed as we spread it over him. Then BJ pried open his mouth and dumped more dirt inside it so he couldn’t ever yell or say vile things again.” She started to hum beneath her breath. “We covered him all over so we’d never see those mean eyes again, never see them again....”

Avery’s stomach knotted.

Had Imogene or her brother really stabbed Wade, or was she simply delusional?

* * *

J
AXON
AND
A
VERY
waited in the hallway for Dr. Pirkle as she spoke to Imogene. When she emerged from the room, anger slashed her features.

“I can’t believe you came here to implicate Imogene in a crime to exonerate your brother, Miss Tierney.” She slanted Jaxon a harsh look. “And you, Sergeant Ward, you know that anything Imogene said in her condition is not going to stand up in court.”

“I’m aware of that,” Jaxon said. “But if Imogene did kill Mulligan, or if her brother did, and you know the truth, you should tell us.”

“Anything I’ve learned through my patient’s private therapy sessions is privileged and you know that, too.”

Avery sighed next to him, and Jaxon wanted to pull her up against him, but he refrained. “Yes, of course. Although if Imogene killed Wade, you could use an insanity defense. And Hank would get the freedom he deserves.”

“She didn’t kill him,” Dr. Pirkle said. “Although she certainly sounded venomous in there, her story was just that—a story. A fantasy. In her delusions, she has imagined doing what she didn’t have the courage to do back then.”

“You mean she blames herself?” Avery asked.

Dr. Pirkle shrugged. “Most victims experience some sort of self-blame, think they deserved the abuse and ask themselves why they didn’t do things differently.” Her stare pierced Avery. “I’m sure you understand that feeling.”

Jaxon’s jaw tightened, but Avery simply nodded.

“More than you know.” She lifted her chin. “That’s one reason I’m determined to free my brother. He wouldn’t have lied about killing Wade if he hadn’t been protecting me.”

Dr. Pirkle squeezed Avery’s hand in hers. “I’m truly sorry for how you’ve suffered, for how your brother suffered. After hearing Imogene’s story, I believe that man deserved what he got. But I don’t see how I can help you any further.”

Jaxon wanted to be angry with the doctor, but he understood her position. Hell, Imogene was an emotionally unstable woman and needed protection.

But he hadn’t learned anything new here, and he needed something that would make a judge grant a stay for Hank.

He thanked Dr. Pirkle, and he and Avery walked down the hall, the silence thick with anxiety.

His phone buzzed, and he checked the text. The forensic examiner from the lab.

Stop by. I need to show you something I saw on Mulligan’s autopsy report.

Jaxon texted that he’d be right there, then gestured for Avery to get in the SUV.

“We’re going to the lab,” Jaxon said. “Our analyst finally reviewed Mulligan’s autopsy.”

Avery leaned against the back of the seat, a troubled look on her face. “Imogene is a wreck and her brother an addict. I’m not sure they can help us.”

“Two more lives completely destroyed by Wade Mulligan,” Jaxon muttered.

“I know. Which makes me wonder why the social worker placed me and Hank with the family. I can’t believe nobody picked up on the problems in that house. Especially after Lois and Dotty.”

* * *

“S
OMEONE
SHOULD
HAVE
stopped him,” Jaxon agreed. “We’re going to talk to Erma Brant after we see this autopsy and find out just what she was thinking.”

Avery twisted her hands together. “How does she live with herself?”

“Good question. Ask her that when we see her.”

“I intend to.”

Dark clouds hovered above, threatening rain, late-afternoon shadows slanting across the road. It took almost an hour to reach the county lab, which was housed in an old brick building, set away from the road about a mile from the warehouse district.

They bypassed several offices and labs where workers were processing evidence collected from various cases, running DNA tests and analyzing photographs.

Jaxon knocked on the door to Dr. Jeremy Riggins’s office. The doctor yelled for him to come in, and Avery followed him inside. Jaxon made the introductions, and Dr. Riggins led them over to his workstation.

“I studied the autopsy report,” Dr. Riggins said. “Wade Mulligan definitely bled out from a stab wound that penetrated his aorta.”

That was nothing new.

“You said you found something else?” Jaxon asked.

Dr. Riggins glanced at Avery. “Maybe you should step out, Miss Tierney. What I’m going to show you is pretty graphic.”

Avery folded her arms. “Go ahead. I’ll be fine.”

Dr. Riggins glanced at Jaxon for confirmation, and Jaxon gestured for him to continue.

He indicated a whiteboard on the wall, then flipped it over on the stand to reveal numerous photographs of Wade Mulligan’s body in various states—clothed, bloody and dead, on the floor of the bedroom where he’d been murdered, and others of him naked on the autopsy table.

Jaxon pointed to the pictures. “There are the photographs the ME took of Mulligan when he got him on the table.”

Jaxon noted the gashes on the man’s chest, and glanced at Avery to see if she was okay. Her face had paled slightly, her lips pinched.

Dr. Riggins pointed to several of the stab wounds. “If you look at the angle of these, they all slant the same direction, indicating that they were done by a right-handed person.”

Which made sense. Hank was right-handed. He pointed to the numerous small stab wounds. “Those were the wounds Hank inflicted.”

“But look here.” Dr. Riggins used a pointer to highlight another stab wound, this one slightly different. “It’s not only deeper and wider but slants the opposite direction.”

Jaxon’s heart hammered. “That one was made by someone other than Hank. By someone left-handed.”

Dr. Riggins pushed his glasses up his nose with a smile. “Exactly.”

Avery made a low sound in her throat. “What are you saying?”

Adrenaline rushed through Jaxon. This was what they needed, some concrete evidence to support the theory that there had been another perpetrator.

“It means that a second person stabbed Wade,” Jaxon said.

“Not only that,” Dr. Riggins said as he pointed to the wound again, “but this wound was the fatal one. It sliced through the aorta. Mulligan probably died within seconds.”

Jaxon gritted his teeth. This should be good news.

Except that Avery was left-handed.

* * *

A
VERY
MENTALLY
DIGESTED
the implications of the ME’s report. “That means Hank was telling the truth.”

“It could mean a second person actually killed Mulligan,” Jaxon said quietly.

Avery glanced at her hands, her eyes widening. “My God, I’m left-handed.”

She staggered back against the table. “Hank thought I stabbed Wade. And I...don’t remember what happened that night.” Fear clogged her throat. “What if I did do it?”

Regret flashed in Jaxon’s eyes. “Avery, don’t jump to conclusions. You were just a child.”

Avery rubbed the scar on her wrist. “I didn’t want to remember.” Her breath caught. “But then I thought Hank was guilty. I didn’t see any reason to relive it.” Maybe she should try harder now.

If she could recall the details of that night, if she’d witnessed the murder, she might be able to identify the killer.

“Ms. Tierney,” Dr. Riggins said. “The wound made by the left hand was the fatal one and much deeper than the other wounds, which appear more superficial. It tore through muscle and tissue. But I doubt a nine-year-old girl would have that kind of strength.”

Relief filled Avery. “If you show this to a judge, he’ll have to stop the execution and grant a new investigation.”

Jaxon scrubbed a hand over the back of his neck. “I wish it was that simple. But the prosecutor can easily argue that Hank used his left hand at some point. Maybe he grabbed the knife with his left hand at first because he was holding Mulligan down with his right, or he dropped it at some point and then retrieved it with his other hand.”

Avery’s hopes wilted.

“Don’t get too discouraged, Avery,” Jaxon said. “This is a start. But we need more.” He turned back to the forensic specialist. “Is there anything else you can tell us from the body?”

Dr. Riggins studied the photographs intently. He pointed to a cut on the man’s right wrist. “The only defensive wound Mulligan sustained is that cut. Which suggests that he raised his arm in an attempt to deflect the blow from the left-handed attacker.”