Like Father Like Daughter
LIKE FATHER,
LIKE DAUGHTER
By Christina Morgan
LIKE FATHER, LIKE DAUGHTER
Copyright © 2016 by Christina Morgan.
All rights reserved.
First Print Edition: July 2016
Limitless Publishing, LLC
Kailua, HI 96734
Formatting: Limitless Publishing
ISBN-13: 978-1-68058-714-2
ISBN-10: 1-68058-714-5
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to locales, events, business establishments, or actual persons—living or dead—is entirely coincidental.
The space where the paint had peeled from the ceiling above me looked like a mushroom. That’s the first thought I had when I opened my eyes. The second thought was,
my head is pounding.
It felt like someone had a vise grip on my head and was slowly and sadistically turning the screw. I sat up. Slowly. I looked over at him—I don’t know—out of instinct maybe? The back of his head was just…fucking gone…and there was blood. Blood everywhere. It was all over me too. The sound that came out of me after a few seconds of shocked silence was akin to that of an animal caught in a trap. I didn’t even think I was capable of making such a sound, but then again, I’d never discovered the man I loved murdered only inches away from me. I nearly fell over myself as I frantically climbed backwards out of the bed.
When I finally landed on solid ground, I patted my body with trembling hands, searching for a wound but found none. The blood was all his. My shirt was drenched and stuck to my chest and neck. I could feel his blood matted in my hair, which was plastered to the sides of my face. Thick, white globs of what must have been brain matter spotted the headboard and the white Egyptian cotton sheets Ryan had bought me for our anniversary.
I screamed again. I screamed until my throat was raw and I couldn’t scream anymore, but no one could hear me as we had no close neighbors out in the country where we lived.
I tiptoed dizzily around the bed with my quivering hand over my open mouth until I reached his side. I stood staring at his face, or what was left of it. There was a hole the size of a golf ball right in the middle of his forehead. His eyes were staring right at me, it seemed. I thought of closing them, as I’d seen people do in old-timey movies, out of respect, but touching a dead body, even my own husband’s, was something I just wasn’t capable of doing. His mouth was parted halfway open as if he was about to say something…but he would never speak again. I’d never hear him call me “baby” again. I’d never hear his low, rumbling laughter again. Worst of all, I’d never hear him say “I love you” ever again.
I turned away when I got close enough to see the destruction to his face. He had apparently been shot by some sort of handgun. I scanned the room, but saw no handgun lying around. The killer was obviously gone, or else I’d be dead too. Which begged the question—why was I still alive?
I stumbled over my own two feet back to my side of the bed and reached for my iPhone that was plugged into the wall. My eyes were so blurred with tears I could barely see the screen. Somehow, I managed to swipe the dial pad but soon realized I had never dialed 911 before. It had to be done, though. I couldn’t just let him lie there on the bed like that. I thought about calling Mom first, but what could she do? I dialed the three numbers.
The voice on the other end of the line seemed very much like it would rather be saying anything other than “911, what is your emergency?” She actually sounded bored. But then again, we lived in a small town in Kentucky where the only dispatch calls they probably ever received were cats up trees and wandering grandpas. Well, I was about to liven up her morning a bit.
“Yes…um…oh my God…my…he’s…
dead
,” was all I could say at first.
“Excuse me?”
“I said, my husband is dead. He…he’s been murdered, actually. There’s b-b-blood everywhere. Please…s-s-send someone.” I just knew I sounded like a bumbling idiot, but I couldn’t form a coherent sentence.
“How do you know he’s been murdered?” Now I had her attention.
“Because the back of his head is gone! That’s how I know!”
“Are you safe? Is the intruder still in the house?”
“No, I-I don’t think so.”
“Okay, listen to me. Is there a neighbor’s house you can go to? Somewhere safe until the police get there?”
“No. I’ll be fine. Just send someone, okay?” There was a neighbor a ways down the road, but I didn’t want to leave Ryan all alone in the house. Stupid, I know, but I wasn’t exactly thinking clearly.
I hung up the phone before I realized I hadn’t given her my address. But then I remembered they had GPS. Or, at least, I hoped they did.
I slid my phone in the waistband of my pajama bottoms and took one last look at my dead husband.
Who would do this? Who would come into my house and kill my husband, but leave me alive?
After ambling dizzily down what seemed like an eternal hallway, I opened the front door. The pre-dawn air was thick and sticky and I could hear crickets chirping off in the field behind our house. I sat down on the warm concrete porch and waited.
It was only as I sat there, barefoot, soaked in my husband’s blood, that the reality of my situation started to sink in. I covered my face with my hands and began to sob uncontrollably. I cried so hard that every inch of my body hurt. True, Ryan and I had our differences, but I loved him. I had loved him for eight years, and now he was gone. Not just gone, but murdered. Violently and in cold blood. The reality of the way my husband had been killed, as I lay right there next to him, was undeniable. Absurd. But undeniable.
It took less than ten minutes for the police to arrive. Out in the country, especially in the middle of the night, I could hear them from miles away and see the flashing blue and red lights pulsating through the tobacco fields. Four Crown Victorias pulled right up on the lawn, not in the driveway. The Nicholasville Police Department probably only had about ten squad cars to begin with, so to see almost half the police force show up at my house was evidence of the gravity of the situation. I tried to recall the last murder in Nicholasville. None since I’d lived there, I was sure of that.
“Ma’am, are you okay?” one of the officers asked as he walked toward the house with his hand on the gun at his hip.
“I’m fine,” I answered quietly as I wiped tears and snot from my face with the palms of my hands. “But my husband is dead.”
He walked up the steps and stopped right in front of me. I read his nametag.
‘Officer Kingston’
. I’d seen him around town before, at Walmart or one of the town’s very few restaurants. Or maybe it was at the fair? I couldn’t recall for sure, but his chiseled face and stereotypical cop haircut were very familiar.
“You have blood all over you. Are you sure you’re not injured?”
“Yes, I’m sure. It’s my husband’s blood.”
He looked at me queerly. “Ma’am, I think you’re in shock. I’m going to call medical out here to check on you.” Before I could protest, he grabbed the walkie-talkie on his shoulder and spoke into it. “Dispatch, I need medical out here at 2101 Elm Fork Road. Female victim in shock. Possible head injury.”
The CB crackled with the dispatcher’s response. EMTs were on their way, whether I needed them or not.
“I want you to stay right there. Don’t move.”
Officer Kingston walked past me into the house, and I did as he commanded. Then another officer approached me. A female. One of Nicholasville’s very few female officers, I assumed, probably called out to identify with me and get me to talk, where I might be hesitant to speak with the good ol’ boys.
She stood over me, looking down at me with suspicious eyes.
“What happened here?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” I said through new tears. “I woke up and my husband was just…lying dead next to me.”
The officer pulled out a small spiral notebook and a pen from her front pocket. She clicked her Bic and looked right at me. “I need you to tell me everything that happened here tonight.”
Between sobs, I told her exactly what had happened—that I had woken up dizzy with a pounding headache and found my husband dead in the bed next to me.
“Let me see your head,” she said, and without waiting for my response, she grabbed hold of my head and began looking it over thoroughly. “I don’t see any signs of trauma.”
“I’m not hurt. Just a bad headache, that’s all.”
The other officers walked right past us into the house. The flashing lights lit up my house, painting the white vinyl siding alternating shades of blue and red.
I loved our little house. We had bought it nearly two years ago from Ryan’s mother when she decided to move into town. The forty acres of land and barn were just too much for her to handle on her own since Ryan’s father passed away of a heart attack. No big surprise there. He smoked three packs of Winstons and drank twelve PBRs a day. At first, it felt like I was intruding on someone else’s property. Ryan had grown up in that house. I grew up in the suburbs of Lexington…but it was just starting to feel like home. Now, I realized, it would never be home again. Just the house where my husband was murdered while I lay sleeping next to him.
Officer Kingston stepped back onto the porch and addressed the female officer whose name tag read
‘Officer Jones.’
“One male victim, deceased. Obvious gunshot wounds to the front and back of the head. No murder weapon, anywhere that I can see, anyway. Radio dispatch and tell them we need a detective out here, ASAP.”
Jones nodded and returned to her Crown Vic to call for detectives. I sat there with my elbows on my knees and my throbbing head in my hands, trying not to picture my husband’s head—or what was left of it—to no avail.
“Ma’am,” Officer Kingston said from behind me.
“You can call me Libby.”
“All right, Libby, I’m going to need you to come down to the station—once medical gets here and clears you—that is. I know this is an extremely difficult time for you, but it’s standard procedure.” Then he turned his attention to the other officers milling about, doing what appeared to be important police things. “You, you, and you, secure the perimeter. I want tape up around the house ASAP and until a detective gets here, no one else steps foot inside this house. I won’t have the crime scene contaminated.”
“Why do I have to go downtown?” I asked, even though I already knew the answer. As Ryan’s wife, I was the most natural first suspect. Not to mention the fact I had miraculously survived without so much as a scratch, and I was covered in Ryan’s blood.
“As I said,” Kingston said shortly. “Standard procedure.”
I knew all about standard procedure. I worked as a paralegal and had for nearly sixteen years. My specialty was criminal law, which was a perfect fit for me, considering my obsession with all things crime related. I used to work in civil law, mostly car wrecks and slip and falls, until I was laid off by one of the big litigation firms in Lexington and all I could find was a low-paying job working for a solo-practice attorney named Dave Rogers. He mostly represented people facing DUI or drug charges, but I loved it. Eventually, I found a higher-paying job in Lexington with a big criminal defense firm. So I knew when Officer Kingston said “standard procedure,” what he really meant was “we need to interview you and try to get a confession out of you before you lawyer up.”
The ambulance arrived five minutes later. A thin, red-faced EMT, who looked young enough to be my son, introduced himself as Jason.
“Hi, Jason,” I said, fighting my instinct to fall to the ground and curl up into the fetal position. “I’m fine. Really, I am. Just a bad headache.”
“Well, let me be the judge of that. Stand up for me?”
I stood from the porch and realized just how short Jason was. I was taller than him by a head. He pulled out a penlight and shined it in my eyes while he lifted my eyelids one at a time. Next, he examined my head and picked through my short blonde hair, which hadn’t been washed in two days. After confirming I had no wounds, Jason pronounced me medically healthy, but likely in shock.
A fifth Crown Vic pulled up, but this one pulled into my gravel driveway. It was tan and unmarked, which told me this must be the detective they had been waiting for.
A large man with an equally large head stepped out of the cruiser and waddled toward the house. I recognized him instantly. Detective Jim Dorne. He was one of only a handful of detectives in the county but everyone knew him as “the” detective. He was everywhere. I had worked with him during my time with Dave Rogers. Well, not so much
with
him, but
against
him. He would charge suspects and we would defend them. He was a grade-A son of a bitch, notorious for overcharging and stacking charges against suspects. But if there was anyone who could figure out who killed my husband, it was Detective Jim Dorne, so for that alone, I was grateful to see him.
He approached the porch where I was now standing with EMT Jason and the police officers. “Jones. Kingston.” He nodded his head at the officers and then swiveled on the heel of his black leather boot to face me. “Elizabeth Carter, I presume?” He held out his meaty hand. He didn’t recognize me.
“Libby,” I said, letting his big hand envelop mine.
“I’m Detective Jim Dorne with the Nicholasville Police Department. What happened here tonight?”
All cried out for the moment, I simply recited the events of the evening. When I had been through the entire ordeal in vivid detail, he nodded his fat head and said, “Do you know anyone who might want to hurt your husband, Libby?”
I thought about it briefly. We had no enemies. We barely had any friends, outside of co-workers. Ryan never pissed anyone off in his life. I told him as much.