Mountain Witness Read online

  He had to think she was crazy. But she’d been here before. She’d been the woman sitting on the couch while the policeman told her that he was dead. And then he...wasn’t. And then...and then. She shuddered.

  “Is he dead?” She held her breath, waiting for his reply.

  He exchanged a look with the female officer before answering. “Yes. I’m sorry. Yes, he’s dead.”

  She covered her mouth with her hands, desperately trying to keep from falling apart.

  He’s dead. Oh, my God. He’s dead.

  “Someone will take your official statement after you’ve been checked out at the hospital. But can you tell us anything right now about the man who attacked you? Did you know him?”

  “Know him?” A bubble of hysterical laughter burst between her lips. “I married him.”

  Chapter Five

  Chris exchanged a startled look with Donna as he knelt in front of the couch. His neighbor, Julie Webb, had just announced that the intruder Chris had killed was her husband. And, instead of being angry or crying or...something that made sense, she was rocking back and forth with her arms around her middle, eyes squeezed tightly shut. The rocking wasn’t the part that was odd. What had the hairs standing up on his neck were the words that she kept whispering over and over in response to him telling her that her husband was dead.

  “Thank you, Lord. Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

  Her callous words didn’t seem to match the fragile, lost look in her deep blue eyes, as if she were caught in a nightmare and couldn’t find her way out. He instinctively wanted to reach for her, pull her into his arms, tell her that everything would be okay. But the words she kept chanting sent a chill up his spine and started alarm bells going off in his suspicious detective’s brain.

  If she’d been abused by her husband, which seemed likely given that he’d held a knife on her, Chris could understand her relief that her husband couldn’t hurt her anymore. And he’d seen the fear in her eyes earlier today, which lent more evidence to the abuse theory. But he’d also seen many domestic violence cases, and almost without fail, the abused party would defend her abuser. If a cop tried to arrest the husband, or hurt him while trying to protect the wife, nine times out of ten that wife would immediately leap to the husband’s defense. Julie’s actions were nothing like what he was used to seeing in those cases. The whole situation just seemed...off.

  “The chief’s motioning for you.” Donna kept her voice low. “Go on. I’ll sit with her until the ambulance arrives.”

  He hesitated, feeling guilty for wanting to jump at her offer. He’d created this mess. He should have to stay and deal with the fallout, including whatever was going on with Julie Webb.

  “It’s okay. I’ve got this,” she reassured him. “Go.” She put her hand on Julie’s back, lightly patting it like she would a child. Julie didn’t even seem to notice. She just kept rocking and repeating her obscene prayer.

  As if drawn by some invisible force, Chris’s gaze slid to the body of the man who was dead because of him. This wasn’t the first time he’d killed someone in the line of duty. Being on the only SWAT team within a hundred miles of Destiny meant he was often called out to help other small towns or unincorporated areas when violence landed on their doorstep. But every time he’d had to use lethal force, the what-ifs and second-guessing haunted him for a long time afterward. He didn’t expect this one would be any different.

  He wished he could put a sheet over the man, afford him some kind of dignity in death. But the uniformed officer standing near the body was his reminder that the scene had to be preserved until the Blount County coroner arrived. And since Destiny shared their coroner with a handful of other rural counties, that could be a while from now. Two more uniformed officers stood near a stack of boxes on the left side of the room, probably to keep Julie and others from contaminating the scene.

  “Downing.”

  Chief Thornton’s gruff voice had Chris finally standing and turning around. His boss stood just inside the front door, still wearing the khaki shorts and polo shirt that he’d worn to the cookout a few hours earlier.

  “Powwow, front lawn. Now.” The chief headed outside.

  Chris followed the chief down the porch steps to where three members of the SWAT team who’d also been at the cookout stood waiting. Max, Randy and Colby were dressed in full body armor just like Donna, back inside the house. It occurred to him that they must have raced like a mama sow protecting her piglets to have gotten here so fast. None of them lived close by, except for Dillon, and he was noticeably absent.

  “Is Ashley okay?” he asked no one in particular, assuming the worst. He couldn’t imagine his best friend not responding to a call for aid from Chris or any of their fellow officers unless something had happened to Ashley.

  “She’s at Blount Memorial in Maryville.” Max held up his hands to stop the anticipated flood of questions. “When your 911 call came in, Dillon and Ashley were halfway to the hospital because she’d started having contractions. I assured him we could handle—”

  “It’s too soon,” Chris interrupted, worry making his voice thick. “She’s only seven months along.”

  “I know that,” Max said. “Like I was saying, I told Dillon not to worry about you, that we had your back. And, before you ask, I spoke to him a few minutes ago. They were able to stop her labor, but they’ll keep her there for observation overnight, maybe even a few days. But she and the baby are both fine.”

  Chris nodded, blowing out a relieved breath.

  “You okay?” Max put his hand on Chris’s shoulder. “You look greener than Dillon did when you mentioned fried gizzards.”

  “I killed a man. No. I’m not okay.”

  Max winced and dropped his hand, immediately making Chris regret his curt reply.

  “Tell us what happened,” the chief said, impatience etched on his features. “Take it from the top and don’t leave anything out.”

  Chris began reciting the events that had led to the shooting, being as detailed as he could. Since everyone on the SWAT team performed dual roles as detectives in the fifteen-officer police force, they all listened intently, taking notes on their phones or the little pads of paper most of them kept handy.

  Dillon was normally lead detective, with Chris as backup. But obviously Chris couldn’t investigate a case where he was a primary participant. He wasn’t sure who would run with this one.

  After Chris finished his statement, the chief motioned to Max.

  Max pulled a brown paper evidence bag from his rear pocket and awkwardly cleared his throat as he held it open. “Sorry, man. Standard operating procedure. Gotta take your sidearm as evidence.”

  Chris knew the drill and had been vaguely surprised that no one had taken his gun the moment they’d arrived. But even after putting his pistol in the bag, the weight of his now-empty holster seemed heavier than before, a reminder of what he’d done, the life he’d taken.

  Max closed the bag and stepped back beside Randy. Since Max looked miserable about taking the gun, Chris gave him a reassuring nod to let him know that he understood.

  “You said they were arguing when you approached the house,” the chief said. “Did you hear what they were arguing about?”

  He replayed the moment when he was crouching by the window, trying to remember what he’d heard.

  “Seems like they both said something about ‘keys,’ or maybe it was ‘please.’ I definitely heard the man mention a gun. But he was holding a knife, so that doesn’t seem right.” He shrugged. “I was too far away to hear them clearly. I was more focused on what he was doing with the butcher knife and how to get it away from him.”

  The low wail of a siren filled the air as an ambulance turned down the road and headed toward them.

  “About time,” the chief said. “I was thinking we’d have to
wake up Doc Brookes if it took any longer.”

  Chris couldn’t help smiling. Even though it was only a few hours past sundown, it was probably Doc Brookes’s bedtime. The town’s only doctor was getting up there in years. And he made sure everyone knew not to bother him after hours unless there was arterial bleeding involved or a bone sticking out. Unfortunately, with the only hospital nearly forty-five minutes from Destiny, ornery Brookes was who they were stuck with most of the time.

  “I’d better move my truck,” Max said.

  “Ah, shoot,” Colby said. His truck’s front bumper was partly blocking the end of the driveway. “Me, too.”

  They hurried to their vehicles to make room before the ambulance reached the house.

  “Chief, got a second?” Chris asked.

  Thornton looked pointedly at Randy, who took the unsubtle hint and awkwardly pounded Chris on the back before heading toward the house.

  As soon as Randy was out of earshot, the chief held up his hand to stop Chris from saying anything.

  “I know we still have to process the scene, and get the coroner out here, perform due diligence and all that. But honestly, son, it looks like a clean shoot to me. I can tell it’s eating you up inside, but you need to let that go. You saved a life tonight. That’s what you should focus on.”

  They moved farther into the grass while the ambulance pulled into the driveway. The EMTs hopped out of the vehicle and grabbed their gear.

  “I appreciate that, Chief,” Chris said. “I feel like hell for taking a life. But I know I did what I had to do. That’s not what I wanted to talk to you about.”

  Colby and Max jogged up the driveway, having parked their trucks farther down the road. They started toward Chris and the chief, but a stern look from Thornton had them heading toward the house, instead, and following the EMTs inside.

  Still, Chris hesitated. Putting his concerns into words was proving harder than he’d expected.

  “Well, go on, son. Spit out whatever’s bothering you. The skeeters are eatin’ me alive out here.”

  As if to demonstrate what he’d said, the chief smacked his arm, leaving a red smear where a mosquito had been making a buffet out of him. He wiped his arm on his shorts, grimacing at the stain he’d left behind, before giving Chris an impatient look. “Well?”

  “It’s Mrs. Webb,” Chris said. “The thing is, after the shooting, she asked me whether the guy I’d shot was dead. No, what she asked was whether I was sure, as if she thought I was playing a cruel joke on her, as if she wanted him to be dead. The guy is, was, her husband. And it seemed like she was...relieved...that I’d killed him.”

  “Well, he did hold a knife on her. Makes sense she’d be happy to be alive and that she didn’t have to worry about him attacking her again.”

  Chris scrubbed his face and then looked down the dark road, lit only by the occasional firefly. Crickets and bullfrogs competed with one another in their nightly symphony. All in all, everything seemed so normal. And, yet, nothing was the same.

  “You think there’s more to it than that, don’t you?” The chief was studying him intently. “Why?”

  “Because she didn’t ask me just once whether he was dead. She asked several times. And it was more the way she asked it that spooked me. You know how it is. If there’s a domestic dispute, a husband beating his wife or trying to kill her, we cops intervene and suddenly we’re the bad guys. Happens almost every time. But I shoot Mrs. Webb’s husband and she starts praying out loud, thanking God. I don’t know about you, but that’s a first for me.”

  Thornton was quiet for a long moment, leaving Chris to wallow in his own thoughts, to wonder if saying anything was the right thing to do. He hated the unflattering picture that he’d just painted of Julie Webb. It didn’t seem right, as if he was spreading rumors, gossiping—something his father would have rewarded with an extra long switch applied liberally to his hide. But this wasn’t high school. This was the real world, a death investigation, where actions and words had consequences. They mattered. And he couldn’t ignore something just because it was uncomfortable.

  “How did she seem before all of this?” Thornton finally asked. “If her husband had a history of violence against her, she might have joined a support group and got the help she needed to cut all ties. Maybe she moved here to escape him, thought she was safe. But he figured out where she was, came after her. Seems to me that’d make her mighty grateful that he’s never going to hurt her again.”

  “Maybe.” He wanted to believe that was it. But even he could hear the doubt in his voice. He shrugged. “Hard to say what her state of mind was prior to this incident. She kept to herself, didn’t even wave. I did get the feeling earlier today, when I saw her on her porch, that she was afraid of...something. And that was before her husband showed up.”

  “There, see? It’s like I said. Her behavior could very well make sense, given those circumstances. And she’s lucky you were close by to save her.”

  “Yeah,” he mumbled. “Lucky for both of us.”

  The chief gave him a knowing look. And it dawned on Chris that Thornton might know firsthand how he felt. Chris had joined the force right out of college, thirteen years ago. But Thornton was already chief by then. There was no telling what horrors he might have faced as a young beat cop, or even in his detective days, what burdens he might have accumulated like an invisible weight that no one else could see. All Chris knew for sure was what he felt, which was all kinds of uneasy about this whole thing.

  It was bad enough that he’d taken a life. Even worse if there was something else going on here. The “something else” that kept running through his mind was so prejudicial against Julie Webb that he couldn’t voice it to the chief, not without proof, something concrete. All he had was a disturbing series of impressions that had begun to take root in his mind from the moment he’d seen her reaction to the shooting.

  Suspicions that maybe this wasn’t “just” a case of a domestic dispute with tragic consequences.

  That maybe Julie Webb knew she was moving in next door to a cop all along.

  That she had planned this whole thing from beginning to end.

  That she’d just used Chris as a weapon to commit murder.

  Chapter Six

  Standing in the Destiny Police Department at midnight on a Saturday wasn’t exactly where Chris imagined his fellow SWAT team members wanted to be. But not one of them had even considered going home. Max, Colby, Donna and Randy stood shoulder to shoulder with him in a show of solidarity while they watched their boss interview Julie Webb through the large two-way glass window.

  Behind Chris and his SWAT team, two more officers sat at desks on the other side of the large open room that was essentially the entire police station. One of them, Blake Sullivan, was a recent transfer and would eventually be a detective and member of their SWAT team. But not yet. For now, he was learning the ropes of Destiny PD as a nightshift cop, which included filling out a lot of mundane reports.

  There were fifteen desks in all, three rows of five. And other than a couple of holding cells off the back wall and a bathroom, there was just the chief’s office, his executive washroom that the team loved to tease him about and the interview room.

  The entire night shift consisted of the two officers currently writing reports and two more out on patrol. Destiny wasn’t exactly a mecca for crime. The town didn’t boast a strip of bars or clubs to spill their drugs or drunks into the streets. A typical night might mean lecturing some teenagers caught drag racing, or rescuing a rival football team’s stolen mascot from a hayloft.

  Tonight was anything but typical.

  Tonight a man had died.

  And Chris wanted, needed, to find out what had precipitated the violence by Alan Webb, leaving Chris no choice but to use lethal force. The chief had officially placed him on administrative lea
ve, pending the results of the investigation. He’d expressly forbidden Chris from going into the interview room. But since the chief would’ve had to fight his own SWAT team to force Chris to leave the station, he’d wisely pretended not to notice him in the squad room, watching the chief interview the witness.

  Along with her counsel, assistant district attorney Kathy Nelson.

  Plus two administrative lackeys—Brian Henson and Jonathan Bolton—that Nelson had brought with her from Nashville. She’d left the two men sitting at one of the desks on the opposite side of the squad room like eager lapdogs waiting for their master to give them an order.

  Chris studied Henson and Bolton for a long moment before looking back at the interview window. “If she felt she needed a lawyer, why call an ADA? And since when does an assistant district attorney have an entourage? Or drive with that entourage for three hours in the middle of the night for a witness interview, let alone one that’s way outside her jurisdiction?”

  “Right? Doesn’t make a lick of sense,” Donna said beside him.

  After dodging another barrage of questions like the polished politician that she was, Nelson shoved back her chair and stood.

  “Wait, what’s she doing?” Max asked.

  Nelson motioned to Mrs. Webb. She picked up her purse from the table and stood.

  Chris stiffened. “They’re leaving.”

  Donna was clearly bemused. “But they didn’t answer hardly any of the chief’s questions.”

  “Screw this.” Chris stepped toward the interview room door.

  Max grabbed his shoulder. “Don’t do it, man. The chief will—”

  Chris shoved Max’s hand away and yanked open the door.

  * * *

  JULIE HURRIEDLY STEPPED back to put more distance between her and the imposing man suddenly filling the open doorway of the interview room—her neighbor, Detective Chris Downing. With his clenched jaw and hands fisted at his sides, he seemed like a tautly drawn bow, ready to spring.