Run by emily_michele
Annie gasped loudly, and Nick’s eyes darted back and forth from his fiancé to the detective, and back again. “Bob?” she asked incredulously. This was unbelievable. Nick’s parents weren’t his favorite people, and they weren’t hers either, but she’d met them a couple of times, and these days, Bob seemed pretty harmless, really. Besides, why would he want to kill her parents? He’d never even met them. Detective Jones looked down at the criminal profile in front of him. Bob? Did the guy have an alias they didn’t know about?
“You’re not talking about Bob, are you?” Nick asked him quietly.
“I don’t think so….” Kendall said cryptically. “Am I right to assume that Annie doesn’t know about him?”
“Yeah,” Nick admitted somberly. He fell back against his chair, suddenly exhausted, the effects of two sleepless nights finally catching up to him. “I thought he was still in jail,” he said, looking up at Kendall with wide eyes. “Why is he not still in jail?”
“He was up for parole two months ago, and they let him out, for good behavior,” Kendall told him. This time, he knew his suspect. This time, he was going to get it right. He’d been up all night for the second night in a row reading up on him and finding out everything he could about his new suspect. “I’m sorry, Nick.” He said earnestly, staring into his former suspect’s eyes intently. This “I’m sorry” was so much more than “I’m sorry the justice system let your father out of jail.” It was “I’m sorry I was wrong, and I’m sorry the justice system failed you, your girl, and her family.”
Nick’s hands started to shake, and he looked at Annie, tentatively taking her hands in an attempt to steady his own. “I’m so sorry, Annie.” He looked at her brother. “Josh.”
“Nick, what’s going on?” she pleaded.
Nick glanced at Kendall, then at Jordan, and settled his gaze back on Annie. “I never intended for you to know about this. I don’t know why, exactly. I mean, you’re going to be my wife by the end of the year. I guess it never really mattered that much, but apparently it matters now.” He squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head back and forth as he breathed out a disgusted sigh. He grasped both of her hands in his and turned so that he was facing her, his knees grazing up against hers. “For whatever it’s worth, Bob’s my dad. He’s the man who raised me, but he’s not my father.”
Annie knit her brows in confusion. “But you look so much like him!”
Nick gulped. “Yeah, I know. That’s because Frank’s his brother. We’re talking about Frank, right? My father?” He spat the word ‘father’ out, as it obviously left a bad taste in his mouth, and looked across the table at the detective with questioning eyes.
Part of him was silently begging Kendall to jump up and say, “Gotcha! Your psycho serial killer father is still locked up tight in prison and Annie’s parents aren’t really dead.” Perhaps Ashton Kutcher would jump out from behind the detective and tell him he’d been Punk’d. But that show had been cancelled years ago, and Detective Jones could only confirm that this nightmare was still far from over. “Yes,” he answered. “We’re talking about Frank.”
“What the hell ?” Nick grimaced. “I haven’t talked to him in years. I didn’t even know the guy existed until I was twenty-- as if I didn’t have enough reasons to not trust my family already.”
For a moment, Annie almost forgot why they were there in the first place and gazed longingly at her fiancé, her head cocked to one side as her heart crumbled for him. His family dysfunction obviously ran even deeper and wider than he’d ever let on, and the years of hurt and confusion were etched all over his face. “He doesn’t even know about Annie. What reason could he possibly have to want to track down and murder her parents?”
“My thoughts exactly,” Kendall replied matter-of-factly. “That’s what I’ve been up all night trying to figure out. My team and I have some theories, and one of them looks pretty solid. If it’s okay with all of you, I’d like to ask some questions about your parents.” Nick choked down the lump in his sandpaper-dry throat, and Annie gave his violently shaking hand a reassuring squeeze. This was crazy, but it certainly wasn’t Nick’s fault, and she was just relieved that now the investigation seemed like it was actually going somewhere. Kendall gave a nod to the stenographer in the corner and pushed the record button on his tape recorder. “When was the last time you had any contact with Frank Carter, Nick?”
“He sent a Christmas card last year,” Nick replied stoically.
“To what address? Los Angeles? Nashville? Tampa?”
“Tampa. It’s the only one he has, and that’s where I was living when he first contacted me.”
Kendall nodded and jotted down some notes on the yellow notepad on the table in front of him. “And do you recall the return address?”
“Lewisburg, Pennsylvania,” Nick answered, without missing a beat.
“The United States Penitentiary?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Do you remember anything about the correspondence, specifically? Did he write anything in the card?”
“No, not this time.”
Detective Jones raised an eyebrow. “Not this time? What has he written in the past?”
Nick rolled his eyes. “He thinks we’re friends, and just like everyone else in my family, he wants my money,” he scoffed. “I never really understood the logic in that, considered he was serving twenty-five to life in a maximum security federal prison. What’s he going to do with it? I guess he figured he’d get out eventually? If that was the case, why would he go and do something that would put him right back in?”
“Did he ever say anything about revenge?”
Nick’s breath caught in his throat, and Annie mirrored his reaction from beside him. “Revenge? No, not that I can remember.”
“Are you aware of the nature of your father’s crimes, Nick?”
Nick pursed his lips and nodded. “I know he killed a lot of people. I honestly never wanted to know the details.” This was why he never brought it up. Pretend your father’s not a crazed murderer and maybe it didn’t happen. Maybe you can pretend he’s not even your father. Sad that the man he much preferred to claim as his dad was Bob Carter-- certainly not a saint in his own right, but still the man who took in his nephew to raise as his own when he was just a baby. “Is it okay if I share some of the details?”
Nick hesitated. “I-”
“It’s relevant to this case,” Kendall Jones clarified quickly.
“Ok.” Nick looked at Annie, then at Josh, took in a deep breath, and let it out slowly. “Go ahead.”
“Thank you.” Kendall turned his attention to the children of his victims in the current case. “Frank Carter was an orderly at St. Vincent’s hospital in Erie, Pennsylvania in 1979. Around that time, there was a string of mysterious deaths among patients in the surgical ward at the hospital. Initially, the deaths were attributed to natural causes or surgical complications, but after five unexpected deaths in as many weeks, the state medical board began investigating the hospital. An autopsy of patient number five showed toxic levels of labetalol in his bloodstream. All the previous patients had died due to sudden cardiac arrest. Only one of them had an EKG tracing before her death, and it showed extreme bradycardia before her heart eventually stopped.”
“Labetalol slows the heart rate,” Annie clarified. “Toxic levels would easily result in cardiac arrest and death.”
“Yes,” Kendall agreed. “After the cause of death was determined, there was an investigation into the nursing staff and pharmacy procedures to see if medication errors were causing the deaths, but it was a third-year surgical resident named Jack Donohue who came forward and reported that he’d seen an orderly retrieving a vial of labetalol from the med room on the night of one of the deaths.”
“It was Dad,” Josh whispered. “Dad turned him in.”
“Yes. It was your father’s testimony that led to Frank Carter’s eventual indictment and sentencing. The fact that you two--” Kendall gestured to Annie and Nick. “Are engaged seems to be a huge coincidence. We have an APB out for him, but we’ve yet to locate Frank. Nick, do you have a bodyguard?”
