The Madson Court Murder Read online

  The

  Madson Court

  Murder

  Rachel Renee

  Disclaimer

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2020 Rachel Renee

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions

  ISBN: 9798650260035

  Chapter One

  Thomas Hewitt

  The night was humid, and the bare skin of his legs stuck to the leather seat as he exited the highway close to where he lived. The breeze, though still warm, kept him company. The man was so close to home, his pulse began to speed up, but his eyelids were struggling to stay open.

  “Five more minutes,” he spoke aloud. “Five more minutes and I can sleep.”

  The single traffic light sprang from yellow to red, as if it knew he was in a hurry, causing him to slam on his brakes. “Of course,” he yelled before punching the steering wheel with his free hand. Normally, he’d not be so cautious. He’d have run the red light and not even thought twice about it. Tonight was different. Something in him told him to stop.

  A siren wailed in the near distance and he averted his eyes to his rearview mirror to see if it was headed his way. The flashing lights grew closer, and before the traffic signal changed to green, the ambulance was upon him. He remained stopped when the green bulb flickered his release and allowed the vehicle to race past. Wonder where it’s going, he thought to himself as he slowly freed the brake and continued his trek home.

  The man followed the flashing lights that seemed to be heading to the exact location he was destined. His heart rate grew steadily quicker, this time because of dread, not anticipation. His wife was at home with their newborn child. Not two days had passed since they left the hospital. Had something happened in his absence? He dared to pick up his cell phone and dial his wife when the ambulance turned abruptly in front of him, right into his neighborhood.

  He followed behind it, but not far. A barricade had been set up on the long street, two houses from the main road. The blockade had been moved to allow access for the emergency vehicle but when he attempted his entrance, a uniformed officer held up his hand, commanding he halt his motion. The man, with his cell still gripped in his palm, used a finger to press the button, permitting the window to roll the rest of the way down.

  “I live down there.” He pointed with the same finger he used to release the glass of his window. “My wife and baby are waiting for me.”

  “It’ll be just a few minutes. Someone will come talk to you before you can be granted access.”

  “What do you mean? This is my street. How can you keep me from going home? My wife and newborn need me to deliver these.” He was hoping the officer would feel some sympathy and let him go home, so he grabbed the package of diapers from the passenger side, practically shoving them in the officer’s face as he’d bent down to peer inside the vehicle.

  “It will only be a few minutes. This street is a crime scene. No one in or out without permission. I’m sorry.”

  “A crime scene?” He accidentally let go of the brakes when he uttered the words. The officer extended inside the window, attempted to commandeer the car. The man behind the wheel pressed the brakes once more and reached the shift lever of his own volition to put the vehicle firmly in park. “Sorry. I’m really tired. New baby. No sleep.”

  The officer pulled himself back out of the window, righting his hat then tapping on the door frame. “No harm done. You just keep this thing in park until someone comes to let you through.” He double-tapped the metal and sauntered back through the barricade.

  The man put his head in his hands, reminding him he had ahold of his phone and should call his wife to let her know what was going on. With the press of another button, ringing filled the speakers. Two, three, four times. Then voicemail. She’s already passed out. Pressing end, he dropped the phone and fell back, his head propped against the seat and eyes shut. I’ll get a little rest while I wait.

  His breathing slowed and it took him no time at all to begin drifting off into sleep. It had been a long week. Work was busy, long hours at the office meant no time at home with his very pregnant wife. When she called last Thursday to tell him she thought something was wrong, he told her she was fine and she needed to relax. Two hours later, his mother called and said Sarah had been rushed to the hospital. He had been in the middle of an important meeting, one that could make or break his career, so he hadn’t even answered the call. In fact, he turned it off completely, so as not to be disturbed. It was nearly 7:00 p.m. when he listened to the multitude of messages he’d received after turning off his phone. Turned out the acquisition was a done deal and he had nothing to worry about on the job front, but now he had a lot to worry about on the home front.

  The baby was nearly a month early when his wife went into labor with their first child. The doctors had tried to slow things down, but it seemed the baby had other plans. He’d raced out of the office with a flurry of expletives and panic, leaving the new clients behind. He flew down the highway the twenty miles to the hospital his wife was admitted to and got a ticket on the way. Once he finally arrived, he was alerted to the fact that the labor had finally stalled and his wife could go home. There would be no baby that day.

  He was fuming as he dropped his wife off at home, her tears only fueling his anger. Not at her, but the situation in general. He had to go back to the office and apologize—explain there was no baby after all. He felt embarrassed for the way he had acted in his rush to leave, but that emotion turned to anger when he expressed it to the world. His boss informed him he may have lost the clients because of his behavior and would need to show them how much he truly valued their relationship by working all weekend on a special project. The weekend turned into Monday and more frantic phone calls from his mother and mother-in-law that the baby was coming and he needed to get to the hospital. He turned the phone off once more, assuming it was another false alarm. They would stop the contractions again and he would have missed out on the opportunity to finish the design and keep the client’s contract with the firm.

  He completed the job, got the client’s final approval. But he missed the birth of his daughter. As the phone booted up, a picture of a brand-new baby appeared on the screen with one after the other of new messages and texts dinging through. He knew he’d royally messed up.

  Sarah wouldn’t let him in the hospital room that Monday night. Well, early Tuesday morning by the time he actually arrived. Her father stood guard, telling him he better figure out how to make this up to his baby girl or he wasn’t sure what he was going to do to him.

  The man slept in the hospital waiting room all night until his mother woke him and told him to go meet his baby girl. Sarah’s father was no longer standing guard and although his wife was still beyond upset at his absence, she could no longer keep the precious miracle from her husband. He later found out the baby wasn’t breathing when she’d made her entrance into the world. It took the doctors and nurses nearly a minute to revive her. An entire sixty seconds his wife feared she wouldn’t be bringing a baby home this time either. And he wasn’t there for support. He’d been at the bar drinking, for all his wife knew. Though, he wasn’t. That was how they’d all made it seem, bringing up his absence every chance they got, tearing him down for one simple mistake.

  The last couple of days, he’d been doing all he could to encourage his wife to forgive him for being a selfish idiot. Hence the running out in the middle of the night for a pack of diapers even though they still had a couple left and Claire would make it through the night before she truly needed them. And, even though he himself had not slept more than five hours since arriving home from the hospital, he calmed his wife’s worries and raced out of the house, half-conscious, in track shorts, a sweatshirt, and jacket-clad to appease her with a bag of diapers. If it weren’t for that idiot neighbor provoking him on the way out of the house, he probably would have been home sooner. He took extra time to slow his adrenaline and get his anger under control before returning home to his wife and new baby.

  The man jolted awake, his head slamming forcefully into the steering wheel when he rushed to sit up. A baby wailing startled him, and it took him a moment to get his bearings. Despite the goose egg forming on his forehead, he threw open the driver’s side door. Tangled up in his seatbelt, he nearly faceplanted, but caught himself at the last second and attempted to push through the checkpoint.

  The shrill cries moved his feet quickly to the barricade, his arms pushing at the wooden plank to rid him of the item blocking his path.

  “Sir, you can’t come in here,” someone shouted to his left.

  “My baby,” he mumbled as he attempted to clamber through the obstacle.

  “Baby,” the man heard from behind him and the child’s cries growing more distinct in front of him. There was someone or multiple someones grabbing for his shirt. He felt fingers fisting at the fabric but his erratic behavior kept him from getting caught up by them.

  “Sir, stop.” The words came from multiple directions, but he couldn’t. Stopping wasn’t an option when his baby was crying in the street. How had she gotten out there? Was her mother with her? Surely, Sarah was with the baby. Why would Sarah bring their newborn outside in the middle of the night?

  There
was a large presence at his back as he reached the crowd of would-be spectators and finally the area where his baby screeched and his newfound fatherly instincts kicked into gear.

  “Claire, Daddy’s here. It’s okay now,” he called out as he pushed his way through his neighbors. His eyes scanned the masses, looking for his wife and the reason for his obvious concern.

  People were murmuring around him but the words were undecipherable. His one goal was to get to his crying baby. The moment his eyes found Sarah’s, he gave a slight pause at her ashen face and wide, gaping mouth.

  “Thomas. Where have you been?” George, the man who lived next door, yelled out to him.

  “Diapers,” he answered, reaching out to Claire, whose cries were dissipating in the arms of George’s wife, Susan. “We were almost out of diapers,” he reiterated.

  Susan was singing a lullaby to his baby, and the crying all but ceased. Just the tiny whimpers of the after-cries still lingering in the air. His heart was thrumming in his ears, blocking out what George’s response to his answer was.

  Someone close by tugged at the back of his shirt. He whirled around, expecting an officer, but it was only Sarah. “What took you so long?” His wife was pale in the bright spotlight. “It’s been a nightmare…” Both of their eyes shifted at once to the scene not twenty yards from where they were standing.

  His words were barely audible as he said he’d only been gone for twenty minutes. Someone else commented that he in fact had been missing for over an hour.

  “I thought it was you at first. I thought…” His wife grabbed ahold of his hand. “I heard tires squealing and loud banging sounds. When I looked out the window, I saw brake lights and I thought it was you backing up into the drive. But the light disappeared and… Oh, Thomas.” Sarah broke down beside her husband, the evidence wetting his sleeve. A few small splotches of red on his jacket caught his eye as he stared past the yellow tape to the body lying on the ground.

  Chapter Two

  Detective Griesel

  “We need a unit for a 10-25 in the six hundred block of Madson Court. A couple of calls reporting possible gunshots and squealing tires. Who’s responding?” the dispatcher’s voice boomed over the radio.

  Officer Franklin looked at his partner in the driver’s seat, gave a smile, and then picked up the other end of the device and answered. “Car 27, on our way.”

  It had been a slow night, hell, a slow week for the two officers on duty in the suburbs of Cincinnati. While not being busy meant a time of peace, it often led to boredom and job dissatisfaction. Patrolling the streets overnight with nothing to do gave the officers little desire to stay awake and a great hunger for coffee and sweets. Specifically, the two men sitting in car 27. They’d been working this beat for close to twenty years. Sometimes together, other times individually, but always for the same precinct.

  Officer Calhoun flipped the switch, turning the sirens on full blast to allow them to traverse the side streets much quicker than they would without it. Surprisingly, there were still many cars on the roads and without the sirens, people tended to drive slowly in the sight of a police vehicle.

  “You think someone actually got shot?” Franklin pondered.

  “Doubtful. Probably someone just shooting off a few rounds at those coyotes that have been terrorizing the neighborhoods, taking care of those stray cats the people insist on keeping around.”

  Franklin retorted, “Yeah, you’re probably right. I responded to a similar call last week. No sign of the coyote, but there were a couple of bullet holes in the shed of the armed man’s neighbor.” Franklin thought for a minute. “Might even be the same neighborhood.” He scratched his head. “Hell, I don’t remember.” After weeks of mundane tasks, they all seemed to run together.

  Five minutes after the transmission came through, the two men turned onto Madson Court. Calhoun silenced the siren and slowed the vehicle. For the time of night, every house on the street was lit up like it were still early evening, the lights sparkling and illuminating the normally very dark street. There were a couple of people walking down the steep hill that led to the cul-de-sac a quarter of a mile down. A gathering halfway through the neighborhood caused Calhoun to slam on his brakes as he almost hit the man who was poised in the street with his hand up in the stop position.

  The two officers glanced at each other before stepping out of the vehicle. Both had their hands on their weapons, just in case. “What seems to be the problem?” Franklin called out. The beams from the patrol car were a spotlight, shining over the dozen or so people gathered around.

  No one spoke, but they parted ways so the officers could get a peek at what everyone had been standing over. The figure was too big to be a coyote. And it didn’t take long for the officers to realize what was really going on.

  Franklin grabbed the CB attached to his shoulder and called into the device. “This is Franklin on the six hundred block of Madson Court. We have a 10-42, please send backup.”

  “In route,” someone called out over the line. The men didn’t hear the rest as they hurried to get the humans contaminating the crime scene moved out of the way.

  “Did anyone touch the body?” Calhoun asked.

  “I did, just now.” One man raised his hand. “I was checking for a pulse.”

  Calhoun couldn’t help the roll of his eyes that came so naturally when he was frustrated by people’s ignorance. Although, the man was not ignorant. He’d wanted to see if the other man was alive, but he probably didn’t realize it was part of a crime scene. “Did you call it in? When you found this man lying in the street?”

  All the heads shook. A woman in a nearly see-through nightgown spoke up. “I called in the gunshots. The operator said someone was on their way. I just figured you’d see when you got here. It was only a few minutes ago.”

  “So, you hadn’t been out here yet? To know that someone had been shot?”

  Her eyes were wide but her mouth was sealed shut. The only answer was the continual back and forth of her head.

  “Did anyone see anything?” Franklin asked, ushering the people to the side of the street so the approaching help could pull up to the scene. “Who found him first?”

  Not one word from any of the people gathered on the road. Typical, both officers thought to themselves. Calhoun walked over to the body of the man shot multiple times in his upper extremities, careful not to step in the blood soaking the blacktop, and checked for a pulse himself. He knew there wouldn’t be one, even after the neighbor refused to speak again. Franklin walked back to the car to retrieve the crime scene tape to officially block off the area.

  Two more patrol cars arrived, along with an ambulance that wouldn’t be needed, CSI, and the County Coroner. A detective showed up about twenty minutes later to assist the officers in questioning the individuals littering Madson Court.

  “Is everyone accounted for?” Detective Griesel peered around the crowd expectantly.

  The neighbors all glared around at their friends. A crying baby and a woman in yoga pants and a t-shirt approached just as the last of the words exited his mouth.

  “Alice isn’t here,” a woman in her mid-thirties called out. “She lives there.”

  The detective glanced at the house in perfect view of the crime scene. She would have seen something, had she been awake. The swaying of the curtains when his eyes caught her peeping told him all he needed to know. “I’ll talk to her in a little bit. Anyone else?”

  “My husband. He’s not back yet,” the woman with the screaming infant called out. She shushed and rocked the tiny baby continually, attempting to calm it down.

  “Are you expecting him soon?” There were many other questions the detective wanted to ask the woman whose husband seemed to be the only other person missing from the neighborhood, but he would refrain from asking them in public.

  “I thought he would have been back…” She let the rest of the sentence trail off when she caught sight of CSI moving around the scene. She had suddenly stilled all movement as she locked eyes on the victim. The detective caught her swallowing hard, her face paling and her body wavering. A neighbor must have noticed the same and reached out for the crying baby as he stretched his own body to steady the lady who was about to pass out.