Altered State by Tom Lowe

Author:Tom Lowe [Lowe, Tom]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-06-29T22:00:00+00:00

FIFTY

Elizabeth was holding a bag of groceries and inserting a housekey into the front door lock when her phone buzzed in her purse. “Great timing,” she mumbled, unlocking the door, closing it, and walking across the wooden floor toward the kitchen, the phone droning as her heels clacked along the hardwood floor. She set the groceries on the kitchen table, searching in her purse for the phone. Mike Bradford’s name was on the screen.

She answered as her cat, Jack, sauntered in from another room, yawned, and jumped up on the couch. He stared through the backyard window at bugs orbiting one of the lights near the deck. “Hi, Mike. I just walked in the door. What’s up?”

“I wish I were calling you to join me for dinner, but that’s not the case.”

“I hate it when conversations start that way. Tell me it isn’t about Tracy Newman.”

“It’s not. However, the situation with Tracy is that the assistant prosecutor, under pressure from the Reynolds’ family, wants to file an assault charge. It won’t stand up. On the flip side, I think Tracy will have a good case for a civil suit against the Reynolds’ family once this scene plays out. I’m calling to let you know there was another killing in Magnolia Oaks earlier this evening.”

“What happened?” Elizabeth sat down on a kitchen table chair.

Bradford told her the story, as much as he knew, and added, “I’m at my desk in the office. I had one of our techs upload the doorbell video to my computer. I’d like for you to look at it. Your psychological perspective might shed some light on it.”

“Are you thinking the recent crimes, the murder-suicides, could be connected to what happened there tonight?”

“I’m thinking it because you first suggested the possibility. But maybe not so much with what happened earlier on the front porch of Patel’s home.” Bradford leaned forward in his chair; the video image of the woman who killed Doctor Patel locked on a section of his screen. He studied her face, eyes filled with anger and hurt, mouth twisted, the knife in her right hand. “It looks like the murder had more to do with avenging something than anything else.”

“Avenging what?”

“I believe this woman was one of Doctor Patel’s patients.”

“Meaning he performed an abortion on her, right?”

“That’s how it appears. After she’d stabbed him, the doctor’s wife opened the front door, and the woman screamed at her. One of the things she said was this … ‘do you know what he did to me?’ She was seething with anger, maybe pain from whatever happened.”

“Send the video to me. Better yet, we can look at it on a Zoom call. Maybe there’s nothing to connect it to the recent killings. It won’t hurt to look. Could be we’ll find something subtle she said that might connect the dots. Let me open my laptop.”

“Okay.”

Elizabeth looked across the room. “Sorry, Jack, I haven’t even said hello to you.” The big cat turned his head in her direction, wide eyes unreadable.

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