Chapter 32 #2
“About seven months,” Henley confirmed. “It’s a miracle, but the baby seems to be okay. If we can keep the mother alive, that’ll truly be a miracle.”
Wyatt’s cop instincts were roaring. “Did the wife’s parents mention anything else that the daughter related regarding this tension in her marriage?”
“Jamison didn’t want any more children. She’d already defied him once and ended up having a miscarriage.
Fell down those same basement stairs. We don’t know yet if he had anything to do with that.
The wife never mentioned to her parents that she suspected anything along those lines.
” Henley slid the file she’d opened across the desk in their direction.
“Two days after he almost killed her, the wife’s parents hired a private investigator to find out if their initial suspicions about him had been correct. ”
As Wyatt and Addy reviewed the findings, much of which they had already heard from Father Grayson, Henley continued.
“He spent almost eleven years in a mental institution, then another four and a half in a supervised living situation. His biological father killed his wife and would have killed the children, ironically, if Jamison hadn’t stopped him. ”
Wyatt didn’t mention that they already knew that part. There was no need to bring Father Grayson into this investigation—at least not at this point. “Was he taking any medications? Antipsychotics?”
Henley laughed but the sound held no humor. “When he and Lydia married he stopped taking his mood stabilizers as well as the medication for the bipolar diagnosis. Apparently, they interfered with the sex life.”
“You said he worked for the postal service,” Addy noted. “They do background investigations on their employees. How did a guy with his medical history get the job?”
“According to his supervisor,” Henley explained, “his record came back as clean as a whistle. Nothing about his medical condition popped up. Evidently this guy knows how to work the system. That’s not all,” she added, “he worked at the supervised living facility as a nurse’s assistant the last year he was a resident there. ”
Wyatt wasn’t sure where she was going with that point but judging by the fury in her eyes he was about to find out.
“That’s how he got into his wife’s room at the hospital so easily.”
“He made another attempt on her life?” Wyatt understood now. Henley had mentioned that a nurse and a police officer were dead.
Henley nodded, the movement visibly weary.
“He dressed like a nurse’s assistant, conducted himself as one.
He killed a nurse to access the drugs. Then killed one of my deputies with the same drug he partially unloaded in his wife’s IV.
Potassium chloride. Stops the heart. It was too late for my deputy, but the code staff managed to resuscitate her.
I’m here to tell you, that woman does not intend to go down without a fight. ”
God have mercy. When would this end? “I take it he wasn’t apprehended.” Wyatt felt fairly certain of the answer before he asked.
“He got away.” Henley’s lips flattened with fury. “But we’ll get him.”
“I’d like to see any photos you have of Daniel Jamison.”
Wyatt glanced at Addy. This man was her brother. As horrific as he found the whole thing, she had to be reeling. He kept forgetting that nightmarish fact.
Henley shuffled through the file, tapped an eight-by-ten photo of a man, his wife, and son. “That’s him.”
Addy’s hand shook as she picked up the photo and stared at it. Not only was her brother in that photo, but a nephew. Wyatt’s gut twisted.
“The wife,” Henley nodded to the photo, “I don’t know if she suspected her husband really intended to hurt her or not, but she’s one smart cookie.
When she made the 911 call, instead of hanging up when she heard her husband coming back into the room, she left the line open and slid the receiver under the sofa so he wouldn’t see it.
The dispatcher couldn’t make out all that was said and we’ve listened to the tape twenty times.
Most of the verbal exchanges are inaudible.
But there’s one statement that’s loud and clear.
It’s his voice, the in-laws have already identified it.
So, if he gets his wish and his wife dies, he can’t show up claiming to have been kidnapped and say it was an intruder. It’s him.”
“Can we hear the tape?” Addy had dropped her hands into her lap, clasped them together so tightly her fingers were white.
Wyatt wished he could take her hands in his and at least try to console her just a little.
“Of course.” Henley reached into a desk drawer and removed a handheld recording device.
“By the way, when he entered the hospital and killed a nurse and one of my men”—Henley met Wyatt’s gaze, then Addy’s, unadulterated rage in her own—“he had changed his appearance. He wore glasses and he’d shaved his head. ”
“Jamison is bald?” Addy echoed, her eyes suddenly wide with fear.
“According to the nurse who survived his attack and two other members of the hospital staff,” Henley explained, “his head was as smooth as a baby’s butt.”
Addy turned to him. “Put Womack on my mother’s room,” she demanded, her expression, her voice, frantic. “Now!”
Wyatt reached into his pocket for his phone. “You think he knows your mother is in the hospital and might show up?”
Her face went even paler. “He’s already been there. I saw him. He was mopping the floor. He bumped into me . . .” Her breath hitched. “He asked me if she—Irene—was my mother.”
Wyatt made the call. Addy didn’t stop twisting her fingers together until he’d closed his phone and confirmed that it was done. “He’s filling in hospital security on our concerns en route. If Jamison is there or shows up, he’s not going to get near your mother.”
Addy breathed an audible sigh of relief. She turned back to Sheriff Henley. “Can we hear the call now?”
Henley pushed play on the recorder.
A new tension simmered through Wyatt as he watched the kaleidoscope of changing reactions play out on Addy’s face.
She flinched at the crashes and screams. The inaudible rants and snarls by Daniel Jamison had her leaning forward in an attempt to make out the words.
His intent was unmistakable. He wanted his wife dead.
“Here it comes,” Henley warned.
The screams and the sobs abruptly stopped.
A moment of taut silence, then . . .
“There will be no princess in this house!”