Chapter 19 #2
Caroline sighed. “That’s a Sarah thing. She always wanted to believe that she could have children.
It was Father McCain’s idea really. He kept telling her that it was God’s will, and, at some point in time, she would have children.
She just needed to believe in the goodness of life, to believe in men, to believe in all that stuff.
Of course she knew that John was a hell of a playboy.
He’d had that reputation a long time ago. ”
“The same as she knew Kurt was a playboy?”
“Yes, I told her that this had to stop, that she had killed John. She told me that the bottle was supposed to be for me.” She pulled up her phone again and showed her the text.
Kate read the text and sat back, nodding at Rodney.
Caroline continued. “Sarah told me that she had left it there for me and that I was the one who was supposed to die. That I must have given it to John, but I didn’t. John had already pounded it down before I even got there.”
“How did she get the poison?”
“You’ll have to ask her that. He had come home, upset, pissed off, and started drinking that wine.
Sarah told me that she had used a needle of some kind to get the drugs inside the bottle.
I don’t know,” she added, sobbing again.
“I mean, Sarah’s bloody devious. Apparently the poisoned bottle of wine is what killed John.
And it would have killed me too, if he hadn’t already drank it all. ”
Rodney nodded, and Caroline put her hands on her face and rubbed it hard. “Sarah wrapped John up in that goddamn bow, as a gift to me. And I just haven’t been the same ever since.”
“And yet you didn’t come to us.”
“No,” she confirmed, closing her eyes, “because I’d picked up the damn wine bottle, and my fingerprints were all over the thing. I didn’t know if you would even believe me.”
“Why not? You’re sitting here with the texts.”
“I know, but, short of Sarah telling the truth, I wouldn’t have had any way of getting you to see my side of the story.”
“That’s not true. You’re sitting here with the texts to prove your side of the story. However, your fear that we wouldn’t believe you has nothing to do with your failure to contact the police. It has to do with the second death, … Robert Blake. You killed him, right?”
Caroline closed her eyes, and she whispered, “I’m so sorry.”
“Because you’re the one who killed him?” Kate asked.
She pursed her lips, and then the tears flew nonstop.
“Why did you do that?” Kate asked.
“Because Sarah had fallen in love with him,” Caroline wailed, tears pouring from her eyes. “She had found somebody new, and, after what she did to John, I couldn’t stand the thought that John’s death would go unpunished.”
Kate snorted. “So, you decided to take it upon yourself and to kill another innocent man who had nothing to do with any of this, all because of Sarah?”
“Yes,” she said, “all because of her.”
“Holy shit,” Rodney muttered, as he pulled away, looking at her as if she were a viper. He got up. “Excuse me.” And he walked out in shock.
Caroline looked up at Kate and asked, “I’m really in trouble, aren’t I?”
“You tell me. … You just confessed to killing a man.”
She nodded. “After I found out about John, I met Sarah outside her apartment, and she was just losing it. She was screaming at me and telling me how I had ruined her life so long ago, and she wanted me to pay the price. She just made me so angry. I asked her about her new boyfriend, and she told me how he was the best man ever, but no way he would ever talk to me.”
“So, how did you manage to kill Robert Blake? You knew nothing about him.”
“I snatched her phone while she was distracted, screaming mad. She was losing it. She was just not all there sometimes. So I saw his text on her phone, and I got the contact information and his address. I dumped her phone back at her doorstep. She had even told me what poison she used to kill John. Do you want to know how she told me?”
Kate kept quiet, just letting her talk.
“She was laughing like a loon about killing John, telling me the name of the poison and how it slowly kills. She told me that she even still had it in her car, so I took it, the same poison she used.”
“She knew you took it?”
“Yeah, she knew. She practically gave me the bottle, but I think she was just trying to get my fingerprints on it. What will you do? Give it to the cops? That’s what she told me.
It’s not as if they’ll give a shit. Your fingerprints are all over that now.
Then she laughed and laughed, calling me a killer, a crazy woman, and all kinds of shit. ”
Caroline kept sobbing and sobbing.
“What did you do next?”
“We were back in her apartment, and she was telling me how she would spend the night with her new man, and then she just laughed and laughed. Not that you’ll know anything about love again because I’ll just keep killing them and framing you.
So I followed her, and she was walking around outside as if she had absolutely lost it, and I realized that maybe she really had.
“I mean, she just wasn’t there. … Then, somewhere along the line, between here and there, I lost me too,” she acknowledged, shaking her head, but more dry-eyed now than she had been.
She looked at Kate and added, “I don’t even know what came over me. I was just so upset over John and what Sarah had done, that I didn’t even think,” she noted. “I pulled up the information I had taken from her phone and did a quick check on Robert.
“He was a real man, a 240-pound muscled-up heap of a man. And he was just so much like John. Robert was just one of those men who were constantly out there. So I got an idea to show up Sarah—I would sleep with Robert. That’s all I would do.
I would sleep with him, and I would take a picture and show her that she couldn’t get the better of me by killing John.
I went to Robert’s profile, and, when he swiped right, I asked if we can hook up. His reply was instant.”
“So, you went over to his place?”
“I was twenty minutes away. He was all for it, and, yeah, he just let me in,” she said.
“Just like that?” Kate asked and Caroline nodded. “So, you had sex?”
“No, I didn’t. Robert felt too much like John all over again,” she shared, “but I had brought the bottle of wine.”
“Where did you get the wine?”
“I grabbed one off her shelf before I left, and I brought it to his place. He looked at it, smiled, and said that he knew somebody else who drank that, and he was good with it.”
Oddly enough, the sobbing had stopped now, and right now Caroline was narrating the events—calm, calculated, even smiling—still with tears in her eyes as she remembered the little details.
“I told him that I was having cold feet about this. When he gave me an odd look, I shared how I lost somebody recently, so this was kind of the first time, and he didn’t push it.”
“Did he say anything?”
“He just told me that, anytime I changed my mind, he would be happy to hook up. I just left and sat in my car for a long time. Then I called him back and told him that I had changed my mind. He laughed, but his voice was slurred. I went back up, went in, and sat down beside him, and he seemed woozy, but then he went into a seizure. That’s when I realized the bottle of wine I brought must have also been poisoned, and I had killed him with it,” she explained.
Kate noted, “You could have called an ambulance.”
“I was shocked. I had no idea that the wine was poisoned.”
“So, he died while you were there?”
“Yes, and I needed it to look like it was Sarah again, and I didn’t know how to make that happen.
I looked around his place and saw he had a bunch of Christmas tinsel, and I just wrapped him up.
I took a napkin and tried to wipe off everything I had touched, then took a picture of him and sent it to her.
Honest to God, I think that probably sent her over the edge, but I’m, I’m right there with her. ”
She sighed. “I have fallen so far, and I don’t know why.
… Everything had to do with her blowing up my world.
And, yes, I know that I am to blame because I told her fiancé that she couldn’t have children, but he was also a really good friend of mine at one point in time.
I knew how he felt about being a family man, and no way in hell he would sign up for somebody who was infertile.
” Suddenly she stopped talking, turned to Kate, and said, “I only heard about Father McCain on the news.” She covered her eyes.
“I’m really, … really hoping it’s not what I think it is. ”
“I can confirm that he is dead and that he was stabbed.”
Caroline closed her eyes and nodded. “I didn’t do it.”
“No, I don’t think you did,” Kate replied, “but you might have pushed somebody else to do it.”
She looked at her in shock. “Do you think Sarah killed the priest?”
“Don’t you mean, you killed him?”
“No! I didn’t mean to kill anyone, … no one,” she cried out. “It was the wine Sarah had in her home, and I didn’t know,” she sobbed. “I didn’t know.”
Kate stared at her. “I’m not even sure what to say about this right now,” she admitted. “I will speak to the DA. I mean, you went there with ill intent but not to kill.”
She repeated, “Not to kill. Not to hurt anyone.”
“But that was the end result. You gave Robert the wine, knowing that Sarah had already used a bottle of wine to poison somebody else, and you didn’t even stop to think that there might be poison in this bottle too?”
“No,” she wailed.
“But the wine was in your possession, in your car. You brought it to Robert, which makes you look like you set up both similar murders.”
She stared at her and started bawling. “I didn’t though. I didn’t,” she cried out. “You can have my phone. There’s all the texts. You can see it all. Sarah set me up.”