The Bodyguard

“Mr. Ashton left the house at 7:55. His wife left fifteen minutes later. She drove directly to a dry-cleaning company and stayed there for ten minutes. After that, she drove across town to Wiley & Harrison, again without making any stops along the way, arriving at precisely 8:40.”

“Wiley & Harrison, the law firm?”

“One and the same. Her visit at the law office lasted twelve minutes. After that, she headed down Highway 80, pulled over and stopped for fourteen additional minutes.”

“Any clue why?”

“You’ll have to ask her that.”

“Okay, then what.”

“You know the rest. She drove straight to our office, arriving at 9:12, hired us, and you followed her to the cottage, arriving at 9:47. You placed the 911 call four minutes later.”

Luke considered what Mitch had said. “I haven’t been told an official time of death yet, but Richard Ashton’s body was still warm when I checked for a pulse. From what you just told me, there’s no way she had the opportunity to kill him.”

“Doesn’t look like it.”

Some of the tension went out of him. It was only then that he realized how much he’d hoped Caroline Ashton was innocent. He was normally an excellent judge of character, a skill that helped immensely in his line of work. From the beginning, Caroline had seemed kind and caring, as evidenced by her concern about whether he might get hurt protecting her. She didn’t strike him as the type of woman who could murder someone, even if they deserved it.

“Thanks, Mitch.”

“You bet. You need me to follow up on anything else?”

“Not right now. Just keep the office going. I’ll call you later.”

He headed back into the waiting room. When he updated the detective about what he’d found out, disappointment flashed across the policeman’s face.

As if noticing Luke’s puzzlement, Cornell gave him a lopsided smile. “I’d hoped for a quick open-and-shut case. The coroner called while you were outside. He said the victim was killed within an hour of when the body was discovered. I already confirmed Mr. Ashton arrived at his office at 8:30 and left again at 8:45. His limo driver said he dropped Mr. Ashton off at the cottage, per his instructions, twenty minutes later. That would have been about the same time Mrs. Ashton arrived at your office. If everything you just told me checks out, she didn’t have the opportunity to shoot her husband.”

“His limo driver dropped him off? And left him there?”

“Apparently. I’ve got another detective interviewing the driver right now to find out more. I’m also sending someone over to your place of business to take a statement from this Mitch guy, the one you said can vouch that Mrs. Ashton was there this morning.”

“Mr. Dawson?” a voice called out. “Detective Cornell?” A doctor stood in the entrance to the waiting room, looking around at the various groups of people. Luke and Cornell both rose. The doctor hurried to them and introduced himself.

“Is Mrs. Ashton okay?” Luke asked.

“I’m hopeful for a good outcome. She’s in recovery now.”

“‘Hopeful’?” Luke said. “‘Recovery’? You had to operate?”

“She was bleeding internally, from a ruptured spleen. If she hadn’t gotten here when she did, she might not have made it.”

“Do you know how she was injured?” Cornell asked.

Luke shook his head. The answer was as obvious as the bruises on Caroline’s wrists.

The doctor’s jaw tightened. “I’ve got a pretty good idea. Follow me.”

He led them through the double doors and turned left down a brightly lit hall, stopping at a door marked Recovery. Inside, he brought them down a row of curtained-off enclosures to the last one at the end. He pulled the green curtain back to reveal Caroline Ashton, asleep, looking pale, vulnerable, her small body lost in the middle of the hospital bed. An IV tube ran from the back of her right hand to a bag suspended on a pole. A blood-pressure cuff was wrapped around her other arm. The monitor behind the bed beeped and displayed numbers and graphs as it tracked her vital signs.

The doctor waved to the bruises on her wrists.

For once, the detective wasn’t smiling. He hadn’t seen the bruises earlier, as Luke had. The sight of them now had his mouth pressing into a hard, thin line.

“I won’t disturb her to show you the other bruises,” the doctor said, keeping his voice low. “But I can tell you, there are plenty of them, across her abdomen, her back, her side, in places typically covered by clothing. Unless she was in several violent car wrecks recently, there’s only one obvious explanation. Someone beat her, viciously, repeatedly, over a period of several days, based on the coloration of the bruises. But that’s not half the story.”

He crossed the small space to a computer monitor on a rolling cart. After typing a few commands, he turned the screen around to reveal an X-ray.

“This,” he said, pointing to the screen, “is a healed hairline fracture on her right forearm. It was probably broken a few years ago.” He punched another button to reveal a new picture. “And this is another fracture, on her other forearm. Again, it’s healed, a relatively old injury, probably within the past eight or nine months.” He turned the monitor back around. “I could show you more scans, but they all show the same thing—a history of injuries. None of them were compound fractures, meaning they weren’t bad enough breaks to cause lasting damage or require setting. Which is probably why whoever did this to her was never forced to take her to a hospital. But those injuries should have been stabilized with a cast to aid in healing and to reduce her pain.”

Luke flinched and looked down at the bed. How could someone do that to another person? Especially a woman. And especially a woman as small and delicate as this one.

“How do you know no one took her to a hospital?” Cornell asked.

“Because as soon as I saw the scans, I had my assistant call the Ashton house and talk to the staff. None of them were aware of any trips to the hospital and never saw her in a cast. We also verified that none of the hospitals in Savannah ever listed Mrs. Ashton as a patient. Either she wasn’t treated for these injuries at all, or she was treated out of town, or possibly seen in a private office by a doctor who didn’t know her history of other injuries. If a doctor only saw her once, for one fracture, he might not have had any reason to suspect domestic violence. But this last time, her abuser went too far, ruptured her spleen, nearly killed her. But that’s still not the worst of it.”

Luke’s head whipped up. “What could possibly be worse?”

“Mrs. Ashton is septic. She’s on IV antibiotics and will be moved from Recovery to Intensive Care soon.”

“Why is she septic?” Luke asked.

“Because she was recently pregnant. I suspect she lost the baby during a beating, and she never had medical treatment. I performed a D & C to scrape out her uterus. If she’s lucky, she’ll respond to the antibiotics.”

“And if she isn’t lucky?” Cornell asked, his notebook out again.

“She could die.”

A nurse came into the room and whispered something to the doctor.

“I have to check on another patient, gentlemen,” the doctor said. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

After the doctor left, Cornell flipped his notebook closed.

“I’m keeping Mrs. Ashton at the top of my persons-of-interest list.”

Luke stared at him incredulously. “After what the doctor just said? You’d pursue her as a suspect?”

“Regardless of what her husband did to her, she didn’t have the right to kill him. She should have reported the abuse.”

“It’s not that easy and you know it. I’ve seen enough domestic-violence cases to know people feel trapped, with nowhere to turn. Or they kid themselves into thinking the abuser is sorry, that he’ll change his ways. Or worse, they blame themselves. Getting out isn’t as easy as you would think from the outside looking in.”

“Regardless, she’s a billionaire’s wife,” Cornell said. “She wasn’t exactly hurting for money. She could have left him. She did leave him. She wasn’t trapped.”

Luke ground his teeth together and reached for Caroline’s hand. Her skin was burning up, pale, almost translucent. He couldn’t begin to imagine the pain she’d suffered. Did she even know she was pregnant? Did she know she’d lost a baby?

“In the waiting room,” Luke said, “you agreed she couldn’t have killed him.”