Page 74 of Dirty Valentine
He moved to the timeline they’d constructed, his finger starting at Monday evening.“Five thirty p.m.—Victoria Mills flees her medical practice.The woman at the insurance office next door, Dolores Hutchins, said Mills was loading her car like the devil himself was chasing her.Hands shaking so bad she dropped her keys twice.”
“So someone got to her at work,” Martinez said.“Threatened her.That kind of panic doesn’t come from nowhere.”
Jack nodded.“She races home, probably thinking she’s got enough time to grab her things and run.”Jack’s expression darkened.“She meets her attacker in the garage on her way out.That’s where we found the blood—still tacky on the concrete when CSI processed it.”
“Attacker takes her and her Mercedes,” Cole continued, building the narrative.“Meanwhile, less than two hours later across town, Thomas Whitman shows up at Judith Hughes’s apartment for what he thinks is just dinner and a good time.”
I felt the pieces clicking together as I studied the timeline.“Judith cooks—chicken and rice, opens a bottle of wine.They’re talking, eating, and neither one realizes they’re being poisoned.Belladonna—deadly nightshade.One of the herbs stolen from Evangeline’s greenhouse.”I traced my finger along the timeline.“At low doses, it causes hallucinations, confusion, nightmares—exactly what Judith described.She’s been getting microdoses for weeks through those letters.The herb smell she mentioned?That’s the delivery method.Just handling the parchment, inhaling the scent—it builds up in her system.”
“Both get sick,” Jack said.“Thomas leaves before nine, probably thinking it’s food poisoning.Judith goes to bed.But the poison keeps working.”
“Thomas is dying,” I said quietly.“The belladonna weakens his heart.All he’d need is a sudden shock or surprise to trigger cardiac arrest.And then he’s dead.”
“Maybe she was hoping to kidnap him,” Jack said.“But Thomas dies and the drugs wear off of Victoria too soon.”Jack tapped his finger against his thigh.“Based on Whitman’s estimated time of death around 3 a.m.we can assume he was alive in the trunk when the Mercedes pulled into the gas station at two forty-five.We have to assume she had another plan to kill him—she’s got her service weapon—but luck gave her a hand and his heart gave out first.”
“We can assume Potts used the gas station as a lookout to make sure the cemetery was clear,” I said.“Al Contreras didn’t lock up like he was supposed to.Which she knew because she was at the gas station waiting for him to come by for his rounds.”
“So she pulls into the cemetery and gets as close as she can to the grave.Dead bodies are heavy, but she gets him out of the trunk, strips him naked, and positioned the boards and stones.The lack of violence explains why his clothes were so clean.”
“And somewhere else Victoria is still alive and waiting for her turn,” I said.“Where would she keep her victims hidden?”
“She rents a house on James Madison,” Doug said.“Looks like a two-bed, one bath.”
“We’ll get a couple of units to check it out,” Martinez said, already on his phone.
“You won’t find anything there,” Jack said.“Someone like Potts thinks she’s smarter than everyone else.She lives a quiet life, goes to work, does her job, all the while she’s telling herself she’s better than the rest of us, too smart to get caught, laughing every time she’s working a crime scene.She’ll have another location for her dirty work.She’d want to keep it compartmentalized from her life as a cop.”
“We have a lot of unanswered questions,” I said.
“The logistics of this are staggering,” Jack said, studying the board.“One person couldn’t possibly manage all this—threatening Victoria at her office, attacking her at home, keeping her captive, ensuring Thomas and Judith got poisoned at dinner, waiting for Thomas to die, then moving and staging his body with those heavy stones.
“Then Wednesday night,” Cole continued.“Same pattern.Judith’s attacked at her house—drugged with hallucinogens, terrorized.But she escapes into the woods.”
Jack nodded and said, “All the while, Margaret Randolph is being lured to the mill.She’s drugged, has her tongue cut out, drowns in her own blood.Her body is elaborately staged with all her books.”
The room fell silent as everyone stared at the timeline.
“The Hughes plantation and Hawthorne Mill are on opposite sides of the county.Even if Judith’s attack started early in the evening and Margaret was killed later, the timing is too tight.”
“She had help,” Jack said quietly.“Someone else who knows the history, has access to the drugs, can move freely without raising suspicion.”
Doug’s fingers were already flying across his keyboard.“Margot, run a cross-reference.Anyone connected to this case who has the means, motive, and opportunity to assist.”
“Processing.”Margot’s voice filled the room.“I can help cross-reference databases,” she offered.“Though genealogical research of this depth will take time.”
Doug’s fingers flew across the keyboard.“I’ve been digging into this for the last hour.Let me pull up what I found.”He opened multiple windows.“The Potter/Potts line is documented in Massachusetts records, but there’s another branch I almost missed.”
On the screen, a family tree began to populate.Bridget and Jedediah Ashworth, their daughter Mary who became Mary Potter, then Mary Potts.But there was another line—a son, born to Jedediah’s second wife.
“Okay, this is weird,” Doug said, hunched over his keyboard.“There’s another kid.Samuel Ashworth Potter, born 1747—right before Jedediah got hanged for smuggling.”His voice cracked slightly on “hanged,” reminding me he was still just sixteen despite his genius-level intellect.“Jedediah remarried some woman named Catherine Bowman after he fled Virginia.”
“What happened to him?”Jack’s question came out sharp, focused.
Doug’s fingers flew across the keyboard with the manic energy of a teenager who’d consumed too much caffeine.“Hold on, hold on…okay, it looks like Catherine Bowman remarried about a year after Jedediah was hanged.This is where things get a little hazy.Catherine Potter married a guy, name George Apthorp, who was a very well-to-do merchant in Boston at the time.In the 1755 census, George and Catherine Apthorp are listed, along with their three children—Samuel, George, and Charles Apthorp.
“It looks like Samuel joined the revolution and ditched the Apthorp name at some point, becoming Samuel Ashworth.George Apthorp was a loyalist, so it sounds like there were some daddy issues.I’m sure that made holidays exciting.”
“Mary would have been an adult when Samuel was born,” I said, working through the timeline.“Twenty-two when her father was executed.She might not have known she had a half brother.”
