She Wanted It All - Kathryn Casey [94]
“You’re just upset,” the deputy said. “We tested her for residue. She didn’t fire a gun.”
“I don’t care what you tested. He’s in danger with her here,” Ray answered.
As McEachern spoke, Celeste praised Steve to the others and pledged her love for him. She said she didn’t think she could live without him. And she cried.
With the exception of Kristina, the teens, too, were looking at Celeste suspiciously. As they discussed the events of that night, there were just too many oddities. Why did Celeste take Meagan to the lake? Why did she say the boys weren’t allowed to sleep over and send Christopher, Amy, and Jennifer to the lake house? Of them all, Jennifer was the most certain that her mother had some involvement in the shooting. Celeste was ruthless; about that she had no doubt. In the hospital, Jennifer looked across at Kristina, who hovered protectively near their mother. She made a decision there, at that moment. She’d keep her distance from Celeste and watch. But she wouldn’t tell Kristina her suspicions. “I love Kristina to death,” she says. “But I didn’t trust her not to tell our mother.”
As Jennifer thought the situation through, she believed her mother was not only involved with the shooting but, under the right circumstances, capable of hurting not only Steve, but her and Kristina. She considered fleeing somewhere Celeste couldn’t find her. But she couldn’t. “Kristina wouldn’t go, and I would never leave her behind.”
Inside an operating room, doctors attempted to piece together Steve’s abdomen. The birdshot had entered his body and fanned out, until it appeared on a portable X ray like a thin spray of white dots. His lungs already weak from asthma, he struggled to breathe on his own, so they inserted a ventilator. Using a tiny camera to guide him, Dr. Robert Coscia, a trauma surgeon, worked to repair the damage. In places, Steve’s abdomen looked like ground meat. Parts of his skin were already decaying, poisoning his system. Coscia slowly and carefully resectioned his stomach and removed part of his colon and intestine, inserting an ileostomy. With so much to repair, he didn’t have enough undamaged skin to close. Instead, he pieced Vicryl, six-by-six-inch panels of surgical mesh, over the wound. Eventually, if Steve lived, he’d require skin grafts, but for the time being Coscia wanted him out of surgery and stabilizing. With his enlarged heart and weak lungs, the longer he spent in the operating room, the more dangerous his situation became.
“At best, he has a fifty-fifty chance,” Dr. Coscia told Celeste and the teens after the operation. “There’s a good possibility that he won’t make it through the night.”
As Kristina held her, Celeste sobbed.
At the Toro Canyon house, Detective Wines made plans to have the place thoroughly searched and to bring in the forensic team. First, he wanted to make sure anything they found would later be admissible in court. He called Knight at the hospital. “Ask Mrs. Beard to sign a consent-to-search for us,” he said. In case she refused, Wines then left and went to his office to write up a search warrant. That turned out to be unnecessary. Knight called just after he arrived and said Celeste had signed the forms. On the phone, Wines told Knight about all he’d noted at the house, including what looked to be a staged burglary. Knight told Wines about the teens’ identification of Tracey Tarlton as a possible suspect.
“I’ll come to the hospital,” Wines said. “Let’s see if we can talk to Mr. Beard.”
At 9:30 A.M., Wines arrived at Brackenridge, and he and Knight went to the nurse in charge of the surgical ICU and flashed their badges. “We need to talk to Mr. Beard,” he said. With no objection, she led them into his room.
In the bed, surrounded by machines pumping him with antibiotics, painkillers, and fluids, Steve had tubes protruding from his throat and nose. His abdomen was covered by layers of gauze. He’d been opened and pieced back together, but not all the birdshot