Lies Left Unsaid

Detective Brandon

I stared at the thin white piece of plastic in my hand imagining what it must have been like when she found out. Caitlyn was in fact, pregnant. Avery found the test in the trashcan of the bathroom they shared. She said she felt bad that she had held onto it as something to hold over Caitlyn's head the next time they got in a big fight. The vindictiveness of siblings never ceased to amaze me, and while brothers might get in fistfights, sisters could be down right conniving.

The positive pregnancy test however, was not the most interesting development I received that day. While I was grilling the Coates women, Martinez had interviewed several employees at the hospital who confirmed that Caitlyn interned there during her sophomore year. One woman mentioned she had seen Caitlyn at the hospital several times this past school year as well, although the woman indicated it could just have been to visit her mother. She said that Caitlyn and her mother must have been very close because she was always hanging around the office in which her mother worked. This piece of information was perplexing, to say the least, since just about everyone I interviewed gave the impression that Caitlyn and her mother were at each other's throats.

Video surveillance showed that Vivian Coates was, in fact, at the hospital the night before Caitlyn went missing, however, administrative records indicated that she was not scheduled to work late that evening, which meant she was there of her own volition, but why? Was she an extremely hard worker, or was it to make sure she had an alibi?

I decided to go down to the hospital myself and do some digging. I set up an interview with Dr. Terry Patrick, whom Vivian worked for. He was a highly respected surgeon, not just at Saint Joseph Hospital, but in the nation. I was hoping that he might be able to fill in some of the holes concerning Vivian's whereabouts the night before her daughter went missing and also possibly provide some information about the year that Caitlyn interned at the hospital. Our interview was brief and he was less than forthcoming, but little did I know that initial visit to the hospital would be one of many over the next couple months. I had been following the white rabbit now for several weeks trying to connect the dots of who Caitlyn was and why she was murdered, and unbeknownst to me, I was about to fall down the rabbit hole.