Lies Left Unsaid

Detective Brandon

I couldn't believe it. It had been staring me right in the face all this time. Caitlyn's code name for the father of her child was Curtis. According to Madison, Caitlyn had a thing for a character from The Outsiders named DARRY Curtis who was played by PATRICK Swayze. Darry rhymed with Terry. She was referring to Dr. Terry Patrick; I was sure of it. Madison described Darry as older than the other boys, intelligent and wanting to help keep the younger boys out of trouble. Dr. Patrick was clearly MUCH older, extremely intelligent and wanted to protect Caitlyn by not revealing her drug problem so that she wouldn't get in trouble with the police and ruin her future plans of becoming a surgeon. However, I couldn't help but see the irony in that, by knocking Caitlyn up, Terry had been the one to derail Caitlyn's bright future, not her drug addiction. Nevertheless, all signs pointed to Dr. Patrick as the mystery baby daddy and proving a motive wouldn't be hard. Caitlyn's pregnancy had the ability to derail his entire life. His wife, his career, his reputation, would all be ruined if the public knew that he, not only had sex with a high school senior, but that she was pregnant with his child, when she was violently murdered and dismembered. "Illinois's Most Talented Surgeon Impregnates Teen Girl" is a headline he would never escape. We might not be able to get him on rape charges. At 19, Caitlyn was old for her grade, but even if she were legal, it didn't mean it was consensual. Of course it was hard to prove that now. Without a body, we couldn't say for sure, how far along she was with the pregnancy. Lord knows there have been teens in the past who have, not only hid their pregnancies, but given birth without anyone knowing it; however, with Caitlyn always being the center of attention, it was hard to imagine her being able to hide a pregnancy without the entire school knowing about it. 

There was also the fact that Avery found the pregnancy test in the trash a few weeks prior to Caitlyn's disappearance. If things had played out the way it seemed to appear, I imagined that Caitlyn was only about a month to a month and a half along in her pregnancy when she went to tell Terry about the baby. It was difficult to believe he would have been thrilled by the news. Based on my interactions with him, I could envision he would have been quite enraged. A man who felt the need to constantly give you a list of his accomplishments and remind you of how important he is, is hardly the type of fella who would jump for joy at the thought of his teenage girlfriend having his love child and the world knowing about his shameful indiscretion. His ego couldn't withstand that sort of hit. It could have even been enough to push him over the edge. Bye bye Caitlyn, bye bye dirty little secret. With that said, just because he was the father, didn't necessarily mean he was the killer. But unfortunately for Dr. Patrick, he was the only real potential suspect we had and it wasn't the biggest stretch to think he could have murdered her. I'd seen people kill for a lot less. I once saw a woman stabbed to death by her boyfriend over an argument about who should have taken out the trash. Stranger things have happened.

The only problem was that Caitlyn's little code name game wouldn't hold up in a court of law. I had to find hard evidence. Unfortunately, hard evidence was something that we were lacking quite a lot of lately. The forensic test results of Caitlyn's hair and finger showed zero signs of someone else's DNA. We had the cum stained panties, but when we ran the DNA sample through the database, there wasn't a match to any of the registered offenders, which of course, made sense if the culprit was Dr. Patrick. He wasn't in the system. I would have to find some way to get a DNA sample from him. The coded ramblings in a lovesick teen's diary were hardly enough to force him to submit to a DNA swab.

In the meantime, since I was lacking in physical evidence, I needed someone to slip up and provide me with some sort of verbal confirmation of the good doctor's guilt and I knew just where to look. Women have a way of turning on those they love most when they realize they've been betrayed. I would use Terry's unfaithfulness to manipulate Vivian Coates and his wife, Caroline Patrick, into giving me the info I needed to nail the almighty Dr. Terry Patrick. He might have been the king of the castle, but he was about to be dethroned, for "hell hath no fury like a woman scorned."