“And you were alright with it?” Smith asked.
“What choice did I have?” David asked. “It’s Gracie’s life, her decision. She wanted to see what else was out there.”
“But you still consider her your girlfriend?”
“She still is,” he said.
“But she went on dates,” the cop began.
David cut him off. “She went on a date but nothing came of it. She got left on the side of the road because she didn’t have sex with him. You know, I’m pretty sure the idiot who left her on the side of the road gave her a better reason not to date other guys than anything I could have done.” David snapped. The guy probably did me a favor. Now, unless you have any more questions?”
“No,” Smith said calmly on the other end of the line. “I think you’ve answered all of them for now. I’ll be in touch, Mr. Breedlove.”
David snapped the cellphone shut. “Why couldn’t she have gotten the dumb cop?” he muttered as he heard the sound of a car pulling into the driveway.
“Jesus Christ, what now?” David asked as he looked out the front window and saw Twitchy Eddie Von Hussant standing in his front yard looking very self-righteous.
*
“What do you want?” David snarled as he jerked open the front door to his trailer a moment before Eddie raised his hand to knock.
“I need to ask you a few questions,” Eddie said. He felt incredibly nervous. David was a good head taller than he was, and while he probably didn’t outweigh him, David was all muscle and Eddie was mostly Starbucks Lattes and blueberry wheat muffins.
“About what?” David asked crossly.
“Don’t you, ‘about what’ me,” Eddie said sharply. He tried to pull himself up to his full five feet six and a half inches. “I know what you did.”
David loomed in front of him menacingly, the tattoos on his arms and chest rippled.
Eddie had done the research the Sheriff had told him to before he had headed this way. There were five 1980’s model Toyota trucks registered in Coastal County. One belonged to a woman, the second had been crushed by a junkyard four months ago after blowing it’s head gasket, the third was in Louisiana with its oil rig working owner and number four belonged to an outrageously fat man who could not have been the guy Eddie had seen throwing the body out of the truck bed Saturday night.
Truck number five belonged to David Breedlove.
It briefly crossed Eddie’s mind that he should have brought backup, but who was he kidding? All his backups were David’s buddies. He couldn’t count on them to do anything but try and screwball his investigation.
Alex, he actually believed, was David’s cousin. Alex was also Sheriff Hall’s chosen one when it came to the deputy position Eddie knew should rightfully be his.
Sheriff Hall had known what he was doing when he assigned the Marquette murder case to Eddie. If he couldn’t solve the crime, it would give Hall the justification he needed to boot Eddie out of the Sheriff’s Department. It was discrimination to skip over the best qualified candidate for a position because you were dating the other candidate’s Momma. On the other hand, it was perfectly legal to send the on-trial deputy, who hopelessly gummed up a murder investigation, packing on down the road.
Eddie knew he had to solve this case or he would be handing out his resume door-to-door in record time.
He frowned at David, who was staring him down like he was a bad joke.
“Why are you on my property?” David snarled at him. Eddie noted that his teeth were crooked as he took an involuntary step backwards and fell off the porch with an audible thud, bouncing his head against a transmission that had been innocently laying in the dirt next to the parking pad.
The impact knocked the air out of him, and everything faded to black.
The last thought that went through Eddie’s mind was to wonder whether anyone would even bother trying find his body after David disposed of it.
*
“You have got to be kidding me,” Addison stared down at Eddie’s prone body, lying flat on his back in David’s front yard.
“He fell off the porch,” David grumbled, leaning back against the trailer as Alex went as far as to prod the unconscious Eddie in the ribs with the toe of his thick, muddy work boots. “Cal took out the fucking railing Friday night when he threw me through it.”
“Did you call Sheriff Hall?” Alex asked Addison, who in turn looked to David.
“I didn’t call anyone but you,” David told Addy.
“I tried to call Uncle Wally, but he didn’t answer,” Addy said. “I think he went fishing.”
“Probably, that’s what Momma said they were doing tonight.” Alex shrugged when Addison and David stared at him. “What? Momma’s a grown woman. If she wants to date the Sheriff, let her.”
Addison shook his head and frowned at Alex. “If she becomes wife number four, that’ll make you and me cousins.”
“Yelch, I hadn’t thought about that.” Alex gave Addison a once over and then grinned. “Oh well, could be worse.”
“Yeah, like I could have a dead deputy in my yard.” David grumbled, looking less than amused.
“He’s not dead,” Addison said.
“You can see he’s still breathing,” Alex chimed in, running a hand through his coppery hair. His hazel eyes were twinkling with laughter.
“Not my point,” David said.
“Do you think we should do something?” Alex nudged Eddie’s shoulder with the toe of his boot.
“Call whine-1-1 and have them send world’s slowest Whambulance?” Addison asked.
“Ah hell. It’d be quicker to drive him to the hospital ourselves. That damned thing will get lost three times before it gets here,” David said.
“Normally I would,” Addison scowled at Eddie, who appeared to be peacefully asleep. “But this overqualified under-talented idiot has Uncle Wally so petrified he’s gonna sue the department’s pants off that he’s become a stickler for procedure.”
“Wally?” David blinked. “The same Wally who sometimes lets the criminals go home over the weekend as long as they promise to come back for arraignment just so he doesn’t have to staff the jail?”
“Same Wally,” Alex sighed and flicked the Sheriff’s star on his lapel. “He’s pretty much told me that the badge is only temporary too. He says Eddie will sue the piss out of Coastal County if I get hired over him.” He stopped as Addison gestured for him to shut up. “What?”
“Unless we can document that he’s incompetent.” Addison was waving one finger in the air. “Alex, call the whambulance. Use the official system.”
“You mean, call it through dispatch?” Alex asked.
“Absolutely,” Addison had gone back to his truck and was digging around behind the seat. “Tell them that the highly incompetent Deputy Von Hussant has fallen off a suspect’s porch and knocked himself unconscious on a transmission.”
“10-4,” Alex said as he headed for his cruiser with a bounce in his step.
“Wait, hold on. Suspect?” David followed Addy. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “It’s a bunch of delusional bullshit.” Addison yanked a digital camera out of the truck. He began snapping pictures of Eddie, who was beginning to stir, and the porch and the transmission.
“What delusional bullshit?” David demanded.
Addy sighed. “It’s nothing. Don’t worry about it. The motherfucker’s nuts.”
“Addison, if I’m being investigated for something I need to know about it.” David’s mind kept flashing back to the conversation he’d been having with the State University cops moments before Eddie had pulled into his driveway.
The camera flashed a few more times and Eddie groaned.
“He’s convinced you’re a murderer.” Addison frowned at David. “Saturday night, Alex and I got the bright idea to play a little trick on clueless over there. We got him out in Johnson’s cow pasture, let his cruiser sink and left him there
all night.”
David could hear sirens in the distance as the ambulance approached the house. Wonder of wonders, it must have been sitting at the unmanned fire station just down the road. He gestured for Addy to hurry up and get to the point.
“When Johnson found him in the morning, he had a dead body with him, and he was swearing up down and backwards you were the one who dumped it.”
David gawked at Addy uncomprehendingly. “No way.”
“I already told him he was barking up the wrong tree, but he’s convinced you did it. I told him you were too busy screwing my sister to be running around dumping dead bodies, but he won’t listen to me.” Addison shrugged as the ambulance pulled up to the driveway and Alex waved it down towards the house.
Eddie groaned again, this time mumbling something about school and Mommy.
“He thinks I murdered someone?” David was almost too stunned to speak.
“He’s stupid, David. Don’t worry about it. We all know he’s just blowing air out his ass, right?” Addison winked at David and walked over to make sure the ambulance crew handled Twitchy Eddie with proper protocol.
*
Eddie saw the light. It was a really bright light and it seemed to be coming towards him. It wasn’t peaceful like all the people on the Discovery Channel special on near death experiences had said it was. Actually it was somewhat painful. It felt like someone was pulling his eyes open by the eyelashes.
The light got closer and Eddie realized someone was, in fact, pulling his eye open. He blinked and tried to jerk away, but a thick arm held him in place. The light began to distance itself.
“Relax.” A melodic woman’s voice came out of the bleak surroundings.
Eddie realized he was lying on a white bed in a white room with white walls. An immense black woman was leaning over him, peering into his eyes. She was holding one of those little medical flashlight gadgets doctors use to check your eyes and ears.
“I’m not dead,” Eddie said, vaguely amazed.
She laughed. She was wearing scrubs printed with cartoon characters and had on a name tag that identified her as Dr. Marie Daugherty.
“Nope, you’re not dead at all,” she informed him with a laugh, then turned serious. “It’s a mild concussion. We’re going to keep you here overnight, but if all goes well, you should be free to go in the morning, Deputy Von Hussant.”
“I, wait. No. Where is here?” He suddenly realized he had no idea where he was, or how he had gotten here.
“Baker County Memorial Hospital,” she said calmly. “You were brought here in an ambulance. That nice blonde boy, I think he may be the Game Warden? He said you’d fallen off a porch and hit your head on some kind of car part.”
“Blonde. Game Warden. Addison,” Eddie put the puzzle together automatically and then sat up ramrod straight, unaware of the IV he had in in his right wrist until it yanked painfully in his vein. “Oh no!”
“What’s wrong?” Dr. Daugherty asked, frowning at his sudden movements.
“My suspect!” He began to struggle to get out of the bed, pressing aside medical equipment and ignoring the dizziness he felt as he struggled his way out of the sheets.
“Will just have to wait,” Dr. Daugherty said as she pushed him gently but firmly back down onto the bed. “You are in no condition to be going anywhere.”
“But, I was about to question a murderer. I was going to bring him down to the office so he could confess. I was about to solve my first case and get hired on full-time officially. Not to mention getting a really bad guy off the streets. I’ve got to go. He could flee the county now that he knows I’m on to him.” Eddie tried to push his way back up.
“I’m sure the other officers will take care of your suspect for you until I clear you to leave,” she said.
Eddie shook his head miserably. “They don’t think he did it. They’re all friends with him and don’t believe me when I tell them I saw him ditch the body.”
Dr. Daugherty’s warm brown eyes widened and Eddie started to cry.
“I don’t know why I bother,” he wailed. “They all hate me. They want to hire Alex instead so they’re trying to get rid of me. I fell backwards off a porch and gave myself a concussion, and now I’m sure it’ll be in my personnel file. Someone will bring it up and say I’m a blithering idiot at my first review. I’m never going to catch Jarvis Marquette’s murderer because now he knows I saw him, and he probably didn’t kill me because he needed to spend his time hiding all the evidence instead.” Tears were rushing down Eddie’s face faster than the Kleenex the doctor had handed him could absorb them.
“You want to know what the worst part was?” he asked her.
“What it is it honey?” she asked soothingly, rubbing his back in a motherly way.
“Right before I fell off the porch, I was looking at David, and he was looking at me, and my right eye twitched!”
“Okay. Well then you may not have fallen; it may have been some kind of medical...” the doctor seemed vaguely concerned, but he shook his head.
“No, it’s social. It started around puberty, lasted all the way through high school getting progressively worse despite seven hours of therapy a week and then went away in college. Now it’s back. You know what my nickname was in high school?” he asked her.
She shook her head.
“Twitchy Eddie,” he sobbed. “I hate Coastal County.”
“Oh dear, it sounds to me like you’ve just had a miserable day and too much stress.” The doctor patted his hand and handed him another tissue. She walked over to a locked cabinet in the corner of the room and pulled out a small bottle of clear liquid, stuck a syringe in it and then held the needle up in front of Eddie with scarcely a nod. “This will make you feel better,” she told him.
His eyes widened for a moment, and then he nodded and held out his arm. She shook her head and gestured for him to stick out his leg. It looked scrawny and was almost whiter than the sheet as she stuck the needle into it.
“Now you get some rest, honey. I’ll come check on you in the morning,” Dr. Daugherty told him.
He said he would even though he didn’t think that would be possible. He saw David’s face looming towards him every time he closed his eyes. Whatever the doctor had given him in the syringe was working though, because he closed his eyes and tried to forget about David and passed out cold.
*
“Tell David we’re probably going to have to arrest him in the morning.” Wally Hall scowled at the pile of paperwork Eddie had apparently placed on his desk before his ill-fated tumble onto the transmission. The Sheriff was gritting his teeth and pulling on his mustache hairs with a fierceness that Addy had never seen before.
The Sheriff had come rushing into the office wearing a t-shirt with a giant catfish on it and a pair of ripped blue jeans that were probably every bit as old as Addison. He’d stared at Addison and Alex, who were telling Lieutenant Perkins exactly how the whole thing had happened and stopped dead in his tracks and asked them what the hell they’d done to Twitchy Eddie. Wally said he had left the lake to come straight to the Sheriff’s Office when he’d heard a vague report one of his deputies was in the emergency room.
Addison had repeated the whole story again, making Perkins laugh and the Sheriff groan and head to his desk, where he’d been sitting and shuffling papers ever since.
Perkins had left on patrol and Alex had gone home for the night, so they were alone in the office. Addison had been checking through his messages from the day. He’d just come across a request for a call back from the State University Police Department with no reason listed. He was trying to figure out what the hell his kid sister could have gotten into when Wally had called him over to his desk.
“What?” Addison stared at his Uncle. “You can’t be serious.”
Wally sighed. “He’s filed a report claiming enough evidence to bring David in for questioning. He’s claiming to have backed his own eyewitness account up by investigating every 1980’s model Toy
ota in the county. He says David’s is the only one he hasn’t been able to rule out. His report says he’s already requested, and received, a search warrant from Judge Bohannon for David’s truck.”
Addison’s eyebrows shot up. “I thought no one was allowed to request a search warrant without you okaying it?”
“They’re not.” Wally glared at the report in his hand. “But that’s department policy. Not the law.”
“He’s already gotten the search warrant?” Addison couldn’t believe it. “The last time I tried to get a search warrant it took me three days and the whole county knew before I got it. Evidence was so far gone by the time I got there, it wasn’t even funny.”
“He said,” Wally held up the neatly written report, “that he went ahead and went directly to the judge when he couldn’t reach me. He claims he didn’t want to give a murder suspect the chance to get ahead of our investigation.”
“I can’t believe he got a warrant,” Addison said.
“That makes two of us.” Wally shook his head. “When I get my hands on that boy in the morning he’s going to wish that damned transmission had killed him.”
Addison laughed, but turned sober quickly. “If you don’t kill him, David sure as hell will.”
“David.” Wally shook his head. “Tell David to bring the truck down here first thing in the morning, so I can go ahead and send it off to Baker County. Their crime techs will go over it with a forensic fine tooth comb whenever they get the time. Eddie’s trying to push it through as high priority, but I’m not signing off on that.”
“Yeah, I really see David cooperating with a bullshit investigation headed by Twitchy Eddie.” Addison shook his head. “How can he even do this?”
“Do what?” Wally asked.
“Arrest my best friend on a warrant based on his own bullshit eyewitness report?” Addison scanned the report as Wally handed it to him; he was getting madder by the minute.
“The eyes of the law don’t discriminate,” Wally said.
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Addison asked.
Feeding Gators: Book 1 in the Shiner's Bayou Series Page 25
