Feeding Gators: Book 1 in the Shiner's Bayou Series

by Gen Anne Griffin

  “What’s parked in front of the cruiser?” He asked even as he was moving towards the tree line.

  “Richard Perkins’ Toyota,” Alex said, trailing after him. “It’s empty too, but there’s a loaded gun on the driver’s seat and the ground is all stirred up. Like there was a fight.”

  “Shit,” David cursed as he headed towards the beat up truck.

  “You know, I’d forgotten about that truck. It’s just like yours, David. Almost identical. You don’t think that the truck Eddie saw the other night, when he thought he saw your truck, was really Perkins’ truck, do you?” Alex stared at the Toyota with obvious concern. “Perkins doesn’t like Eddie. I can’t think of any good reason why he would be out here with him.”

  “It’s the same truck,” David checked the ignition and saw the keys were still dangling. “Cal figured the whole mess out earlier today. Shit.”

  “You don’t think Perkins would hurt him, do you?”

  “Who, Eddie?” Addison asked.

  “Obviously Eddie,” David snapped. “And yeah. I’m pretty sure he’d hurt him. Especially if Eddie’s made the same connection we have between that truck,” he gestured at the Toyota, “and a certain dead body.”

  “Oh God.”

  “Hell, Eddie’s the type of guy you just want to punch in the face. Even if he’s not trying to arrest you for murder,” Addison pointed out. “I’ve thought about breaking the little twerp’s neck myself at least 15 times this week.”

  “Crap.” Alex stared into the dark trees. “Maybe there’s a good reason for them to have left their cars here. Maybe they’re working together on a case or something.”

  “Perkins, work?” Addison scoffed. “Fat chance. That ain’t happened yet.”

  David leaned against the hood of the Toyota. “Truck’s still warm,” he said. “They haven’t been gone all that long.”

  “We should go after them.” Alex straightened his spine and stared into the woods, his trepidation obvious. He looked over at David. “Give me that shotgun, will you? I’m not a real good shot with this thing.” He thumped the butt of his service revolver and gestured at the shotgun that was sitting in Perkins’ truck.

  “Fine,” David rolled his eyes and held out his hand for Alex’s service weapon. “Trade me. I’m not going in unarmed, and all my guns are back at my house.”

  “Um, are y’all sure we want to do this?” Addison frowned as David checked the shotgun to see how many rounds it held and passed it to Alex.

  “You turning coward on us?” David had picked up on the hesitation in Addison’s voice. “Perkins is 55 years old. He weighs a minimum of 350 pounds, and he’s slow. The three of us shouldn’t have any problems taking him.”

  “We could get shot.” Addison checked the clip in his own gun even as he said the words. “If Perkins left a gun behind then it means he didn’t think he needed it. He’s going to be armed.”

  “Eddie should have been armed too.”

  “I didn’t see his gun anywhere. I looked for it.” Alex shrugged his shoulders and checked the shotgun’s chamber for himself.

  “Look, all I’m doing is asking whether y’all are 100 percent sure we want to risk our own sorry asses to save a guy who’s done nothing but try to ruin our lives since he got back to town?” Addison frowned at his friends. “You see what I’m saying?”

  “You think we should just let Perkins kill him?” David didn’t even try to hide his disgust.

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Then what are you saying?”

  “I’m saying that I don’t really want to die for Twitchy Eddie.” Addison crossed his arms over his chest. “We’ve spent the last week trying to sabotage everything the guy has done. Now we’re going to go plunging off into the woods after an armed killer to save him?”

  “And y’all keep saying I’m the cold emotionless one.” David frowned contemplatively and shook his head. “I have to admit you have a point. The bastard does want me strapped to the electric chair.”

  “He wants to dig up Josie too,” Addison pointed out. He scowled at the Toyota. “Perkins is going to come back for his truck. Y’all know he ain’t going to walk anywhere he doesn’t have to. Does it really make us bad people if we just kind of hang out here and arrest Perkins when he gets back?”

  “What if he’s already killed Eddie?”

  “Um,” Addison scratched his head. “I guess that would be bad?”

  “You know, evil triumphs when good people do nothing,” David muttered. He stared down at his boots, lost in thought as he kicked at the thick covering of leaves that dusted the ground.

  “Who said you were good people?”

  “I did,” Alex spoke up firmly, his jaw locked in a tight line as he adjusted his grip on his gun. “I say we’re good people. Besides, I have a hard enough time sleeping at night as it is. I don’t like Eddie, but I’m not having his death on my conscience either.”

  David and Addison both looked over at him in surprise.

  “Okay.” Addison let out a soft whistle “If that’s how you feel. Let’s get this over with.”

  *

  Eddie didn’t know how long Perkins made him walk. It wasn’t nearly as long as Eddie would have made a hostage walk if he’d been planning on murdering somebody. He didn’t think they were too far from the highway when Perkins ordered him to stop. The fat deputy’s face was flushed red. He was dripping with sweat as he ordered Eddie to stand next to a tree at the edge of the clearing.

  Eddie had no idea what his odds would be if he managed to escape into the woods. He knew that if he held still, he’d die. Perkins was still holding the gun on him. Its long black nose and big bored barrel sent chills down Eddie’s spine. He felt transfixed by the sight of it, frozen like a deer standing in the middle of the highway while the headlights of a tractor trailer came barreling down the road to end his life. He forced a choked breath into his lungs. He had to move. He had to.

  His small size was no advantage in a fight, but Eddie suspected he stood a decent chance of outrunning the old tub of lard. He heard a click as Perkins cocked his handgun.

  Running away might be his only chance for survival. He forced his gaze away from the gun and jerked his stubborn, unwilling feet into motion. He made his break for freedom before he even realized he was committing to the plan. He hoped Perkins would be too surprised to react as Eddie dropped backwards into the woods, heading away from the road and screaming at the top of his lungs.

  A shot rang out behind him and Eddie heard the solid thunk of a bullet hitting the tree he’d just run past. Two more shots hit the dirt somewhere behind him. After that, if Perkins was still firing, Eddie didn’t hear him. All he could hear was the pounding of his own heart as he ran like he’d never run before, dodging in and out of trees, bouncing roughly off the bark because his handcuffed hands were completely useless when it came to helping him keep his balance. He heard Perkins yelling behind him as he charged into the woods after him.

  Eddie kept tripping and stumbling through the woods, moving as fast as his asthmatic lungs and clumsy feet would allow him to. Every breath burned but burning was better than asphyxiation due to bullet holes in the lungs any day of the week. Eddie forced down another hot breath of rancid swamp air and ran like he’d never run before deep into the depths of the bayou.

  *

  “That report is a doozy. Even for Addison’s overactive imagination.” Wally Hall made a face as he ambled back into his office and caught Cal reading the report Addison had given him earlier in the day.

  “It’s creative. To say the least.” Cal was trying to search his mind for a word that didn’t convey that he found the plot despicable, conniving or crooked.

  “Wrong.” Gracie filled in the blank for him. Wally nodded his head in agreement and held out his arm to give Gracie a hug. “It’s wrong.”

  “What’s this your Momma called me crying about earlier today?” he asked her. “She kept going on and on about how you were dropp
ing out of college and marrying David?”

  “Good Lord,” Cal raised an eyebrow at Gracie and the two of them exchanged a look. “Maybe we should go ahead and have the engagement announcement dinner tonight.”

  “Before any more rumors get started?”

  “Precisely.” Cal dug around in his pocket until he pulled out his phone. He tossed it to Gracie. “Do me a favor and call Mom and get everything set up.”

  “Engagement?” The Sheriff was clearly surprised. “I thought she was marrying David.”

  “She’s marrying me,” Cal said, a bit grumpily.

  “Does your Mom even know we’re back together?” Gracie asked him.

  “No. Well, unless she heard it from your brother. I don’t know. Maybe.”

  Gracie sighed. “If she thinks I’m sleeping with David, she’s going to freak out on me.”

  “Then tell her that you’re not.”

  “Do I tell her that we’re getting married?”

  “Sure. Why not?” Cal shrugged his shoulders and grinned teasingly at Gracie. “It’ll give her an excuse to break out the good china.”

  “Okay, but if she yells at me I’m blaming it on you,” Gracie sighed and scrolled through the contact list on the phone. “I guess I’ll leave y’all to talk and go call Miss Loretta.” She headed out the office door and over to Addison’s desk, where she flopped down in the chair and prepared pour her heart and soul out to her future mother-in-law.

  Wally laughed then looked over at Cal. “You’ve had a busy day, haven’t you?”

  “Busy week,” Cal admitted as he sunk into the chair beside Wally’s desk and set the report back down.

  “You ready to talk to me about that murder yet?” Wally asked.

  “That’s why I’m here.” He picked up the file he’d liberated from Addison’s desk when he’d come back in to the office half an hour ago. He flipped it open to display the picture of Jarvis Marquette he’d taken to Leon’s earlier. “I saw this guy Friday night drinking in Leon’s Bar,” he told Wally. “He was with a woman.”

  “Oh boy. This oughta be good. Go ahead.” Wally gestured for him to continue.

  “I’d forgotten all about him until this morning. I guess because the mess between David and Eddie had gotten me all kinds of distracted,” Cal didn’t bring up Gracie or her dead boyfriend. What Wally didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him. “When Pappy was fixing to shoot that guy earlier, I all of a sudden remembered seeing another homeless guy,” he held up the picture. “This guy. The night before his body got dumped in Johnson’s pasture.”

  “Okay. Who was the woman?” Wally tugged on his mustache. Cal noted that it was getting a bit threadbare.

  “Sharyn Perkins,” Cal said with a scowl as he pulled out Eddie’s neatly folded printout listing the registration of every 80’s model Toyota in Coastal County. “Formerly known as-”

  “Sharyn Greene,” Wally plucked the printout out of Cal’s hand and glared at it as if simply staring at the woman’s name could make her magically appear in his office. “Dammit.”

  “After I left here earlier, I took the picture to Leon; he agreed it was the same guy.”

  “You think Sharyn killed him?” Wally asked skeptically.

  “Not Sharyn,” Cal shook his head. “I mean, I guess it would be possible, but she was looking pretty hot and heavy with him.”

  “Dammit,” Wally cursed again. “I knew that son-of-a-bitch was going to make trouble eventually. I didn’t want him on my force. I got stuck with him because his application had legal priority since technically he’d been laid off from his last position. The state doesn’t care that the reason the Connertown PD put a force veteran on their chopping block at the first sign of a budget cut was because he’d been accused of beating his wife’s lover half to death with a steel pipe.”

  “You’re kidding me.”

  “I wish. It was never proven and no charges were filed. Captain Lewis wanted him gone after that. First budget cut that came along and his ass got kicked right off their force. And right onto mine.”

  “You had to hire him?”

  “Unfortunately. It’s political. He had seniority and legal priority because he’d been cut from a state job due to budget rather than misconduct. Now the bastard has gone and killed somebody else.”

  “You make that sound like he’s killed more than one person.” Cal watched worriedly as the Sheriff continued to yank on his mustache.

  “The man’s a walking blood bath, Cal. He was an Army Ranger, and he never got back out of the war mindset. He’d just as soon shoot a suspect as arrest him. He’d shot something like 17 people during his 14 years in Connertown. Why do you think I kept him on our weekday night shift?”

  “Nothing ever happens on weeknights in Shiner’s Bayou,” Cal said.

  “Exactly. The guy was riding out his pension anyway. He’s lazy. I figured if I let him be lazy he’d eventually retire when his pension matured. Hopefully without killing anyone else.”

  “No offense, but I don’t think your plan worked,” Cal thumbed the file at him.

  *

  The sound of bullets being fired followed by an extremely loud, high-pitched scream nearby made both Alex and Addison jump. David dropped down to his knees on the trail, muttering obscenities. “Get down, you idiots!” he snapped.

  Addison immediately dropped back against the base of an old pine tree on the side of the trail. After a moment, he reached out and snagged Alex’s arm and pulled him out of the open area of the trail as another three rounds boomed through the mid-afternoon air.

  “Oh this is great,” Addison muttered, clutching his service weapon with both hands. His breathing was shaky and his hands were trembling on the gun. Alex was sitting squarely on his rear end beside him, clutching the shotgun like it was his favorite teddy bear rather than a form of self-defense. “Who’s up for heading back to the truck now?”

  More screams echoed through the trees. Another couple of blasts followed.

  “If we’re going to go, we have to do it now.” David gestured towards the clearing ahead of their position.

  “What?”

  “I counted 10 shots,” David said, sounding deceptively calm. “He’s empty.”

  “He’s reloading,” Addison pointed out, his eyes wide.

  “You two chickenshits coming or staying here?” David countered. He’d shifted into a hunched position and was already beginning to make his way forward.

  Alex and Addison exchanged a look, and then Alex stood up on shaky legs, using the shotgun as a prop. “Come on,” he told Addison. “We’re the law, right?”

  Another scream pierced the air.

  “We’re the law,” Addison spoke the words with more force than necessary. “And I’d like to be the law for at least the next 50 years. Deer don’t shoot back, y’all know? This is why I’m the game warden.”

  “Come on,” Alex hissed at him. He started to follow David down the trail towards the area where the shots had been fired.

  Addison took a deep breath as David broke into a jog and headed down the trail, the .45 caliber handgun clutched in his left hand.

  A moment later the three of them were standing at the edge of a small, empty clearing.

  “Where are they?” Alex whispered so softly his voice could barely be heard above the wind.

  “There,” David nodded towards the far right section of the clearing next to a thick, old cypress whose trunk was swollen from all the water it had absorbed over the years. “See where they broke through the trees.”

  “Eddie must have made a run for it,” Addison mused aloud.

  “Perkins isn’t going to run far,” David pointed out. Addison could practically hear David gritting his teeth as he scanned the tree line for any sign of movement.

  “You think he shot him?”

  “Maybe,” David shrugged his shoulders. His gesture was casual but he had the gun pointed into the woods and was standing in a classic shooter’s stance. He was a decent shot and had
pretty good reflexes. Addison planned on standing behind David if Perkins came barreling back out of those trees like an enraged rhinoceros. David was far more likely to successfully take the man down with his first shot than Addison was. “Maybe not.”

  “Um, guys?” Alex shifted his weight back and forth on the balls of his feet. “Should we really be standing out here in the open like this?”

  “Depends, are we going in after them?”

  “You know, I think we’ve reached the point in the movie where everyone but the main hero and his girl get killed,” Addison made a faint attempt at humor. The other two ignored him completely.

  “Perkins isn’t going to get far,” David repeated, chewing on the inside of his lip as he considered his options. “Watch my back,” he told them as he made a decision and began moving towards the area where he suspected Eddie had fled into the woods.

  “Oh shit,” Addison muttered.

  David ran his fingers across the scarred bark of the cypress tree. “Here’s one shot,” he said, fingering the hole where the bullet had sunk into the bark.

  “Tell me he’s shooting a .22,” Alex had gone noticeably pale. Addison shook his head no.

  “They should have .45’s. Him and Eddie both.” David spoke without thinking about it. He was staring down at the crushed brush just below the tree line.

  “Oh fantastic. We’re getting shot. Either way. Perkins will kill us because he knows we know he’s a murderer,” Addison grumbled. “Eddie will shoot us because his aim sucks.”

  “Might as well get on with it then.” David seemed completely oblivious to everything but the trail in front of him. Addison groaned.

  “Just for the record, y’all, this is a bad idea.”

  “Point taken. Now let’s get moving.” David headed into the woods, following the trail of crushed leaves and squashed saplings.

  *

  Eddie didn’t know how long he’d run or how far. He knew he was bleeding. An old tree with miserable thorny vines growing all over it had provided the best cover Eddie could find. He’d hit his shoulder when he’d tripped the last time. Something in it was throbbing now. The pain was awful but even through the blazing pain and the tears he was fighting to keep from running down his face, he kept reminding himself that it wasn’t as awful as the bullet wound that Perkins wanted to give him.