by BJ Bourg
“Start talking about your relationship with Bill, and don’t leave anything out.”
Isabel was bawling now. She dropped to her knees and buried her face in her hands. I remembered Susan’s warning and didn’t approach her. Instead, I kept my hand close to my pistol and watched her carefully.
“Go ahead,” I said. “Spill it. I’m running out of time and patience.”
Through breaks in her sobbing, Isabel described a sexual relationship that began when she was a single intern for Bill and continued until after she was married and working as an assistant district attorney. “He wouldn’t let me break it off,” she said, tears flowing down her pale face. “Every time I’d try, he’d threaten to tell my husband. I didn’t want to lose my family. I was trapped, can’t you see?”
Not feeling any sympathy for her, I asked if she knew anything about Jolene’s murder.
“I always suspected he might know something, because of how it impacted him. He carried on like a person who was overcome with guilt, not someone who was grieving.” Isabel had calmed down a little and wiped her nose on the sleeve of her dress. “I was really scared after that happened and I felt like he would kill me if I tried to break it off again, so I simply went along with whatever he demanded.”
“Where were you the night Jolene was killed?”
“Home, I guess. I mean, I don’t know exactly when she was killed. I just know I got a call from him one morning saying she had been found murdered at their house. I was home when I got the call.”
“Where was he the night before that call?”
“He was at a conference. I would usually attend with him, but I couldn’t go that time because I had to be in court all week, so I was home.”
“Your husband…did he have any clue you were screwing around on him?”
Isabel started bawling again and could only shake her head.
“Did Bill ask you to page Doug and tell him about the knife?”
She shook her head again, saying something that was indiscernible.
I walked up to her and grabbed her by the arm, pulling her to her feet. “Get in the car. I’ll take you back to your office.”
“Are you going to tell my husband?”
“I don’t know yet.” When we were seated in my Tahoe and jostling along the cane field road, I noticed Chloe’s phone on the center console. “Where were you Wednesday night?”
Isabel sniffed and shook her head. “I don’t know. Work, maybe.”
“You’d better hope you have an alibi,” I said under my breath. I gripped the steering wheel as I drove, wondering if I’d used the right approach with Isabel. She’d come clean about her affair with Bill, but was she telling the truth about the murder? Up to this point, all we had were statements from our main suspects, Bill, Isabel, and Doug, and all of them denied doing it. What I needed now was physical evidence—something real to link one of them to the case. If I couldn’t find that evidence, Duggart might end up spending his life in prison for nothing and Chloe’s murder would go unsolved, both were unacceptable to me.
When I reached the district attorney’s office I pulled right up to the front door. Isabel’s eyes grew wide. “What are you doing?” she asked. “You can’t drop me off here.”
“Just get out of my truck,” I said sternly. “I’ve got work to do.”
“But what if Bill sees me?”
“That’s your problem.” I stared coldly into her bloodshot eyes. “I really don’t care if he sees you or not.”
CHAPTER 52
Chateau Parish Sheriff’s Office
After getting Isabel out of my Tahoe, I drove back to the sheriff’s office and reunited with Susan and Mallory in the large conference room. Melvin was also there and he greeted me with a huge grin.
“How’s it going, Chief?”
I shrugged. “It’s going okay, I guess. How’re things in town?”
“Quiet, actually. It’s almost as though people are scared to go outside.” He rubbed his bare crown. “Claire is still trying to pressure me into quitting, but I told her this is what I want to do with my life. She’s not happy with me at the moment.”
I nodded my understanding, and then updated them on my conversation with Isabel. “I’m leaning more toward Bill being the killer,” I said, “but we need some physical evidence linking him to the crimes.”
“The only physical evidence from Jolene’s murder points to Duggart,” Susan said. “So, we need to try and link him to Chloe’s murder and then work backward from there.”
“All we have are projectiles,” Mallory pointed out. “And we compared the projectiles from their murders with all the projectiles we recovered during the shootouts at the police department and Clint’s house, but none of them match. We’ve got nothing.”
“Wait a minute,” Melvin said. “Did you get a look at Bill’s shoes?”
I shook my head. “Why?”
“Remember? I recovered a dozen shoe prints from the bridge cabin. Most of them were from the floor and could be anyone’s prints, but I recovered one beautiful print from the door. Whoever kicked the door open dumped Chloe’s body in Bayou Tail, so all we have to do is match the print to a shoe, and we’ve got our killer.”
“Where’re the prints?” I asked, suddenly excited.
Mallory jumped to her feet. “They’re in our evidence locker. I’ll get them now.”
When she was gone, Susan turned to me. “How are we going to get a look at Bill’s shoes?”
I smiled. “If need be, you’re going to kick him right in the face and I’m going to pull his shoe off.”
We laughed and made small talk until Mallory returned carrying a stack of large evidence envelopes. She pulled a scissor from her desk drawer and began carefully cutting each of the envelopes open so we could examine the prints. Several of the shoe prints from the floor appeared to have been made by the same type of boots Amy wore, and one set matched Melvin’s boots.
“I thought they were mine,” Melvin said, “but it was hard to tell in the low light of the cabin, so I took all of them.”
I nodded my approval and continued going through the prints. Mallory finally pulled one from an envelope and announced, “This is the one Melvin recovered from outside of the door.” She placed it on the desk and we crowded around it.
As soon as I saw it my heart stopped beating for at least ten seconds.
Susan looked up at me and cocked her head to the side. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost. Do you recognize this print?”
I nodded slowly as the pieces started to come together inside my head. I pointed to Mallory. “How fast can you type up a search warrant?”
“As fast as you can spit the facts from your mouth.”
“Good, fire up your computer so we can get to work.” I turned to Melvin. “You’re a genius. Get your gear together. I want you coming with us.”
“Wait a minute,” Susan said, grabbing Melvin’s arm. “No one’s going anywhere until you tell us what you know.”
CHAPTER 53
3:00 a.m., Wednesday, November 4
Susan and I crept across the soft grass, careful not to make a single sound as we approached the house. Somewhere in the distance a neighborhood dog barked. I froze in place and squatted in the wet grass, gripping my pistol firmly in my fist. I could feel Susan’s hand on the small of my back, waiting for me to move again. When the dog quit barking and I was sure there had been no movement from inside the house, I continued moving forward until I reached the front door of the residence.
Cupping my hand over my mouth, I spoke quietly into my radio mic. “Melvin, are you and Mallory in place?”
Melvin’s voice was loud in my earpiece. “Ten-four. Waiting on your command.”
I turned and made eye contact with Susan, nodding my head. The nearest street light was a block away, but there was enough ambient light to make her brown eyes sparkle. She grabbed my hand and leaned close to me, pressing her lips to my ear.
“Just in case so
mething happens to one of us,” she whispered, her warm breath tickling my ear, “I need you to know I have feelings for you.”
My heart began to race inside my chest. I turned my head and stared into her moist eyes. “What are you talking about?”
I must’ve said it too loud, because she winced and pushed her finger against my lips to silence me. Pushing her lips back to my ear, she said, “We’ll talk about it later. If something happens to me inside, I just didn’t want to die without telling you. When I was shot with that arrow, my one regret was not letting you—”
“Chief, did you copy?” Melvin called into his radio. “We’re waiting on your command.”
Susan’s words had cut to my core and I lost my focus for a second. A million thoughts began running through my mind and Susan had to give me a shove to bring me back to the present. I shook my head to clear it and looked toward the opposite corner of the house, where a sheriff’s office SWAT operator was waiting with a battering ram. I looked back at Susan and gave her a nod. She nodded back and I waved the operator forward.
The operator scurried forward and stopped directly in front of me. With my pistol pointed toward the door, I held up the five fingers of my left hand and counted down. When I dropped my last finger, the operator flung the ram violently into the door, blasting it open.
I rushed through the opening, hooking to the left and following the wall of the room toward the hallway. Susan had crisscrossed to the right and followed the opposite wall. I made it to the hallway a split second before she did and she followed me toward the second door to the left.
Just as we reached the master bedroom, I heard the back door crash open, and I knew Melvin and Mallory had made entry. Before they could start yelling out commands, I smashed my shoulder into the hollow-core door, busting through to the other side. Susan’s flashlight lit up the room and I caught movement to my right. It was a half-naked woman and she was scrambling about the bed and screaming for her life.
On the other side of her, a man was just pushing himself to a seated position, staring about in confusion. Before he could register what was happening, I leapt across the woman and smashed my pistol into the side of his head, sending him sprawling to the floor. The woman thrashed about under me and I got tangled up in her legs and arms.
The man was pushing himself to his feet when Susan came around the other end of the bed and kicked him squarely in the chest. He crashed into the wall behind him, causing a large hole to form in the sheetrock.
I rolled off the end of the bed just as Mallory and Melvin came through the door and secured the woman. I hurried around the bed to help Susan, but the man was already on his face handcuffed and she was reading him his rights. When she turned him over and the light from Melvin’s flashlight caught his face, I saw blood dripping down the side of his head.
“What’s going on?” Reginald demanded. “And why the hell are you in my house?”
“Let’s get him to the living room,” I said, helping Susan lift him and drag him away.
Reginald’s wife was already seated on the sofa and the lights were on when we pushed him onto the loveseat across from her. His eyes were slits and his face was purple. “Do y’all know who I am? I’ll have Bill Hedd indict every last one of you bastards for home invasion! All of y’all are going to prison! Your careers are over!”
“Bill actually knows we’re here,” I said, shoving a search warrant into his lap and turning it so he could read it. “He agreed that we had probable cause to search your premises and to arrest your ass for murder.”
“Murder? You can’t even get me for jaywalking. There’s not a shred of evidence…” The color slowly drained from his face as he read the allegations in the search warrant. “This is bullshit! You can’t pin this on me!”
Melvin appeared from the back of the house carrying a clear plastic bag that contained a pair of large leather ankle boots—the same boots I’d seen when Reginald threw his feet up on the desk at the sheriff’s office Saturday morning.
“They’re a match,” Melvin proclaimed.
“There’re a million boots like that,” Reginald said. “That’s not evidence of anything!”
“If they were new, you might have a valid point.” Melvin turned the sole of the boots around so Reginald could see them. “Do you see how the sole is worn on the outside of the right heel? And you see this missing chunk from the center of the heel? Those are like fingerprints—unique to this pair.”
“I was not in that bridge cabin. I didn’t touch Chloe—I loved her!”
“Like you loved Jolene?” I strode across the room and looked down at him. “You used Chloe, is what you did, so you could keep tabs on her investigation. And when she started getting too close to the truth, you killed her and Megyn to shut them up.”
“You can’t prove any of that.”
“It’ll be hard for you to explain away the fact that Chloe’s earring was found in the back of your truck.”
Reginald’s mouth dropped open. “You know how that got there! We were having sex on our lunch break—long before she was killed.”
“That’s not the way the jury will see it. When we present the facts to the jury, they’ll believe the earring came off when you were moving her body around.”
“You’re just pissed off because you came in second to me! That’s what this is about, isn’t it?”
Reginald’s wife was bawling on the sofa, her hair a tangled mess and her nightgown hanging off of her. “Who’s this Chloe person? And why were you having sex with her? Oh, my God, you’re such an—”
“I’ve got it!” screamed Doug, as he burst through the back door holding a brown paper bag in his gloved hands. “I found this in an old rusty tool box under a bunch of shit in the garage.” He shot a finger at Reginald. “It’s that bastard’s favorite hiding spot! I bet it’s where he hid his porn as a kid.”
“Men are definitely creatures of habit,” Mallory said, laughing at Doug.
I laughed, too, pleased with myself for calling in a favor to Sheriff Turner, who agreed to reinstate Doug’s detective status at my request.
I walked over to where Doug stood holding the bag under the living room light and glanced inside. There was a handgun and several spent shell casings at the bottom of the bag.
Reginald hung his head and began to cry when Doug pulled the firearm out of the bag and held it so we all could see. It was a cheap, silver nine millimeter pistol with obliterated serial numbers.
“Based on the way he’s carrying on,” I said, shooting my thumb toward Reginald, “I’m guessing you found the murder weapon.”
“Yep, and I acted on the tip he called in twenty years ago…trying to make himself sound like a woman.” Shaking his head, he returned the pistol to the bag and walked outside.
I followed Doug into the darkness and looked around for Susan. She wasn’t in the back yard or in the garage, so I walked around to the front of the house. A white Escalade was parked in the driveway and a large man was talking to someone I couldn’t see because of the shadows. I approached the vehicle and heard a booming voice that I recognized to be Bill Hedd.
As I rounded the corner and came up behind him on the driver’s side, I heard him say, “I acted like an ignorant ass and I’m really sorry for all the pain and trouble I’ve caused you. Your dad was a good man, Sergeant, and I’m sorry for trying to say otherwise.”
“I really appreciate that, sir,” Susan said, her voice soft and sincere. “I harbor no ill feelings. As far as I’m concerned, it never happened.”
Susan looked up when I approached and Bill turned around. He stuck out his hand and pumped my arm vigorously. “I can’t thank you enough, young man. To think this evil bastard has been working for me all these years and I never had a clue he did all those horrible things and…” His voice cracked and he just shook his head, trying to hold himself together.
CHAPTER 54
Three hours later…
“How’d you figure it out?” Susan
asked as we got in my Tahoe to drive back to her house.
“When I talked to Duggart I got the feeling he was telling the truth, but I wanted to give Reginald the benefit of the doubt.” I turned the wipers on to wash away the dew that had formed on the windshield. “It was when I talked to Bill that I started doubting Reginald. I could tell Bill had no clue that his wife was sleeping with Duggart.”
Susan nodded her head knowingly. “If Bill didn’t know about Duggart, then the only way Reginald could know was if he was the one who followed Jolene and caught them together.”
“Which meant he was the number two Duggart was talking about.”
“And since he worked for Bill, he knew Bill was away at a conference and he’d have the opportunity to murder Jolene.” Susan nodded. “Motive and opportunity. If you think about it, he was brilliant to kill Jolene right after she’d slept with Duggart and then stage the scene to look like a rape.”
I rubbed my tired face and nodded I agreement. “He’s a great manipulator, that one. I should’ve seen it from the beginning. He was the one person connected to everything—to Duggart, to Megyn, to Chloe—and he controlled the investigation into Jolene’s murder. There were some holes in the reports, but he filled them with believable information that he figured I wouldn’t second-guess, and I didn’t at first. I think I wanted it to be Bill. I wanted him to pay dearly for what he did to you, and that clouded my judgment.”
“You’re not the only one who fantasized about Bill Hedd being locked away forever, but it turns out he’s not a bad man.” Susan was quiet for a long moment. When she spoke again, her voice was soft. “You know, had it not been for Chloe’s investigative work, Duggart would have to spend the rest of his life in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. Basically—but not knowing it—she traded her life for his.”
I only nodded as we continued traveling south. The sun was rising to the east and it was shaping up to be another beautiful day in swamp country. Now that the case was closed, my mind was free to wander. I had lots to think about, but I had to do one thing before making any decisions.
