James 516: A London Carter Novel (London Carter Mystery Series)

by BJ Bourg

  “What?” Bethany asked.

  “The…the shooting. I saw Captain Landry get killed!”

  Bethany and I traded glances and rushed out of the office, following Rachael down a long row of cubicles to her desk. Rachael dropped to her chair, moved the cursor over the play button on the video program and clicked it. She then stood and moved back so we could gather around the computer.

  “I don’t want to see it again,” Rachael said. “Ever.”

  Bethany took the seat and I knelt beside her, and we both watched wide-eyed as the scene unfolded on the screen in front of us. The view was from across Highway Three and it displayed the eastern side of Betty Jo’s parking lot. Captain Landry was standing in the parking lot beside Warren Lafont, holding his police radio and staring toward the bank. A cone of red mist exploded out the back of his head and he collapsed. His knees buckled without warning and he crumbled straight down. Warren jerked his head around and his mouth spread open. Although the video had no audio, I thought I heard him scream.

  Lieutenant Bethany Riggs’ face had lost its color. I touched her shoulder. “You okay, LT?”

  She nodded. “It’s surreal, seeing a cop getting killed. When I see civilians dead or dying, it’s easy to get my work done and depersonalize it, but when I see that”—she pointed to Captain Landry’s lifeless body on the cement—“I realize it could be me there on the ground. I mean, we wear the same uniform, the same badge…”

  Counseling wasn’t my forte, so I didn’t know what to tell her to make her feel better. Myself, I was motivated by an intense desire to murder the person who did this to Captain Landry. Instead of saying anything, I leaned over Bethany and grabbed the computer mouse. I reversed the video and played it in slow motion. I clicked the pause button at the moment Captain Landry’s head exploded.

  Bethany winced. “Do you have to?”

  “Yeah.” With my index finger, I traced the edges of the cone of red mist. “You see this cone?”

  Bethany nodded, forcing herself to look.

  “It points toward the shooter’s location.”

  This seemed to get Bethany’s attention. She leaned forward and studied the frame. “So, the shooter was off to the north?”

  “Yeah. Come with me.” I stood and walked to the conference room, stopped in front of the large sketch and tapped on Captain Landry’s body. I slid my index finger to the north and circled an area that encompassed the Pizza Hut and the truck stop. “The shot originated from here somewhere.” I turned to Bethany. “Did y’all find the projectile?”

  “No. We went over every inch of that place and didn’t find anything. We figured the bullet broke up on impact, turned to specks.”

  I stared at the sketch, thoughtful. “I want to go out to the scene.”

  “Why?”

  “I want to look for the remnants of that bullet.”

  The corners of Bethany’s mouth hardened ever slightly. “I already told you—we’ve been over every inch of the scene and didn’t find anything.”

  “I’m not suggesting y’all missed something.”

  “Then what exactly are you suggesting?”

  I pointed to Bestman’s Market on the map. “Did y’all check the northern wall of this building?”

  “No. Why would we?”

  “It’s the backstop for the shooter’s line of fire.”

  Bethany scowled. “There’s no way the bullet made it that far. If there was anything left to it, it would’ve lost energy and fallen to the ground several feet from the body.”

  I shook my head. “The shot was fired from a high-powered rifle. It’ll absolutely lose energy when it rips through the human skull, but it can travel for quite a distance afterward. Depending on the makeup of the bullet, it might not have enough energy to punch through the wall, but it could scar the paint and that would help me pinpoint the shooter’s exact location.”

  Bethany pursed her lips and thought about what I’d said for a moment. Finally, she spoke. “What good would that do? We already know the general location from which the bullet was fired and we combed every inch of the area, but found nothing. I think it’d be better if we began looking into Captain Landry’s background to find out who had a motive to kill him.”

  “He was certainly the target in this killing, but there’s a chance it wasn’t personal.”

  “Explain.”

  “He could’ve been a high-value target of opportunity. Snipers are trained to take out high-ranking officials, and if this shooter’s had prior sniper training, he would’ve recognized Captain Landry’s rank. But…”

  “But what?”

  “But snipers are trained to take out enemy snipers first, and high-ranking officers are the second group on the list of priorities.” I studied the map. “I was probably out of his line of fire because of that air conditioning unit and the storefront, and Alvin was hidden in the trees, but Dean and Ray were clearly exposed out here by Block’s Truck Stop. So why not take them out first?” Scratching my head, I mused aloud, “And why just kill Landry? The sheriff was out there and he’s the chief law enforcement officer in the parish…it doesn’t get any higher than him.”

  Bethany nodded. “If your high value target theory is correct, the sheriff would’ve certainly been taken out.”

  “I guess.”

  “What makes the most sense is that someone was pissed at Captain Landry and took him out, so our best course of action is to pursue that avenue of reasoning.”

  “You’re the boss, but I’d still like to get out to the scene.”

  Bethany’s blue eyes studied my face. After what seemed like a long moment of tense silence, she finally asked, “What exactly do you hope to accomplish again?”

  “It’s important that I figure out where he was when he fired the shot because his location alone will tell me some things about him.”

  She sighed. “Okay, but after we secure your rifle and spent shell casing in evidence.”

  CHAPTER 6

  Twenty minutes later, Lieutenant Bethany Riggs parked her car in front of Bestman’s Market. I jumped out and walked to the side of the building that faced the north. I began on one side and carefully searched every inch of the wall’s surface. It was constructed of cinderblocks and painted white, which made the search much easier. It didn’t take me long to locate a tiny crater in the wall that was about a quarter inch deep. It was about two feet above the ground and there was a tiny pile of powdered cinderblock on the cement beneath the hole.

  Bethany was standing above where I squatted. She grunted. “I can’t believe we missed that. I feel like such an idiot.”

  As I scoured the ground, I shook my head. “If you’d studied high-powered ballistics and test fired thousands of rifle bullets you would’ve found it just as easily as I did.” Off the edge of the sidewalk, about six feet from where the round had impacted the wall, I found the remnants of a rifle bullet. The only thing left was the base of the brass jacket with a small bit of lead attached to it. “It’s definitely a thirty-caliber bullet, quite possibly a three-o-eight round.”

  Donning a pair of latex gloves, Bethany recovered the projectile. “I guess it’s a good thing the sheriff put you on the case.” She said it more to herself than to me.

  I moved back to the bullet hole and turned away from it, facing Betty Jo’s. “LT, how tall are you?”

  “Five-seven. Why?”

  “Captain Landry was about five-nine. Can you go stand exactly where he was shot? Like we saw in the video?”

  Bethany hesitated. “That’s like asking me to climb into someone’s coffin.”

  “I’ll just need you there for a second or two, so I can use his location as a second point of reference. It’ll help me line up the trajectory.”

  She sighed, walked across the parking lot and stopped at the very spot where Captain Landry had spent his last moments. I dropped to my right shoulder and put my head at a level even with the bullet hole. When I stared from there through the area two inches above B
ethany’s head, the trajectory led into the clouds. I began rising slowly along the wall to compensate for the drop in the bullet, keeping my eyes focused on the area directly above her head. The first thing that rose up from the earth and came into view was the Highway Twelve high-rise bridge that crossed over Highway Eighty, Highway Three and Bayou Magnolia. Highway Twelve extended east to west, cutting through the center of Magnolia Parish. “No shit!”

  “What? What do you see?” Bethany called.

  “Come on. We have to get up on the high-rise!” I jogged to her car, and she followed. It only took a couple of minutes to reach the eastbound shoulder of the Highway Twelve high-rise bridge. I exited the vehicle in a hurry, like a poor bastard heading to cash in his lottery ticket, and walked to the edge of the cement guardrail and looked over the side. Directly under us, cars zipped by along Highway Three. Bethany hurried beside me. From our vantage point, we could clearly see the parking lot where Captain Landry had been standing. I moved sideways to the east until I had lined up the approximate locations of the two reference points—the bullet hole in the wall of Bestman’s Market and the spot where Captain Landry had been murdered. “This is it!”

  Bethany shook her head. “It’s impossible to hit someone from here. This has to be a quarter of a mile.”

  “Good eye.” I straightened my arm, held my thumb up, gauged the distance. “Right at four hundred yards—about four-eleven. Very doable.”

  “Maybe for deer hunting,” Bethany said, “but there’s no way someone could hit a person’s head from here.”

  “Not the head, the eyeball,” I corrected. “And I’d bet a steak dinner I can prove you wrong.”

  “I don’t eat dead cows.” Bethany studied my face. “Seriously, you really think you can make that shot?”

  “Not only can I make the shot, but I can do it with one eye closed.”

  As Bethany pondered the meaning of my last comment, I began walking along the edge of the cement guardrail, searching for clues—black scuff marks on the rail to indicate a bipod, shell casings on the ground, shoe impressions in the gravel—but found nothing. Well, nothing but some graffiti painted onto the side of the guardrail.

  “If this is the spot,” Bethany began, “why haven’t we found a shell casing?”

  “Either the shooter didn’t cycle another round, which isn’t likely, considering he’s obviously received sniper training of some sort, or he picked up his casing.”

  “Why would he pick up his casing?”

  “Snipers are trained to be ghosts. When they leave an area, they erase all signs that indicate they were there.” I scowled. “This is just one more indication we’re dealing with a highly-trained individual.”

  “Is that why you took your shell casing from the scene?”

  I nodded.

  Cars zipped by at seventy-plus miles per hour, sending gushes of wind in our direction. This got Bethany’s attention. “With all of this traffic, someone would’ve surely seen something.”

  I shook my head. “We sealed this area off. Traffic was diverted to the east at Highway Eighty-One and to the west at Exit Thirty-Eight.”

  “So this area was cleared of traffic?”

  “Yep, completely. There were only cop cars and a few locals who had to travel this way to get home.” I scanned the buildings between the murder scene and the bridge. “This is the highest point out here…the perfect spot. I can see over everything.” I stepped back and looked up and down the four-lane highway. “And there’re a number of quick getaways along this road.”

  “This guy knew what he was doing,” Bethany said.

  I nodded my agreement. “This is definitely a worst-case scenario.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We’re dealing with a highly-trained sniper who can reach far out and touch anyone…anytime…anywhere, and we have no idea who he is and why he did this. This has the potential to turn into a cold case and go unsolved real quick.”

  “But once we find out who had a vendetta against Captain Landry, we should be able to figure out who the shooter is.”

  “I have a feeling it won’t be that simple. If this were personal, the shooter could’ve killed him a hundred different ways. He could’ve shot him in his driveway, a dark parking lot, or at the boat dock on a lazy Sunday morning…any number of less conspicuous locations and at a closer and more manageable distance.” I shook my head. “But not this guy. No, he waits until Captain Landry is in the middle of a high profile situation, surrounded by a small army of cops. There are a couple of things at play here.”

  I held up a finger. “First, this bastard’s arrogant. He wants to show off his skills. At four hundred yards, a lot can go wrong with a head shot. Landry could’ve turned his head at the last second—sneezed, anything—and that bullet would’ve just whizzed by.”

  I held up another finger. “Second, by taking out a cop, especially a high-ranking officer, he’s telling us he’s not afraid of going to war with the entire department. That means he’s either stupid or very good at what he does. Judging by the shot he made and his clean getaway, I’m thinking the latter.”

  “I agree,” Bethany said, nodding. “But if it’s not personal, then why do it? Why murder a cop in broad daylight in front of half the department? He’s got to know the chances are high he’ll be killed when he’s captured, and, if he survives to make it all the way to trial, he’ll get the death penalty. I can’t imagine anything being worth that.”

  She did have a point, and as I considered possible motives, Bethany retrieved her camera. She began taking pictures of the surrounding area, while I stood where the shooter had been just hours earlier and tried to see what he saw…think what he thought. When Bethany was through taking her pictures, she walked up beside me. “What’re you thinking?”

  “Just wondering why he did this,” I said, “and wondering what’s next.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “I have a strange feeling this is only the beginning of something really ugly.” I turned to face Bethany, then sank back against the guardrail. “People are most afraid of what they can’t see or hear and what they don’t understand. There’s a certain mystique surrounding snipers. Those who don’t understand them fear them. Those who do understand them also fear them. In battle, there’s nothing more fearsome than a sniper and his rifle.”

  “But this is not a battle or a war.”

  “Like I said, people fear the unseen and the unheard. Once word gets out that there’s a mystery sniper on the loose, Lord knows what’ll happen. It could cripple this place.”

  “But he killed a cop, so why would civilians be worried?”

  “If someone’s brazen enough to kill a cop, they’ll kill almost anyone.”

  Bethany pushed a lock of dirty-blonde hair behind an ear and crossed her arms. “You really believe this person will kill again?”

  “I’m almost certain of it. Hell”—I waved my hand around in a semi-circle—“he might be out there right now, with glass on us as we speak.”

  Bethany glanced around nervously, unfolded her arms and walked toward her unmarked car. “Well, let’s get out of here and find out who wanted Captain Landry dead. The quicker we do that, the quicker we can put this case to bed.”

  “Have you eaten yet?”

  She slid into the driver’s seat and started the engine. When I got in and shut my door, she paused with her hand on the gearshift. “No…you?”

  I shook my head.

  “Okay,” she said. “Let’s grab something quick and then we’ll go meet with Captain Landry’s widow.”

  CHAPTER 7

  Starla Landry was Captain Anthony Landry’s second wife. They had been married for a little over a year. I’d met her once—during an awards banquet—and I didn’t like her. There was something about her that rubbed me wrong, and it had nothing to do with her being half his age.

  Now, Captain Landry’s first wife, Olivia, was a good woman. She had taken the news of her husband�
�s adulterous affair hard, the divorce harder and the marriage to Starla… Well, that had nearly killed her.

  “We should be talking to Ms. Olivia,” I said quietly to Bethany as we waited for someone to answer the door. “She was with Captain Landry for nearly thirty years.”

  “I know what you’re getting at,” Bethany said, “but the last days and weeks of his life are the most important. If anyone knows who Anthony Landry’s enemies are, it’s Starla.” She knocked on the door again, waited. “Oh, by the way,” she said, changing the subject. “When you report to work tomorrow, try wearing something that makes you look a little more like a cop and a lot less like a mercenary.”

  I glanced down at my sniper coveralls. “Sorry. You didn’t exactly give me time to go home and change.”

  “Yeah, it was kind of sudden the way it—”

  The door to the double-wide trailer burst open and a twenty-seven-or-so-year-old woman stood in the doorway. She wore thin shorts and a tank top with no bra. Her eyes were swollen, mascara smeared on her cheeks. “What do y’all want?” Starla Landry’s voice was gruff. “I already talked to the other detectives. I don’t know who did this to Anthony.”

  Bethany reached out and put a hand on Starla’s arm. “I want to begin by offering our deepest condolences. As I’m sure you’re aware, your husband was a legend to the men and women of Magnolia Parish and everyone loved him. It’s impossible to think that anyone would want to do him harm, but we’d like to sit down with you and see if we can maybe recreate his activities for the past week or so and maybe come up with something—a lead, perhaps.”

  Starla threw the door open and stepped back. “Come in, I guess, but I don’t know what good it’ll do. I already told them other detectives that Anthony never got into it with nobody.”

  I nodded when I walked by Starla. She nodded back and said, “Your name is…let me see if I remember…London Carter, right?”

  “Yes, ma’am, that’s right. Anthony was like a father to me.” I thought I saw Starla’s face lose a few shades of color. I followed Bethany Riggs into the double-wide and we took seats around a small dining room table.