by BJ Bourg
“Who’s the suspect?” I asked, eager to find out who’d been hunting down the citizens of our small town. Once I had a name, I could track him down and put my hands on him.
Melvin handed me the crime lab report and I scanned it, searching for the culprit’s name. I finally found it. “Gregg Daniels,” I read out loud. I looked from Susan to Melvin, whose expressions were as blank as mine felt. “Who the hell is Gregg Daniels?”
Susan shrugged. “I have no idea. I’ve never heard of him before. Neither has Melvin.”
“Did y’all run him in the system?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Melvin said, handing me a criminal history report complete with his prison mug shot. “It seems he got out of prison a few months ago.”
Melvin was right. Gregg Daniels had been released from the state penitentiary on July 27, after serving twenty-one years of a twenty-five-year sentence. He’d been arrested a dozen times before the long stint in prison, and it took me a few seconds to sift through all of his previous arrests before finding the charge that landed him in prison for most of his adult life—aggravated rape. A sick feeling formed in the pit of my stomach as a thought occurred to me. “If he’s killing jurors for putting him behind bars,” I said slowly, “it’s only a matter of time before he gets to the victim.” I turned to Susan. “Call Isabel and give her his name. Ask her to find his case file and send us the names of everyone involved in the case—from jurors to witnesses to victims to law enforcement.”
Next, I asked Melvin to run a name inquiry and get every address ever listed to Gregg Daniels, as well as any vehicles registered in his name.
I went into my office and called Sheriff Buck Turner. When he answered, I told him we had identified the suspect through DNA evidence and, based on the newspaper clipping from Chloe’s grandfather, we believed the incident occurred in his jurisdiction and Reginald Hoffman had assisted in some way. “Can you have one of your people try to locate the old file? I need to know as much as I can about the case and everyone involved.”
“Sure,” Turner said. “That won’t be a problem.”
“And Sheriff…”
“Please, Clint, call me Buck.”
“Buck…everyone who worked this case is a target.” I let that information sink in before continuing. “Gregg Daniels spent the last twenty-one years seething in prison, but he’s out now—and he’s pissed off.”
“I’ll put my people on high alert.”
Once we’d said our goodbyes, I found the number for the state prison and dialed it. I needed to know all I could about Gregg Daniels. He was ruthless and unpredictable, and I needed to stop him as soon as possible—before someone else found themselves on the wrong end of a three-blade mechanical broad-head.
After pressing too many buttons and not getting a live person on the line, I finally started pressing “0” repeatedly until an automated message finally told me to hold on for an operator. When she came on, she transferred me to a Lieutenant who transferred me to a secretary who asked me to hold for the warden. Ten minutes later a heavy voice answered in a thick north Louisianan accent. “This is Warden Grant. What can I do for you?”
I introduced myself to him and explained everything I knew about the case. “We’re in the process of trying to track down Gregg Daniels’ whereabouts, and I was wondering if you might be able to help us out.”
“Hold on a minute.” There was a long pause and I could hear fingers snapping against a keyboard. It was painfully obvious he had a hard time navigating the keys, but it wasn’t long before he spoke again. “Go ahead and send me a written request on your department’s letterhead and I’ll see what I can find out.”
I pulled the phone from my ear and stared at it, telling myself to count to ten before opening my mouth again. I put the phone back to my ear. “Warden, this is an emergency. For starters, I need to know who picked him up when he was released, I need a list of every person who visited him over the past twenty-one years, and I need to know who he called while he was there—and I need to know this in a hurry, before someone else dies. His current address would also be most helpful.”
“Then I suspect you’ll get that written request to me in a hurry.”
I started to object, but the line went dead. I thought about calling back, but decided against it. It would only be a waste of time anyway. On a yellow sticky note, I jotted the list of things I needed from the prison and the fax number, and then brought it to Lindsey. I explained what I needed and stepped into Susan’s office. She was on the phone, but waved for me to sit across from her.
“I’m on hold,” she explained. “Isabel’s got someone looking through their old computer system. She said Reginald thinks he might remember the case now, but he wasn’t the lead detective. He said a female detective was primary—a Mary Cox—but she was killed in a crash a few years ago during a high speed chase. I actually remember when it—” She threw up a hand and turned her attention back to the call. “Yeah, I’m here. Right…okay…sure, thanks.”
“Well?”
“She found an entry in the system, but it only has the disposition of the case. She’s got someone going to their storage facility and she’ll call as soon as they have the file in hand.”
Susan and I sat in her office for fifteen minutes, talking about the case and bitching about the upcoming hearing. We finally stepped into the patrol section to see what Melvin was up to. We found him seated at his desk, which was next to Lindsey’s work station, with Lindsey looking over his shoulder. “Is that him?” Lindsey asked, staring at the computer monitor. “He looks scary!”
Susan and I walked to stand behind Melvin. He had accessed Daniels’ mugshot from the last time he was arrested and it was quite a picture. Daniels’ eyes were so wide the brown of his irises were completely surrounded by a sea of white. His scruffy face and brown hair sticking straight up added to the insane look in his eyes. The zipper on his sweat jacket was low, revealing a series of scratches and claw marks on his neck and upper chest.
“His victim fought hard, it seems,” Susan said in a low, stern voice. “I’d like to get my hands on him.”
Melvin grunted. “Yeah, but you wouldn’t scratch him—you’d punch him so hard his grandma would get a nosebleed.”
“Who’s his grandma?” Lindsey wanted to know.
“How should I know?” Melvin asked.
“You just said Susan would—”
“It was a joke, Lindsey,” Melvin said with a smirk. “You know what those are, don’t you?”
Lindsey socked him playfully in the shoulder and turned away. “See if I deliver anymore messages from your wife.”
“Are any vehicles registered to him?” I asked.
Melvin shook his head. “None—not even back when he was a free man, but I did find his brothers.” He handed me a printout that listed Daniels’ relatives. He had two brothers—Farrell and Howard—but all of the addresses listed to them were at least five years old.
“Nothing current?” Susan asked.
“Nope. Not a thing.” Melvin searched for more results and then whistled. “Farrell had a green Thunderbird registered to him, but the registration has been expired for two years.”
“You mean he’s driving around killing people in a car that has an expired tag?” Susan asked incredulously. “He’d better not let Amy catch him.”
We all laughed and sat around while Melvin ran query after query, trying to locate anything that would tell us where Daniels had taken up residency. It was nearly an hour later when Susan’s cell phone rang. She glanced at the screen and nodded, put it to her ear. She spoke back and forth with Isabel and then waved for Lindsey to bring her a notepad. With pen in hand, she told Isabel to read off the list of jurors from Gregg Daniels’ case. I couldn’t see what she was writing, but counted thirteen lines. Susan frowned, causing her dimple to dig deeper into her cheek. “Wait, is that it?” she asked, then said, “Okay, thank you.” She hung up the phone and handed me the list. “They’re not on h
ere.”
“What?” I read over the names of the twelve jurors and the one alternate, and then read over them again, but slower. None of them were our victims.
CHAPTER 34
“So, you think these will help me sleep?” I asked Doctor Leslie Garner, holding up the orange bottle of pink capsules she’d recommended.
“You could start to see improvement within five days, but it usually takes one to two weeks.” She wrote some notes in my chart and flipped it shut. “Okay, that should do it for today. Come back and see me if you have any problems at all.”
I thanked her and stopped to pay the deductible before heading home. It was four o’clock when I arrived home and stepped out of the Tahoe. Chloe was already there and I found her fussing over the living room. She dropped what she was doing and ran to greet me, beating Achilles by half a step. When she finally let go of my neck, she stared sideways at the pill bottle in my hand. “What are those?”
“I’ve decided to try something new. Susan suggested I go to a doctor and see about getting some—”
“So, when Susan tells you to go to a doctor, you go”—Chloe folded her arms across her chest—“but when I tell you to go, you make all kinds of excuses and refuse to get some help.”
“No, that’s not it. She told me the same thing you did and I told her I didn’t need to see a damn shrink. That’s when she said all I had to do was see a general practitioner and say I was having problems sleeping. So, I did.” I looked up at Chloe. “I thought you’d be happy about it.”
“I’m sorry.” Her face softened and she hugged me again. “I am happy. This is a huge step and I know you’re doing it for me.”
“I am. I don’t have a problem with vodka at all.” I tossed the bottle of pills on the table and went in my room to change. “Want some grilled burgers?” I called over my shoulder.
“Sounds yummy.”
As I changed into jeans and a T-shirt, I considered whether I should tell Chloe about the latest on the case. We’d run all of the names Isabel had given us, but we couldn’t come up with a connection to Isaac Edwards, Betty Ledet, or Chloe’s grandfather. Being that her grandfather was involved now, I would simply be updating a victim’s family member, and not divulging information to the media.
I could tell Chloe recognized the conflicted look on my face as we began making the patties together, because she said, “Just say it. You know you will eventually, so just get it over with.”
She was right, I knew. I made her promise to keep it to herself and then told her what we’d learned.
She stopped what she was doing and stood there lost in thought, her hands covered in ground beef. After a few moments, she finally said, “So, this Gregg Daniels is responsible for the killings and for desecrating my grandfather, but none of the victims served on the jury that convicted him?”
“Yep, you’ve been paying attention.”
“Then why’d he pick them?”
I didn’t have a good answer, so I didn’t say anything. One thing was for certain—I needed to find Gregg Daniels before he killed again. Chloe started to ask another question, but my phone began ringing.
“Achilles, get the phone!” I ordered. “My hands are dirty.”
Instead of picking up the phone, Achilles just cocked his head to the side and perked his ears straight up, as though trying to figure out what I’d said. I laughed and washed my hands off, getting to the phone just as it stopped ringing. It was the office. Groaning under my breath, I called back and Amy answered on the first ring. “Chief, I’m sorry to bother you, but we need you to come out.”
“What is it?”
Amy explained how William had staked out Cig’s Gas Station and finally caught the suspicious subject who had been asking about me. William had him bent over the hood of his cruiser handcuffed, and he wanted me to interrogate him. When I asked why he’d handcuffed the man, Amy said the stranger told William he had a message for me—and it was about my dead wife and kid.
My curiosity fully aroused, I said in a hurried voice, “Okay, I’ll be there in a few minutes.”
Chloe sensed something was amiss and gave an understanding nod. “It’s okay. I’ll finish these up and keep them warm until you get home.”
I kissed her and grabbed my pistol before heading out the door.
CHAPTER 35
Isabel Compton tossed back a lock of wet blonde hair and wiped sweat from her sticky forehead with a rag. “What if we destroyed the file?” she asked Reginald Hoffman, who only sighed and sank to a seat on a file box that was smashed and busted open on one end.
Reginald had come to her earlier in the day waving a newspaper article in the air like a madman and saying he knew how to solve the Arrow Slayings (as they had been dubbed by the media). While the picture Chief Clint Wolf showed them didn’t ring any bells for Reginald, he figured his mom would recognize it, and he was right. He often complained about her saving every issue of every newspaper that ever had his picture or name in it, but he wasn’t complaining that day. Isabel thought it was adorable how Mrs. Hoffman followed her son’s career, and she loved the woman—well, not because she followed Reginald’s career, but mostly because she brought fresh eggs and vegetables to the office on a regular basis. Come to think of it, Isabel couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten a store-bought egg, thanks to her.
As it turned out, the photographer from the newspaper hadn’t been taking a picture of the jury in the background—he had been shooting Reginald. According to the article, Reginald was the defendant in a civil case where a suspect was claiming he used excessive force during an arrest. It had been a bench trial (meaning a judge heard the case, rather than a jury) and he had ruled in Reginald’s favor. The article quoted Reginald as saying, quite simply, “The truth prevailed today.”
After reading the article and scanning the entire newspaper, searching for any mention of the jurors in the background, Isabel had tossed the paper onto her desk and looked up at Reginald. “You won…good for you. Now, please explain how this helps us solve the arrow case?”
Reginald had stabbed the top of the paper with his index finger so hard Isabel thought he’d punch a hole through her desk. “We now know the date of the trial! All we have to do is find out what trial y’all were having on that date, and we’ll find the jurors!”
Isabel had turned from Reginald and fired up her computer, accessing the ancient program that housed their files from twenty-one years earlier. It had taken her nearly an hour to peruse the records—with Reginald hovering over her, his foot tapping the floor in an annoying fashion—but she found an entry on January 23rd that made the blood in her veins slow to a trickle.
“Holy shit!” she’d said to herself, but loud enough for Reginald to hear it.
“What is it?” he’d asked.
She’d pointed to the file entry, which indicated Gregg Daniels had been found not guilty of simple rape after a six-day trial. The file entry was dated three days after the picture of Reginald had appeared in the paper.
Everything after that moment was a blur. Isabel vaguely remembered calling her husband to tell him she’d be late coming home, letting Bill Hedd know she was heading to the storage facility—that took twenty minutes because he had a hundred questions—and then holding on for dear life as Reginald raced to the facility.
Now, at least six hours later, she was starting to wonder if they’d ever find the file. She also wondered if she’d still be married when she got home, because she’d been too busy to answer her husband’s earlier calls and it had to be nearing midnight. After wrestling with large boxes and digging a hole in the mountain of files, she and Reginald had finally located a dozen boxes from twenty-one years earlier. They had ripped them open and scoured every sheet of paper inside, but nothing they found had yet pertained to the first Gregg Daniels trial.
The storage facility was supposed to be climate-controlled, but it was smothering hot in their room. The only lights inside lined the hallways and it was har
d to see in the deep shadows cast by the walls of boxes. This slowed their search considerably and she had resorted to using the flashlight feature on her cell phone—until an hour earlier, when the battery on her phone died. She didn’t know if it was from using the light or from all of her husband’s calls, but it was dead nonetheless. Reginald had begun using his phone, but the light was starting to grow dim.
“It’s got to be here,” Reginald said, rising slowly to his feet. Several slivers of paper slid from the box he’d been sitting on and he grunted, bending to pick them up.
Isabel started to turn back toward the mountain behind her when the flap of the box Reginald had been sitting on flipped to the side and she saw a name printed in black marker. “Reggie, that’s it! The box you’re sitting on! It’s the Gregg Daniels file!”
She nearly knocked Reginald over as she rushed by him and dropped to her knees. She tore away the cover and coughed when a plume of dust rose up and engulfed her. The picking in her throat persisted and she sneezed several times, but that didn’t deter her.
“Are you okay?” Reginald asked.
Isabel nodded and wiped away the tears, straining to read the small print on the file labels through the blur in her eyes. Reginald aimed his light in her direction and it helped. After a few minutes of searching, she finally found the file folder labeled Prospective Jurors. Her heart raced as she thumbed through the individual pages. There were lots of questionnaires—some filled out, some not—to go over, and a ton of notes by the prosecution team. Finally, her heart jumped to her throat when she found a diagram of the jury’s seating arrangement and she saw Frank Rushing’s name all the way to the left of the top row. She scanned the sheet and found Betty Ledet’s name listed at the middle of the bottom row. Isaac Edwards was seated directly to her right on the chart. She made a note of the remaining eleven names, but didn’t recognize anyone she knew. She held up the form with hands that shook. “This is the hit list,” she said. “These people are going to die if we don’t protect them.”
