by BJ Bourg
He didn’t know why Sissy wasn’t moving, but she looked like Winter—their white German shepherd—did when she had gone to Doggie Heaven. It was the saddest night of his life. They had stayed up all night crying when that happened…well, except for Stepdad. He had told them to shut up so he could get some sleep.
The boy watched as the people in the ambulance uniform put Sissy in the back of the wagon. Mom got in the back with Sissy and Stepdad got in his newly painted truck to follow them. When everyone was gone, he just sat there staring out the window until it got too dark to see anymore. He then padded to his room and slipped into bed. He cried himself to sleep, wondering if Sissy was gone forever like Winter.
CHAPTER 2
Friday, November 18
Mechant Loup, Louisiana
It was almost noon when I guided the ten-passenger tour boat under a tree that had fallen during a thunderstorm last summer. The tree had come to rest against a neighboring cypress and was suspended about twenty feet above the water. Branches covered the length of the tree trunk and thick Spanish moss hung like ghosts from their gnarled fingers, making for an interesting tunnel under which to coast. Every one of the six passengers in the boat turned their attention to the tree as we passed under it, no doubt looking for snakes.
“Clint Wolf—is that your name?” asked one of the four women onboard, her voice betraying her nervousness.
Before I could answer, my mother, Nancy, spoke up from her perch nearest me on the bench situated to the left side of the boat. While I got my dark hair and eyes from her, I certainly didn’t get her height. At five-two, she was eight inches shorter than me.
“He’s Chief Investigator Clint Wolf,” Mom corrected. “He’s Mechant Loup’s first official investigator. He took the day off from his real job and he’s only doing this swamp tour as a favor to me. I’ve lived in the city of La Mort all my life and have never been on one of these boats. My husband is working overseas for three months, so I’m staying with Clint and his fiancée for Thanksgiving. Um, her name is Susan and she’s the Chief of Police here.”
The woman cast an odd look in my mom’s direction—as though Mom had provided more information than the woman wanted to know—and then glanced back up at the tree. “What do we do if a snake falls out of the tree?”
“Whatever you do,” I said flatly, “don’t jump in the water, because it’s filled with alligators.”
Everyone began casting nervous glances around, including my mother.
“Can they jump in the boat?” one of the men asked. He was a young guy with a pale complexion and he wore a dress shirt and slacks. “The alligators, I mean?”
As I puttered along, I told them the story of how Dexter Boudreaux had lost his arm. There were gasps from some of the tourists and the guy with the slacks pulled back from the edge of the boat. I allowed the story to sink in with them for a moment before I spoke again.
“So, while we look for Godzator,” I finally said, “why don’t each of you introduce yourselves and share what brings y’all to the southernmost tip of Louisiana.” I nodded toward the woman who’d asked about snakes. “Why don’t you go first?”
A cold front was forecasted to blow through tonight, but at the moment it was eighty degrees and the young woman wore a light blue romper. She pulled her top a little higher on her chest and frowned. “I’m Shirley. I met a guy online who’s from here and who was supposed to be rich and good looking, but it turns out he lives with his mom and he posted a picture he found on a modeling site. He doesn’t even have a car.”
“Oh, dear,” my mom said, “thank God you weren’t kidnapped and murdered.”
The girl nodded. “Since I’d already driven six hundred miles to be here, I decided I’d do something fun. I’ve never been on a swamp tour, so, here I am.”
I nodded to a fellow with short-cropped dirty blond hair. He sat beside a woman with long dark hair. They were obviously a couple. “What about you two?”
“Matthew and Jill Bernard,” the man said. He nodded to my mother. “Like you, we’re here for Thanksgiving—visiting my mom. I joined the service four years ago and haven’t seen her since.” He lowered his eyes. “It seems she’s sick and might need a kidney transplant.”
“He was stationed in Hawaii and we got to live there for over a year,” Jill explained, seemingly unbothered by the plight of her mother-in-law. “We’re in New York now, but I didn’t want to leave the Islands.”
The guy with the dress clothes chimed in next, shoving his thumb in the direction of the girl sitting on the opposite row and at the far end of the bench. “My sister dragged me out here. We came down from—”
“Look!” Shirley jumped to her feet and pointed out in the distance ahead of the boat. “Is that Godzator?”
Achilles was resting at my feet and he popped his head up when he heard the tone of Shirley’s voice. I leaned toward my right to see past her, shook my head. “No, that’s a nice size gator, but it’s not Godzator.”
Everyone crowded toward the front of the boat to get a better view, and some of them snapped pictures from their cell phones. Achilles’ ears were perked up and he rose to a seated position. “Stay,” I said calmly.
“Can we get closer?” Matthew asked.
I nodded and guided the boat slowly toward the giant lizard. I shut off the engine when we were fifty feet away and held up my hand for them to be quiet and remain still. “If it feels threatened,” I whispered, “it’ll disappear beneath the surface.”
We all watched as the alligator glided effortlessly through the water, moving closer to our location. When it was about twenty feet from the boat, someone gasped and asked if we were in danger. At the sound of the voice, the alligator instantly disappeared from view, like a ninja on the water.
I continued the tour and we were able to locate a dozen more alligators, thanks to the warm weather we’d been having. Once I’d reached the end of the route, I turned around and headed back to Brennan Boudreaux’s restaurant on the water. The brother of former mayor Dexter Boudreaux, the elderly man owned Brennan’s Seafood and Swamp Tours. When I’d given up my tour business to go back into law enforcement work, I donated my equipment to Brennan and he invited me to give a tour anytime I felt like it.
“Now that you’re not taking business away from me,” he had drawled, “I guess we can work together from time to time.”
I tied the boat to the dock at Brennan’s Seafood and Swamp Tours and watched as the passengers disembarked one at a time. They all tried to give me a tip when they walked by, but I refused to take their money.
“I do this for fun now,” I explained, “but if y’all insist on parting with the extra money, there’s a church south of town that’s taking donations to feed needy families for Thanksgiving.”
They loved the idea and most of them hurried off, but Jill Bernard stopped and asked if she could pet Achilles. I told him to sit and then placed a hand on his head while he smelled Jill’s hand. He then turned his head, seemingly bored with her, and I nodded. After rubbing his ears for a few seconds and talking in baby-speak, she thanked me again for the tour and turned to follow her husband down the dock.
“Is that it?” my mom asked.
I gathered up the tour paperwork and nodded. “I’ll turn this in and we can head home.”
Once we were in my old truck, I fired up the engine and headed for Main Street, where I turned south. My mom was beaming and she raved about the swamp tour from the second we left Boudreaux’s place until I parked in the driveway of the house I shared with Susan. My mom had spoken at length to every person on the boat—her first line into every conversation was, “Who’s your momma?”—and she now claimed to be five friends richer. “I even have their phone numbers and I’m going to call them.”
I groaned silently, let Achilles into the back gate, and then followed my mom inside, where I called for Susan. She didn’t answer and my mom turned her frowning face in my direction. “Where could she be? Do you think she’s o
kay? Maybe she fell and can’t get back up.”
Ever since the bone in Susan’s right leg had snapped clean during her fight against Antonina Ivanov, she had been hobbling around on crutches. While she never complained, I knew she was frustrated to not be able to do everything she was accustomed to doing—including training every day.
“I know where she is,” I said. “I’ll be right back.”
I then headed across the street to the gym we had built for Susan’s fight training. Although she swore her last fight was her final fight, I wouldn’t hold it against her if she wanted to get back into the cage. Truth be told, I always got a rush out of watching her fight. Sure, my nerves were all tied up in knots during the fight, but a surge of excitement would course through me every time she landed a hard punch or kick or when she’d slam her opponent to the ground.
Susan didn’t look in my direction when I pushed through the door. She was standing in front of a heavy bag—her right leg resting gingerly against the floor—executing punch combinations with vicious intentions, careful not to put too much weight on her broken leg. She dipped to the right and left as the punches flowed seamlessly from one to the other. She was punching bare knuckled and her fists made a sharp splat with each strike.
“What’re you doing?” I asked. “You’ve got a broken leg.”
“I’m training for my next fight.”
I smiled to myself. I knew you couldn’t stay away from the cage. “Oh, yeah, when’s your next fight?”
She stopped what she was doing and wiped a stream of sweat from her tanned face. As her hand brushed against her cheek, I couldn’t help but notice the torn skin on her knuckles and the spots of blood leaking between her fingers. Her dark hair was pulled back into a ponytail and her brown eyes sparkled when they met mine. “I have no clue,” she explained. “It could be tomorrow…next week…or three months from now. Whenever it is, I need to be ready—and so should you.”
I frowned. “Huh? Are you going to jump me?”
Laughing, she hobbled toward me and put a hand on my face before pressing her moist lips to mine. She was only a couple of inches shorter than me and, while her body was made for combat, she was more beautiful and sexy than any woman I’d ever known. The longer we were together, the more I came to know and love her. Hell, we could even finish most of each other’s sentences, but I had no clue what fight she was talking about.
When she pulled away, she said, “In our line of work, we never know when our next fight will be, so we have to always be prepared.”
“Well,” I said, pulling her by the waist, “I hope you let your leg heal up before you put yourself in a position to get into another fight. Remember what the doctor said; if you don’t let it heal, she’ll have to open you up and put pins in your leg.”
Susan grunted. “Yes, Mother.”
CHAPTER 3
Saturday, November 19
“Clint…Clint!” Susan’s voice broke through my dreams. “Your phone’s going off.”
I rolled away from her smooth body and snatched my phone from the nightstand, instantly awake. “Yeah…this is Clint.”
“Clint, I need you out at Mitch Taylor’s Corner Pub.” It was Officer Amy Cooke and her voice was strained. “There’s been a murder.”
I glanced at the digital clock on the dresser across the room. It was a little after five in the morning. “Anyone I know?”
“It was Mitch—he was shot in the back inside his place.”
“Oh, no.” I rubbed my face. “I’ll be there in a few minutes.”
“What is it?” Susan asked when I rolled out of bed and reached for the jeans draped over the back of the chair on my side of the room.
“Mitch was murdered last night.”
I could see her face in the dim glow from the clock and she frowned. “Who would want to kill Mitch? He’s as nice as they come.”
I just nodded and hurried through getting dressed and brushing my teeth. After shoving my pistol in my waistband, I kissed her forehead and headed out the door. I shivered when the cool air hit me. That’s what all the rain was about, I thought. I’d awakened at about one-thirty to the sound of heavy rain pounding the roof. I guess the cold front made it here.
It wasn’t raining anymore, but the highway still glistened from the downpour several hours earlier. The Corner Pub was along Washington Avenue, about four blocks up from the police department. While it was primarily a barroom, Mitch served hamburgers for lunch and sometimes dinner. His burgers were among the best. I parked along the sidewalk behind Amy’s marked cruiser and stepped out, joining her under the overhang. She was writing in her notepad and looked up when I approached.
“Hey, Clint, sorry to wake you.” She pushed a strand of blonde hair from her face. “He’s inside. Looks like he was shot while talking on the phone.”
“Someone he knew?” I asked.
“Not likely.” Amy waved for me to follow as she led the way through the door and into the crime scene.
Across the hardwood floor from the entrance was a long mahogany bar that stretched from right to left inside the dining area. Round tables with chairs resting atop them littered the dining room. All of the barstools except one were neatly in place. The one barstool out of place was pulled out slightly, as though someone had been sitting there.
I snatched my flashlight from my back pocket and shined it across the floor, searching for wet shoe prints.
“Bone dry,” Amy said. “Whoever did it must’ve been inside before the rain started.”
“Which was what time?”
“The rain?”
I nodded.
“It started drizzling around one o’clock and was raining heavy thirty minutes later. It ended around two-thirty.”
“Who reported it?”
“His girlfriend,” Amy explained. “She said she’s usually asleep when he gets home, but the rain woke her up and she went into the living room, where she fell asleep on the sofa. She said she woke up at four-thirty and was surprised he didn’t wake her up when he got home. She went into the bedroom and realized he wasn’t there. She began calling his cell phone and then called the bar. When he didn’t answer, she started thinking he wrecked in the bad weather and started freaking out. She called in a welfare complaint and I came out here to find the main door open, the screen door closed, and the lights still on.”
When I approached the bar—careful not to step on anything that might be evidence—I noticed a saltshaker knocked over and a small pile of salt on the bar. It was the only thing out of place.
Amy pointed a slender finger at the barstool. “It looks like someone was sitting there and knocked the saltshaker over when they got up. It could’ve been the robber getting up to go shoot Mitch in the kitchen, out of sight of the street.”
“What makes you think this was a robbery?” I asked.
“The register’s open and empty, and there’s a ledger under the counter showing he took in a little over a thousand dollars last night.”
I nodded and followed Amy past the bar to the left and down a narrow hallway that ended at the kitchen. There, slumped on the floor against the far wall, was Mitch Taylor, the owner. I’d eaten there at least a few dozen times. Although I could only see one side of the victim’s face, there was no mistaking the man.
“It looks like the shooter snuck back here,” Amy explained, “and shot him as he was speaking on the phone.”
I approached Mitch’s lifeless body and visually examined it. There were no obvious injuries. Had I not known better, I would’ve thought Mitch was sleeping on the job. Well, except for his open eyes—that wasn’t normal.
The phone was pale green and mounted to the wall. The handset was attached by a long, spirally cord and it rested on the ground just inches from Mitch’s outstretched hand.
I carefully leaned over his body and used my light to examine his back. There was one gunshot a little left of centerline and in the area of his heart. There was no stippling or fouling, so it was fi
red from at least a few feet away. Amy’s scenario wasn’t entirely out of the realm of possibilities.
“I’m thinking it’s a revolver,” Amy offered. “I couldn’t find a casing anywhere, so it must be a wheel-gun.”
I twisted around from my squatting position and shined my light in all directions across the floor. I didn’t see an obvious casing, but that didn’t mean it hadn’t rolled up under the sink or fallen into a crevice. “Once I finish processing the scene, we’ll tear this place apart,” I said.
“I didn’t touch anything,” she acknowledged, “so I could’ve missed it, but if he was shot from the doorway it should be right in this area.”
I straightened and glanced at the ceiling. “Any cameras in the place?”
“Not that I saw.”
“That figures.” I walked back toward the front, where light was starting to spill in from the rising sun, and stopped in the dining area. I glanced around, making a mental note of all the items I’d need to fingerprint. Like any good patrol officer, Amy had traveled along the outer edges of the room to get to and from the crime scene, taking a path least likely to have been used by the killer. I glanced at her. “Is Takecia working days?”
She nodded. Takecia Gayle was one of Susan’s officers who worked the day shift—she was also a damn good fighter—and she should be getting on duty soon.
“Do you want me to call her to help with the scene, or do you—?”
“Hell no,” Amy said quickly. “I want to help.”
Before heading to my Tahoe to get my crime scene box, I asked her if she’d notified Mitch’s girlfriend.
“Since they live out of the town limits, I got a shift supervisor from the Chateau Parish Sheriff’s Office to deliver the bad news.”
