by BJ Bourg
He shook his head. “I can’t remember the last time I washed my hands.”
Considering the thick funk caked under his black nails, I believed him. I then called Amy on my cell to see if she could transport him to the police department. She agreed and arrived five minutes later. Although it was considerably cooler than it was yesterday, strands of her blonde hair were plastered to her sweaty forehead.
“I’ve been up and down the street looking at surveillance videos, but the rain was so heavy I couldn’t see much of anything.” She pointed across the street. “None of the shops across from here have cameras, so we’re out of luck in that regard.”
I turned Jack over to her and thanked her for her help. “Lock him in the cell and tell the dispatcher to keep an eye on him until I get there,” I said. “Tell her I’ll be in as soon as I interview Mitch’s girlfriend.”
When Amy had left with Jack, I dug through the stack of papers I’d recovered from under the bar. There were no employee records among what I’d gathered. I had taken a picture of the work schedule on the wall—it was from October—and remembered seeing another sheet with telephone numbers scribbled across it. I snatched up my camera and scrolled through the images until I found the one for which I was looking.
“There it is,” I said to myself when I saw the photo I’d taken of the wall. I zoomed in and read the names and numbers on the sheet. Some were beer vendors, one was the number for the police department, and then there were two names I recognized from the schedule; Foster Blake and Joyce Reynolds. I jotted their numbers in my notebook for later and tossed it on the seat of my SUV.
My phone rang just as I slipped into the driver’s seat of my Tahoe and fired up the engine. I glanced at the display screen. It was Susan.
“I heard you made an arrest,” she said when I answered. “Did you solve the case already?”
I sighed. “No. I just arrested Jack Billiot for theft. He was definitely in the bar when the killing happened, but I don’t think he killed Mitch.”
“How do you know he was in the bar when the killing happened? What if he went in afterward and stole the money?”
“Mitch had already cleaned the bar for closing, so he was killed sometime after two in the morning, when it was raining. If Jack would’ve entered the bar afterward, he would’ve tracked water on the floor.”
“What if he stole the money before Mitch was shot?”
I grunted. “If he would’ve tried pulling that stunt while Mitch was alive, he would be the one lying on the barroom floor.”
Susan was quiet for a few long seconds. “Do you think the murderer was in the bar before closing time? That Mitch knew the person?”
“I don’t know if Mitch knew his killer, but the person had to be in the bar before the rain started and after Mitch began cleaning up for the night.” I cocked my head sideways as I stared at the front of the bar. “Unless they were a ghost or…”
“Or what?” Susan asked when I allowed my voice to trail off, lost in thought.
“Let me call you back.” I ended the call in the middle of Susan demanding that I finish my sentence, and I approached the front of the Corner Pub.
CHAPTER 7
15 years earlier…
Sunday, January 7
Breechville, Kentucky
The young boy knew it was his golden birthday, but he didn’t fully understand what it meant, so he asked his stepdad.
“It’s when you become the age of the day of your birth,” he explained idly. “You were born on the seventh and you’re seven, so it’s your golden birthday.”
“That’s it?” The boy scowled. “I thought it was something special.”
“Shut up,” Stepdad said. “I’m trying to watch the game.”
Ever since the day Sissy had been taken away in the ambulance, things had gotten worse around the house. After a week of waiting for Sissy to come back home, the boy had made the mistake of asking about her. Mom had started crying and had run out of the room. That had prompted Stepdad to slap him so hard one of his baby teeth flew out of his mouth. Sure, the tooth was already loose, but the slap was that hard.
The boy stood and stomped toward his bedroom when the television erupted in chaos. Some football fans cheered and others booed. Stepdad began cursing and threw a can of beer across the room, spraying the yellow liquid across the carpet and on the wall. “Look what you did!” Stepdad bellowed.
The boy jerked in his skin as fear wrapped its icy fingers around his heart and squeezed tight. He tried to calm the trembling in his jaw as he braced himself for what would happen next. He was tired of crying. Tired of living in fear—tired of watching Mom live in fear. “What did I do wrong?” he asked in a voice that sounded calmer than he felt.
“You made them lose!” Stepdad stormed toward him and lifted his hand high in the air. The grown man derived great pleasure out of watching the young boy sweat. “I ought to knock the hell out of you.”
The boy didn’t flinch. He stood strong, staring up at this animal who made a habit out of beating him. A look of shock seemed to spread across his stepdad’s face. “What’s the matter? Aren’t you scared?”
The little boy didn’t answer for fear his voice would betray him. Instead, he stood a little taller and set his feet, anticipating the beating that would follow—and he didn’t have to wait long. Stepdad punched him right in the face, knocking him off his feet. When he fell, his head slammed against the floor and a sharp pain shot across his head. He rolled to his stomach and scurried forward, determined to get away this time. This was it—he wasn’t taking it anymore.
“Where do you think you’re going?” asked Stepdad.
The boy scrambled to his feet and broke into a run, darting through the living room and toward the hallway that led to the back door. He wasn’t fast enough. A huge hand grabbed him by the shoulder and jerked him off his feet—
“Hey!” called a shrill voice. “What’s going on in here?”
The boy rolled onto his belly in time to see his mom open the bedroom door behind Stepdad and enter the hallway. Her hair was a mess and she was wearing a thin nightgown.
“I’m teaching him a lesson,” Stepdad replied, reaching for the young boy. “He’s heading down the wrong path and if we don’t nip this in the bud, he’ll be a terror when he’s a teenager.”
“No!” Mom said. “Please leave him alone. I’m trying to sleep. I have to work tonight.”
The boy watched as Stepdad froze, and then slowly turned to face Mom. “Did you just correct me in front of the kid? Did you just disrespect me in the presence of a child? What kind of example do you think you’re setting?”
Mom cowered against the doorframe as Stepdad moved closer to her.
“Please, just let me get some rest. I need to be at work for—” Her sentence was cut short when Stepdad slapped her across the face, knocking her to the ground.
“I’ll kill you!” the young boy shouted, bursting off the floor and diving into the man’s legs. They were like tree trunks and the boy collapsed to the ground upon impact. Righting himself, he began punching blindly as the man continued to slap his mother around. Before long, he felt a hand on his head and he was jerked off his feet by the hair. His feet dangling, he clawed at the hand that held him, but it was no use. Stepdad was too strong.
“You think you can kill me?” Saliva sprayed from Stepdad’s mouth and into the young boy’s face. “Do you?”
Summoning courage from deep inside of his gut, the young boy tried to nod, but couldn’t because of the grip on his hair. So, he quietly said, “I might not be able to kill you now, but when I turn eighteen, I’m going to come back and find you and I’m going to kill you for what you did to Sissy! Just you wait and see.”
“What did he do to Sissy?” his mom asked in a weak voice.
“Come back?” Stepdad sneered, ignoring Mom. “What makes you think you’ll ever leave this place?” He then dropped the young boy to the ground and began dragging him through the hou
se by the hair. The boy could hear his mother crying somewhere behind them as she begged Stepdad not to hurt him. “Shut up, woman, or it’ll be worse!”
Stepdad opened the door to the basement and stomped heavily down the stairs as he dragged the young boy roughly behind him. The wooden corners of the steps dug into the boy’s back and legs, but he refused to cry out in pain. When they reached the floor level, Stepdad threw him against the column in the middle of the room and retrieved two lengths of chain from a nearby shelf. The boy struggled to get away, but it was no use. Stepdad chained his hands and feet to the column and then stood to admire his handiwork.
“There,” he said triumphantly, “that’ll teach you to threaten me.”
“I’m still going to kill you when I turn eighteen,” the boy said defiantly.
Stepdad leaned close and slapped him across the face, causing his ear to ring. “You could be thirty and I could be a hundred, and you still couldn’t kill me,” he said. “At this rate, you’ll be lucky to make it to eighteen. If you’re not careful, I’ll send you to be with your sister.”
Tears welled up in the young boy’s eyes as he watched his stepdad stomp up the stairs and slam the door shut, leaving him alone in the dark. But these tears weren’t for him—he was well past crying for himself. No, these tears were for Sissy and what had become of her. “I don’t care how long it takes,” he muttered to himself. “I’m going to get out of here and train myself to be a killer, and then I’m going to come back for you. I’ll do it, I swear!”
CHAPTER 8
I fished the keys to the Corner Pub from my pocket and pulled the screen door open to unlock the main door. Once it was unlocked, I pushed it open and stepped back, allowing the screen door to slam shut. From the sidewalk, with the sun beaming down through the clouds overhead, it was impossible to see inside the bar. But at nighttime, with the lights on inside, it would be easy to see inside the establishment.
I then picked my way back to the kitchen and studied the very spot where Mitch Taylor had taken his last breath. The phone was on the wall to the right. In order for Mitch to take a bullet to the back, he had to have been facing the back wall. I rubbed my chin.
Boots shuffled on the hardwood behind me and I turned to see Susan approaching on her crutches. “I can’t believe you hung up on me!”
“I can’t think and talk at the same time.” I pointed to the phone. “We’ve been working off the assumption that Mitch was shot while he talked on the phone, but he was shot in the back.”
There was a blank expression on Susan’s face. “What’s wrong with that?”
“There’s nothing on the back wall and the phone’s on the wall to the right, so wouldn’t he have been facing the phone or the open kitchen? I mean, who stands with their face to the wall while talking on the phone?”
“Go on,” she said, seemingly curious.
I moved back to the bar, where the stool was still pulled out and the salt shaker was still tipped over. I sat on the bar stool and glanced over my shoulder, nodding at what I was seeing.
“What is it?” Susan asked, turning from me to the doorway and then back to me.
“The killer didn’t even enter the bar. Whoever it was, they shot Mitch from outside.” I jumped off the stool and hurried to the screen door, where I dropped to my knees and scanned the screen carefully. “Holy smoking alligator tails!”
Susan lumbered toward me and bent to see over my shoulder. “Is that a bullet hole in the screen?”
“Yep! The killer shot Mitch through the screen—didn’t even open the door.” I straightened and glanced back toward the stool. “When Mitch got hit, he ran to the kitchen to call for help, but he must’ve died before he could dial the number, because we never got a call.”
Susan cocked her head sideways. “So, the theft is unrelated to the murder?”
I nodded as I walked outside, holding the screen door open until Susan cleared the opening with her crutches. “The gunshot is probably what woke up Jack. He stole the money because it was in front of him and no one was there to tell him not to do it.”
I scanned the sidewalk, searching for a spent bullet casing and hoping passersby hadn’t kicked it down the street. When I didn’t see an obvious casing, I dropped to my knees on the hard concrete and searched more closely. Susan stood over me and moved as I did, searching from her vantage point on high. I had just crawled past a post when she called out to me.
“Look in that water puddle.”
I looked where she pointed and saw something shiny submerged in a tiny puddle of water that had formed inside a crack in the sidewalk. When I leaned closer, I saw that it was a spent nine millimeter shell casing. I nodded up at Susan. “This is where the killer stood.”
As she guarded the shell casing, I retrieved my crime scene kit and documented the evidence before collecting and packaging it. Once I was done, I locked up the Corner Pub and glanced at my watch. One o’clock.
“I have to interview Mitch’s girlfriend,” I said. “Do you want to come along and then grab lunch afterward?”
“Lunch would be a start.”
“A start?” I cocked my head sideways like Achilles did when he didn’t understand my English. “What do you mean?”
“It would be a good start on your way to earning my forgiveness.” Her eyes narrowed. “You hung up on me, or don’t you remember?”
“I was in the middle of a thought and—”
“Thought or not, it had better never happen again.”
Although there was a playful glint in her eyes, it did appear she was a little upset about it. I moved close and gave her a peck on the cheek. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again. Now, what about we go find”—I pulled out my notepad and studied the information Amy had given me—“Brandy Lewis and see if she knows anyone who might want to kill Mitch?”
Susan followed me to my Tahoe and slipped inside, tossing the crutches over her seat. She groaned. “I can’t wait to be rid of these things.”
I nodded my agreement and headed north, quickly putting the town in my rearview mirror. After a thirty-minute drive, we found Brandy Lewis sitting on a swing at a trailer in Central Chateau. I dropped down from my Tahoe and waited for Susan to catch up, and then we joined Brandy on the porch. Her long blonde hair hung wild and her blue eyes were red. She had thrown on a pair of sweat pants and an oversized sweat shirt, but I think it had little to do with the drop in temperature—it seemed she lacked the energy to find something suitable to wear.
After making the introductions and expressing condolences for her loss, I asked if we could talk to her about her boyfriend, Mitch.
“Sure,” Brandy said, dragging herself to one side of the swing to make room for Susan to sit. I remained standing.
“Can you tell me what happened?” she asked, rubbing her tired eyes. “The deputy who came by would only say that they found him dead in his bar. They didn’t say anything else.”
I pursed my lips, frowned. “Well, I can tell you he was murdered—shot in the back.”
“Oh, God.” Brandy hung her head, but she didn’t seem too surprised. “I was afraid this day would come.”
“What do you know?” I wasn’t going to waste time. She knew something, and I wanted to know what it was.
She looked up into my eyes. “Do you have a suspect?”
“Not at the moment.” I held her gaze for a long few seconds. “Do you?”
“I don’t want to falsely accuse anyone of anything…”
“Then don’t,” I said matter-of-factly. “Just tell me who wouldn’t be upset to see him pass.”
She hesitated, then nodded slowly. “Connie’s the first person who comes to mind.”
“Who’s Connie?” I asked.
“Connie Taylor—she’s his wife.”
CHAPTER 9
I scowled. As long as I’d been going to the bar to grab a burger, I never knew Mitch had a wife. “Is he still married? Or is he with you? I’m conf
used.”
Brandy sighed. “He never could make up his mind. He wants to be with me, but he doesn’t want to get a divorce. I know Connie took it hard when he moved in with me.”
I turned to Susan. “We need to notify his wife right away—”
“She already knows,” Brandy said, interrupting me. “I called and told her. I also called his mom and dad.”
“How’d Connie take the news?” I asked.
“She didn’t seem too bothered by it, if you ask me.”
“How long has Mitch been living with you? Has it been a while?”
“About two years now…on and off.” She was thoughtful. “Like anyone else, we had our ups and downs and he would go back to Connie from time to time.”
“When was the last time he went back to Connie?”
“Maybe six months ago. But, as always, it didn’t last long. The very first time he ever left her, it was for a reason—whatever that reason might’ve been—and that won’t just go away with time. Needless to say, he was back with me the following week.” She shifted on the swing and it caused the chain above her to squeak. “I figured it would only be a matter of time before she had enough and snapped. A woman can only take so much rejection, you know? He kept stringing her along, making her think they would be back together again if only she’d wait long enough. The back and forth was killing her.”
“Why’d he go back to Connie that last time?”
“It was cruel, really. We were eating out in town and Connie walked in with some guy. For the first time since I’d met her, she looked happy. Mitch tried to act like it didn’t bother him, but I could tell it did. Later that night, after we’d gotten back home, I caught him hiding in the closet on the phone. He was whispering to someone and I knew it was Connie, because he was saying how sorry he was and that he loved her and he wanted to get back together. He had told me many times before that he didn’t love her anymore, but then he freaks out the first time he sees her with someone else? I was so angry I kicked him out of my house.”
