by BJ Bourg
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 okay? 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 fired 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.”
CHAPTER 4
Three hours later…
I was covered in black fingerprint powder as I squatted behind the bar with Amy. After processing the scene and relinquishing the body to the coroner’s investigator, Amy and I had set about dusting everything that could’ve possibly been touched by the killer—including the floor. We’d recovered some smudges and a palm print from the bar, two fingerprints and a few smudges from one of the tables, and four prints from the register. All of the other tables and the rest of the bar were void of prints and had circular streak marks, which told me Mitch had cleaned up the place prior to being shot.
“Whoever did this wasn’t very savvy,” Amy surmised. “They didn’t even wear gloves.”
I was staring thoughtfully at one of the fingerprints we’d recovered from the register. It was of great quality, and that had me puzzled a bit.
“You’ve got a strange expression on your face,” Amy said, tugging at the front of her uniform shirt. She always kept the top three buttons undone, and that often drew the ire of local townswomen, especially when they caught their husbands or boyfriends staring.
I handed her the print. “This print is perfect.”
She studied it and shrugged. “Okay?”
“More evidence that the murder happened before the rain started—or the shooter was already inside,” I explained. “We need to find out who was here last night and into this morning.”
Amy nodded and stood to her feet. “I’ll start canvassing the businesses, looking for surveillance cameras.”
“Good idea.” I followed her outside, where it was cool and cloudy, and watched her head across the street to one of the businesses. When she disappeared inside, I loaded my gear into my truck and decided to give the bar one more pass-over in an attempt to locate the spent shell casing.
I ducked under the crime scene tape tied to the front posts and opened the screen door. The spring squealed as it jerked the door shut behind me. It was a sound that brought back fond memories of rushing out the door at my grandpa’s house when I was a kid. The sound of the spring and the door slamming shut behind me signaled freedom. Unlike youngsters nowadays, I couldn’t wait to go play outside. My mom or my dad—when he was home from offshore—often had to hunt me down and drag me back to the house when the sun went down. Sometimes, I fought back.
I made my way back to the kitchen and dropped to my hands and knees. I couldn’t help but think we’d missed something. The shell casing had to be here somewhere. Using my flashlight, I went over the scene again and again, beginning in the kitchen and working my way out into the hallway and then the dining area. Knowing how casings can ricochet off of walls and roll along hardwood floors or get stuck under boots and carried away, I crawled under the bar counter and began searching the floor inch by inch—
“Breakfast is on me, Mitch!” called a loud and hoarse voice from the doorway. “I’m buying today!”
I snapped upright and jumped to my feet, turning my attention toward the door. A drunken man was standing on wobbly legs across the counter staring back at me. His face was thick and red. The curly white hair on his head grew down into his beard, where it completed a white circle—well, it was white save for the stains on his moustache and chin. I recognized him as one of the local drunks named Jack Billiot who lived on the east side of town near the water. He pointed a long crusted index fingernail in my face. “You don’t work here.”
“And you must be blind.” I walked around the counter. “Didn’t you see the police tape? This is a crime scene.”
Jack’s eyes grew wide when he saw the pistol on my side and the badge clipped to the front of my belt. He scurried backward toward the door, his brown sandals dragging the ground. “No need to get physical,” he said.
He hurried to where a rusted bicycle was leaning against one of the columns out front. His white pants were stained and drooped low on his waist, and I was thankful his jacket covered his backside. I watched him throw a leg over the bike and he pushed off to a shaky start. His pedals didn’t quite make a full revolution before he crashed into a garbage bin and fell over. He seemed to be moving in slow motion as he dropped to the ground. I had to stifle a chuckle.
Jack got up cursing. He pulled a rag from his back pocket and wiped down the seat. I wanted to tell him his pants were already stained, but resisted and started to turn away instead. I had to go over the scene once more and—
I suddenly froze and spun around. Something had fallen from his shirt pocket when he pulled out the rag and I realized it was money. “Wait a minute, Jack,” I said, hurrying toward him.
Jack stumbled and fell to the ground again. He covered his puffy face with his stained hands. “Please, don’t hit me.”
Grabbing his arm, I helped him to his feet. “Don’t be stupid.” I reached down and retrieved the bill from the sidewalk. It was a hundred. He had to be the only drunk in town with that much money on his person. Hell, I didn’t have that much cash on me and I had a job.
“Where’d you get this?” I held up the money. “And don’t tell me you worked for it.”
“Found it.” Shrugging, he pointed to the north. “Over by the bakery.”
“When?”
“This morning.”
“Show me.” After frisking him for weapons, I locked the front door to the bar and walked beside him. The stench of stale urine drifted across the few feet that separated us. Jack led me to Granny’s Oven, a bakery down the block, and then he shuffled down an alley toward the back. He stopped and pointed toward a fence that loome
d ahead. “Found it right there. On the ground.”
“When?”
“It was this morning…about an hour ago.”
My heart pumped like a piston. I felt that a break in the case was near. I carefully checked the alley, digging through the two garbage cans positioned near the back door to Granny’s Oven, but there were no clues—nothing but some old food in the cans and a stray cat running around on the opposite side of the fence.
Before I threw in the towel, I decided to speak to Granny. I told Jack to wait for me on the bench in front of the bakery and I pushed through the front glass door. The sweet smell of wedding cake icing tickled my pallet, but that’s not why I loved this place. I smiled at Granny. “Got any brownies?”
She shook her gray head and laughed. “My dear, people buy them faster than I can make them.”
I pulled up a stool and shoved a thumb over my shoulder. Her usually glowing face turned to ash when I told her why I was there and asked if she recognized Jack Billiot.
She pulled at the buttons on the front of her shirt. “You think those murderers might come here?”
“I don’t think so. Do you recognize that drunk?”
She looked past me and squinted against the sunlight pouring through the front window. Finally, she nodded. “Everyone knows Jack Billiot.”
“Did you see him around your place this morning? Maybe out by the back door in the alley?”
Granny shook her head. “I went outside to feed the cat this morning and didn’t see or hear anything.”
“Well, he said he found some money in the alley near the fence.”
Granny scoffed. “That’s unlikely. There was no money on the ground when I went out there.”
“Do you have surveillance cameras out back?”
“I sure do.” Granny led me to a back room and pulled up the footage from earlier. It didn’t take us long to fast-forward through the video file from that morning. The ground in that area was bare of anything, and nothing ever popped up as we blew through the footage.
