by BJ Bourg
“He got out of surgery an hour ago. They expect a full recovery.”
I sighed. “That’s a relief. It didn’t look good for him.”
“The doctor did say his heart stopped beating a couple of times while they were working on him, but they were able to save him. He’s very lucky.”
I took another sip of coffee. I found it hard to keep my eyes off Sally. My mind wandered to that night in Gatlinburg and I had to fight to bring it back to the present. “Did Bethany make a statement to the FBI?”
“No. She refused to say anything. I guess it’s a good thing she confessed to us.”
“Yeah…” I thought back to earlier that day and doubt started to creep back into my head.
Sally cocked her head sideways. “Something’s on your mind. What is it?”
“Had I known, I don’t think I could’ve taken the shot,” I admitted out loud for the first time. “I would’ve hesitated.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“I’m very honest with myself, Sally. If it hadn’t been for that ballistic mask, I really think I’d’ve had a hard time squeezing off the shot. Hell, I wanted to kill the person who shot Captain Landry until I found out it was Bethany. I let her get inside my head. I got too close to her.”
“That’s where we differ. I could shoot Bethany Riggs with a good heart.”
“You don’t think she was a little justified—morally, at least—for killing the people responsible for killing her family? You don’t feel a little sorry for her?”
“That’s not why I want to shoot her,” Sally admitted, a twinkle in her. “I want to shoot her for sleeping with you.”
I felt my face flush, but my embarrassment soon turned to anger. “How could I have been such a fool? She was using me from the very beginning. She was never interested in me. Shit, I’m not even her type, but I actually thought we made a connection…that she was something special. Well, until you and I took that trip to Gatlinburg. If she’d really been special, I guess…”
I let my voice trail off.
“I guess you were both lying to each other and to yourselves. Stop beating yourself up about it. We were all fooled…about everything. Let’s just put this all behind us and move on. In a few weeks or months, none of this will even matter anymore.” Sally touched my face softly. “And maybe we can pick up where we left off in Gatlinburg.”
“That would be very nice,” I said, smiling. I leaned in and kissed Sally Piatkowski for a long moment. When I pulled back, her eyes were half closed.
She purred. “I could get used to that.”
“You’ll have to.” I stood. “But first, there’s one last thing I need to find out.”
“What’s that?”
“I want to know how Bethany did it.”
“You think she’ll talk to you?”
“She talked to us before. Why wouldn’t she talk now?”
“You’re right. She has nothing to lose.” Sally stood to follow me out the conference room.
As we walked down the hallway, I asked over my shoulder, “Does she even know?”
“Nope, no one told her. The FBI agents figured if she found out she’d be too distraught to talk—she’d have no incentive.”
“Where is she now?”
“They’re getting her ready for transport. I think they’re going to keep her at the women’s prison until the trial.”
CHAPTER 47
We found Captain Corey Chiasson in his office. He looked up and jumped to his feet when he saw us. Three FBI agents were seated across the desk from him. “London! How the hell are you?”
“I’m good.”
“Is there anything I can get for you? Anything I can do? You’ve done a hell of a job and there’s no way we can ever—”
“I want to talk to Bethany Riggs one last time,” I said.
Captain Chiasson started to speak, but one of the FBI agents interjected. “That won’t be possible. She’s already exercised her right to remain silent. To talk to her now would be a violation of her rights.”
I ignored the suit, addressed Captain Chiasson. “Where is she?”
“She’s in interview room number two. Tell the guard I said to leave y’all alone with her.”
“Captain,” said the same FBI agent, “we have already attempted to interview the suspect and she refused to speak with us. We’ve employed the most advanced interview techniques, yet still she refused. I must inform you that if your detective attempts to speak with her it’ll be a violation—”
“I don’t give a shit what techniques you employed and I’m not interested in your opinions,” I retorted, taking a step closer to the agent and staring down at him. “You had your crack at her and you failed. Get over it and stay out of my way!”
Captain Chiasson stifled a grin to wave us out of his office. “Let me know when you’re done with her.”
The FBI agent started to object again, but Captain Chiasson shut him down. “You forget you’re here at my request, and at any moment that request can be rescinded.”
Sally ripped the case file from Detective Melvin Ford’s hands and met me outside the interview room. “Ready?” I asked.
She nodded, and we pushed through the door. Bethany’s head was resting on the table. She lifted it when we walked in and came instantly alert. “London? What’re you doing here? I thought the FBI had taken over the case.”
“We kicked them out.” I smiled. “Wouldn’t you rather speak to me than them anyway?”
“Of course I would.” She smiled back. “What do you all want to talk about? Like I told those FBI pricks, I already made my statement to you and Sally, so there’s really nothing much left to say.”
“Ah, but there is.” I took the chair nearest Bethany and leaned close to her. “I want to know who was helping you.”
“I already told you. It was my ex-husband. His name’s—”
“Troy Riggs.” I pursed my lips. “The only problem with that is Detective Rachael Bowler—you remember her, don’t you?—talked to Troy Riggs. He’s in Sevierville, where he lives with his new wife.”
Bethany’s face paled a bit, but she was quick to recover. “She must’ve spoken to the wrong Troy Riggs. You see, the Troy Riggs I married was from—”
“Oh, it was the right Troy Riggs… and he certainly remembered you.” I leaned back in my chair and folded my arms across my chest. “It seems you lied about the way things ended with y’all.”
Bethany tried to remain casual. “What’re you talking about? I didn’t explain why I divorced him.”
“That’s just it—you didn’t divorce him; he divorced you.”
“He told you that? That’s bullshit!”
“Is it also bullshit he caught you cheating on him?” Sally asked, her voice cold.
Bethany swallowed hard. “He…he’s lying.”
“No,” I said thoughtfully. “I don’t think any man would lie about something like that.”
“No way,” Sally agreed.
“As it turns out,” I continued, “he still remembers the name of the person you cheated on him with. Well, the first name anyway. He said he forgot the last name.”
At this point, Bethany Riggs’ eyes were watering, and a tear dangled precariously from the corner of her left eye. “Please…I already admitted what I did. There’s no need to involve anyone else. I’ll take responsibility for everything…even the murder of Sheriff Burke and the others this morning. Give me the death penalty. I don’t care. My life is over anyway. Please, just don’t involve anyone else in my mess.”
“I’m sorry, Bethany, but we’re not involving anyone else—you’re the one who did that.” I uncrossed my arms and leaned close, touched her knee. “Look, there aren’t many women named Gina. It was Gina Pellegrin, wasn’t it? He caught you in bed with Gina Pellegrin, didn’t he?”
Bethany’s face turned to ash. She stared desperately about the room. “Please, I’m begging you…don’t involve her in my mess. I admit we were having an
affair, but she had nothing to do with the sniper killings. That was all me. She had nothing to do with any of it.”
“She had everything to do with it,” Sally said. “Not only did she kill the sheriff and all this morning, but she’s also the one who shot at London and me in Gatlinburg.”
“That’s impossible,” Bethany pleaded. “She had nothing to do with any of it!”
“You know, it’s one thing to kill a bunch of dirty cops,” I said, “but she definitely crossed the line when she shot Dean Pierce just so she could take up his position. A jury might have been a little sympathetic toward you with regard to the others, but attempted murder of an innocent cop? No way! They’ll regard you as nothing less than a common cold-blooded murderer.”
Bethany looked from me to Sally, confused. “Me? Just me?”
I nodded. “Just you.”
“So you won’t go after Gina?”
“Well, you did say Gina didn’t have anything to do with any of it, right?” I asked.
“That’s right. She didn’t know anything about it. In fact, Jerry told me she was in New Orleans meeting with the FBI, so you all could take down Sheriff Burke. If she was in New Orleans, there’s no way she’s involved.”
“Then how do you explain this?” I dug in the file and pulled out the picture of Gina Pellegrin’s lifeless body lying beneath the water tower, holding it so she could see.
Bethany’s scream was bloodcurdling and ripped at my eardrums. The door burst open and the guard rushed in, his eyes wide, not knowing what he would find inside the room. Once we convinced him everything was okay, he left, and Sally and I turned back toward Bethany. She was bawling like a newborn, mouth wide and tears spilling like blood from an artery. Because her hands were cuffed behind her back, she was unable to wipe her face. Sally quickly left the room and returned with a handful of napkins. I took them from Sally and dabbed at Bethany’s face. After nearly ten minutes of dabbing and consoling, we finally calmed her down enough she could speak.
“What…what happened to her?”
“I had no choice,” I said.
Bethany’s eyes turned to slits. She lunged at me, spat full in my face and tried to kick at me, but the chain from the leg shackles went taut and she fell hard. I wiped my face on my sleeve and then helped her to her seat.
“You bastard,” she wailed. “You killed the only person I had left in my life!”
I started to apologize, but Sally stopped me and grabbed Bethany by the face. “Get a grip on yourself and think about it. You did this! You killed Gina. Had you not involved her in your insane plan, she’d still be alive today. But it’s over. There’s nothing you can do about it now—except help us understand why she’d do something like that. Help us explain to the world why she’d turn rogue and kill fellow cops.”
I nodded. “We know why you did what you did. Help us understand why she did it.”
Sniffling uncontrollably, Bethany sighed. “She did it for me. She loved me more than she loved her own life. She would’ve died for me—hell, she did die for me!”
“I don’t understand how you two hooked up,” I said. “You were raised in Tennessee, and she was raised here. Your husband caught you in bed with Gina before you moved here. How’d y’all even meet? What was she doing in Sevierville?”
Bethany frowned, her chin trembling. “I’ve known Gina my whole life.”
I scowled, confused. “How’s that possible?”
“The night my dad and brother were killed, I was not home. I was sleeping at a friend’s house. That friend was Gina Pellegrin. Uncle Kenny picked me up from her house.”
My jaw dropped open. “What the—?”
Sally was equally shocked. “Gina Pellegrin—our Gina Pellegrin—has known Elizabeth James—you—all this time?”
Bethany nodded. “We kept in touch, and her family would come visit every year, sometimes twice a year, and she even came to stay with us over the summer two or three times. She meant everything to me. She was the one person who saw me through everything, who kept me going when I felt like giving up. I-I don’t know what I’m going to do without her.”
As much as I didn’t want to, I couldn’t help but feel sorry for Bethany Riggs—and I felt like an idiot for misreading her, and a complete fool for misreading Gina. I stood and placed my hand on her shoulder. “If it makes you feel any better, I would never have been able to pull the trigger had I known it was Gina. She had that mask on, so I thought she was a man.”
“You mean that?” Bethany asked.
“Yeah. In all of my years of training, I never prepared myself mentally to kill a woman, especially a woman I knew well—or thought I did—and liked a whole lot. That’s one shot that’ll haunt me for a long time.”
After we were done with Bethany, Sally Piatkowski and I exited the interview room and walked out into the parking lot. The sun had long since gone down on what had been Magnolia Parish’s darkest hour. I sighed and leaned against Sally’s unmarked car. She hesitated by the door, her keys dangling from her hand. “You want to come over…maybe have a drink or something? Put this day and this case behind us?”
I studied Sally’s face, trying to see deep inside her to gauge what type of person she really was.
“What? Why are you looking at me like that?”
“I’m trying to figure out what you want.”
“Huh?” Sally’s brows puckered.
“Bethany and Gina pretended to be interested in me because they wanted something from me, and like a fool, I really believed they were into me.” I squinted, studying her face some more. “I just don’t want to make that same mistake again—”
Sally grabbed the back of my head and pulled my mouth to hers, kissing me long and passionately. When she pulled back, her eyes were moist and her chest was heaving. “Any more questions?”
Book Two:
PROVING GROUNDS
CHAPTER 1
Thursday, August 30
Glass suddenly exploded from the side window of the first squad car. I turned quickly and was just in time to see blood, bone and glass smash into the opposite window, causing it to shatter and spill onto the cement. Where Sheriff Burke’s head once was, there was now an empty mass of broken flesh and bone. Everything above his ears was gone. I dropped my phone, dove to the ground and scrambled on my elbows and knees to the rear of a nearby detective car, pulled my rifle around and flipped open my scope caps.
Behind me, Jerry screamed over the radio. “Dean, where’d that shot come from?”
The radio was silent except for a brief moment of static. Jerry repeated the radio traffic—more silence. Just as I shouldered my rifle and turned it toward the water tower, the second squad car exploded in broken glass and someone screamed that Captain Carmella Vizier was down. Footsteps pounded the cement all around me as officers scrambled for cover, trying to seek out the shooter’s position.
Just as I attained proper eye relief, I caught a flash of movement through my scope. A dark figure disappeared around the southern side of the water tower. I moved down to the bottom of the catwalk where Dean was supposed to be…he was gone. On the opposite side of the water tower a length of rope dropped toward the ground. Before my mind could process what was happening, a dark figure raced down the rope as the killer rappelled toward the ground. Without thought, I dropped my crosshair to the sniper’s feet and squeezed off a shot. I thought I saw the figure lurch slightly. I aimed at the knees for my second shot and fired twice in rapid succession. The sniper’s arms went limp, and he crashed toward the ground at breakneck speed.
“I got him!” I hollered, confusion scrambling my thought process as I wondered what in the hell Dean Pierce had to do with Bethany Riggs, or Elizabeth James.
I pushed myself to my feet and bolted across my property, keeping my rifle poised. My legs were pumping at their full potential by the time I reached the street and raced across it. I jumped my neighbor’s fence, landed at a stumbling run and straightened out as I caught my stride a
nd zipped across his property and through a patch of barren fields. I was still fifty yards from the water tower when I saw a dark spot in the thick grass, still attached to the rappelling rope. I slowed to a fast walk and leveled my rifle at the figure on the ground. I took several deep breaths to help slow my heart rate. I stalked quietly toward the downed sniper, every one of my senses on high alert, straining to detect even the slightest hint of life, my right index finger brushing the trigger on my sniper rifle.
“Don’t move!” I called out, but when I got a little closer I realized I was speaking to the dead. The body, dressed in typical ninja-like SWAT garb, was twisted like a pretzel and blood oozed from three bullet holes—one in the neck and two in the torso. Unless it was the odd angle of his body, it looked like Dean Pierce had lost a few pounds. A sniper rifle—like the one I’d issued to all the snipers, including Dean Pierce—was positioned on the ground several feet away. I approached the body and used the muzzle of my rifle to strip the ballistic hood and the goggles from the sniper’s face.
I jerked awake, staring wildly into the darkness. It took me a full second to realize I was in my bedroom. I’d kept my shades and curtains pulled tight, which made my room darker than the belly of a coal mine, and it was only the familiar hum of the ceiling fan above my bed that gave my location away. The breeze was cold against my sweaty chest and I shivered. I closed my eyes and was about to slide back under the covers when the alarm from my cell phone began screaming from the nightstand. It was four-thirty in the morning. I’d selected the most obnoxious alarm I could find as my wakeup call, and it didn’t disappoint.
I pried my eyes open again and reached for the phone, knocking it over in the dark. Grunting, I rolled out of bed and fished it off the floor, silencing it and clearing the dozen missed calls from last night. I was tempted to set it to snooze, but I had to be at the range within the hour for sniper training and I didn’t want to be late.
After rushing through a shower and a cold breakfast of cereal and milk, I headed for the shooting range. As usual, I was the first to arrive and busied myself turning on the floodlights and setting up the course. The smell of freshly cut grass clung to the early morning air as I trudged the two hundred yards across the wet uneven ground to the target stands. A gentle breeze caressed my flesh, but it wasn’t enough to keep the aggressive Louisiana mosquitoes away. Ignoring the pricks from their tiny needles, I attached cardboards to the wooden frames and then began stapling colored photos in place. I was shooting the staples into the last photograph when my longtime partner, Jerry Allemand, walked up behind me. He wore the same faded drab green coveralls and black boots I’d issued him years ago, and his .308 sniper rifle was slung over his shoulder.
