Girls Just Wanna Have Guns

by Toni McGee Causey

  She and Trevor clamored over floors that were now sagging all across the back wall of the house, the supports falling apart beneath them, and she remembered now why she’d hated the stupid obstacle course in P.E. She’d declared rather obstinately to her fifth-hour teacher that she was never going to use this physical education stuff. There was no freaking rock climbing in freaking Louisiana, she’d insisted, and she was never, ever in her freaking life going to need to know how to do a hand-over-hand climb up a stupid freaking rope. (Said hand-over-hand technique coming in rather handy as she scaled the electrical cord to the lamp wedged near the front window to keep from falling into the burning kitchen below.)

  Behind her, Trevor fell and snagged a grip on molding from the ceiling, cutting his hand on the protruding nails as he climbed toward the window. As more of the house gave away, she swung out on the dangling cord, Hi Tarzan, Me Jane–style, planting both feet in the gigantic front window as the entire glass popped out, squeezed as it was by the torque of the twisting outer walls. Bobbie Faye latched onto the sill as the house caved in behind her, Trevor following, and they both tumbled through the window, sliding two stories down the now-sloping exterior as the house collapsed away from them.

  Safe. They were safe.

  She glimpsed Emile and his two bodyguards running away frantic. The guards shoved their boss into his car, doing their job, protecting him, though she thought he may have seen her.

  Bobbie Faye leaned forward to check out a cut across Trevor’s shoulder, and at that moment, a bullet whizzed past. One from a different angle than Emile.

  Great. Just great.

  * * *

  From: JT

  To: Simone

  Jesus Christ, I am so fired. The whole fucking house collapsed?

  * * *

  It had taken John five minutes to find where Otto had moved the van in the wooded lot across from Marie’s—he’d apparently moved it so that he could watch the front of the house to make sure the bitch didn’t come crawling out. John expected to find a very pleased Otto and a confirmation that his fee would be wired to his account. The dozer had been the perfect tool for the perfect accident: no Bobbie Faye, no house, no clues, no worries. The buyer would be thrilled. What he found, instead, was Otto on the roof of the van, dead. Sniper rifle in hand. Cell phone ringing. John guessed the dumb fuck had climbed up there to have a better line-of-sight above the cars parked in the front drive of Marie’s house. A motorcycle raced by and he looked up in time to see that bastard mercenary Emile had hired riding off with Bobbie Faye.

  The caller ID on the phone showed unknown. John answered, because the only person Otto had been talking to on that phone had been the buyer. By the time John explained the situation, the buyer had wired extra money into John’s account so he could hire the help he’d wanted in the first place.

  Sean and Aiden climbed back into their box truck.

  “Happy huntin’?” Mollie asked, and Aiden nodded. They’d seen the man climbing onto the top of the van, aiming a sniper rifle at Marie’s.

  “Who do you think he was?” she asked. “Feds?”

  “Not fuckin’ likely. The cunt’s too fuckin’ amateur by half,” Sean answered.

  “You still got her?” Aiden asked Robbie, who nodded, focused completely on his computer system and the GPS signal he was tracking.

  Cam stood in the front yard of Marie’s collapsed house. The fire department had turned off the main gas supply and had trucks in front and in back, putting out the flames.

  “We can’t get to the upper floors,” Jordan, the local precinct captain, told him. The man was a friend, who also happened to have married Cam’s middle sister. “The building’s barely standing,” Jordan continued. “We gotta get the fire out on the ground floor and then get an assessment of structural stability before we can try to get in there to sift through the debris,” he shouted above the roar of water rushing through hoses onto the house. “I heard you got a couple’a witnesses say they saw her climb outta there.”

  Cam nodded. It wasn’t anything he could keep secret, particularly with the media interviewing everyone and their dog who lived in the neighborhood—an upscale place where the homeowner’s association preached the neighborhood watch program. Jordan grinned, relieved. He’d always liked Bobbie Faye—hell, all of the firemen in the city had been especially appreciative of her since she’d lobbied hard and very publicly to get them a raise and new equipment after the last disaster. Cam envied feeling that pure, simple, happy relief. Bobbie Faye was alive, and she hadn’t even called him. She’d been shot at, had a bomb explode her car—not to mention a bridge—and she hadn’t even called him to let him know she was breathing. He pressed the heel of his hand to his right eye, in the vicinity of the bitch of a headache he was nursing.

  “Your sister wants to know if you and Winna are still coming over Saturday for the bar-b-que,” Jordan said, and Cam threw an are-you-freaking-kidding-me? expression in Jordan’s direction. They were standing in the middle of another Bobbie Faye disaster—how in the hell could he be thinking about something like a date?

  “Hey, don’t kill the messenger. You know Gracie—she’s inherited the Moreau control-freak gene,” his brother-in-law said, but he smiled. He and Gracie had been married three years and seemed pretty happy about it. Gracie, in turn, was determined to see the last of her brothers shackled, as if it was something of a personal affront that her oldest brother had somehow evaded her matchmaking skills. She taught school with Winna, who, Cam had to admit, was very pretty, sweet, stable, and refreshingly interesting. They’d been dating for about two months—often enough, as far as his sister was concerned, to be an official couple.

  Cam’s phone rang and he recognized the crime scene tech’s number. He had already called out another crime scene team to Marie’s and it was entirely too soon for Maggie to have any sort of findings on the bomb or even the evidence they’d bagged from the car. Jordan went back to his job as Cam took the call.

  “Your girl is keeping me too damned busy,” Maggie said, getting straight to the point. “I feel like I can give you a prelim that there were no remains in the car—it’s looking pretty good that whoever was in there got out before detonation.”

  This was good, but he already had the wit’s descriptions of Bobbie Faye leaving Marie’s, and he’d told Maggie that earlier. “What’s up, Maggie?”

  “I have something here I need to run to confirm, so this is guesswork, but given the case’s profile, I thought you needed a heads-up. You know I got hair and blood from the bridge.” Cam tensed, but he’d seen the spots she’d scraped—there wasn’t enough blood to indicate a serious injury. “It’s the hair,” she said when he hadn’t responded. “Before we got called out today, I’d been running a hair sample from our diamond jeweler case.”

  “I thought the Feds took all of the forensic evidence?”

  “Not all,” she said, and he could practically hear her smile. “A couple of pieces of evidence had been misplaced and we’ve been working real hard on finding them. Anyway, while I was waiting on them to ask me for this stuff again, I had a DNA run—the lab owed me a favor—there were no known matches. It seemed like a dead end.”

  “Why do I get the feeling there is a ‘but’ here.”

  “Yes. I don’t have a DNA on file for Bobbie Faye.”

  “Why would you need one?”

  “I was supervising the cataloguing of the samples from the bridge, and something about the hair sample we found next to her handprint struck me as familiar.” Cam knew that they did have Bobbie Faye’s fingerprints on file. Hell, the PD practically made them must-reads for all new cadets. “And if the handprint was definitely Bobbie Faye’s, then odds are that the hair sample next to it was probably hers, too—but that wasn’t what bothered me. Then I realized why it was so familiar—I’d just seen it, from the jeweler case. I’ve run preliminary tests and I’ll get a DNA to see if the two match, but I won’t know if they are positively Bobbie Faye’s hai
r unless we get a DNA on her.”

  No fucking way. Bobbie Faye would never be involved in an actual murder.

  A large section of Marie’s roof gave way and crashed in under the blast of water from the fire hoses.

  Damn, he did not have time for this. He did not want to have to go through the freaking ordeal of chasing her down again and arresting her.

  He had to get a DNA sample.

  Bobbie Faye and Trevor walked through her trailer, checking closets and beneath beds and in the bathroom—making certain no one, especially not a persistent assassin, was hiding. Then relief hit her—the endorphin rush after the adrenaline subsided, which was probably the only thing that was keeping her upright, because even her bruises had bruises. She plopped down at her tiny kitchen table, tearing open the paper bag of food they’d bought on their way to her trailer. Within seconds, she’d shoved a bite of the chili cheese dog her into her mouth and nearly collapsed with joy.

  When she noted Trevor’s amusement at her expression, she said, “Apparently, blowing up things gives me the munchies.”

  “Dear God, we’d better stock up.”

  She’d have made a face at him, but that would have slowed down the eating. Besides, there were magical powers of healing in a great chili cheese dog. Especially the dogs made by the Ardoin brothers, because they were a Cajun version of the American classic, using smoked sausage and Cajun spices and three kinds of cheeses and she wasn’t sure what was in the chili, but if she could mainline it, she would. She tried to remember when she’d told him of her unholy obsession with the Ardoin’s hot dog stand, how she’d actually save her change so she and Stacey could have chili dog Saturdays. She heard him chuckling and when she looked up, she saw a crooked white smile against tan skin, and holy geez, that was even better than the chili. He bent down and kissed the corner of her mouth, stealing a little chili she was sure was smeared there and her brain sort of exploded as two of her favorite things in the world collided. Suddenly chili cheese dogs were associated with lust and all things sex and her unholy obsession just got a lot unholier.

  Her phone rang: Nina, returning her call. Bobbie Faye would have assumed Nina was sleepy from the lazy sound in her voice and the time difference, but knowing Nina the way she did, the woman probably had just finished with some Italian count. Or two.

  “What can I get you?” Nina asked.

  “Your condo, if that’s okay? I need a place to hole up and think.”

  “Sure thing.”

  “Hang on, not so fast. I should probably warn you that the house I was just at is no longer an actual house.”

  “Is it a puppy?”

  “Ha.”

  “You have a spare key and the code. Have at it. I’ve been meaning to remodel that kitchen anyway.”

  They said their good-byes and in less than ten minutes, she’d cleaned up the food wrappers, thrown some clothes and toiletries in a satchel, and met Trevor in the living room. He was standing by the side of the window, scanning the front.

  “We’ll have to go out the back,” he said, and she eased up close to him and peered past where his hand barely parted the curtains: two different TV stations had set up cameras. The manager had kept them from entering the premises since it was privately owned; odds were they were setting up at every exit.

  Front and center, though, was Reggie O’Connor. Bobbie Faye gritted her teeth. People had warned her that Reggie was the kind of person who’d look in your face while she put a knife in your gut, but Bobbie Faye hadn’t believed the warnings. It was tough being a strong woman, as Bobbie Faye knew directly, because there was the constant expectation to be demure, deferential, a good little Southern belle. That crap could just bite it, and she understood the kind of flak Reggie had gotten trying to muscle her way into a bigger market by scooping her male colleagues. Bobbie Faye would have thought that would have created a bond between them, maybe something supportive they could have shared. Then Reggie had targeted Bobbie Faye. It was probably the show titled BOBBIE FAYE: SHOULD SHE BE SPAYED? which was most memorable, though the BOBBIE FAYE: FORCE OF EVIL OR JUST PLAIN STUPID? was a close runner-up.

  She wasn’t overly fond of Reggie.

  Bobbie Faye looked at Trevor and knew what he was thinking: sugarcane field. The trailer park backed up to a huge field with green sugarcane about a man’s height, and the rows were just far enough apart for a motorcycle to fit in between the stalks. It was going to be a pain to push it through the tight space—they would get smacked with every stalk they passed. They’d parked three trailers down when they’d arrived because Trevor didn’t want to be obvious, and they were leaving the same way they’d entered: out the back door. They were barely down the back steps into the privacy-fenced yard (a tiny twelve-by-twelve-foot “patio”) when the wooden gate to her fence started to open.

  * * *

  From: Simone

  To: JT

  Alert—cell phone activity. Incoming to BF. Signal originated in Italy.

  * * *

  * * *

  From: JT

  To: Simone

  Shit. Buyer’s from Italy. Do you think BF is planning to sell?

  * * *

  * * *

  From: Simone

  To: JT

  We have to assume yes.

  * * *

  Twelve

  Cam slipped through the back gate of Bobbie Faye’s patio area, his gun drawn. He listened: no noise coming from her home. He eased toward the back door and nothing seemed disturbed. Still, given the day’s events, there was no assuming that all was okay.

  He’d seen the TV cameras set up in the front of the trailer park, so he’d hidden his truck a half-mile down the road and taken to the sugarcane field to avoid the media. The back door was locked. He glanced overhead—no news helos. Yet. They were all probably too busy covering the bridge or Marie’s. He put his gun away long enough to jimmy the lock; he kept a nice lock pick set hidden in what looked like a regular pocket knife. It wasn’t something he advertised. He’d had to go into an old apartment Bobbie Faye had before they’d started dating, before he’d become a cop, and stop an asshole who’d trapped her there. He hadn’t had a pick that time, and breaking through the freakishly well-made door had taken an eternity. It had only been when he’d finally broken through that he realized she’d kicked the bastard’s ass and the crying had come from the idiot as he whimpered for her to just let him leave.

  This time, he didn’t want to show forced entry.

  Cam stood just inside Bobbie Faye’s back door, in the living room/dining room combination and the place smelled like . . . chili cheese dogs. She’d been here recently, for the aroma to be that strong. He looked in the kitchen trash and sure enough, Ardoin’s take-out bags were crumpled there. Sonofabitch, he’d missed her. He pulled out his cell phone to call her and there was a missed text message from her—had to have been delayed when he’d hit the crappy wireless reception area on his way to her trailer.

  * * *

  From: Bobbie Faye

  To: Cam

  I’m 5 × 5.

  * * *

  Five by five. Slang for wonderful. Which was her way of saying I’m breathing, but let’s not get too hopeful about it.

  Cam scanned the room, his cop’s eyes picking up every detail that was different from her last trailer. He hadn’t actually yet been inside this slightly less-beat-up model (“newer” would have been too generous). He could see she had salvaged a few of her things—some family photos, that dumb clock Stacey loved, some toys, and a few oddball knickknacks which had meaning to Bobbie Faye but probably to no one else. Except him. He knew that French-drip coffee pot was the one they’d found at a flea market one lazy summer afternoon; she’d loved the red enamel color and kept it at her place to make him coffee on Saturday mornings when he stayed over. Next to it was a rock about the size of his palm, only it wasn’t a standard rock, but a piece of silica he’d found once and thrown against her window when they were kids. He hadn’t expect
ed to break the damned glass, and she’d landed in huge trouble, but she’d saved it, all silvery and black. There were other things, but he forced himself to look away from the old to see what was different: a new TV and VCR; well, used-for-new. Probably bought them down at Dusty’s Thrift Shoppe.

  The place smelled like her perfume—light, airy, something called Angel, he thought, which if the marketers had had a clue, should have been called Temptation. Or Damnation. He eased back toward her bedroom and he closed his mind to the scent as he moved in and out of the rooms. Clearly she wasn’t there, and he should have already finished his mission and left. He sure didn’t need memory lane. He just needed that DNA sample. One that would show that it wasn’t her hair at the murder site. One that would show that the killer had also been on that bridge, though how it had happened to be next to Bobbie Faye’s bloody handprint was going to take some explanation.

  He stopped in her bedroom, noticing the open closet door, the empty hangers on her bed, the look of her dresser drawers having been shut and not quite closed, as if she’d left in a hurry, and a cold trickle of worry pricked at the base of his spine. It looked like she’d taken some clothes, and her makeup bag was gone from the tiny bathroom. And so was her favorite hairbrush. He rummaged around in the cabinet, knowing her habits as well as he knew his own, and in a basket on a top shelf, there were a dozen or so ponytail bands. Two had caught hairs in them. These should suffice for Maggie to match to determine if one or both hairs from the two different scenes were Bobbie Faye’s.