Biloxi Sunrise (The Biloxi Series Book 1)

by Jerri Ledford

  Jack moved a stack of books to the floor and sat in one of the chairs facing the desk. He felt as if he were sitting in the principal’s office at school. Only, his principal had been much neater.

  He leaned forward in his seat to read the papers on the desk. None of the papers he could see clearly held any information he could use so he sat back in the chair and focused on the spider weaving away in the dead plant. Interesting critter. It didn’t care that its host was dead. It weaved back and forth making its own home to whatever specifications spiders thought were important.

  A few minutes later, the doctor walked in and introduced himself. Jack was impressed with the presence of the man. He was tall. Over six feet. And his dark face was framed by a full beard and mustache. When he spoke there was a slight accent to his voice that Jack could not place.

  “Doctor Mercer, I appreciate you taking time out of your busy schedule for me. I just have a couple of questions for you.” Jack stood and shook the man’s hand.

  “I’ll answer what I can, but I’m sure you are aware of patient confidentiality laws.” The doctor stood by the door. He fidgeted with something in his pocket.

  “I am aware, Doctor, and I understand. I really just need to ask a few questions.” Jack thought it odd that the man didn’t sit behind the desk. Instead he stood almost as if he was ready to flee.

  Dr. Mercer nodded.

  “First, is Tim Burris a patient of yours?”

  “I have seen him once, and he is scheduled to come again. So yes, I guess he is.”

  “Okay, and what can you tell me about Burris? Did he tell you about his interest in young women? Teenagers, really.”

  A dark cloud crossed the doctor’s face. He shifted his large body from one side to another and his eyes narrowed to a tight squint. “There are laws, Mr.…”

  “Special Investigator.” Jack stood. “Jack Roe. And I understand patient confidentiality laws, Dr. Mercer. But Tim Burris is facing charges for statutory rape. And now he’s the main person of interest in multiple homicides. I can get a warrant for your records, but I would much rather you cooperate.”

  During his speech, the doctor’s squint had faded. He studied Jack for a long moment before his posture relaxed and he pushed himself past Jack to drop heavily into the chair behind the desk.

  “I hate court-appointed cases.” The statement was one of resignation and Jack knew by the tone of the doctor’s voice that he would help.

  Jack settled back into the chair he’d cleaned out earlier. “When are you supposed to see Burris again?”

  “I was supposed to see him this morning, but he didn’t show up.” The doctor sat stone still, his hands folded on top of a pile of papers and files in front of him.

  “But you’ve already seen him once?”

  The doctor nodded.

  “What can you tell me about him?” Jack wanted to ask why Burris seemed to have a taste for teenage girls. And he hoped the doctor would tell him that Burris admitted killing Patricia Simms and Karen Whiteside. He knew neither would happen, but there’s always hope.

  “Not much to tell, really.” The doctor pulled a file from the middle of the stack on which his hands had rested and flipped it open. Jack tried to read the notes in the file, but the handwriting was tiny and spaced so closely it nearly overlapped in places.

  “He was sent to me by the court. And as you can imagine, he wasn’t very forthcoming. Of course, I know why he was sent to me.” The doctor flipped a page. “But he didn’t have much to say about it. His reasons for sleeping with that girl were simply to deny that there was anything wrong with it. And when I pushed him about it…”

  The other man looked up and almost seemed surprised to see Jack sitting there. “Oh. Sorry. I was saying, when I pushed him about the legalities of a sexual relationship with a minor, he got angry. He tried to leave, but I reminded him that leaving would mean going back to jail.”

  “What was his reaction to that?” Jack leaned forward in his chair as the doctor spoke. His elbows rested on his knees, but even sitting closer he couldn’t make out the writing in the file.

  “Nothing threatening. At least not overtly threatening. I think subconsciously he would have liked to threaten me, but he kept that to himself. I didn’t push hard enough. But he did choose that point in our interview to exert his own personal kind of control.”

  “What do you mean?” Jack felt like he was about to hear something that he might be able to use. Something that would point to Tim as the killer.

  “He refused to say anything further. We spent the rest of the appointment in silence.” The doctor dropped his gaze back down to the file, and Jack could see a subtle change in the color of his scalp where his hair had thinned to nearly nothing.

  Jack had never known Tim to be silent and he said as much.

  “I’m not surprised. People like Tim have a hard time keeping quiet. They love the sound of their own voice.” The doctor gathered his notes back into the file and closed it, bending several of the sheets of paper. “How do you know his habits?”

  “What did you mean, ‘people like Tim’?” Jack sat back in the chair and placed his left ankle over his right knee.

  “Oh, the borderline narcissistic type. They like to talk because they think everyone wants to hear what they have to say. That he kept quiet tells me he loves to control situations, and very likely people, as well.”

  And that was what Jack had hoped to learn. That Tim did, in fact, have a personality that might lead to murder.

  “Control. Like the control he can exert over teenage girls. They don’t even realize it’s happening.”

  “Precisely.” The doctor didn’t realize Jack was just thinking out loud.

  “Could that kind of control be reason enough for him to murder?”

  The doctor’s brows drew together. “Yes, probably. If someone were to resist his control, it would make him angry. And I don’t think he has control of his anger most of the time. I think his ability to remain calm here in my office was just another means of controlling me and this whole situation. ‘You can make me go, but you can’t make me talk.’”

  Jack sat straighter as a theory formed in his mind. “So, if the mother of one of these girls kept him from seeing her daughter, would that make him angry enough to kill?”

  “It certainly could. Of course, numerous other things could set that kind of personality off as well. And you also have to remember that I’ve only seen this man one time. I’m making some pretty wide jumps in understanding based on my professional knowledge and a very short visit with Tim Burris.”

  Jack was still focused on the doctor’s confirmation that Tim had the ability to kill. And if he killed these women because they interfered with his ability to see their daughters, then he would kill again. Since Leslie was Tim’s latest problem, she could be next.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Marlee crouched beside the house next door to Leslie’s. The shadows in the side yard concealed her from sight well enough. She’d parked nearly a mile away, in the back corner of a convenience store parking lot, and walked into the neighborhood. As she drew closer to the house, though, she’d started cutting into and through yards, working her way down the street until she’d found this spot.

  It was close enough to watch Leslie’s house, but in a dark area where she wouldn’t be seen, even if someone walked a few feet from her. She was grateful that neither this neighbor nor Leslie seemed to have a dog. Evidently the house on the other side of Leslie’s did, but that shouldn’t be a problem.

  Now she waited. She wanted to catch a glimpse of Leslie and Lisa in their own environment. She wanted to see what else she could learn about them. She settled against a tree and grew stone still, listening to the night around her. Dogs barked in other yards around the neighborhood, and cars passed on the main road from which she’d walked earlier and occasionally on the roads in the neighborhood. All were just background noise. Nothing moved close to her.

  She watched the lig
hted windows in Leslie’s house. The upstairs window that she knew belonged to Lisa went dark and the glow of a television bounced off the walls in a back room downstairs. Was that Leslie’s room? No one moved past any of the windows inside.

  As she watched and waited, her thoughts drifted back to time she’d spent with Jack the night before. He seemed thoughtful. And she thought he was opening up to her. He had offered up information on the investigation.

  He was also handsome. Again the thought crossed her mind that she could become attached to Jack but no sooner had that thought fully formed than she shook it away with a sharp shake of her head. She could not, would not, become attached to him. She had a job to do. She was the only person who could do this. And she would not grant Leslie any special favors because of Jack.

  A pickup truck rumbled down the street. It slowed in front of Leslie’s house, coasting past. The idling engine sounded like a low growl and Marlee leaned back against the tree, trying to make herself smaller. She knew that the driver couldn’t see her from the street, but her instinct was to try to become part of the landscape.

  In front of Leslie’s drive the truck accelerated again, its engine loud as it rolled down the street and then turned a few blocks away. Strange that a car should slow down right in front of Leslie’s house. Marlee looked up and down the street.

  Lights were sparse in this neighborhood, which worked to her advantage in getting here. There were only two lights near Leslie’s home, neither of which were close enough to chase away the darkness. That made it difficult to tell if there was anything in the street that might have caused the driver to slow down.

  From her vantage point, she couldn’t see anything and Leslie’s house remained as it had for the last two hours. Quiet. The driver must have been distracted by something. Maybe a cell phone. Maybe something else. Marlee didn’t know, but she could figure no other reason that the driver might have slowed down in front of Leslie’s house.

  She shifted her weight as much as she could in the position she’d chosen. Her feet were starting to tingle and her hips ached. She focused on Leslie’s house, reminding herself that she was here to see what she could learn about Leslie and Lisa. To see if Tim showed up. She needed to maintain discipline and not let herself be distracted by physical discomfort.

  She shifted again and gritted her teeth against the ache in her muscles. Then she tried to turn her thoughts to something else to distract from the low throbbing pain building in her legs and feet. Her thoughts had just turned back to Jack when she heard a soft click. If a car had been passing right then, or even if crickets or other insects had been in full song, she would have missed it. But the neighborhood was quiet. It had drifted off to sleep for the night, so the sound reached where she crouched in the shadows.

  Marlee held her breath and looked around the yard, then up and down the street. She’d nearly decided maybe the sound was an animal moving around in the trees behind Leslie’s house when she caught a flash of light behind the house. She focused on where the light had appeared and saw it again almost immediately. It was moving across the back of the yard.

  She pushed out of her hiding place, careful to stay in the shadows, and edged toward the light. As she moved closer to the back of the house, the light moved away. But now she could hear a voice. Lisa’s voice. Whispering.

  “Hey, I’m on my way.” The light blinked out completely, but now Marlee could see the shadow she assumed was Lisa moving through the back yard, toward the tree line at the back of the property. “Sorry. I had to make sure Mom was in her room. She almost caught me.”

  Marlee stood near the corner of the house, watching. There was no way she could follow Lisa without stepping out into the open. The yard was dark, but a nearly full moon hung above, lighting her surroundings just enough that Marlee didn’t want to chance being seen. She watched as Lisa disappeared into the trees behind the house.

  A few moments later, she heard an engine rumble to life and the pieces slipped into place. It sounded like the same truck that had slowed down in front of Leslie’s house just a short while before. Whoever it was must have been signaling Lisa that they would meet her. Who was driving that truck? Was it Tim? Or was it someone else?

  Marlee turned and jogged back toward her car. Just as she reached the spot where she’d been hiding she stopped. She was certain she could recognize the truck if she saw it, but her car was nearly a mile away. By the time she got to it, Lisa would be long gone with whoever was driving. Only pure luck would allow her to find them and then follow them. Her time would be better spent here.

  She turned back to the house. Moving slowly, ducking below windows, she made her way to the door that Lisa must have snuck out of. It was situated nearly in the middle of the house, and the door itself was half glass. If Leslie had been moving around inside, she would surely have seen Marlee. But Marlee decided to take the chance any way.

  Doubtful that it would do any good, she slowly twisted the knob. It popped open quietly, surprising her. It made sense when she thought about it, though. It’s much quieter to sneak back into a house if you don’t have to use your key.

  Marlee pushed the door open just far enough to slip into the house. Inside, she heard the soft mumble of a television. Edging through shadows she got close enough to hear news announcers on the television talking about the events of the day. A shooting here, a crooked politician there. A normal day.

  She could also hear Leslie’s voice, low, but clear. She was on the phone.

  “Tim, I don’t know if that’s a great idea. What if Lisa wakes up.” Marlee’s blood started to boil. Really? Was she on the phone with him? The good news was that Lisa wasn’t going to meet Tim. The bad news was that Leslie still hadn’t learned.

  “Okay. Okay. Give me a few minutes and I’ll be there. Yeah. You too.”

  Marlee heard a soft thunk, probably Leslie dropping the phone onto the bedside table, then a brighter light switched on and she could hear Leslie moving around in the room.

  Marlee stepped deeper into the shadows and considered her options. She should go ahead and finish this. It was obvious that Leslie wasn’t going to learn. She was weak. And she was going to continue to allow Tim to control her. But she was also Jack’s sister. And no matter what was in her past, no matter what her instincts told her to do, Marlee couldn’t help but think of Jack. How would he handle it when he found out that his sister was dead?

  Thoughts of learning that her own sister was dead flooded through her. Marlee remembered clearly the crushing weight that had landed on her chest when she realized that her sister was gone forever. She wasn’t coming back. So many times since then she’d wished that she had died too.

  The decision was made for her as memories flooded through her mind. She’d give Leslie one more chance to learn that Lisa was what was most important. One more opportunity to do the right thing. And if Leslie didn’t catch on this time, she would have to teach her the final lesson. For Lisa’s sake.

  As she stood in the shadows, planning her next moves, Leslie whisked out of her bedroom, moving softly, obviously trying to be quiet to keep from waking Lisa. What would she say if Lisa came walking down the stairs right now? What lies would she tell?

  The questions almost made Marlee change her mind. But she held still, even caught her breath when Leslie walked within five feet of where she was hiding. She had time, and Leslie would either change or write her own death sentence.

  The door leading to the garage clicked shut with only the faintest of sounds. And a few seconds later, Marlee heard Leslie’s car start. The garage door opened and then closed a short while later. And Marlee was alone in the house.

  She wandered through the house, looking through drawers, poking into Leslie’s and Lisa’s lives as well as she could with a pen-style flashlight. She sat on the edge of the bed that Leslie had left unmade when she dashed out of the house. And she could imagine what happened in this bedroom. It made her angry.

  Then she searched out Lisa�
�s room. Clothes were tossed across a chair beside the bed, but otherwise the room was pretty clean. Standing in the doorway she could also imagine the things that happened in that room. Late night phone calls and computer chats. And the things that happened with Tim. Her anger ratcheted up a notch. Where was Leslie when Tim was taking advantage of Lisa? Did Leslie know before she caught them together? And why was it so important to her to be in a relationship with Tim that she would forgive him for what happened, even if Lisa had consented?

  Leslie had to learn. Marlee backed out of Lisa’s room, pulling the door closed behind her with a soft click. Leslie needed to understand just what was at stake here. And obviously she was too dense to figure it out on her own, so Marlee was going to have to spell it out for her.

  Downstairs she opened the door to the garage and using her little light she scoured the shelves lining the walls for the tools she would need to help Leslie understand how critical it was that she come to her senses. It didn’t take her long to find them.

  She gathered an armful of stuff and then headed back into the main living area of the house. The room right off the front door. The room where Jack had nearly beaten Tim to death.

  She lined all of the items she gathered in the garage across the coffee table in the middle room and set to work. Leslie had one last chance to get it right. Marlee set to work trying to make that as clear as possible.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  The phone ringing in the middle of the night startled Dana. She wasn’t sleeping. She rarely went to sleep before three a.m. Since she had no family or friends her phone rarely rang and only rang after midnight if it was something related to her patients.

  She looked at the caller ID expecting to see the number for the hospital or the answering service. Instead, she saw Leslie’s number. Her skin prickled as goose flesh rose from her chest outward. Deep breath.

  “Hello.” Sounding sleepy.

  “Dr. McNally? Did I wake you?” Leslie’s voice was soft and trembled the slightest little bit.