by BJ Bourg
She joined me and her mouth dropped open. My heart racing in my chest, I moved closer and glanced through the driver window. Relief flooded over me. “It’s empty.”
“Amy!” Susan called, walking toward the cluster of trees, her pistol in hand. “Melvin!”
I fanned out to her right and crossed the boulevard, shining my light across the property surrounding the mansion, but I didn’t see any signs of Amy or Melvin. Susan tried calling Amy on the radio, but there was no response.
As Susan made her way through the cluster of trees, I walked around it and searched the outer edges, keeping my pistol at the ready. There was nothing to indicate anyone had been there. I shined my light on the ground, but the dew in that area had not been disturbed. I could hear some rustling in the trees to my left and I called out softly.
“It’s me,” Susan replied. “There’re some snapped twigs and crunched leaves and I found two spent shell casings, but there’s no sign of anyone.”
I had reached the edge of the mansion property and still hadn’t seen any signs of life. I was about to turn and go back when Susan broke through the trees and crossed the street to stand with me.
“They’ve got to be out here somewhere,” she said.
I began walking a little farther toward the front of the street, scanning the property on the north side of the boulevard with my flashlight, when Susan grabbed my arm and pointed. “There…in the grass!”
I looked where she pointed and could clearly see oblong marks in the wet grass that represented footsteps. There appeared to be three distinct sets of tracks and they all led north through an empty field that separated the mansion from the next house on the boulevard. Before we could take another step, we heard a gunshot off in the distance, and it propelled both of us forward.
We raced across the open field, the beam from our flashlights jostling up and down, following the blotches in the dew as best we could. As we ran, Susan repeatedly keyed up her radio and called out to Amy, asking for a status and for her location. We didn’t hear anymore gunshots and that scared me more than anything.
The footsteps in the dew cut a wide path around the mansion and then headed east, traveling parallel to a barbed wire fence. I heard cows mooing, but couldn’t see much of anything. The beams from our flashlights seemed like faded streaks of yellow fingers against the utter darkness that surrounded us. The grass was taller now and I felt it whipping against my pant legs as we ran. It was also easier to follow the trail now, thanks to the deep impression in the grassy field.
Susan was a little ahead of me and I could hear her footsteps pounding the ground and could see her flashlight swing up and down. All of a sudden, her light went airborne and I heard her screech. Before I could react, I slammed right into her back, my chin making direct contact with the back of her head. We both crumbled forward, rolling over and over, tangled up in each other’s limbs. When we finally came to rest, I was face down in the wet grass and Susan’s left boot was almost in my mouth.
“Are you okay?” I asked, twisting around to try and untie myself from her. My chin hurt something awful, but I didn’t have time to worry about that. “What happened? Why’d you stop?”
Susan rolled gracefully to her belly and jumped to her feet. “I saw water up ahead.”
I followed her forward and, thanks to the faint glow from the moon, I was able to see that the tall grass ended abruptly at the muddy banks of a drainage canal. “Where’s your light?” I whispered. Mine had flown from my hand when we crashed, but my pistol was still clutched firmly in my strong hand. I aimed it toward the banks of the canal.
Before Susan could answer, we were blinded by bright lights, and an authoritative voice shouted, “Put your hands where we can see them!”
CHAPTER 19
“Oh, damn, it’s Susan and Clint!” The second voice was Melvin’s, and the first was Amy’s. The lights dipped quickly and Amy hollered an apology from across the drainage canal.
I shaded my eyes and saw them standing in the thick grass on the opposite bank. They were both drenched and looked like wet muskrats, their clothes and hair plastered to their bodies.
“What’s going on?” I asked Melvin, shining my light up and down the opposite bank, expecting to either see someone in handcuffs or bleeding out. I saw neither. “Who shot up your truck?”
“I don’t know. I never saw him.” Melvin glanced over at Amy. “But she did.”
Amy nodded, brushed a strand of wet blonde hair away from her right eye. “When I arrived at the end of the street, I saw a masked man running toward Melvin’s truck, firing as he ran. I gunned my engine and headed straight for him, planning to run him down. Before I got him, he turned and sprinted across the road, jumped the ditch.”
“Where is he now?” I wanted to know.
Amy shot her flashlight down the canal, pinpointing the light on a weeping willow tree about fifty yards south of us and on their side of the canal. “Last we saw, he crawled out of the canal near that tree and disappeared in the swamps.”
Susan shot a glance in my direction and I nodded. She got on her radio and asked Marsha to call the sheriff’s office and request that they put their helicopter in the air. “And request K-9 support and a boat,” she told Marsha before clipping the radio back to her belt.
“I fired a shot at him from the water,” Melvin offered, “but I doubt I hit him.”
Susan shined her light up and down Amy’s uniform. It was plastered to her body like shrink wrap, and water was still dripping from the dead radio clipped to her belt. “Y’all tried to swim after him?”
Although the light was dim, I could see redness move over Amy’s face live a wave of sunshine. “No, um, we…we didn’t see the water in time and ran straight into it. I didn’t know what the hell had happened.”
“Yeah, she almost drowned.” Melvin chuckled a little, but stopped when Amy shot him a cold stare.
“I already told you, I didn’t almost drown. I sucked in some water, but I was fine.”
Melvin nodded and created some distance between them before saying, “You tell it your way and I’ll tell it the way it happened.”
Although Melvin was acting like his usual jovial self, there was a look of sadness in his eyes that couldn’t be denied. I wanted to ask him what he had been doing out here at this time of night, but resisted the urge. I certainly didn’t want to have that conversation with him across twenty feet of muddy water.
Susan moved close to me, turned her back to the canal, and whispered so only I could hear. “Melvin wasn’t working tonight. What the hell was he doing out here?”
“Your guess is as good as mine,” I whispered back.
She glanced over her shoulder to where Amy and Melvin were squatting near a tree. Their attention was on the swamps to the south, and they were far enough away that they didn’t even know we were talking. “Mrs. Beaman said Pauline was having an affair with a married man. You don’t think that married man—”
“Sue, don’t even say it.”
“Melvin’s as loyal as they come, Clint, and you know it. He adores Pauline. If he was having an affair with her and she asked him to take out the competition—”
“Damn it, Sue, don’t go there.” I wiped my face and looked away, not wanting to consider what she was saying.
“Someone has to,” she said softly, “because you don’t seem to want to go anywhere that makes you feel uncomfortable.”
I was quiet for a long moment as sirens wailed in the distance and drew closer. Before long, blue and red lights could be seen in the area of the mansion. Susan picked up her radio and switched to the sheriff’s office channel, told the deputies where to find us.
“It’s not that I don’t want to go there,” I explained when she was done with her directions. “It’s just that I know Melvin well enough to know he’d never cheat on Claire.”
“Well, I hope you’re right.”
I sighed. “Me, too.”
CHAPTER 20
Wit
hin thirty minutes the entire area was flooding with K-9 officers, water patrol deputies, and SWAT members. We had the place wrapped up so tight that a single mosquito couldn’t escape. I just hoped the shooter hadn’t already made it outside of the perimeter we’d established.
With Susan leading the search effort for the suspect, I had called Justin to meet me at the scene. We were now both standing with Melvin on the outside of the yellow crime scene tape near his truck.
“Go ahead and tell Justin what you told me earlier,” I said to Melvin, “so he can catch up.”
Melvin hesitated.
“It’s okay,” I said. “He’s been there, too, I’m sure.”
Justin nodded. “No matter what it is, I’m sure I can relate. I might be a fire investigator, but I worked for the sheriff’s office back in the day and I’m still a cop.”
Melvin took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “Okay, so I couldn’t sleep because I kept seeing Lance Beaman burning up. Every time I closed my eyes I’d see his face, and I even saw it sometimes when my eyes were open. I started to question my actions at the scene, doubting that I’d done enough to save him.” He paused, wiped his face with a hand that shook. “I know it sounds crazy.”
“Not at all…I’ve been there.” Justin’s voice was soothing. “When I was a young firefighter, a kid died in a house fire in Central Chateau because I couldn’t find him. I heard him screaming, so I went searching for him. I went the wrong way down the hall and he died, but I made it out of there alive. I questioned whether or not I went the wrong way on purpose, just to save myself.”
“Did you ever get over it?”
“Well, I got some help with it and it got easier to deal with over time, but that kind of thing stays with you. With some things, it’s a daily struggle.”
Melvin frowned and hung his head. After being thoughtful for a while, he continued telling how he’d visited the storage yard at Rupe’s Dealership and then came here to revisit the scene in hopes of getting some closure. When he detailed the shooting that ensued, Justin scowled. “You mean he attacked your position?”
“Yeah. If Amy hadn’t shown up, well, I don’t know how things would’ve ended.”
Justin looked at me, then back at Melvin. When Melvin had finished his story and walked off, Justin hissed, “This person was trying to kill your officer!”
I nodded my agreement.
“Do you think it’s the arsonist?” Justin asked. “And if so, why on earth would he try to kill Officer Saltzman?”
I pointed to the clump of trees. “Melvin first heard the shooter in those trees. I’m betting they lost something in those trees when they attacked Lance. I don’t know if they found it or not, but it was important enough to kill a cop over, so we’re not leaving until we know for sure what it is.”
“But we already searched that area.”
“We did, but what were we searching for?”
Justin stared blankly at me. “I don’t know—anything that might be evidence in the case.”
“Right, we were looking for anything that might be there, but now we’re looking for something that we know is there. I’ve got metal detectors in the back of my Tahoe. We’re going to run them through those trees and we’re not going to stop until we dig up every little thing that makes them beep.” I pointed to Melvin’s truck. “But first, we have to process this shooting scene.”
Justin followed me to my vehicle and I removed my crime scene box from the back and we started measuring the scene. We had been working for about twenty minutes when I heard the rhythmic chopping of helicopter blades approaching. I stopped what I was doing and watched the large eyeball of light approaching in the dark skies from the north.
Justin straightened from the casing we were measuring and stood there watching me. “You want to be out there searching for this prick, don’t you?”
“Yeah, I do, but I’m in charge of investigations around here, so…” I allowed my voice to trail off and went on to the next shell casing.
It was easy to distinguish between Melvin’s shots and those of the killer, because Melvin was shooting a .40 caliber pistol while the killer used a 9 mm. We located nine .40 caliber spent casings and fourteen 9 mm casings.
“You know what I don’t understand,” Justin said when we moved on to documenting the eleven bullet holes in Melvin’s truck, “why would an arsonist use a gun to try and kill Officer Saltzman? Why not set him on fire like he did with Lance?”
I mulled over what he said for a few seconds. When I opened my mouth to answer, I clamped it shut as a light bulb went off in my head. “I think I’ve got it!”
“What is it?”
“Your question is backwards.”
A blank expression fell upon his face. “Should Officer Saltzman have tried to burn the shooter?”
“No…if the killer has a pistol, then why in the hell would he firebomb Lance? Why not just shoot him like a normal person would?”
Realization caused Justin’s mouth to slowly drop open. “Either we’re dealing with two suspects—a shooter and an arsonist—or someone was so pissed off at Lance that they wanted to torture him.”
I shot my index finger in Justin’s direction. “That’s exactly what I’m thinking!”
“But what would piss someone off so bad that they’d set fire to another human being? It’s such a horrible way to go.”
I shot my index finger in Justin’s direction again. “That I don’t know.”
He grinned and helped me collect the casings from the scene. Once they were all packaged separately and secured in the back of my unmarked unit, I pulled out my phone and called Susan. The sun was just starting to rise and our surroundings were slowly coming into view.
“Anything?” I asked when she answered.
“Not so far. The dog picked up the scent near the tree Amy and Melvin pointed out and followed the trail for about a mile along the bank, but then it turned back toward the water. It appears the shooter jumped back into the canal—we even found deep boot prints in the mud—but we can’t find where he or she climbed out.”
The way Susan said she led me to believe she still suspected Pauline. I told her our theory about a possible revenge motive.
“It makes sense,” she said. “Lance said a lot of horrible things about Pauline, and if he was about to reveal her affair, well, she would want revenge.” After a slight pause to tell someone to check inside a rotted-out log, Susan asked about the surveillance footage. “Did you ever find out what time she got back home?”
“No.” I noticed Justin leaning in the back of my vehicle to get one of the metal detectors. “I’ve got to go. Be safe.”
“We need to find out who Pauline was sleeping with,” she called out as I was hanging up. Although she couldn’t see me, I nodded.
When I walked over to Justin, he was flipping switches and studying the tiny control panel. “How the hell does this thing work?”
I leaned forward and showed him how to turn it on. He thanked me and waved the search coil near my bumper. It beeped loudly when he drew to within a few inches of the metal. “It works.”
I grabbed the other detector, slammed the gate, locked it, and followed Justin to the clump of trees. “So, did you have a chance to finish viewing the surveillance footage?” I asked when we reached the edge of the curb. “I made it to the three o’clock hour when we got the call about this shooting.”
“I did finish the tapes.” He adjusted his forearm on the stabilizer, nodded to himself when he found the sweet spot. “Yeah, Mayor Cain’s vehicle turned down her street at about four-thirty in the morning. She was traveling from the north, so she must’ve gone through town as you suggested earlier.”
I pointed to the right to indicate I’d work that side, and pondered this new information as I allowed the search coil to hover a few inches from the ground. “She must’ve been seeing her boyfriend.”
“Yeah, we need to find out who he is.” Justin’s metal detector beeped and he dropped to
his knees to investigate the alert. After a moment of digging through the pine needles and dirt, he pulled up a foil gum wrapper and scowled. He shoved it in his pocket and continued searching. “Any idea who it could be?”
Evil thoughts kept running through my mind, such as the possibility that Melvin had staged the shooting of his own truck to throw the scent off of him and Pauline, but I immediately dismissed it. There was no way Melvin was cheating on Claire. I just knew it. “No, I’ve got no idea who it could be, but I do know where we can start.”
Justin looked up from another miniature excavation he was working on. “And where’s that?”
“Mrs. Beaman said a private investigator was following Pauline. While she didn’t know his name, she said he was from Mechant Loup, and we’ve only got one private investigator in town—” My metal detector finally beeped and I dropped to my knees to investigate the alert. After removing a thick blanket of dried leaves, I found a rusted bottle cap. Damn it!
We continued searching and had moved about twenty feet from the curb. It was a painstaking process, because there were tons of tiny pieces of metal in the dirt. In addition to bottle caps and gum wrappers, there were nails, pieces of rebar, and even an old zipper.
The sun was clawing its way up the eastern horizon and we were both dripping sweat. It was only April, but the temperature was already into the eighties and the humidity was in the nineties. Forecasters were predicting a hot summer—probably the hottest on record—but I didn’t care. Anything was better than the cold weather.
I had moved around a large pine tree and was just waving the search coil of the detector between the edge of a crawfish hole and the tree when it beeped. Expecting another piece of trash metal, I leaned forward and brushed the leaves away. There was nothing. I swept the metal detector over the area again, and once again it beeped. I was about to lean forward to start digging in the ground when something shiny in the crawfish hole caught my eye.
