by BJ Bourg
Before Junior could grab the knife, Susan punched him on the side of the head. The sound of her fist connecting with his temple was sickening. He stood on wobbly legs for a split second and then dropped like a felled tree. I ripped the revolver from his holster as he fell away from me.
Melvin and Takecia were on him immediately and jerked his hands behind his back, ratcheting the cuffs on him.
It took about thirty seconds for him to open his eyes. We helped him to a seated position and he stared at us in confusion. “What…what the hell happened?”
“You went for a knife and you got punched,” I said. “Most cops would’ve shot you.”
Melvin grunted. “Hell, I would’ve shot you. I don’t get into a knife fight with my fists.”
“Why did you punch me?” Junior wanted to know.
“I didn’t punch you.” I shot my thumb at Susan. “She did.”
“But…why?” He looked like a wounded child who’d gotten a spanking for something they didn’t do. “Why did y’all cuff me?”
“Chester Raymond, Jr., you’re under arrest for the murder of your father, Chester Raymond, Sr.,” I said. “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in court…”
Junior didn’t say anything as I read him his rights. When I was done, I led him into the second interview room. Susan kept an eye on him while I stepped into the room with Patricia and Alf.
“I thought I heard yelling.” Patricia pointed to the door knob. “I tried to go see what all the fuss was about, but that door is locked.”
I waved an apology. “We sometimes lock the doors for the safety of our guests, and this was one of those times.”
“Our safety?” She tilted her head slightly. “Why?”
“We just arrested your dad’s killer.”
She straightened so quickly she nearly jumped out of her chair. “Who is it? Where are they? I want to see them now!”
“I’m sorry, but you can’t see them just yet.” I placed both hands flat on the desktop in front of me. “I’m very sorry to have to tell you this, but your father was murdered by someone you know.”
Her face scrunched up. “What do you mean? Who do I know?”
“This isn’t easy to say and I’m so sorry to be the one to break the news to you, but it was your brother who killed your dad.”
She opened her mouth to speak, but clamped it shut.
“I’m sorry, but Junior killed your dad.”
After a long moment of silence, she laughed roughly and shook her head. “No, this is some kind of joke.”
“It’s no joke. He killed your dad.”
“What reason would he have to kill my father?”
“I don’t know yet, but I’m hoping to find out.” I lifted my hands. “I was hoping you might be able to help with that.”
“I can help you right now by telling you he didn’t do this. You’ve got the wrong person.” Her voice was becoming stronger. “You need to release him immediately and get out there and find the right killer!”
“I have solid evidence that he’s our guy. I can show you if you like, but it’s not pretty.”
“I don’t care what your evidence says—he didn’t kill our father.”
I sighed, stood to leave. “I’m going to ask that you wait here while I talk to him.”
Patricia shook her head and stood to her feet. “I will not remain in this building one minute longer. Unless you intend to arrest me, too, I’m leaving.”
Alf stood beside her. “Detective, you’re making a serious mistake. I was with Junior all day and I can assure you he didn’t kill Chester. That boy loved his father. When no one’s paying attention to him, he’ll break down crying over it. Please, you need to reconsider what you’re doing. Don’t victimize this family twice.”
“I’m sorry, but—”
“We’re leaving.” Patricia brushed past me, bumping me hard with her shoulder as she walked by, and jerked the door open. Alf scurried after her as she pushed through to the lobby and I heard her slam the exit door on her way out.
CHAPTER 42
One hour later…
“I swear on all that’s holy, I didn’t shoot Pops,” Junior said for the tenth time.
“Like I’ve already told you,” I said, “we’re beyond who done it and are now focusing on why you did it. I’ve told you a dozen times, we’ve got hard evidence that you killed your dad.”
“I don’t care what your evidence says, I didn’t do it.”
I pushed aside the fingerprint collection kit I’d used to roll his fingerprints. “Your prints are now in the hands of a fingerprint expert with the Chateau Parish Sheriff’s Office. They’re going to match the prints we recovered from the boat trailer and from Terry’s red truck.” I tapped the desktop with my fingers. “I just don’t know if it was a coincidence that you stole your future stepmother’s dad’s truck or if you knew exactly what you were doing.”
“I already told you, lawman, I didn’t steal nothing and I didn’t kill Pops.” He threw his hands in the air. “I mean, why would I want to kill my own pops?”
“Unfortunately, only you can answer that question.”
“Well, I can answer this question, too—Shelly is the one who stole that truck.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because she’s done it before.” He nodded triumphantly. “I’ve seen her in that same truck more than once before when I went to town for groceries. So, why don’t you ask her about stealing the truck?”
I never did like showing evidence to a suspect during an interrogation, but I needed to know why he did it and if anyone else was involved, so I was tempted to show him the video in order to convince him to start talking. I decided to float a test balloon first.
“What would you say if I showed you a video from a cell phone of you in that red truck holding a rifle right before your dad was shot?”
“I would say you faked it like Shelly faked that will.” He scoffed. “I heard people can do all kinds of things with those phones, like making your face look like someone else. I bet Shelly killed Pops and made a fake video to frame me for his murder so she could steal away all of our land. I see it now—all she wanted was the land. Why else would she fake a will?”
Something occurred to me. “So, you believe Shelly was out to steal your land?”
He nodded.
“Why would she try to steal it if your dad was going to just give it to her anyway?”
“Pops wasn’t going to give her our land. You said yourself that the will was a fake.”
“The will was a forgery, but the marriage wasn’t.” I leaned forward in my chair. “She was going to marry your dad to get her thieving hands on your property, isn’t that right? Once it became community property, all she had to do was wait for your dad to die and it would be all hers.”
“She didn’t wait for him to die—she killed him.” Junior pounded his fist on the table, then winced in pain and reached for his temple. I could see he was in real pain from where Susan had punched him. “Damn it!”
“Why on earth would a woman kill a man before she married him?” I folded my arms across my chest. “That makes absolutely no sense. If she kills him before the wedding, she gets nothing. If she kills him after the wedding, she gets it all. Again I ask you, why on earth would she kill him before the wedding?”
“I don’t know, but I just know she did it.”
I was about to ask the next question when I heard a light tap on the door. I’d asked Susan to interrupt me when the fingerprint examiner had taken a look at the prints.
“Excuse me for a minute.” I stepped out into the hallway, where Susan was waiting with a notepad. “Please tell me it’s him.”
“It is. The prints we recovered from the driver’s side door handle, the tailgate, and on the boat trailer all belonged to Junior. Oh, and the print we recovered from that Polaroid picture also came back to Junior—it was his left thumb print.”
; I scratched my head, nodding slowly. I thanked her and rejoined Junior in the interview room.
“How do you feel about Shelly trying to steal your land?”
“I hate her for it. That land belonged to my grandpa, and then my Pops, and then me and my brother and sister. That stealing bitch was trying to rob me of what was rightfully mine. That land is all I have. It’s all I know.”
“How far would you go to save your land?”
“As far as I’d have to.”
“Would you go as far as murder?”
“I already told you I didn’t do it.”
“You know, Junior, my interviews with suspects are always evolving,” I explained. “This one is no exception. Remember how I told you we were past who done it and had moved onto the why you did it?”
He nodded idly.
“Well, I’m pleased to report I now know why you killed your dad, so we’re now onto whether or not you had help.”
“Oh, yeah, and why did I supposedly kill Pops?”
“Your dad was fixing to give away your land by virtue of marrying Shelly, and you knew it. If something happened to him after they got married, you would lose everything. You tried to talk him out of marrying Shelly, but that didn’t work. He wouldn’t listen—”
Junior let out a roar of laughter. “That’s so funny, lawman!”
“You knew the only way to stop the wedding was to kill your dad. How sick is that? To turn on the man who gave you life…” I paused to shake my head. “You’re the worst kind of evil betraying bastard.”
The grin faded and his face turned red. I decided to change gears.
“Junior, do you love your dad?”
“What do you think? Of course I loved Pops.”
“Do you think Shelly loved him?”
“Nope. All she wanted was our land.”
“Were you angry at her for using your dad?”
“Of course. Wouldn’t you be mad, too?”
I nodded, asked slowly, “Then why not kill Shelly? Why kill your pops?”
A blank expression fell across Junior’s face.
I pulled a file folder from the top drawer of the desk and placed it on the table between us. “Do you know what’s in this envelope?”
He shook his head.
I leaned forward, my elbows resting on the envelope. “Junior, you strike me as a smart fellow. You knew from the beginning that all Shelly wanted was your land. Isn’t that right?”
“Yeah, I did.”
“Her path to that land went right through your dad. Isn’t that right?”
“Yeah.”
“Shelly wanted the land and your dad wanted Shelly.” I stabbed my index finger in his direction. “What did you want?”
He backed away, as though he thought my finger was a knife. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Isn’t it true that you wanted Shelly all to yourself? That you resented your dad for coming home with a girl closer to your age?”
“That’s a lie!”
“Is it also a lie that you killed your dad so the land would become yours and Shelly would have to marry you if she wanted it?”
“Another lie!” Junior pounded his fist on the table again, this time not caring about the pain in his head. “Did Shelly tell you that?”
“It doesn’t matter who told me, but I am curious about one thing. If you weren’t infatuated with Shelly, why’d you carry around a nude picture of her?”
Junior’s dark leathery complexion faded to a pale gray color. I knew I was finally on to something. The Polaroid was so worn we would never have been able to identify the nude woman, but Junior just gave me all the confirmation I needed—or so I thought.
“Look, Junior, we all make mistakes and we all do things we’re not proud of. This is one of those times. The most important thing is that we’re sorry for what we did.” I paused to let that information sink in. “Are you sorry Pops is dead?”
“Well, yeah.”
“If you could talk to him one last time, would you tell him how sorry you are for shooting him?”
Junior’s chin began to tremble and his eyes misted over. He put up a valiant fight, but he wasn’t able to stop the tears that began to flow. With the release of emotion, I figured he would start explaining why he did what he did, but he clamped his mouth shut and lowered his head when I pressed him for details.
“If you don’t mind—for your dad’s sake—can you nod or shake your head when I ask you some questions?”
He didn’t look up, but he nodded slowly.
“Did Shelly know how you felt about her?”
He nodded.
“So, she knew you liked her?”
He shook his head.
“I don’t understand.”
“I didn’t like her. I hated her and she knew exactly how I felt about her,” he said, biting back the quivering in his voice. “She was just trying to steal our property and I said it to her more than once. In fact, the last time my dad and I talked, he yelled at me for accusing her of only wanting our land. He took her side and said that I didn’t deserve to be a part of the inheritance because I wasn’t supporting his happiness.”
“What about the nudie picture?”
There was a long hesitation, and then he nodded ever so slightly. “It’s mine. I wondered where I lost it.”
“But, if you hated Shelly so much, why were you carrying around a nude picture of her?”
“It…it’s not a picture of Shelly.”
Scowling and confused, I asked who was in the picture.
He hesitated again, shuffling his feet and fidgeting in his seat. “Um, it’s…it’s Patricia.”
CHAPTER 43
I tried not to gulp out loud when Junior admitted to carrying around a nude picture of his own sister. I knew if I became judgmental he could easily shut down and quit talking, but I was having a hard time processing this latest information. When I had been silent for what seemed like too long of a time, I quickly asked if he was aware of his dad’s routine at the fair.
He nodded. “I’ve been there many times over the years while he was working. I knew he would go to the bathroom to smoke a joint every day during lunch.”
“How’d you know where the keys would be on the red truck?”
A long pause, then he said softly, “I met Shelly at the boat launch a few times with Pops, and she would always use her dad’s truck if he was at his camp. I saw her take the keys from the hole by the gas tank a bunch of times. She said he didn’t mind her using it.”
“Why didn’t you just tie up along Forbidden Bayou and walk to the fair to do what you did?” I was careful to stay away from harsh words like murder and kill. I wanted to save those for the end of the statement.
“Because people would see me.” He lifted his head and scrunched his face. “Even I’m smart enough to know you can’t walk in the middle of a crowd with a rifle without being seen.” He waved a hand in the air. “I was going to steal any truck I could find from the boat launch until I saw the red truck. I remembered it having dark windows, so I knew it would be perfect.”
“Why’d you do it at the fair? Why not wait until he went back to his boat and catch him there?”
“I wanted to do it on fair property so y’all would think somebody from town did it.” He stared back down at the floor and shook his head. “I didn’t think nobody from town would ever come out to the Forbidden Swamps. I still can’t believe you had the balls to show up.”
“Junior, this next question is very important; are you sorry you killed your dad?”
A few tears splashed to the floor near his feet. “Yeah, I am. I was just so angry at the time. He told me Shelly had more rights to the property than I did, and that wasn’t right. To pick a strange woman over your own blood…that’s just crazy. I knew he wasn’t right in the head. He wasn’t Pops anymore. He was like a stranger and he was destroying everything we worked so hard to keep.”
“Where’s the rifle you used to murder your dad?�
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“I threw it in the swamps on the boat ride back home.”
“Can you show me where you threw it?”
He shook his head. “I can’t remember where it was. I was scared that someone saw me and I just threw it out after I reached Forbidden Bayou. I felt like somebody was chasing me, so I was going as fast as my boat could go.” He shuddered. “I even had a dream that night about the law catching up to me and shooting me. It was so real it was scary. And then when you showed up with that other lawman, I thought my nightmare had come true.”
“Well, I’m not going to shoot you, but I have to arrest you for murdering your dad.” I gathered up my notepad and file. “I’m going to lock you in a holding cell and then a prison van’s going to come down from the Chateau Parish Detention Center to take you to the jail.”
“Can I have something to eat before they take me?” His face fell into a long frown. “It’ll probably be the last real meal I get to eat.”
“Sure, Junior. I’ll order you a burger from down the street and deliver it to your cell.”
I kept a wary eye on him while he stood and walked down the hall. He’d already been frisked when we first arrested him, so I wasn’t worried about him having a weapon, but he was a free spirit and a wild man of sorts. Once he saw the bars of the holding cell, the reality of being locked up could trigger a violent reaction.
My caution was for naught, because he went meekly into his cell and immediately took a seat on the bunk. It would’ve been easy to feel sorry for him, but the image of his father sitting on the toilet shot full of holes was too fresh in my mind’s eye for that.
Susan was standing in the hall outside of the interview rooms when I left the holding area. Her face was beaming. “We’re getting married!”
A huge burden was suddenly lifted off my shoulders as I realized the case was finally solved—and within five days we’d be married. “Thank God! I was starting to worry.”
Susan nodded. “Me, too.”
As Susan headed for home, I hurried down the block and picked up a late night burger for Junior. Melvin was sitting in the dispatcher’s office when I returned and gave the food to Junior. When I returned to the dispatcher’s station, Melvin offered to wait at the police department until the transport van arrived.
