by BJ Bourg
SILENT
TRIGGER
A London Carter Novel
(Book 3)
__________________
BY
BJ BOURG
www.bjbourg.com
SILENT TRIGGER
A London Carter Novel by BJ Bourg
This book is a work of fiction.
All names, characters, locations, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination, or have been used fictitiously.
Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, locales, or events is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved.
No portion of this book may be transmitted or
reproduced in any form, or by any means, without permission in writing from the author, with the exception of brief
excerpts used for the purposes of review.
Copyright © 2017 by BJ Bourg
ISBN-13:
ISBN-10:
Cover Art by Christine Savoie of Bayou Cover Designs
PUBLISHED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Contents
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 37
CHAPTER 38
CHAPTER 39
CHAPTER 40
CHAPTER 41
CHAPTER 42
CHAPTER 43
CHAPTER 44
CHAPTER 45
CHAPTER 46
CHAPTER 47
CHAPTER 48
CHAPTER 49
CHAPTER 50
CHAPTER 51
CHAPTER 52
CHAPTER 53
CHAPTER 54
CHAPTER 1
Monday, September 24
If there was any truth to the assertion that our lives flash before our eyes when we die, then Gaylord LeDoux’s highlight reel should’ve been displayed big as shit and in full surround sound on the jumbotron in his mind.
I’d been eating lunch at my favorite Chinese restaurant when I received the call five hours earlier. An irate man had walked into Olivier’s Car Dealership in Mathport—a small town in Magnolia Parish that was located between Gracetown and Payneville—and shot two employees and one customer to death. He then proceeded to lock up the doors and take the remaining occupants hostage, threatening to kill anyone who defied him or made a break for it. Luckily, an employee was in the bathroom during the time of the takeover and he hid in a stall and dialed 9-1-1.
It had taken me less than fifteen minutes to throw away my food, toss money on the counter, and drive the nearly ten miles to the scene. I set up on the eastern side of the dealership, high in the cabin of a nearby lift bridge. From my vantage point, I could clearly see through the glass walls that made up the entire front of the building. Before getting in my position, I’d been able to obtain information from the owners about the type of glass on the front of the building, and had loaded my bonded bullets for the shot. I was hoping we’d be able to lure the bad guy outside, but we had to be ready in the event he refused to leave.
It wasn’t hard to spot Gaylord. He wore faded jeans and a dark, plaid flannel shirt that was unbuttoned, exposing a dirty white T-shirt underneath. His sneakers were held together with Duct tape, and there was at least a week’s worth of salt-and-pepper growth on his face. His disheveled hair was balding in a weird way. It was brown and thick on the sides, but had a landing strip down the middle—sort of like a reverse Mohawk.
After taking one look at his leathery face through my crosshairs, I knew immediately how this one would end. His eyes were a dull gray—as though the life had already started to drain from his veins—and one thing was certain…he was so pissed off that he no longer had any regard for human life.
I’d tracked as much of his movement as I could, losing sight of him every now and then when he’d enter an office or duck behind a cubicle wall to harass the employees huddled there. He walked by the dead bodies often, but didn’t give them a second glance. He paid as much attention to them as intoxicated tourists did to the litter on the ground along Bourbon Street.
Jerry and Ray had arrived minutes after I did. Jerry was set up in a field on the south side of the building and Ray had taken up a position to the north. Since then, we’d waited and watched.
While this wasn’t how I planned on spending my day, I had long ago realized that such was the life of a police sniper leader. My primary job was as a detective, and I had a heavy caseload, but my sniper duties controlled my life. When I wasn’t at the range shooting, I was honing my skills in other ways, such as dry-firing (practicing all of the fundamentals of marksmanship with an empty weapon) on my living room floor, practicing my quick-draw—this included my rifle as well as my sidearm—and a host of other drills.
Once I’d made detective and both of my jobs were combined, well, that meant I had to give up sleep if I wanted spare time to do the little things…like eat or bathe. I sighed. Or have a social life.
I’d only seen Detective Sergeant Dawn Luke once since we’d closed the Trinity Sniper case. We’d gotten together the following week to view the SD cards from the game cameras recovered off of Wellman Boudreaux’s property. There was nothing useful on the cards and we’d gone our separate ways with a promise to keep in touch. I’d meant to call her, but one thing had led to another. Here it was, three weeks later, and I hadn’t said a single word to her. Maybe she cared, and maybe she didn’t—
“Command Post to Sierra One, stand by,” said Sheriff Cory Chiasson, whose voice sounded excited in my earpiece. “November One says negotiations are breaking down. Subject is threatening to kill a hostage.”
November One was our top crisis negotiator, Uma Menard. If she said communications were breaking down, then that meant this guy’s grapefruit was about to get popped.
Uma was as good as they got, and had quickly moved to the top spot after her predecessor, Lieutenant Henry Petit, had mishandled his last situation. He had responded to a crisis call about a troubled teenager threatening suicide. When he arrived with his team, they found the young boy sitting on a high branch in a tree with a noose around his neck. Petit had walked up to the tree and said, “Kid, get your ass down from there.” The kid did exactly as instructed—he promptly jumped out of the tree and killed himself. They said his neck nearly snapped clean off when the rope went taut. Members of his family were outside and witnessed the whole ordeal. One of his junior negotiators later said Petit had been arguing with his wife earlier in the day and was distracted, but that didn’t save his ass—or the sheriff’s budget—in the lawsuit that followed. It was the largest liability payout yet for the Magnolia Parish Sheriff’s Office and it cost Petit his job.
I quickly calculate
d the distance between Gaylord and the glass window. Between ten and fifteen feet. In all my years of sniping, I’d learned that there were no guarantees when shooting through glass. As the distance between the target and the glass increased, the chances of a one-shot stop decreased. The dangers to nearby hostages also increased with distance, and I was acutely aware of this as I made my calculations.
At the moment, Gaylord was leaning against a cubicle wall and he was on his cell phone. A black pistol dangled from his right hand and he waved it around as he talked. The nearest hostage was sitting on the floor several feet to my right. If Gaylord needed to be taken out, now would be a good time.
I pressed my left thumb against my chest to activate the radio button strapped to it. “Sierra One to Sierra Two, are you ready?”
Jerry mumbled into the radio that he was born ready.
I keyed up my radio again and called out to the sheriff. “Ready when you are, MS1 (it was the sheriff’s radio sign and stood for ‘Magnolia Sheriff’). We’ll go on your count…”
I took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, relaxing every muscle in my body. When I reached my natural respiratory pause (that point at the end of a normal exhale when the body naturally pauses in preparation for the next breath), my crosshairs settled on a mole about an inch in front of Gaylord’s right ear. At his current angle, that mole represented the center of his head.
Suddenly, Gaylord pushed off of the desk and yelled into the phone. He threw it across the room and lifted the pistol in the direction of the nearest hostage.
With the cold calmness born from many years of mental preparation and doing this job, I pulled the trigger.
CHAPTER 2
Cynthia Alvey plopped to the couch and pressed the power button on the remote control. She’d only been back in Louisiana for three weeks and she was already bored. Her mom had sent her to live with her dad in Kentucky when she was sixteen, and she’d only been back a handful of times since then—mostly Christmases or Thanksgivings. Now she was back for good, but she wasn’t sure how she felt about it.
The television fired to life. It was on a local news channel and a young female reporter was standing in front of what looked like a car dealership. Cynthia thought the reporter’s blue dress was pretty, and she wondered how she’d look in it. She also wondered if Hank would ever change and start doing nice things for her, instead of beating her every chance he got. Maybe she could afford nice clothes if he didn’t waste what little money they had on beer.
“…sources close to the investigation say an armed gunman threatened the lives of the hostages,” the reporter said, “and police snipers were forced to take him out. The name of the police sniper is not being released, pending the investigation, but the manager of the business, a Mr. Wilton Michot, agreed to speak with us.”
The camera turned away from the reporter and settled on a man standing directly to her left. The man wore a business suit, but his clothes were covered in dust and his sports coat was torn.
“Mr. Michot, what happened inside the dealership today?”
“It was horrible,” Michot said in a shaky voice. “Gaylord came in brandishing a firearm and he went straight to his ex-wife’s cubicle, shot her dead. A customer screamed and he turned and shot her, too, and then he shot one of my salesmen, who happened to be in his wife’s cubicle.”
“So, you know Mr. Gaylord?”
Michot nodded. “He used to drop by a lot when they were still married. He was a nice guy. We’re all shocked.”
“Do you know why he targeted his wife?”
“Well, she had intimated to one of my secretaries that she was seeing a salesman from here.” Wilton stopped and cleared his throat. “I think her husband found out about it and came in to…you know, he targeted her.”
“Is there any indication that the salesman he shot was the one having an affair with his wife?”
Wilton stammered for a few seconds and finally said, “I have…I’m not…I shouldn’t comment on that.”
A truck door slammed from the driveway just outside the wall of the kitchen and Cynthia jumped in her skin. “Shit!” She hadn’t heard her husband’s truck pull up. She glanced at her watch. It was only four o’clock. Hank didn’t usually get home from work until six. Why are you home early?
The knot started swelling in her stomach. It was a constant in her life—same as the beatings—and it camped out in the depths of her gut like a tumor. Whenever she was alone and Hank was at work, it would shrink to the size of a large fist, but as soon as she’d hear his truck pull up it would balloon to the size of one of those watermelons that won the Kentucky State Fair last year.
Cynthia jumped again when the knob turned in the door and it was jerked open. She turned off the television and hurried to greet him. At forty-six, his dark hair was starting to show signs of gray, so he put lots of gel in it and slicked it back. He had a thick mustache, but his beard was thin and grew in weird patches. She’d often thought about asking him to shave it off, but she dared not.
He slammed his keys on the table and she could see that his jaw was set. Crap! That spelled trouble. She made a detour for the kitchen cabinets and grabbed the rice pot. “I’ll cook some rice and fry up some shrimp,” she said, trying not to sound scared. He didn’t like it when she acted scared of him—it only made him beat her harder. He’d say things like, “You want to act like you’re afraid of me? Well, I’ll give you a reason to be scared!”
Hank didn’t say a word to her. He jerked the refrigerator door open, snatched a beer from the shelf, and then plopped down on the sofa. He turned the news back on and sat there sulking, pulling long and hard from the longneck. If she were lucky, he’d drink himself into a coma like he often did and she’d have the night to herself.
Setting the rice to cook, Cynthia pushed her short, stringy blonde hair out of her face and stole a glance in his direction. She’d met Hank thirty years ago when her mom decided she’d had enough of her rebellious ways and sent her to live with her dad in Kentucky. That summer was the loneliest of her life, but things improved when she started school. She was the outsider so all the girls hated her, but the boys were curious and she got a lot of attention. Hank wasn’t the first boyfriend she had at her new school, but he was the last.
“Get me another beer,” Hank called gruffly from the living room.
Cynthia dropped what she was doing to bring him the longneck. He took it with a grunt and used his gray tank top to twist off the cap. He took a long swig, then stared up at her. “What do you want?”
“I…I was just wondering why you’re home early.”
He turned his attention back to the television, where footage of the hostage scene kept playing over and over. After a few minutes of tense silence, he said, “They cut my hours at the shop.”
Cynthia almost crumbled to the ground, remembering the day Hank had come home last year and announced that the coal preparation plant that employed him was closing and he was being let go. She’d innocently offered to get a job until things improved, but her suggestion triggered within him a rage she’d never seen before…or since. It was the worst beating she’d ever received at his hand. She’d blocked out most of the events of that day, as well as the week-long hospital stay, and she’d rather not be reminded of that horror. Best not to say anything, she thought, returning to the kitchen.
“Are you blaming me?” Hank asked from the sofa. “Is that why you’re not saying anything? Is that why you just walked away from me? You think I’m not a man because I can’t support you? Is that it?”
“No, not at all,” Cynthia said quickly. “You’ve had a rough day and I’m sure you’re hungry, so I want to get your food cooked. If I would’ve known earlier, I could’ve had it ready—”
“How in the hell was I supposed to let you know earlier?” Hank sprang to his feet. “You think I planned this shit? You think it’s my fault they cut my hours?”
“No, of course not.” Cynthia’s heart beat in her chest and she co
wered against the cabinet. There was no reasoning with him when he was this irrational. Every word was the wrong word. Her only hope was that something would distract him and spare her the pain she knew was coming.
“It was your idea to come here,” he said. “Go to work for the oilfield in Louisiana, Hank. We’ll never have to worry about money again. You remember that?”
Tears welling up in her eyes, Cynthia nodded. “I’m sorry, it’s my fault.”
“Damn right it’s your fault.” He squinted, eyeing her suspiciously. “Why’d you really want to come back home, Cynthia?”
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t play dumb with me. Who’d you come back to see?”
“Oh, God…no one. I hate this place.”
“That’s bullshit and you know it. Your mom sent you away because you began screwing all the boys in the neighborhood.” He spat a stream of saliva in her direction. “You were nothing but a common whore. You’re lucky I got a hold of you when I did. I saved you from yourself.”
Cynthia nodded her head in agreement, hoping it was convincing enough for him, but she remembered how bad things had changed once he’d gotten a hold of her. It was her junior year, back when she had plans for her future. She wanted to be a teacher or an astronaut or a veterinarian. She actually believed she could do whatever she wanted, to be whatever she wanted, but that was before she slept with Hank.
One time together was all it took for him to start thinking he owned her. Afterward, if any boy in school showed the slightest interest in her, Hank would wait until the final bell rang and follow the boy to the parking lot and beat the crap out of him. Despite the extreme fear she felt, Cynthia almost grinned to herself as she remembered thinking, I knew I was good in bed, but damn…I ruined that poor kid.
Hank finally got kicked out of school for fighting, and he demanded she quit with him. When she refused, he hit her, and he hit her hard. She’d never been hit before and she thought she was going to die. He apologized and told her it only happened because he’d never known true love. He said he loved her so much it made him crazy. She was scared, but flattered at the same time.
