by BJ Bourg
“I did. I also brought one for Cade.”
“Good…I might get to shoot him if he gets stupid with it.”
“Can you at least wait until after he shows us where the body’s buried?”
Dawn laughed. “I’ll try, but I can’t make any promises. I called Melvin to see if he could come give us a hand. He said he would get some help and meet us out there.”
I was glad she had and was hoping he’d bring an army. The sooner we found out if Cade was telling the truth or not, the sooner we could get back to figuring out who killed Wilton. “What about K-9?” I asked, “Can you call them to see if they can get a cadaver dog out there?”
“Great idea!” Dawn pulled out her phone and began making calls.
I was just driving to the back of Ender’s Lane when Dawn hung up. “All of the K-9 officers are busy at a drug bust in Chateau, but they’ll try to send one as soon as they break free.”
The City of Chateau was the parish seat for Magnolia and it was located as far north as one could travel without leaving the parish. Even if they were available, it would take them at least an hour to reach us. We couldn’t wait.
I pulled to the side of the street and shut off the engine after we passed the last house on Ender’s Lane. As we sat waiting for the prison van to arrive, I glanced over at Dawn. She was leaning back in the seat, her window open and the wind gently caressing her long brown hair.
“How are you?” I asked. The suddenness of my voice seemed to surprise her.
She turned and smiled. “I’m well. Just thinking about my mom.”
“You know you can leave anytime to go be with her. I’ll cover things here.”
“Thanks…that’s sweet of you,” she said, “but I need to see this through.”
I nodded my understanding and met her gaze. “I admire your dedication to the job. It’s rare and it’s one of the things I like about you.”
Her tanned face seemed to redden just a little. “Do you remember when we were back in the swamps tracking down Norris Simoneaux’s killer?”
“You mean on our first date?”
“Yeah, that.” She grinned and exposed a row of perfect teeth. She then looked away and stared down at her hands. “I…it was exciting watching you do what you do. I’d never felt that way about someone before.”
My pulse began to quicken. “What do you mean?”
“I…I don’t know how to explain it. You were so focused on what you were doing—on the tiniest little detail of the trail—yet you were completely aware of our surroundings. It was amazing to watch.”
“I was just doing my job.”
“Well, that’s another thing I like about you…you’re so good at what you do, yet you’re modest about it.”
My heart was racing in my chest now as the thought popped in my head. Instead of dwelling on it, I just opened my mouth and started talking. I had a saying I’d been using for years, Don’t stop, don’t hesitate, don’t even think about it. If you hesitate, people die…just do it.
“Dawn, when this case is over—before you go back to Arkansas—would you like to go to dinner with me?”
“Sure,” she said, raising her head to look at me. “I’d like that.”
“Just to be clear, I’m not asking you to any old dinner,” I explained. “I’m asking you out on a date.”
“That’s what I was hoping.”
Right at that moment, I noticed Dawn’s lips for the first time. Sure, I’d seen them before, but it was only then that I took notice of how moist and full they looked. They parted ever so slightly as we sat there staring at each other, our eyes locked onto each other like lasers. Before I knew it, I was slowly leaning toward her and she was leaning toward me. My heart was pounding in my chest so loud I thought she could hear it. Her bottom lip was trembling and her eyes started to slide closed as she drew closer and closer—
A loud horn suddenly exploded behind us and I jerked around to look out of my back glass. A young transport officer I’d never seen before was waving at us from the driver’s seat of the prison van.
“I’m going to kick your ass,” I mumbled under my breath.
CHAPTER 28
I stepped out of my truck and walked to the prison van. “Take the lead,” I told the driver, whose name badge told me he was Kevin Nguyen. “Cade will tell you when we get to the magical tree.”
I returned to my truck and slid into the driver’s seat. Neither Dawn nor I spoke as the prison van passed by us. I filed in behind it. The silence seemed loud. Once we’d left the gravel road and began bouncing around the uneven dirt path, I stole a glance at her. The corner of her mouth was curled up into a grin.
“That was almost dangerous,” I said, and we both began laughing.
“Do you think he saw us?” she asked. “Do you think that’s why he honked the horn?”
“I don’t know, but I’m going to find an excuse to punch him in the nose.”
“Not if I get to him first.”
The dirt road was overgrown with tall weeds and it disappeared into the trees about a thousand yards ahead of us. It was certainly a road less traveled. Dead Man’s Canal was off to our right and it flowed east to west, paralleling the road we were on. I wondered if it would’ve been easier to go by boat, but dismissed the idea. It was too late to call someone from water patrol to meet us out there.
Once we reached the thick forest, we were swallowed us by the dark shadows and my automatic headlights came on.
“This place is spooky,” Dawn said, surveying our ghostly surroundings.
Undergrowth was thick in this area of the woods and the going was slow, thanks to the wild roots that snaked across the dirt road. My truck jostled roughly as we moved deeper into the throat of the forest. After what seemed like an hour of being kicked around in the front seat, I saw a wall of light up ahead and we eventually punched out into a large clearing. It was the parking lot of the abandoned lumberyard.
Gravel crunched under my tires as we followed the van across the clearing and parked in front of the large structure. The building was old and the wooden planks weathered, but it still looked sturdy. It was one of those old buildings that had withstood the test of time—and in Louisiana, that test included a whole page of questions on Hurricanes Betsy, Andrew, and Katrina.
I shut off my truck and Dawn and I joined Kevin, Cade, and the other transport deputy—an old veteran C.O. (corrections officer) named Stella—near the prison van. Cade’s legs were shackled and his hands were cuffed to a chain wrapped around his waist.
“How’s he going to dig with all of that jewelry on?” Dawn asked.
Stella jingled a set of keys in the air. “They can come off, especially if it means he’s got to do some manual labor.”
Cade pointed down at his feet. “How am I supposed to walk with these on? It’s at least a couple of miles to the oak tree.”
“Can we take my truck?” I asked.
“Nothing larger than a four-wheeler would fit through there, but that was back then.” He glanced around at the large bushes that had sprung up across the parking lot over the years. “By the look of things here, we might need machetes and chainsaws to get to the spot on foot.”
I walked to my truck and, after shouldering my survival bag, grabbed my axe and the shovels. Kevin took one of the shovels from me, and I nodded to Stella. “You can remove the shackles. If he runs, we’ll shoot him and bury him next to the old man.”
As Stella bent over and removed the leg irons, Cade gulped and said, “I ain’t stupid. I don’t want Ms. Dawn to clobber me again.”
I glanced at Dawn, who had slung a crime scene backpack over her shoulder, and handed her a shovel. “You ready for this?”
“As ready as I’ll ever be, I guess.” She grabbed Cade’s arm and pushed him forward. “You get to lead the way…and if you’re lying, you won’t be coming back.”
Although it was cool and the wind was blowing, sweat beads had formed on Cade’s head and begun pouring down hi
s face.
“I’m not lying,” he said, leading the way around the lumberyard toward the back of the building. “I wouldn’t put myself through all of this for nothing. Believe me…I’d rather be back in my cell right now.”
No one responded to him. Stella took the last shovel and followed Cade. When we reached the back of the large building, we all stopped and stared at the dense forest up ahead.
“Right through there,” Cade said. “That dark spot in the middle is where the path used to be.”
Before us was a solid wall of greenery that looked unforgiving and impenetrable. There was the faintest hint of an opening down the middle, but breaking through would be no easy task. It wasn’t exactly what we’d all planned for our day, but it happened to be the cards we were dealt, so we took to it without complaint.
Kevin volunteered to lead the way and I nodded. Using the shovel I’d given him, he began swinging at the long-stemmed weeds and thick bushes that blocked the faded trail, slowly making a path we could all walk through. Cade was directly behind Kevin, followed closely by Stella and then Dawn. I brought up the rear, keeping a wary eye on our surroundings. I didn’t think Cade was capable of organizing a breakout—nor did I think he had the juice—but I wasn’t taking any chances.
We hadn’t gone a hundred yards when I almost bumped into Dawn’s backside.
“What’s going on?” I asked, craning my neck to look ahead of us to where Stella was holding onto Cade’s arm. Sweat had formed on the back of her uniform and there were pieces of tree branches in her blonde hair.
“Kevin’s getting tired,” Stella said. Her voice was laced with contempt.
“You want to try swinging this shovel?” Kevin asked, holding the shovel in her direction.
“I’ve got my own,” she said.
“Watch our backs,” I told Dawn. I pushed past her and Stella. Thick pickers grabbed at my flesh, but I ignored the sting. When I reached Kevin, I handed him my axe. “Give me the shovel. I’ll take the lead.”
Kevin didn’t argue, and he seemed grateful for the break. I asked Cade if he recognized where we were. He started to talk, but a coughing fit interrupted his response. When he was done, he said, “It’s not much farther along this trail. Once you see the giant oak tree, we’ll be there.”
“What if we already passed it? It’s so thick out here I can’t tell one tree from another.”
“Trust me—once you see it, you’ll know it. It’s the king of the jungle out here. You won’t be able to miss it.”
I took the lead and began swinging the shovel like a scythe, aiming the blade at the base of the weeds. Thistles grew tall along the trail and the purple flowers exploded into powdery dust with each strike of my shovel.
As I forged a path through the wall of greenery, my mind wandered back to my childhood and how independent thistles had made me feel. Anytime I’d get hungry while out in the woods, I’d simply lop the flower off the top of the wild weed with my knife—all it took was one swift swipe of the blade to behead the plant—and then chop away the prickly leaves. Once that was done, I’d strip off the plant’s tough skin with my knife and then eat the tasty core. In those early years, I felt like a survivor living off of the land…and it was a good feeling not to have to rely on anyone else for my food. Of course, it wasn’t as good as my mom’s pot-fried chicken and smothered green beans, but that and wild blackberries kept me alive during my day-long treks in the Louisiana backcountry.
I frowned, wondering what my life would’ve been like had my family not been involved in that car crash. I’d been told many times over the years that these things happened for a reason, but I called bullshit on it. I didn’t believe there was any rhyme or reason to it and I didn’t believe anyone could explain it. If they could, I’d love to hear their explanation for why Lily was left all alone to fend for herself in this cruel world. Sure, she had other family members, but they were strangers compared to her dad and brother.
CHAPTER 29
Sneezing from somewhere in the rear brought me back to the present. Cade had been coughing intermittently and I stopped briefly to ask him if he was okay.
“My allergies are acting up,” he explained. “It happens this time of year.”
I nodded and moved on. If we wanted to find the victim before nightfall, we needed to get busy.
After about thirty minutes of trudging forward—my muscles aching and my shirt ripped from when I’d snagged it on a large branch earlier—I broke through the edge of the tree line and came upon an open field of tall grass with small saplings scattered about. Directly ahead of me at the center of the field was an ancient oak tree that rose toward the sky like a giant piece of broccoli. I stopped and stared for a moment, awestruck by the sheer size of the monster tree.
“That’s it!” Cade said, brushing by me and breaking into a stumbling jog across the field. “That’s the giant oak I was telling you about.”
I thought about stopping him, but decided against it. If he ran off out here, he’d be alligator food before sunup tomorrow morning.
When Kevin walked by, I noticed his eyes were red and his face was swollen.
“You okay?” I asked.
He rubbed his leaky nose on the short sleeve of his uniform shirt. “This shit happens every time I go out in the woods in the Fall. It’s a curse, I know, but someone’s got to have it.”
Dawn stopped beside me and threw the axe to her shoulder. “This is a big field. I hope he knows exactly where he buried the man.”
I glanced up at the sun. It was making a beeline for the west and I knew we only had a few hours of daylight left. Rumbling from the south got my attention and I turned to see dark clouds gathering in the area of the Gulf. I pointed to it. “I hope that’s not coming this way.”
Dawn grunted. “We need to get moving.”
While she dropped her backpack and pulled out her camera to photograph the area, I walked to where Cade was circling through the tall grass north of the tree. Stella and Kevin were watching him like vultures, almost eager for a chance to take him out.
“Well, do you remember where you buried him?” I asked.
Without answering, Cade lifted his chained hands as far as he could and lined them up with a second tree in the distance. He then backed up until he came into contact with the trunk of the massive oak. Keeping his hands trained on the second tree, he began counting out loud as he paced forward.
When he reached the number twenty-three, he stopped and stabbed at the ground with his heel. “This is the spot.”
“How sure are you?”
“I’m positive.”
“Would you bet your life on it?” My eyes narrowed and I took a step toward him, enjoying how he squirmed in his jumpsuit. “I’m serious, Cade, this had better not be a hoax.”
“I…no, it’s not a hoax. I’m sure of it.” He indicated toward the oak tree with his head. “I remember it like it was yesterday—I walked off twenty-three paces from the trunk of that tree and started digging. I buried him right here.”
“Why twenty-three paces?” I asked. “That’s a random number. Why not an even number…like twenty or ten or fifty?”
“Because it’s the day I was born.”
“Makes sense. Did you leave the body in the blanket?”
He nodded.
“How deep did you dig the hole?”
“To my chest.”
“How tall were you back then?” I asked.
“An inch or two shorter than I am now, I think.”
I took the axe from where Dawn had placed it on the ground and waited for her to finish documenting the area. When she nodded that it was all clear, I waved everyone back. With the sun beating down on my back, I took aim at the large roots that snaked across the spot Cade had identified and began chopping them up one at a time. Some only required a single chop, while others required several. Working in a circle large enough to fit three bodies, I continued chopping at the roots until I’d severed all contact between them and
the monster oak tree.
Once I was done, Dawn and Kevin helped me jerk the roots from the ground. Some were harder than others, because their tiny veins were embedded deeply in the ground, but we finally cleared the circle and tossed them aside. Arming ourselves with shovels, we started digging into the earth, removing scoop after scoop of the tar-like mud.
The digging was slower than I liked, because there were countless roots hidden just under the surface that would stop our shovels dead in their plunge. We’d then have to use the axe to clear it away and dig until we hit another root.
Stella and Kevin took turns working one of the shovels and they even gave it to Cade for a spell, but he didn’t last long. Every now and again, I caught myself staring at Dawn’s arms as she worked her shovel. They were feminine, but toned, and she had good stamina.
Once we broke through the top layer of soil, we stopped and dropped to our knees, removing large clumps of mud and broken roots from the area. Dawn worked much harder than Kevin and Stella combined. Although they were switching places, there were many times when they would both stop and sit around to rest. As I watched Dawn, I began to wonder if she would outlast me. I wasn’t tired yet and hadn’t taken any breaks, but neither had she.
“You’re well conditioned,” I said after a while. “You’d make a good sniper.”
She didn’t say a word at first as she cleared out her corner of the dig site, and I began to doubt she’d heard me. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail and sweat poured down her beautiful face, leaving streaks of dirt trails across her skin. After throwing a large clump of mud to the side, she leaned close and looked me right in the eyes, her perfect nose about an inch from mine. Even though she was covered in mud and sweat, she still smelled great.
“If I were to become a sniper under your supervision,” she said in a low voice, “we wouldn’t be able to go on that date. So, which would you prefer?”
I felt excitement growing in my chest and I nodded. “Point taken. There will be no more talk from me about you becoming a sniper.”
