Silent Trigger: A London Carter Novel (London Carter Mystery Series Book 3)

by BJ Bourg

  Dawn was doubled over laughing. When she calmed down, she shook her head. “You’re pretty slick. I’m going to have to watch you.”

  I nodded my head toward the interview room, where Pearce Vidrine had been sitting for the past half hour. “Well, it’s not over yet. You ready to see if he’ll confess to killing Wilton and Shelton?”

  “Let’s do it.”

  I followed Dawn into the interview room and we sat side-by-side across from Pearce. His face was pale and his skin appeared clammy.

  “What’s going to happen to me?” he asked. “Am I going to jail for this?”

  “We need the story and we need it straight,” I said. “Tell us what happened out there at the lumberyard.”

  He adjusted his glasses and wiped sweat from his face. “It was such a long time ago. I don’t…I doubt I’ll be able to remember everything.”

  “Look, no bullshit, okay?” I leaned forward and looked him in the eyes. “You have the power to give this family closure. They’ve been looking for Mr. Simoneaux for thirty years. Now that we’ve found him, they deserve to know what happened. You can’t undo what you did, so the least you can do is to help them understand.”

  “That’s his name? Simoneaux?”

  “Yeah, Theodore Simoneaux. He was a husband and a father. He even had grandkids. He worked hard providing for his family. When he went missing, it nearly destroyed them. They deserve to know…”

  Pearce dropped his gaze and stared down at his feet. “What if they don’t like what I have to say?”

  “As long as it’s the truth, it’ll be fine.”

  He took a deep breath and then let out a long sigh. Still staring at the floor, he began to talk. “It was toward the end of our senior year and we wanted to do something crazy to punctuate our last days of high school. Wilton lived down in the swamps, so we decided to explore the area behind his house and search for some water moccasins. The plan was to put one in every toilet on the last day of school and—”

  “Wait, stop.” Dawn lifted her hand to interrupt him. “You guys were going to let venomous snakes loose in a high school?”

  “I didn’t say we were smart.” He removed his glasses and pinched his eyes with his thumb and index finger. After a brief moment, he opened his eyes and put his glasses back on. “Anyway, we were looking for snakes when we saw this girl fishing out by this wide canal. I don’t remember the name of the waterway—it was ‘something dead’—but it was behind the lumberyard building. The girl was pretty. She had on these tight jean shorts and her T-shirt was tied in a knot in the front, where it showed off her stomach. Like I said, she was real pretty and we hid in the trees watching her for a minute. We were trying to talk Wilton into going talk to her, but…”

  He lowered his head again and remained silent for a few long seconds. When he looked up again, he frowned. “I wish I could go back and change the events of that day.”

  I told him I understood, but I needed him to tell me what happened.

  “Like I said, we were trying to get Wilton to go talk to her when this old man came out of the lumberyard. He said something to the girl and it startled her. He walked up to her and began talking to her, but we were too far away to hear what they were saying. After a few minutes, he reached out to touch her. I’m not sure what he was trying to do, but it scared her and she slapped his hand away.”

  Pearce shook his head slowly. “Everything that happened after that was a bit of a blur. I know the man became really angry and he attacked her. He shoved her to the ground and got really rough with her, cursing while he did it. I don’t know why he got so angry, but then he started choking her. He wouldn’t stop. Her face turned blue and she passed out. We thought she was dead.”

  “Are you trying to tell me Theodore Simoneaux attacked this girl?”

  “I’m not trying to do anything—I’m straight saying he did it. And it got worse…much worse.”

  CHAPTER 47

  “So, while the old man’s attacking this girl, y’all just stood there watching?” I asked.

  “We were kids. We’d never witnessed anything like that before. What’d you expect us to do?”

  “Weren’t y’all football players? Weren’t y’all supposed to be tough?”

  He clamped his mouth shut and I quickly apologized, urging him to continue.

  “Well, the man unbuckled his belt and opened the front of his pants. Next, he ripped the girl’s clothes off and began raping her.” Pearce scowled and shook his head. “It was too much for us to watch. Wilton and I turned our heads. Wilton was crying, I know that for sure, but Shelton disappeared. When I saw him again, he was standing behind the man and he had a hammer in his hands. He…he hit the man in the head with the hammer and the man just slumped over.” He shuddered. “I’ll never forget the sound it made or the look on that old man’s face. I think he was dead from that one hit, but Shelton kept hitting him. I had brought along a baseball bat to help catch the snakes. As I watched Shelton beating the man and screaming down at him…I don’t know, it just made me feel crazy. I ran over to them and…”

  His voice trailed off and he just sat there. “And what?” I finally asked.

  “I was pretty disturbed by what I’d just seen, you know. I must’ve had PTSD or something. I…I joined in with Shelton and began hitting him with the bat.”

  Pearce shook his head slowly. “But it wasn’t like I was doing it. It felt like I was standing over my body watching me do it. I just kept hitting him and hitting him, but I felt numb and absent from my body. I swear, I still don’t think I did it. It just seemed too unreal.”

  “Okay, what happened next?” I asked.

  “Shelton and I just kept beating on him until Wilton ran over screaming like a crazy person, begging us to stop.”

  I realized Dawn and I were both on the edges of our seats. I wanted to stop him to ask what the hell happened to the girl, but I didn’t dare interrupt the flow of the story. I figured he’d get to it in his good time.

  “Once my arms wouldn’t work anymore, I dropped the bat and looked over at Shelton. His eyes were wild. I’d never seen him like that and it scared the shit out of me. The girl had been sitting on a blanket to fish, so Shelton told me and Wilton to wrap the man up in the blanket and strap him to Wilton’s three-wheeler with some chain we found in the lumberyard. I wasn’t about to argue with him, because I thought he would kill me next—he looked that crazy—so we did what he said.”

  Pearce stopped to wipe his eyes again before continuing. “While we were tying down the old man, Shelton checked on the girl and said she was still alive. We wanted to get her some help, but we were worried we’d go to jail for killing the old man.”

  When Pearce stopped again to take a moment, it was more than Dawn could handle. “What the hell happened to the girl?” she asked. “Who is she? Where is she?”

  “We don’t know.” Pearce explained that they had driven to the woods on Wilton’s three-wheeler and dirt bike, with Shelton driving the three-wheeler and Wilton driving the dirt bike. Pearce had ridden on the back of the three-wheeler. “Wilton brought Shelton back to his house so Shelton could get his truck. When they got back to the lumberyard, we loaded the girl in the bed of the truck and Shelton told Wilton to crash the three-wheeler into the canal. Wilton didn’t want to at first. He said he would get in trouble if the body was found strapped to his three-wheeler someday, but Shelton told him to report it stolen.”

  “Why’d he want to sink the three-wheeler with the body?”

  “It was the only thing heavy enough to drag the body to the bottom and keep it there.”

  Pearce leaned back in his chair as though he was done and a weight had been lifted from his shoulders.

  “And the girl?” I asked.

  “Oh, we dropped her off at the hospital in Seasville and hauled ass.”

  My eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean we dropped her off. We opened the tailgate and carried her to the sidewalk, and then
we left.”

  “You just dropped her there like a sack of shit?” Dawn asked incredulously. “Did she even have her clothes on?”

  Pearce shook his head slowly. “The old man had ripped all of her clothes off. We gathered up everything from the lumberyard and later burned it at Shelton’s house. He didn’t want to leave any evidence behind.” He was thoughtful, then said, “We never did find her panties, though. We figured they got wrapped up in the blanket with the old man.”

  “And you never found out who the girl was?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “Did it make the news?”

  “Not that we heard.”

  “Didn’t any of you recognize her from school?”

  “We all went to Magnolia Life Learning Academy and I think she went to public school. I’d never seen her before that day or after.”

  “Do you even know if she lived or died?”

  Pearce shook his head. “I don’t know anything more than I’ve already told you.”

  “Why didn’t y’all go to the police and report what happened? From what you’re saying, y’all acted in defense of the girl, so that would’ve been a justifiable homicide.”

  He grunted. “We didn’t know shit about the law. All we knew was we killed a man and would live the rest of our lives in prison if we got caught.”

  “I guess you now know that Wilton didn’t sink the body to the bottom of the canal?”

  He sighed. “When I heard the news story about the remains of an old man being found in a shallow grave in Lower Seasville, I knew that lazy bastard had screwed us over.”

  I rubbed my chin, mulling over everything he’d said. Something finally occurred to me. “What was the old man doing there?”

  Pearce shrugged. “My guess is he was stealing wood.”

  “Why do you think that?”

  “That hammer Shelton hit him with? He found it near a pile of neatly stacked wood. It looked like the old man was stacking it up to steal. And then we found a boat tied up in the canal. There were some creosote planks in the boat, too, so it looked like he was making a bunch of loads.”

  “What happened to the boat?” I asked.

  “It should still be at the bottom of the canal with the hammer. Shelton threw the hammer himself and he told Wilton to sink the boat. It was an old wooden thing—junk, really. We would’ve driven it somewhere else to sink, but we couldn’t find the keys for it.”

  I glanced at Dawn, and she nodded. “We need to get some divers in that canal first thing tomorrow.”

  I nodded and turned back to Pearce. I spent another twenty minutes getting more details from him, and then I studied the notes I’d taken. I looked over at Dawn. “You have anything else?”

  “Yeah, why were you at Shelton’s camp?” she asked.

  “I stopped at the bar to see him, but they said he wasn’t there. I was about to leave when someone ran in screaming that something bad had happened to him. They said they saw an ambulance turn down the street to his camp, so we all went out there to see for ourselves.”

  “Why’d you go by the bar to see him?”

  “Because he’s my friend.”

  “I think it’s more than that,” Dawn said. “I think there’s a connection between Theodore Simoneaux’s murder and Shelton’s murder, as well as Wilton’s murder.”

  “I do, too, and I was going talk to him about it. When I found out Wilton was murdered with his pants open and his stuff exposed, I knew right away it had something to do with the old man. I wanted to talk to Shelton so we could try and figure it out.”

  “And why should we believe you?” she asked.

  “I don’t care if you believe me or not. If I don’t find out who killed my friends fast, I’m next. They’re coming after us for killing the old man. The more I think about it, the more I believe it’s got to be a member of his family, but I just don’t know how they figured out it was us.”

  I shook my head. “That’s not what’s going on here. We found Mr. Simoneaux’s body after Wilton was killed, so his family had no clue he was murdered until after the fact. But you, on the other hand…”

  “I already told you I didn’t kill my friends. I would never hurt someone I love.”

  “Do you love your wife?” I asked.

  Pearce’s eyes narrowed. “What’s that got to do with anything?”

  “That’s an up or down answer. You either love her or not. Why’s it so hard for you?”

  “It’s not hard. I love her, but I don’t know what she’s got to do with this.”

  I pulled the New Orleans warrant out of my folder and slid it across the desk. “You just said you would never hurt someone you love, yet you strangled the wife you’re supposed to love.”

  He shook his head from side to side. “That’s a bullshit charge. We were in New Orleans for Mardi Gras when that happened. She was real drunk and falling all over. This float was passing by and she started screaming at them to throw her some beads. When no one would throw anything in her direction, she pulled up her shirt to try and flash them.” He removed his glasses and rubbed his sweaty face. “I was mad, sure, but I didn’t strangle her. I tried to get her to stop, but she pushed me away. I was reaching for her shirt to pull it down and my hand accidentally touched her throat. That’s when she started screaming that I was choking her. There were some cops nearby and they tackled me to the ground. They punched me and kicked me after I was handcuffed. It was horrible.”

  “Where’s your wife stay now?” I asked.

  “At home…with me in Jasper. She went to the DA’s office in New Orleans and dropped the charges, but the state picked them up. She’s going to testify in my favor.”

  We pressed him a bit more on his role in the murders of Wilton and Shelton, but he didn’t give us anything useful. He seemed genuinely afraid that he was going to be killed next. He didn’t even argue when we told him he was under arrest.

  “That’s the safest place for me right now,” he said, “until y’all catch the person who’s doing this.”

  “Until we catch the killer?” I smirked. “Dude, if you’re convicted, you’re going to die in prison. Life without parole.”

  Pearce gasped violently, as though the air had been kicked from his gut. “Life in prison? What are you talking about? It was self-defense for that girl—you said so yourself.”

  “A jury’s going to have to decide this one.” I stood to my feet. “Get up. You’re going into a holding cell until you can be transported to the detention center.”

  CHAPTER 48

  Wednesday, October 10

  I met Dawn at the Seasville Substation first thing in the morning. She was wearing tight jeans and a button-down shirt when I found her in the evidence processing room. She looked as tired as I felt, but her brown eyes were fully alert.

  “Did you get the keys from the sheriff?” I asked.

  She held up an ancient ring of keys and asked if I was ready.

  I nodded and followed her down a long corridor at the southernmost end of the building.

  We had stayed up late into the night writing the arrest report charging Pearce Vidrine with the murder of Theodore Simoneaux. He had identified a picture of the bat we recovered from the lumberyard as being the same bat he used to beat Mr. Simoneaux and he said Mr. Simoneaux was wearing glasses when they first saw him. He also thought the panties we recovered were the same panties the girl was wearing before Mr. Simoneaux ripped them off.

  Once we were done with Pearce, Dawn had conducted an exhaustive search of our computer systems, but the records didn’t go back thirty years. That was when she’d told me about the secret room.

  “There’s a room in the attic above the substation with at least twenty large filing cabinets and a stockpile of guns,” she had said. “I’ve never been up there, but Brandon told me about it once. He said there are case files that go back at least sixty years.”

  It had been too late to start last night, so we’d agreed to check it out first thing this
morning.

  “The entrance is supposed to be through here,” Dawn said when we reached the door to an abandoned cleaning closet. She pushed an old mop bucket and a piece of panel out of the way and leaned back to allow some light into the closet. There, behind the panel, was an old wooden door. “Well, here does nothing.”

  She shoved the key in the lock and tried to turn it, but it wouldn’t budge. She jiggled it a bit, but it still wouldn’t move. She tried one of the other keys, but met with the same result. When she had almost reached the last key, she finally found one that worked. The knob was sticky, but she easily twisted it and then forced the door open.

  I flipped the switch on my flashlight and aimed the light up a long, narrow stairway. Cobwebs hung from the ceiling and across the opening, They were thick as moss.

  “It looks like a haunted house,” Dawn said, reaching for the mop in the bucket. Swinging it like a sword, she fought forward and cleared a path through the thick webs. When we reached the top of the landing, she fumbled with the key ring and finally found the correct key to the door that stood between us and whatever mysteries lay on the other side.

  The hinges screamed in protest when she pushed the door open. A strong musky smell greeted our nostrils and a wave of heat enveloped us. The beams from our flashlights looked like light sabers as they slashed through the darkness of the large space. Every surface in the room was covered with at least a quarter inch of dust. The air was thick and I could almost smell the black mold in the place.

  A long row of filing cabinets were positioned against the wall to the left and a homemade gun rack with individual slots lined the entire right wall of the attic—and every slot had a long gun leaning against it. Handguns hung from pegs on the wall and there were at least twice as many of those as there were rifles and shotguns. Tags were attached to the trigger guards of each of the weapons and I walked over to inspect one.