Proving Grounds: A London Carter Novel (London Carter Mystery Series Book 2)

by BJ Bourg

  “Nice try, but you’re toast.” Her expression remained hard. “You’re also being charged with felony theft of the boat.”

  “I didn’t steal that watercraft!”

  “So, you admit that Wellman Boudreaux let you borrow the boat to help kill off his competition?” I asked.

  Shannon’s face scrunched up. “Who’s Wellman Boudreaux?”

  “The man who gave you the boat,” I said.

  “No one gave me the boat. We found it floating near the mouth of the lake.”

  Dawn and I traded glances. “How’d you come to be in the mouth of the lake in the first place?”

  “A friend of a friend named Gary took us out in his little aluminum hull, but when we found that boat, we decided to use it to free Mother Nature’s lizards. You know, just in case someone spotted us.” He smirked. “We weren’t trying to get caught. That bastard just sprung up out of the marsh grass and started chasing us. Before we knew it, there were at least a dozen of them on our asses.”

  “So,” I said slowly, “you just found the boat floating in the water? All alone?”

  “Yep. It was pushed up against the bank of the bayou and it was still running.”

  “Didn’t you find that kind of odd?” I pressed. “A boat idling in the middle of nowhere…”

  “I’ve seen stranger things.”

  “Where was the driver?”

  “I have not the faintest clue, and we didn’t wait around for them to come back.” Shannon shrugged. “Probably some crazed hunter who left his boat to murder one of our helpless four-legged friends.”

  “I’ve never met a hunter who could fit the bikini in the bottom of the boat, and most men can’t fit a woman’s size six.” I shook my head. “Nope, there was no crazed hunter in that boat. Just a small female out there on the water, probably trying to catch what little sun she could find. What’d you do to her, Shannon? Did you rape her? Why’s her bikini at the bottom of the boat?”

  “What in the hell are you talking about? I don’t know anything about some girl and I’m offended that you would accuse me of rape!”

  Dawn left the interview room and returned with her camera. She activated the display screen and pulled up one of the pictures she’d taken of the bikini and sneakers. “This doesn’t look like your color, and your female companions were all clothed when we stopped y’all, so who does it belong to?”

  “I swear I don’t know. I didn’t even realize what it was.”

  Dawn flipped through the pictures until she landed on one depicting the blood spray on the boat. “Can you explain how that blood got there?”

  “Blood?” The skin around Shannon’s eyes tightened just a bit, but he quickly recovered. “I didn’t see any blood when we borrowed the boat.”

  Dawn chuckled. “Oh, so now you borrowed the boat?”

  “I had no intent to keep it permanently, so it can’t be considered theft.”

  “What about unauthorized use?” I asked. “Or murder?”

  “Murder? I already told you I would never hurt anyone—even those who are most deserving of execution for their crimes against humanity.” Shannon took his seat and sighed. “Look, I realize now that it was a bad move on my part taking that boat. I had no idea it was involved in something as sinister as murder. I just thought it had been abandoned by some alligator hunter. It was harmless error. I swear it. You can ask anyone in my group.”

  “Did the bikini and shoes belong to anyone in your group?” I asked.

  “They had to have been there when we entered the boat.”

  I shot my thumb toward the door. “Did one of your buddies hurt the girl? If so and you helped cover up the crime, you’re going down for accessory.”

  Shannon took a deep breath and exhaled forcefully. “I already told you we didn’t do anything with any girl. You’re wasting your time—”

  “London, Dawn…come quick!” Becky had burst through the door and was breathing hard from running down the hall. “I’ve got a caller on line two who needs to speak with y’all.”

  Norm walked into the hallway from the kitchen area and glanced in our office. “What’s going on?” he asked.

  “Can Norm handle it?” Dawn tossed her head in Norm’s direction. “We’re busy interrogating this fellow.”

  Becky shook her head from side to side. “You’re going to want to take it—there’s been another sniper murder.”

  CHAPTER 21

  “That damn Frank Simoneaux sent someone to try and kill my son!” It was Wellman Boudreaux and he was bellowing into the phone. He broke into an unintelligible tirade, but there was no mistaking the threat to march down to the Simoneaux camp and kill the whole bunch of them.

  “Whoa,” I said. “You don’t know that Frank had anything to do with the attack on your son.”

  “That’s bullshit! He accused me of killing Norris and now he’s playing eye for an eye with my family.”

  “Just calm down and tell me what happened. Is your boy hurt?”

  Dawn was sitting at the corner of Becky’s desk staring up at me. “What’s going on?” she mouthed.

  I tilted the handset toward her, and she stood to lean her head close to mine, placing her ear next to the speaker.

  “Clayton was out on the water with his girlfriend when somebody took a shot at him. They missed him, but hit her right in the head.” Wellman paused and I could hear him taking a breath. “I know it was Frank and his people. I swear, London, I’m going to take my men down there and I’m going to burn his place to the ground!”

  “Look, Mr. Boudreaux,” I said, my voice calm. “If you planned on going after them you would’ve already done it. You called me because you’re not positive Frank shot this girl—just like Frank’s not positive you killed his son—and you want me to figure it out.”

  I heard Wellman breathing heavily on the other end, as though thinking over what I said. I didn’t wait for him to object. “This shooting…where’d it happen?”

  “Near the Cut. Clayton was out on the water with his girlfriend when it happened.”

  “Was he in a boat?”

  “Yeah, but it’s missing. Clayton got knocked out of the boat and it ran off. Why?”

  “Can you describe it?” I asked.

  Once he described the boat, Dawn and I turned to face each other, our noses less than an inch apart. I then looked down the hallway where Norm was standing outside of Dawn’s office guarding Shannon. That son-of-a-bitch had to be lying!

  I pushed my ear back toward the speaker. “We’ve got your boat here at the office and we’ve got a suspect in custody.”

  “You what?”

  “We caught someone driving one of your boats—the one you just described—and we took him into custody,” I explained. “We found blood on the motor.”

  “How? Where? I mean, who is it? Is it one of Frank’s people?”

  “No,” I said. “It’s an activist who was protesting alligator hunting. He got caught cutting some lines earlier this morning.”

  There was a long pause from the other end. Finally, Wellman asked, “You mean this guy is killing us off to make us fight each other?”

  “I’m not sure what he’s doing,” I said, mulling over the reasons Shannon would have for killing Norris and this random girl. I could understand his screwed up rationale for killing Norris, but what was the girl doing that caused him to target her? Was Clayton the intended target and he accidentally killed the girl? Shooting at, or off of, a boat could be tricky because of the way it rocks. It was plausible this activist was shooting at both families in the hopes of causing a swamp war. If the two families were busy fighting each other, they wouldn’t have time to kill alligators. It was actually a brilliant plan.

  I cautioned Wellman that I wasn’t even positive Shannon was the killer, and this brought a grunt from the man. “You just said he had my boat and there’s blood in it, so if he didn’t do it, who the hell else could’ve done it?”

  I shrugged to myself, asked, “Whe
re’s your son right now?”

  “He’s here…at my house.”

  “Can you put him on the phone?”

  There was some rustling and a shaky voice came on. “This is…this is me, Clayton.”

  I introduced myself and asked him if he was okay.

  “I…I don’t know. I’m kind of scared and a bit freaked out. My stomach hurts like hell. I…I never seen somebody die before. She was only nineteen and they shot her right through the head. It was horrible. I…I didn’t know what to do. I tried to get her out of the boat, but…”

  “Okay, listen…I don’t want you talking to anyone and I don’t want anyone asking you any questions. Sit tight and wait for us. We’ll be there to interview you within the hour.”

  I told him to give the phone back to his dad, and I instructed Wellman to make Clayton comfortable and not talk to him about the shooting. “I don’t want his statement being influenced by anything someone might say to him. Keep him isolated, and wait for us to get there.”

  Wellman agreed and we hung up the phone. Dawn and I then marched into the interview room. Dawn snatched Shannon out of his chair by the arm and dragged him toward the door.

  “What the hell’s going on?” he asked, his eyes wild. “Where’s she taking me?”

  I followed as Dawn shoved him down the hallway and into one of the holding cells. Shannon lost his balance and fell headlong into the nearest bunk. He righted himself and turned to stare at us, a puzzled expression on his face. The cell door echoed loudly up and down the corridor when it clanked shut. Dawn turned the key and stepped back, folding her arms across her chest. “That’ll keep him until we get back.”

  “What’s going on?” he asked. “I demand to be released on my own recognizance. I’ve violated no laws that would warrant a stint in jail.”

  Dawn leaned close to the bars. “I’ve got some bad news, Mr. Reed. You know that boat you were driving?”

  He nodded slowly, his eyes wary.

  “We’ve been able to confirm that a young girl was killed in it—shot through the head.”

  “But I didn’t know anything about it. I swear—I found the boat drifting on its own. I just borrowed it to cut the alligator lines.”

  “Your bad,” Dawn said.

  We turned and walked away, leaving Shannon to plead his case in our wake. After moving his cohorts from the lobby to separate cells, I told the jailor to keep an eye on them and not let any of them communicate with each other until we returned.

  Dawn and I then hurried to her car and followed Norm south on Highway 3, driving ninety-plus miles per hour with our sirens blaring and lights flashing. I didn’t know what we’d find down there, but I was hoping against hope that the killer was already sitting in our jail cell.

  Just in case we had the wrong guy, I got on my phone and called Ben. “How fast can you get your bird in the air and fly over to Devil’s Lake?”

  “I can be there in fifteen minutes,” he said.

  “Great. I’ll have Jerry and Dean meet you at the hangar. I need snipers in the air.”

  When we hung up, I called Jerry and told him what was going on.

  “But Becky said y’all have the killer in custody,” he said, sounding confused.

  “We’re not positive, so I need you to scour every inch of those swamps from the air. He’ll most likely be wearing a ghillie suit, so look for the small things.”

  “You got it.”

  I described the route Dawn and I had taken on Thursday when we tracked the sniper from his shooting position to the divot along the western bank of Little Bayou. “The trail went cold at the water’s edge, which tells me the killer’s most likely coming and going by boat. I need y’all to check every canal and bayou leading away from the island. If you see a boat tied up anywhere along any waterway, notify us immediately.”

  “And if I spot the sniper from the air?”

  “Get him before he gets you.”

  CHAPTER 22

  Wellman Boudreaux’s camp…

  Clayton Boudreaux was sitting on his bed crying when we walked into his bedroom. He stabbed at the tears with a fist and exhaled forcefully, trying to toughen up. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ve never seen…never seen anything like that. One minute she was alive and the next…it was so horrible. I swear I didn’t know it was going to happen.”

  Dawn sat beside him and put a hand on his back. “It’s okay, son. Don’t bottle it up. Let it all out. It’s normal to be upset after witnessing something so horrific.”

  Clayton fought hard to keep the tears back. He stood and walked around his room, taking deep breaths and exhaling repeatedly. I didn’t say anything for a few minutes. When he was breathing normal again and had stopped trembling, he looked at me with bloodshot eyes. “Am I in trouble?”

  I didn’t know if he was simply naïve or if he’d done something wrong. I hesitated for a brief moment, and then asked if he did something that would get him in trouble.

  He was clenching and unclenching his fists, as though trying to decide if he should say what he was thinking.

  “Look,” I began, “if you didn’t kill the girl—”

  “Joyce,” Clayton said. “Her name is Joyce Cole.”

  “Okay. If you didn’t kill Joyce or set her up to be killed, you can’t be in any trouble.”

  Clayton sighed audibly. “I didn’t have anything to do with it. I liked her.” He lowered his head, as though embarrassed. “When you find her, she’s going to be naked. We…we were about to”—he glanced at Dawn and then looked at me—“you know, do it in the boat.” He whispered the last part so Dawn wouldn’t hear, but she heard anyway.

  I nodded my understanding. “It’s okay. We’ve all been there.”

  I saw Dawn’s eyebrows furrow from where she was sitting behind Clayton taking notes, and she slowly lifted her head to look at me. I stole a quick glance in her direction and she mouthed the words, “I’ve never done it in a boat, so speak for yourself!”

  I stifled a chuckle and asked Clayton if he could tell us what happened.

  “There’s not much to tell. We were getting undressed and…” Tears welled up in his eyes and he lowered his head again.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “Go on. What happened?”

  “They shot Joyce while she was kissing me,” he said, his jaw trembling uncontrollably. “It was such a weird and scary feeling. I felt her die in my mouth. She just went limp. Her tongue stopped moving and slipped out of my mouth. She fell straight to the deck and then slid out the boat. I tried to get her out the water, but it was no use. She disappeared and I thought they would kill me if I hung around, so I tried to leave.”

  When he didn’t continue on his own, I asked what he meant by tried to leave.

  “I wasn’t looking where I was going and a branch knocked me out of the boat.” He started trembling again. “I thought I felt her grab me under the water, but I knew it couldn’t be her because she was dead.”

  “Are you sure she was dead?”

  He nodded, his face blank. “There was a hole on both sides of her head. Blood was pouring out of one of the holes and getting in the water. I think I got some of it in my mouth when I hit the water.”

  It didn’t take a genius to know he would need a ton of counseling after all he’d gone through. Probably never be able to have sex again, I thought.

  “How’d you get home?” I asked.

  “The boat shot off to the eastern bank and I thought about swimming to it, but I didn’t want to be out in the open in case the killer was still out there.” He explained that he swam to the nearest shore, which was on the western side of the bayou, and made his way through the trees until he reached the Cut. “It took me about an hour, but I finally made it and I saw one of my dad’s friends fishing in the mouth of the lake. He brought me home and we called y’all.”

  Dawn closed her notebook and stood. “Can you take us to the exact spot it happened?”

  He jumped at the unexpected sound of Dawn’
s voice and rubbed his face with hands that shook. “Yes, ma’am, I know exactly where it is. Can I talk to my dad before we go? I’d like to let him know what’s going on. Maybe get some water or something? My mouth is dry.”

  We nodded and walked outside to give him some privacy with his dad, descending the stairs two at a time. As we made it to the landing and then walked along the pier toward where Norm was waiting by the boat, Dawn shoved my arm. “Have you really done that before?”

  “Done what?” I knew what she meant, but wanted to see if she’d actually say it.

  “You know what I mean,” she said, unimpressed. “Have you ever had sex in a boat?”

  All I said was, “Maybe,” and then nodded at Norm when we reached the Boston Whaler. “The kid’s going to take us to the crime scene. From his description of her wounds, this’ll definitely be a recovery mission.”

  “I’ll get the grappling hooks ready.” Norm began digging in a large compartment at the front of the boat. After cursing a bit and shoving things around inside the opening, he finally produced a length of rope with a set of hooks attached to one end. He tossed them to the side and began digging for a second set.

  I turned away and idly scanned the front of the house, waiting for Clayton to join us. A few members of Wellman’s security team were milling around, but I didn’t see Patrick. I turned to Dawn. “By the way, any word on Patrick’s prints?”

  “Yes and no. Melvin texted me earlier to say he ran them through AFIS, but they turned up nothing.”

  I was thoughtful. “That doesn’t mean he’s not a criminal.”

  Dawn agreed. “It just means he’s never been arrested.”

  I scanned the area, wondering if Patrick was out there right now with his glass on me.

  “What’re you looking for?” Dawn asked.

  “I’m looking for Slick Patrick.”