by BJ Bourg
“Well, we know he’s a local fisherman who hangs around the beaches harassing women when he’s not offshore. He’s out on bail for fondling a drunk lady who was passed out on the beach.” He eased the gearshift in park and scratched his head. “That’s what the contempt warrant is all about.”
From the back seat of the unmarked cruiser, I kept my eyes on the front door as we stepped out and approached the house. Dawn had spread wide to the right and her hand was dangling near the baby Glock in her holster.
“Want me to cover the back?” I asked McQuarie, who was walking directly to the door.
“Sure, but I don’t think it’s a problem.”
I made my way down a narrow pathway between the house and the neighboring chain link fence until I reached the back door. I stood poised at the corner and waited. From where I stood, I could hear McQuarie bang on the front door. His knock brought about an immediate reaction from inside as small dogs—there had to be three or four of them—went crazy and assaulted the front of the house. Footsteps soon followed the barking. While I couldn’t hear what was being said, the low drone of voices at the front of the house sounded cordial.
“London, it’s clear,” Dawn called from the narrow walkway. When I reached her, she told me Vaughn was working on his boat. “His mom said he’s leaving to go trawling first thing in the morning, but we can catch him at the dock.”
We had to wait a few minutes while McQuarie made small talk with Vaughn’s mother. He finally turned and walked to his cruiser. I grumbled silently to myself, but slipped into the back seat without saying a word and sat patiently while we headed toward one of the many docks along the Gulf of Mexico. I hadn’t planned on spending all day in Mississippi and McQuarie wasn’t moving fast enough for me.
We needed to find out what Vaughn knew and then we needed to return to Plymouth East and identify the mystery man from the casino. We’d obtained copies of the surveillance footage, and the security officer had been gracious enough to print out a still shot of Mr. Moustache, so we could head straight to Joey Bertrand’s house. If he didn’t recognize the man, anyone from the church would, because it was hard to miss that large caterpillar on his lip.
At long last, McQuarie turned into a large oyster shell parking lot and stopped near three long concrete piers that extended like slender fingers over the water. We stepped out and were greeted by a warm breeze blowing in from the Gulf.
“Which boat is his?” I asked, calculating that there must be over five hundred boats along the three piers.
McQuarie pulled out his pocket notebook and nodded to himself as he studied his writings. “He calls his boat the Mr. Vaughn Damn. He’s a big Jean Claude fan. His mother said his boat’s docked down the pier on the end.”
Each pier had to be half a mile long and there were boats docked all up and down their lengths. Large creosote pilings jutted up from the water at even intervals along both sides of each of the piers, making up individual slips for the fishermen to tie up their boats. I turned to McQuarie and shot one thumb to the left and the other to the right. “Which one is considered the pier on the end?”
He scratched his head again and chuckled. “That’s a good question.”
I pointed right. “How about Dawn and I go down the one on that end and you take the one on the other end?”
“That’s sounds good.” He turned and ambled toward the pier on the left and I wondered how many days it would take him to make it to the end.
“Is it just me, or does he not have a care in the world?” Dawn asked.
“He’s certainly not in a hurry for anything.” I shrugged. “I guess it’s better than being uptight.”
Seagulls screamed overhead, circling the boats and water in search of food. A few fishermen were cleaning their nets on the platforms in their individual slips, and every now and then a seagull would swoop down and snatch up a random fish or shrimp that had fallen from the nets.
We walked across the shell parking lot and stepped onto the pier. The concrete surface was damp and sticky with salt water and we had to watch our footing. As we walked, we noticed one guy, who wore a red raincoat, jeans, and black rubber boots, leaning over a large ice chest picking small fish from his catch. He would toss them overboard, to the delight of the nearby gulls, and then drop the shrimp in smaller ice chests. I approached him from behind and said hello.
He didn’t even look up. “What do you want?”
“I’m looking for the Mr. Vaughn Damn.”
“Slip eighteen.”
I thanked him and stepped back to look for a number on the slips.
“There aren’t any,” Dawn said. She started counting from the parking lot. “This would be four or five, depending on which side is an even number.”
We continued walking as she counted and stopped when she reached sixteen. We looked ahead, surveying the boats on either side.
“Over there,” she said, pointing. “It’s the white wooden boat with the blue trim. I can see the name.”
I nodded to let her know I saw where she was pointing. It was twenty yards away and there was a man on the rear deck squatting beside a gray wooden box. The box appeared to be the housing for the engine, and there were tools spread out on a nearby bench. An exhaust pipe extended up from the engine and it was attached to a muffler high up in the air. I didn’t know what a boat muffler was supposed to look like, but that one looked like the muffler on my pickup truck.
As we drew nearer, we walked softly and tried to appear casual in the event he turned around and saw us. We were still too far to reach him if he decided to make a run for it, so we had to be stealthy. I looked toward the opposite pier to see if it would be possible to get Detective McQuarie’s attention, but the middle pier was blocking my view of where he was. He would probably hear if I yelled his name, but I didn’t want to alert Vaughn.
When I looked back toward the boat, Vaughn was staring directly at us. He had stopped working and had fixed us with narrow eyes. I knew in an instant that he would run, and that’s exactly what he did. Without a moment of hesitation, he dropped the tools in his hands and dove over the side of the boat, disappearing into the salt water below.
“Damn it!” I yelled.
Dawn and I bolted in Vaughn’s direction and I hollered for McQuarie as we ran. I didn’t know if he heard me, but I didn’t have time to make sure, because Vaughn had resurfaced on the opposite side of our pier and was already half way to the center pier. He was swimming faster than I thought possible for a person in boots and clothes, and I knew he would reach the nearest slip before I had time to run back to the parking lot and down the center pier. Still, I tried.
“Stop or I’ll shoot!” Dawn hollered, trying to bluff him into surrendering. It didn’t work, and only motivated him to swim faster.
Pumping my arms and legs as fast as I could while trying not to slip, I turned the corner at the end of my pier and raced toward the center pier. I had finally reached it and was just starting down it when I saw Vaughn come up for air to the left of the pier. He was heading for the pier that McQuarie was on.
I switched directions and saw Dawn run by in the parking lot ahead of me. She had seen him, too, and was hollering to get McQuarie’s attention. McQuarie finally heard Dawn and turned to look where she pointed. He waved that he saw Vaughn and picked up his radio. I didn’t know who he was calling, but it was obvious he wasn’t going to chase the fugitive and it would be up to Dawn and me to catch him.
I hit the parking lot on a dead run, my legs stretched to their limit, and began to close on Dawn, who was approaching the last pier. She turned down the pier, but I saw her lurch to a stop and whip around, pointing farther down.
“He swam under it!” she hollered. “He’s still heading east!”
I kept running, trying to keep an eye on him while dodging the occasional fishermen walking around carrying supplies to and from their boats. One man didn’t see me until the last second and he screeched out loud, dropping a small ice chest an
d a six-pack of beer. He began cursing at me, but I didn’t even look back.
Once I ran past the last pier, I realized where Vaughn was heading. Just east of the shell parking lot there was a long stretch of beach. People were sunning and splashing in the water and, at first, I thought he might try to get lost in the crowd. However, it quickly occurred to me why he was heading in that direction. About three hundred feet from the beach was a long line of Jet Skis waiting to be rented. They were secured to an anchor rope by a short strap and a snap hook. If he reached the Jet Skis and stole one, we might never see him again.
I called upon every muscle in my body, begging for more speed. I was almost parallel to Vaughn’s position, but he was still three hundred feet from the shore and only about twenty feet from the nearest Jet Ski.
Once I hit the beach, I headed straight for the water, but I lost a step because of the soft sand. Directly in my path were two women sunbathing. I didn’t have time to run around them, so I hurdled right over them—they were lying on their stomachs and didn’t even notice—and hit the water two steps later.
High-stepping it for the first dozen or so feet, I dove into the water when it got deeper and swam as fast as I could. I was still two hundred feet away when Vaughn climbed up the back of one of the Jet Skis and cranked it up. I hollered at him to stop, that I only wanted to talk, but he revved the engine and sped off, shooting a stream of water behind the craft as he fled.
My heart sank as I watched him growing smaller and smaller in the distance, but I continued fighting forward. After what seemed like forever, I finally crawled up the back of the Jet Ski and mounted it. I slipped the kill switch key in place and fired up the engine. I then smashed the finger throttle, nearly flying off the back of the watercraft as it shot violently forward. The only thing that saved me was my grip on the handlebars.
Once I was clipping across the water, I stood high in the saddle to get a better view of my surroundings. I raced in the direction of the tiny spot that represented Vaughn and his Jet Ski. He seemed to be growing fainter with each passing second. The speedometer indicated I was going sixty-four miles per hour. I hollered and squeezed the throttle tighter, trying to force the Jet Ski to go faster, but it was no use. It would accelerate, but then I would hit a wave and lose a few miles per hour. Water sprayed my face with each wave I hit and the salt burned my eyes, but I just blinked it away and focused like a laser on Vaughn.
After racing full-speed across the water for about ten minutes, it appeared I was gaining on him a little. I kept the throttle fully smashed and took the inside lane as we followed the shoreline, feeling encouraged.
The sense of optimism was short-lived, because I was still a long way from him when he cut left and headed for the beach. At the rate we were traveling and my distance from him, he would reach the shore about a full minute before I did, and that would give him plenty of time to run away or jump into a vehicle and disappear.
I scanned the beach as I raced forward, wondering if there were any Dark Sands police officers around. I didn’t know if they had officers assigned to beach patrol, but if they did, I certainly couldn’t see them. I got excited for a moment when Vaughn hit a wave at an odd angle and nearly capsized, but he righted the craft and barreled forward.
He was only about twenty feet from reaching the beach when, out of nowhere, a speedboat blew by me and nearly rocked me off my Jet Ski. I started to curse them out when I realized there were blue flashing lights mounted to a rack above the boat and a siren was blaring.
It was the Dark Sands Police Department’s water patrol division! I wanted to cheer out loud at the sight of the officers closing in on Vaughn, and I immediately realized Detective McQuarie had been on his cell phone or radio calling them to action from the pier. I suddenly felt bad for how I’d initially felt about him, but there was no time for beating myself up. I needed to get to Vaughn as soon as they captured him so I could question him about—
“Oh, no!” I stared in shock as the speedboat turned sharply when it reached Vaughn and sideswiped his Jet Ski. Vaughn went airborne and seemed to skid along the surface of the water when he landed. I heard him yelling, but then his cries were cut off when he disappeared into the murky bubbles of the Gulf of Mexico.
CHAPTER 28
4:15 p.m., Plymouth East, Louisiana
Abraham pushed through the last cane row in the area where Kathleen’s car had been found and wiped his face on the front of his shirt. He had been searching all day, but hadn’t found anything since locating the random cell phone on the side of the highway. He had searched the patch of sugarcane where the car had been found at least three times. For his efforts, his shirt was torn, his jeans muddy and wet, his arms sliced up from the sharp sugarcane leaves, and his boots were saturated. He looked around, wondering what it was that he was missing.
“Come on,” he said out loud. “There’s got to be some evidence out here!”
He thought about plunging back into the cane, but he knew he had thoroughly searched every inch of the area. He had to face it—there was nothing worth finding out here. If some evidence had been left behind, it had been destroyed or the killer washed away any traces of it.
Sighing in defeat, he trudged from the muddy patch of sugarcane road and made his way to his truck. He stopped to kick the mud off of his boots and even considered taking them off, but decided against it. He could wash his truck later. As for right now, he needed to get home and spend what was left of the day with Joy. She had called him three times—once to say she was back from school and twice more to ask when he was coming home—and it seemed she was losing her patience with him.
Before Abraham could start his truck, his cell phone rang. He put it to his ear without looking and shoved the key in the ignition. “This is Abe.”
“Hey, Abraham, it’s Martha.”
Abraham winced. “What’s up?”
“I haven’t heard from you all day and I was wondering if you were still in Plymouth East.”
He glanced at the clock on his dash. Martha would be knocking off soon and he suddenly worried she might be taking the flirtatious behavior to another level. “I am,” he said, “but I was just leaving. Joy’s waiting for me at home and I’ve—”
“But you’re still there right now?”
“Yeah, I’m on Plymouth Highway near the shortcut road,” he said, trying to be patient. “But I have to go—”
“I just need you for a minute. There’s a disturbance up the road from where you are and my nearest deputy is twenty minutes away on a traffic stop. Do you think you can run over there and get things under control until he breaks free from the traffic stop? We don’t know exactly what’s going on, but it sounded heated in the background.”
Relieved, Abraham agreed. “What’s the address?”
After providing the address, Martha said, “The complainant is a man named Kim Berry. He said someone’s at his house wanting to fight him.”
“Got it!” Abraham whipped his truck around and sped up the shortcut road toward Plymouth Highway. Once he reached it, he turned right and smashed the accelerator. As he drove, he shoved the front of his shirt tail into his jeans to expose his badge. He didn’t want the complainant or the suspect to mistake him for a citizen.
He had just rounded the last bend in the highway and was traveling along the final stretch of road that led to Highway Eighty when he saw the disturbance. A man was standing in the front yard of a house to the left and he was wielding a baseball bat. Abraham was still a quarter mile away, so he couldn’t hear what the man was saying, but it was obvious he was angry and screaming something toward the house.
Abraham smashed the brake pedal and coasted into the front yard, barely throwing the gear shift in park before jumping out. “Sheriff’s Office!” he called. “Sir, I need you to put down the bat!”
The man didn’t even turn toward Abraham.
“Where is she, you bastard? I know you have her!” The man smashed the bat against the side of the
house and continued yelling.
Abraham stole up behind the man and announced his presence again. Still ignoring him, the man reared back to swing the bat again, and that’s when Abraham sprang into action. He leapt forward and hooked his right arm over both of the man’s arms and locked them in place, controlling the bat. He then used his right leg to sweep the man’s feet out from under him. The man landed on his back with a thud that knocked the wind out of him.
Abraham rolled the stunned man to his stomach and handcuffed him.
“I’m going to place you in the back seat of my truck,” Abraham said calmly, helping the man to his feet and then snatching the bat from the ground. “If you act civil, there won’t be any more trouble and you won’t face any more charges. Is that understood?”
The man, whose face was streaked with tears, nodded and continued gasping for air.
“My name’s Abraham Wilson,” he said. “What’s yours?”
“Gerard,” the man said. “Gerard Brister. That son of a bitch has my wife and he won’t tell me where she is.”
Abraham turned toward the house and a chill reverberated up and down his back. Is there another missing woman? Is this Kim Berry the suspect?
“What do you mean, he has your wife?” Abraham asked.
“My wife left me to be with him and he knows where she is, but he won’t come out and tell me.”
“Oh, so he didn’t kidnap her?”
“No, man, didn’t you hear me? She left me!”
Relieved, Abraham exhaled the breath he was holding. “What’s your wife’s name?”
“Debbie.”
“And how do you know this guy knows where she is?”
“Because I paid a private investigator to follow her, that’s how,” Gerard said. The hurt was evident in his voice and his chin quivered as he continued. “She waits until I go to sleep and then she sneaks out and comes to this house. She’s come out here at least eight times in the last two months.”
“I see,” Abraham said thoughtfully. “Does she have a car?”
