by BJ Bourg
I ruffled the hair on Achilles’ neck. “What—this innocent little ball of fur?”
“You can say what you want.” Nikia was shaking his head. “I can see it in his eyes—he’s mean.”
“Your nephew doesn’t think he’s mean.” I shot a thumb toward the west side of town. “I saw him at the bus stop. He said you think you saw Ty Richardson on this side of town.”
“No, I know I saw him on this side of town. I called the police department to tell them and they said they would send somebody over. I didn’t think it would be you.”
“Are you not happy to see me?”
“Nah, you kinda bring back bad memories.”
I nodded, not sure if he was talking about the time he lost his wife or the time I knocked him unconscious with a kick to the chest. If he was referring to the loss of his wife, then I might feel bad—but for her, and not him.
“Well, I need to know what you saw,” I said. “Once you tell me everything, I’ll be out of your hair.”
“Just like I told the girl who answered the phone”—he shot a thumb toward Camp Street—“I saw that fellow named Ty walking on the street heading toward the back.”
“How do you know it was him?” I asked.
“It looked just like the guy in that picture and he was mumbling to himself.”
“What day was this?”
“Saturday—oh, wait, it would’ve been Sunday by then.” He nodded to himself. “Yeah, it was Sunday morning.”
“And what time did you see him?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” he mused. “It must’ve been around two o’clock in the morning. I had come outside to smoke and I was sitting on the steps when I heard someone talking. I looked up and didn’t see anything at first because it was dark, but then he walked under the street light and I saw him.”
“When did you realize he was a missing person?”
“Last night when I was at my sister’s house.” He glanced down nervously when Achilles shifted his position and popped his jaw. “I…um…I was checking her newspaper for the classifieds and I saw the article about him going missing.”
“What was he wearing when you saw him?”
“Um, it was hard to see exactly what he had on, but I think it was jeans or some kind of blue khaki pants.” He scrunched up his face as he tried to remember, and I wanted to beg him not to do that, because it made him look constipated. “I think he was wearing a black shirt and it had a tear in the shoulder where I could see his bare skin. I don’t remember if it was short-sleeved or long-sleeved.”
I didn’t bother telling him that khaki was a color and not a type of fabric. “Were you able to hear what he was saying?” I asked. “Any of it at all?”
“No, not really. He wasn’t really talking loud. He was moving his hands around like he was trying to explain something, but nobody was there to hear him.” He shook his head. “He didn’t see me sitting on the steps because it was dark, so he wasn’t talking to me.”
I nodded and glanced toward the street. “Did you come back outside to smoke later that morning?”
“Oh, yeah, a bunch of times.”
“And did you ever see him again?”
“Nope.”
“Did you hear any noise after you went inside?” I pressed. “Any indication that he might’ve returned the way he had gone?”
“I mean, I didn’t hear anything, so I don’t really know if he came back, but I just know he was heading toward the back, like he might be going to the woods.”
I considered all that he had said. If Ty were high on meth at the time he strolled through this area, he would’ve been far from home when the effects of the drugs had worn off. Lost and confused, there’s no telling what he might’ve done or where he might’ve gone. There were miles and miles of swamplands and woodlands to the east of town, and it would be easy even for someone thinking clearly to lose their way. In Ty’s state of mind, he didn’t stand a chance. This might explain why I hadn’t located him on the west side of town.
Reluctantly, I thanked Nikia for his help. Had he only been a thief or some other low-level criminal, I would’ve felt differently, but he was a vicious wife-beater, so I had no use for him.
“Let’s go, Achilles,” I said, leading my dog to my truck. Before following me, Achilles fixed Nikia with a stone cold stare and popped his jaws again. I grinned. He knew what was up.
When I got in my truck, I called Susan from my cell phone and told her what I’d learned. I explained that I would begin searching the wooded area at the end of Camp Street. If I didn’t find anything there, I would break through to Cypress Highway and start searching the woods on the opposite side.
“Should I request a K-9 team from the sheriff’s office?” she asked.
I pondered it for a few seconds, trying to remember what day it was. I was pretty sure it was Wednesday and Ty would’ve wandered through here early Sunday morning.
“No,” I finally said. “Ty came through this area three days ago, so the tracks would be cold by now. But I could use whatever posse you can pull together. Oh, and Sam Beard said he would help.”
“Okay, I know Sam and his wife,” she said. “They’re good people.”
“Yeah, and based on the smell, they can cook.” I frowned wistfully, wishing I’d taken them up on their offer to eat breakfast. There was no telling when I’d get to eat again. “They offered me breakfast, but—like a fool—I turned it down.”
“Well, I’ll be sure to tell them,” she said. “See you soon.”
“Not if I see you first,” I said lamely.
“Shut up, Clint Wolf!” She burst into laughter as she ended the call.
CHAPTER 29
After parking my truck at the end of the street, Achilles and I stepped out and surveyed the area. It wasn’t even seven o’clock yet, so the grass was still covered in dew. There were no tracks in the wet grass that led to or from the woods. If Ty had set up camp in these trees, he hadn’t been tromping about this morning. I would prefer it if he was hiding out, rather than stumbling around in the wilderness, but I had a bad feeling this wasn’t going to end well for him.
“Let’s go, big man,” I said to my dog. We headed for a drainage canal that was north of us. It cut through the trees to the east. It was too wide to cross without swimming, so it was along its bank that we entered the woods and headed east.
I was thankful that the underbrush was asleep for the winter. It made our passage through the woods easier and it also provided a better field of view. Achilles strolled beside me, stopping to sniff the ground from time to time. He wasn’t a working dog, but I knew he would be able to sense a human’s presence long before I could, and he might prove to be a valuable asset. During one of my first encounters with Ty, he had reeked of stale sweat and armpit juice, and I had been able to smell him before I had even exited my Tahoe to make contact. If he was in a similar condition—and the fact that he had been missing for so long was a strong indication that he might—Achilles would be able to smell him from a few miles away.
Walking through dry woods in Louisiana was far different from trudging through marshlands or through mountainous terrain, and for this I was grateful. The only things I had to watch for in this area were the occasional root that jutted up from the ground, a fallen log stretched across my path, or a raccoon hole below the leaves.
Although it was cool this morning, I began to sweat after covering about a quarter of a mile. Up ahead, I saw that the trees were starting to grow thinner. After covering another two hundred yards, I broke out into a linear clearing that stretched from north to south. I was on the western shoulder of Cypress Highway now.
I took a breath and let out a long sigh as I stared into the thick woods that extended along the eastern shoulder of the highway. If Ty had wandered into those woods, we’d never find him.
I moved ten yards to the south and headed back into the woods from whence I’d come, searching another line of the imaginary grid I’d established in my mind. Achilles and I
were just arriving at the eastern end of Camp Street again when I heard vehicles approaching. My phone rang at around the same time.
“Hey, Sue,” I said, ducking under a low-hanging branch and avoiding a tree that appeared directly in front of me. “Is that you driving up?”
“Me, Melvin, Regan, Baylor, and ten people from town,” she said. “We’re here to help.”
“Good!” I ducked into the clearing and approached my truck. I called for Achilles to come to me when I reached it. He bounded over and dropped to his belly at my feet, panting and staring up at me with half closed eyes. I dug a bottle of water from my rucksack and poured it into my cup holder. I snapped my fingers and tapped the console. I didn’t have to say it twice. Achilles leapt to the passenger’s seat and lapped up the fresh water.
“Where do you want us to start?” Susan asked when she walked over.
I pointed out the imaginary grids I’d already searched and she nodded.
“There’re fifteen of us,” she said. “If we stay ten yards apart, we can cover 150 yards at a time.”
“Sounds good.” I took a swig from another bottle of water and offered some to Susan. She declined. I indicated the group of townspeople with her. “Where’re the Beards?”
“I told them what you said about their cooking, so they’ve decided to set up shop at the police department and cook a jambalaya for lunch.”
The very mention of jambalaya made my stomach grumble, but I ignored the sensation. I stood near my truck and watched while the volunteer searchers piled out of their vehicles and began arming themselves with walking sticks, backpacks, and portable water bottles. Once they were ready, we formed a line and tackled the woods.
I remained to the very left of the line and Susan was directly to my right. I glanced at her occasionally and our eyes met a few times. She smiled each time she saw me and her face lit up. I reflected back to when we’d first started dating and how she had changed. Just recently, she had stopped braiding her hair in cornrows and tying then up in twin pigtails. Instead, she now preferred to let it hang or she would twist it back into a single ponytail.
“If someone grabs my hair during a fight,” she had declared the first time she’d decided to wear it down for work, “it’ll keep them in punching range and I’ll be able to beat their brains out.”
While I thought she was beautiful no matter how she wore her hair, I had to admit she looked damn sexy with her hair down. It was hard for me to tear my eyes away—
Suddenly, I stubbed my left foot on a stump and had to shoot my right foot violently forward to keep from falling on my face.
“Clint!” Susan called. “Are you okay?”
“I just tripped,” I mumbled, feeling embarrassed. Achilles glanced up and seemed to chuckle. I glared at him. “Shut up, boy! I see the way you look at Coco. You’ve got no right to judge me.”
Soon thereafter, we reached the shoulder of the road again. None of us had found any sign that Ty had ever been in these woods. While the man at the southern end of the line stood in place, we all filed past him and lined up facing the west. With a wave, I gave the go-ahead for everyone to continue searching.
The going was so much quicker now that I had multiplied myself by fifteen, and within the hour we were done. While that was the good news, the bad news was that we were no closer to finding Ty. Susan approached me as everyone else congregated under a clump of trees at the end of Camp Street.
“What if Nikia was mistaken?” she offered. “We could be doing all of this for nothing.”
I sighed, but nodded in agreement. It was certainly a possibility. “But we’ve got nothing else to go on,” I grumbled. “This was our first lead, and it makes sense, because he hasn’t been found on the east side.”
“Well, he’s not in these woods.”
I nodded and shot a thumb toward the east. “I’m worried he might’ve crossed Cypress Highway and hit that vast wasteland out there. If he did strike out in that direction, we’ll never find him—alive or dead.”
“Do you want to try looking?”
I considered her question. If Ty had walked along the highway—either toward the north or toward the south—before hitting the woods, we would definitely never find him. However, if he struck out due east from Camp Street, we might be able to get lucky, especially since we were covering an area 150 yards wide.
“Sure,” I finally said. “What else are we going to do? I’m out of leads and out of options, but I feel like I’ve got to do something.”
Susan nodded and approached our volunteers. After speaking to them briefly, everyone mounted up and drove their vehicles to Cypress Highway and parked in a line on the eastern shoulder. I found Melvin and waved for him to join me and Achilles on the outer edge of the group.
“Did you see any sign at all when we were walking through the woods?”
“Nah,” he said with a shake of the head. “The ground’s too dry. If he did snap a branch or crush a leaf here or there, it wasn’t in the areas I covered.”
“What are your thoughts?” I asked. “Where do you think he could be?”
“I think he’s dead,” he said flatly. “If he’d still be alive, he would’ve stumbled onto someone’s radar by now.”
“What if he’s lost in the woods?” I countered. “That could be why no one’s seen him.”
“I still think he’s dead.” Melvin rubbed his shaved head, causing his broad shoulders to stretch the fabric of his BDU shirt. “There’s no way Ty could survive in the woods for three days. Someone who’s thinking clearly might be able to hold it together and find a way out of the woods, but I think Ty would break out in a panic and get himself hurt.”
I sighed heavily, knowing he was right. The thought of Ty being dead had haunted me for most of the day, but I didn’t want to believe it could be possible. If he was dead, we might never know if his mom’s death was an accident or a homicide. On the other hand, if he was still alive, I didn’t know how he would go on without his mom there to care for him. It seemed he had already spun out of control. Of course, that had happened before—more than once—but his mom had always found a way to get him some help.
My phone rang right then and I lifted it to my ear. Before I could even say hello, I was cut off by a voice gushing with excitement.
“Clint, you are not going to believe this shit!”
CHAPTER 30
“Wait a minute,” I said to Tracy Dinger as I shoved my hand over my ear so I could muffle out the sound of an eighteen-wheeler that was rumbling down Cypress Highway. “I didn’t hear what you said.”
“I said, You are not going to believe this shit!” she repeated.
“I heard that part,” I said. “It’s the rest I didn’t catch.”
Melvin was studying me curiously. Susan must’ve noticed something significant was happening, because she walked over to stand staring at me, too.
“Okay, remember how I told you I entered the prints from the doorknobs into AFIS?”
“Yeah. You didn’t get a hit on either of them.”
“Correct.”
“That means the people who left those prints have never been arrested and printed before.”
“Correct on the first part, but not on the second.” She paused to take a breath. “The person who touched the inside doorknob of the shed has never been arrested, but he has been fingerprinted before.”
“It’s a he?” I asked. “We know it’s a male?”
“I know more than that,” she said triumphantly. “I know his name.”
“Well?” I asked impatiently. “Are you gonna tell me or do I have to send Susan up there to beat the information out of you?”
This really piqued Susan’s interest, but Tracy was undeterred.
“Do you know how people have to be fingerprinted in order to obtain professional licenses?”
“Yeah,” I said, realizing she was not going to make this easy for me. “We have school teachers, nurses, and lawyers coming into the office all th
e time to get fingerprinted. We use the applicant cards, though, not the criminal cards.”
“Right!” she said, sounding like a school teacher herself. “Well, people working in certain occupations—like, around sensitive materials or dangerous chemicals—have to undergo extensive background checks, and this includes being fingerprinted. Usually, this only happens when they’re first employed, but when these types of businesses change hands, the new owners usually start the hiring process all over again. Even the employees who are carried over from the previous company have to fill out an application and undergo a background check all over again.”
“But, Tracy,” I interrupted. “We don’t have access to those records.”
“You’re correct.”
I grunted in frustration, which caused Susan to cock her head to the side and study me intently. I could tell she wanted to know what the hell was going on.
“Did you hack their system?” I asked. “And if you did, I don’t care. I just want his name.”
“No, silly, I didn’t hack their system,” she said with a laugh. “That would be illegal. No, what happened was that this chemical plant on the river was bought out by a larger company. They’ve been processing applications and having all of the former employees fingerprinted again. The FBI takes these fingerprint cards and shoots them through AFIS and—”
“No shit!” I exclaimed. “We got a hit through the backdoor!”
“Yup!” Tracy said. “When an applicant’s fingerprints are entered into AFIS, not only are they compared to the fingerprints of all known criminals, but they’re also checked against fingerprints that have been lifted from crime scenes—and this includes your fingerprints that I entered on Monday morning.”
“Well, who is it?” I asked again, walking back and forth in the grass alongside Cypress Highway. “Who’d it come back to?”
“Oh, just some guy I’ve never heard of before,” Tracy said flatly. “But I thought it was cool how we developed the name.”
I was about to cut loose with a string of profanities when she blurted out the name. I stopped dead in my tracks.
