But Not For Lust

by BJ Bourg

  “I’m a big girl!” Grace exclaimed, holding up four fingers. “I’m three!”

  “Not yet, Pumpkin,” I said, patting her red hair. “You’ll be three in three months. Show me three.”

  Grace wiggled from side to side in her chair as she lifted up her right hand. Four fingers shot up and she scrunched up her face. The pinky wouldn’t cooperate, so she pulled it down with her left hand. Grinning triumphantly, she said, “I’m three, Daddy!”

  I started to cheer, but was cut short when my cell phone rang. I picked it up and said hello.

  “Hey, Clint, it’s Lindsey,” said our daytime dispatcher. “I’m sorry to call you so early, but we just got a call from a man on Jezebel Drive and I think it might be important. He said he was letting his dog out to pee and he saw a bunch of buzzards in the sky.”

  “Oh, shit,” I said, dropping my fork and leaning back in my chair.

  “Mommy, Daddy’s a bad boy,” Grace said nonchalantly, shoveling a spoonful of scrambled eggs into her mouth.

  “What’s his address and name?” I asked. “I’ll meet with him right away.”

  “He doesn’t want to be contacted,” Lindsey said. “He said the birds were circling the trees on the west side of the street. He said you can’t miss it.”

  I thanked her and quickly stood.

  “What’s going on?” Susan asked.

  My mom leaned forward, hungry for information. She loved juicy gossip.

  “There’re buzzards circling the woods behind my old house.” I used to live on Jezebel Drive. In fact, I had spent my most memorable birthday in that house—only, it was memorable for all the wrong reasons. “I think it’s Ty.”

  “Daddy, you got a tie!”

  I smiled and leaned to kiss Grace’s forehead. Next, I kissed Susan and told her she was right.

  “About what?” she asked, a puzzled expression on her face.

  “Yesterday, you told me you had a feeling it would be a long day for me.” I smiled. “Thanks for that.”

  She put a hand to my face. “Hold on, I’m coming with you.”

  I walked outside to wait for Susan to join me, but then immediately turned around. I had forgotten about the cold front. While it had only dropped down into the forties, I was having none of it. I hurried upstairs to grab a jacket. My mind was racing, wondering at the possibilities that awaited me out in that field. I was hoping I’d respond and find a dead cow or coyote or some other animal. I did not want to find Ty. Although Amy had predicted this, I wasn’t ready to give up on the man.

  Susan was ready by the time I hit the landing and we both jumped in my truck. It had rained last night and I didn’t want to get my Tahoe stuck in the mud. As for my truck, I’d yet to find a hole it couldn’t climb out of.

  Once I left our street, I headed north until we reached the center of town, where I made a left turn onto West Coconut. I could see the buzzards long before we reached the end of the street.

  “Damn, Sue, that doesn’t look good.”

  She just nodded and stared in awe at the dark cloud of wings that blanketed a large patch of blue sky to the west.

  Suddenly, a thought occurred to me.

  “Sue, they’re circling!” I said.

  She glanced sideways at me, not understanding my excitement. “Yeah—and?”

  “If they’re circling, that could mean he’s still alive!” I was nearly shouting. “They didn’t start eating him yet! They’re waiting for him to die.”

  I wanted to rush toward the back of the street, but I had a personal rule against speeding through neighborhoods. There was no emergency that was worth the life of an innocent child.

  The street was less than a mile long, but it seemed like it took forever for us to reach the end of it and turn onto Jezebel. I drove north until we were directly in line with where I thought the buzzards to be. The trees that lined the street to the west now obscured the birds from view, but I had made a mental note of where we needed to go.

  “You know what,” Susan said, pointing in a northerly direction, “there’s a pumping station back there. The access road is at the end of Jezebel. If we drive down that road, it’ll get us parallel to where the buzzards are.”

  She was right. I hadn’t thought of that road. I continued driving toward the end of Jezebel, passing my old house as I drove. Susan turned her head just as I did.

  “I remember that old place,” she said somberly. “That’s where I thought I lost you before I even had you.”

  I only nodded. I had a one-track mind at the moment—and that was finding Ty alive so I could rush out an ambulance and get him some help. After stumbling around in the forest for four or five days, he would definitely be in need of medical attention. He was probably dehydrated and suffering from fatigue.

  I turned onto the pump access road and stopped when we reached a gate.

  “I’ve got it,” Susan said, leaping from my truck and rushing to enter the code into the padlock.

  I glanced to the south as I waited. I could see the edge of the circling buzzards now. I nodded. The location made sense. From Ty’s camp in the woods behind his house, all he’d have to do was head due north to reach this area. He must’ve run to his camp when his mother fell and hit her head, and then he’d started roaming through the trees.

  Susan was back in a jiffy and I gunned the engine. Mud shot from my rear tires as I accelerated through the opening. There were no kids or traffic on this muddy road, so there was no need to watch my speed.

  Susan clung to the grab handle near her head as the truck jostled violently with every bump it hit. She shot me a hard look. “I’d like to make it there with all of my teeth intact.”

  I mumbled an apology, but didn’t slow down. We were almost there. When trying to save a life, every second counted. We hadn’t quite pulled even with the buzzards when I ran out of real estate. I smashed the brakes and my truck skidded to a stop several yards before we would’ve plowed into the pumping station.

  “Shit!” I muttered, turning off the engine and leaping from my truck. Susan was right on my heels.

  Taking one last look toward the soaring birds to get my bearing, I set off into the woods at a fast clip. I ducked branches and dodged tree trunks and nearly slipped in the soft mud several times, but I finally broke out into a grassy clearing.

  I stopped and stared up in awe. Although it was a bright and cool day—cold by Louisiana standards—this clearing was cloaked in the shadows of dozens of black vultures and turkey vultures circling overhead. There must’ve been a hundred of the large birds milling about, and, collectively, they looked like an ominous rain cloud. A few of the buzzards were sitting in the surrounding trees eyeing us closely. They gave off an eerie vibe.

  I quickly surveyed the field. The grass was chest high and brown, and it was too thick to penetrate with our eyes.

  “I’ll go this way,” I said to Susan, pointing toward the right. She nodded and went in the opposite direction, which was to the east.

  I didn’t bother walking a grid. Instead, I broke out into a stumbling run, my eyes darting everywhere at once. I knew this was a poor way to methodically search a field, but I also knew time was of the essence and this would be the fastest way to locate the possible rotting corpse.

  I was looking off to the left as I ran and my right foot suddenly made contact with something and stopped dead in its tracks. My head overshot my foot and I lost my balance, spilling headlong into the mud. I groaned as I slowly came to my hands and knees. My palms were covered in mud and the front of my right leg ached.

  Letting out a string of cursing, I stood and wiped my hands on my jeans. I looked over to see what I had hit and scowled. There, hidden in the tall grass, was an old, rusted-out bush hog.

  “What the hell?” I walked over and inspected it. Behind the bush hog was a trail of brown grass that was shorter than the surrounding field. One didn’t need to be a detective to realize that someone had been cutting the grass back when the field was green,
but something had interrupted the job. I figured the tractor must’ve become disabled and the farmer had abandoned the bush hog until he could return and retrieve it.

  I shrugged. I didn’t care what had happened or why. I now had a pathway to follow and, since it was easier to see through the tall grass on either side of the shorter path, I began following the winding trail.

  I looked back and saw Susan’s head to the east. She was pushing her way through the field. I spent the next few minutes scanning the tall grass to either side of the trail that had been blazed by the bush hog. The next time I looked back, I didn’t see Susan. I frowned and looked around. That’s when I realized she was now in front of me.

  “Oh,” I said, studying the path upon which I had just walked. I was back-tracking the farmer, who had begun from the east side of the field and made a large circle around the field. It appeared he had only made part of one pass before breaking down.

  I lifted my hand to call out to Susan when something dark shot out of the sky and descended toward the center of the field. It was a turkey vulture and it was less than a hundred yards away. I began hollering and running through the tall grass toward the bird, waving my hands like a wild man. Susan heard the noise and started running to meet me. The bird saw me approaching fast and reversed course in a hurry.

  Using the bird’s trajectory as a mental guide, I continued racing in that direction. I hadn’t taken another dozen steps when it hit me like a wave of crashing water—it was the smell of decaying flesh.

  CHAPTER 36

  My heart sank when I broke through the brown grass and found the small area of smashed grass that served as Ty Richardson’s final resting spot. I didn’t even care about the smell or the flies buzzing around. Susan crashed through the other side of the clearing and pulled up short.

  “Oh, no!” she said, her eyes wide. “What in the hell happened out here?”

  I scowled as I took in the scene. While his body was swollen and starting to decay, it was easy to see that he had been beaten violently. His pants and underwear were down around his knees. His ankles were bound together by one end of an orange extension cord, and the opposite end disappeared behind his back, where it appeared his arms were also bound. There was a strap of some sort wrapped around his mouth.

  Due to the wide area of trampled grass around his body and the dark blotches of dried blood scattered about the clearing, it was obvious that he had been taken here and beaten—possibly to death.

  “Do you see a weapon?” I asked, not moving closer for fear of destroying whatever little evidence there might be.

  Susan had also remained where she had first arrived. She shook her head. “I don’t see anything from this vantage point.”

  I pointed to a break in the tall grass that led due east from the scene. “They came in from there. Thanks to the grass being dead, they left a clear path through the field.”

  Susan nodded and pulled her radio from her back pocket. “I’ll call it in and get someone here to help. Who do you want?”

  “Send our coordinates to Melvin and ask him to find a trail through the woods that leads to this spot,” I said thoughtfully. “If we can find where they entered the woods, we might get lucky and find a house with surveillance cameras pointing right at them.”

  Susan raised an eyebrow. “Good idea. Anyone else?”

  “No, it’ll just be you and me. I don’t want anyone else trampling up the scene.” I shot a thumb toward the path I’d taken to get here. “I’ll retrace my steps back to my truck and get my gear. I’ll also bring my shotgun and some beanbag rounds.” I indicted the buzzards. “We might need to fight them for Ty’s body.”

  Susan looked up at the legions of birds that circled angrily above us. She shook her head and cursed. “Bring two shotguns and a lot of rounds.”

  I left and headed for my truck. I called the coroner’s office as I walked and they connected me to Dr. Wong.

  “Are you available for another one today?”

  “Did you find the son?”

  I told her I did.

  “And?” she asked.

  “He was murdered—apparently beaten to death.”

  She sighed and told me she’d be available any time after two o’clock. She asked if I had any leads. I told her what I knew so far, and she told me to stop finding bodies.

  Next, I called Amy and thanked her for nothing.

  “Told you,” she said smugly. “I know you were hoping to find him alive, but he was just gone for too long.”

  “It looks like he’s been beaten to death.”

  There was a long pause on the other end of the phone. “Are you serious?”

  “Yeah, he was bound and gagged.”

  “Logan Pitre?”

  “I don’t know.” I took a breath. “This looks like the work of someone who was pissed off at him, that’s for sure. Neal Barlow was mad at him for stealing his drugs, but Logan was also mad about not getting enough sleep. I could see either one of them doing it, but I don’t think they acted alone.”

  “Yeah,” she said thoughtfully. “It would be hard to tie up a man and carry him into the woods alone.”

  I agreed. “You might be able to do it if you had someone at gunpoint, but a gun wouldn’t compel Ty to sit still. He can’t help himself.”

  “He could’ve been knocked unconscious,” Amy suggested. “But it would still be hard for one person to carry him through the woods.”

  I had reached my truck by then and stopped to stomp the mud from my boots. It made my feet lighter. I opened the tail gate first and grabbed one of my crime scene boxes. Next, I retrieved my camera from the back seat and looped it over one shoulder and my neck. Lastly, I slung my shotgun and pocketed a handful of beanbag rounds.

  When I was heading back along the trail, I told Amy I’d have to go, but that I would call her when I knew more.

  “I sure wish I could be there to help,” she said. “If there’s anything I can do from home, you’d better call.”

  “I promise I will.”

  After ending the call with Amy, I hurried back to the crime scene. I broke out into the clearing to find Susan still on the opposite side, but working her way along the outer edges toward my original location. She looked up when I reappeared.

  “Did you find a weapon?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “So far, all I see is dried blood and trampled grass. The ground was dry when they came out here, because I don’t see any tracks in the mud.”

  I set down my box and grunted as I tried to see Ty’s head from my vantage point. His feet were positioned in my direction, so I could only see part of his left jaw.

  “Sue, can you see his head?”

  She stopped what she was doing and glanced in his direction. She moved from left to right and then nodded.

  “Does it look like a hammer did him in?” I asked, thinking about the hammer I’d taken from Logan. If the lab recovered Ty’s DNA from that hammer, then Logan would be done.

  Susan scowled. “It’s hard to tell. I can see his bare skull in places—thanks to the state of decomposition—but it’s hard to see if the bone is cracked. The grass is too thick.”

  I nodded and set out to photograph the area so we could move closer. I would know soon enough.

  CHAPTER 37

  It took Susan and me about an hour to photograph and thoroughly search the entire grassy area that had been trampled by the killers. We had been unable to find any weapons that might have been used to attack our victim.

  The rain from last night had not done us any favors, but we were lucky enough that the incident had happened long before the rains came, and the blood had been fully dried before last night. Although most of the blotches of blood were still intact, there was evidence that portions of them had been washed away by the downpour. Still, we were able to piece together most of what had happened, and it wasn’t pretty.

  It seemed that Ty’s attackers had dragged him to this field and begun beating him with their person
al weapons—hands and feet, maybe even knees and elbows. Although Ty was probably already tied up by that point, there was a lot of movement within that space. This was evidenced by the amount of blood that had been spilled in various locations within the crime scene, and it probably meant the killers had kicked him, shoved him, and dragged him around while they beat him. It also could’ve been him squirming and rolling to try and escape from his attackers.

  It was unclear at what point his pants had been pulled down, but when we got closer to his body and were able to see beyond the blotches of blood and decaying flesh, it became abundantly clear that he had been mutilated while he was still alive.

  I immediately became incensed when I saw what they had done to him. Ty Richardson had suffered a horrible death. His last minutes had been excruciatingly painful. No person should ever have to endure that level of torture. It was the type of activities one would expect from a terrorist. And worst yet, Ty probably couldn’t understand why this was happening to him.

  As we processed the scene, a fit of anger began to rise up in me. It was the kind of anger that chilled me to the bone. It terrified me. I didn’t know if I could trust myself to be around Ty’s killers, whoever they might be.

  “What kind of scumbag does this?” Susan asked as she stood staring down at the poor man’s body.

  I only shook my head and dropped to one knee to begin documenting his injuries. The more I detailed, the hotter the fire burned within me. Susan must’ve recognized that look in my eyes, because she squatted beside me and put a hand on my arm.

  “Are you gonna be able to control yourself when we find the suspects?” she asked in a low, motherly voice.

  I glanced up and stared right into her big, beautiful brown eyes. “I’m always in control of myself.”

  “You’re right,” she said with a sigh. “I guess I need to rephrase my question. Are you gonna kill the person or persons who did this to Ty?”

  I dipped my head and went back to jotting down my observations. With crime scenes, one of the first things investigators have to do is bring some sort of order to the chaos, and this has to be decided before they begin the documentation phase of the investigation. If they begin haphazardly documenting everything they see in random order, it won’t make any sense and it’ll be difficult to later articulate their findings. There are different methods that can be used to orderly describe evidence at a crime scene, and some of those include spatial order, order of importance, and chronological order. I always used spatial order to describe my bodies, and I usually began with the top of the head and worked my way to the feet, describing every little detail of their position and condition.