But Not Foreseen
Page 7
CHAPTER 14
“Don’t shoot!”
I quickly lowered my rifle and gasped out loud. “Jesus, Melvin! Where in the hell did you come from?”
“I heard the scream,” he said. “What’s going on?”
“I don’t know.” I turned toward Amy. She had squirmed back into her jeans and zipped them up. She was composed again, but her face appeared ghostly against the moonlight. “What happened, Amy?”
She pointed toward the outhouse door. “There’s something in there!”
I turned the muzzle of my AR-10 in the direction of the door. I stopped to listen, but heard nothing. Amy had slammed the door shut behind her, so I was unable to see inside. I moved forward and was about to kick it in when Melvin stopped me.
“It’s her, Clint,” he said softly. “It’s the girl.”
Confused, I glanced from him to the door. “What?”
“I tracked her to within twenty yards of this spot.” Melvin shot a thumb over his shoulder. “I was just over there and following the trail straight to this outhouse when I heard Amy scream.”
“I didn’t scream,” Amy said quickly, her chest heaving as she spoke. She pushed between Melvin and me and pulled the door open. She aimed the beam of her light at the opening in the toilet. “There’s something down there. I think the girl—Alice Pierce—I think she’s down there.”
I rushed through the door and glanced into the black hole. I could see nothing.
“Bring the light closer,” I said, waving Amy forward. “I can’t see past the rim.”
Amy advanced and shot the beam down into the tank. Melvin was standing over us and we all gasped in unison at the sight before us. A young girl—dark human waste dripping from her blonde hair and pale face—looked up with large, frightened blue eyes. Her lower lip was naturally pouty and it now trembled like a lizard clinging to a windshield.
“Everything’s going to be okay, Alice,” Amy said soothingly. “We’re police officers. You’re safe now.”
The girl stared directly into the bright beam of light, not even trying to shield her face. Her lip continued to tremble. She didn’t try to speak, didn’t try to reach for us. She simply stood there shivering, staring up with a confused look on her face.
“How do we get her out of there?” Melvin asked.
I had been wondering the same thing. The top of her head was about four feet below the toilet seat. The fact that she had fit through the opening on the way in had been a small miracle, and I didn’t know if we could get her back out of the same hole without injuring her.
I stepped back and examined the riser throne. It appeared to have been made from fiberglass and it was about two feet high, four feet wide, and four feet long. A six-inch high wooden step was positioned in front of the throne. I kicked it, but it didn’t move.
“Get your chainsaw,” I said to Melvin. “We’re cutting her out.”
Without wasting time to even nod, Melvin rushed out of the outhouse. Amy continued speaking softly to Alice while I pushed and banged on the framework of the throne, testing it for weak spots. When Melvin returned, I pointed to the spots I wanted him to cut.
He didn’t fire up the chainsaw until Amy had explained to Alice what was about to happen.
“Well?” I asked Amy.
She frowned. “I think she’s in shock.”
I gave Melvin a nod. “Cut off the throne while I call for an ambulance.”
I stepped away from the outhouse and called Beth. She had barely answered when I requested an ambulance. Next, I asked her to contact Mallory Tuttle, who was a detective with the Chateau Parish Sheriff’s Office.
“Ask Mallory to make an in-person notification to Wanda Pierce,” I continued. “We haven’t confirmed the identity of the dead man yet, but Mrs. Pierce needs to be made aware that it could be her husband, and she needs to know we found her daughter. Alice appears to be healthy, but she might be in shock. We’re having her transported to the hospital for evaluation, but it looks like she’ll be fine.”
When I stopped talking, there was no response from Beth.
“Beth? Are you okay?”
“Mallory won’t be able to make the notification.”
“Why not?”
“Haven’t you been listening to your radio?”
I instinctively reached for my belt, but the radio wasn’t there. “No, we’ve been working.”
“A female cop has been murdered—right outside of town.”
CHAPTER 15
My knees grew instantly weak and I almost collapsed. She sounded so despondent that I thought it was one of our own officers.
“Who?” I asked, terrified of the answer. I knew Susan was still on the road and Takecia was taking Melvin’s shift. I didn’t know if Regan had gone in or not, but she had a nose for trouble and would respond to a fight at any time of the day or night. It could be any of them. I was about to vomit. “Who is it, Beth?”
“Jenny…Deputy Jenny Billiot. I…I know her mother.” Beth’s voice was soft and seemed about to crack. “Susan and Takecia are out there now. Tonight was Jenny’s last night on the job. She had taken a job at the hospital so she could be around more for her daughter, who’s only four years old. She’s a single mom, Clint. What’ll happen to her baby now?”
Beth suddenly broke out in sobs. I swallowed the lump in my own throat. I didn’t bother asking what happened. Instead, I told her I’d be there as soon as possible and ended the call abruptly.
Melvin had cut the wooden step away and was working on the throne when I rushed into the outhouse. I must’ve looked pale, because Amy shot me a curious glance and asked what was wrong.
I shook my head. “Not now. After we take care of Alice.”
Never one to give up so easily, Amy must’ve sensed something was dreadfully wrong because she clamped her mouth shut and nodded somberly.
The thin fiberglass was vibrating wildly as Melvin cut through it, and I stepped up to hold it steady. Once he’d cut a line through the base of the riser throne, he shut off the chainsaw and dragged the throne away from the opening. Amy and I immediately reached for Alice and pulled her out of the pit. She didn’t offer any resistance, nor did she try to assist us. She simply stood there and allowed herself to be dragged out like a large sack of Mahatma rice.
We stretched Alice out on the floor of the outhouse. Although her eyes were open, she didn’t say a word and she didn’t move. She just lay there staring up at the ceiling. Amy continued speaking softly to her, but she gave no indication that she understood or heard a word that was being spoken.
I stood and began breathing through my mouth. The poor girl smelled worse than any living or deceased person I’d ever encountered, but she didn’t seem to be fazed by the stench at all.
I guess spending the night in a toilet can do that to a person, I thought wryly.
“Clint, here, take these,” Melvin said, suddenly appearing from behind me. He held four gallons of water—two in each hand—and there were several rags sticking out of his front pockets.
I smiled. “You’re always prepared, aren’t you?”
“Water’s the first thing to sell out when a storm’s in the Gulf,” he explained as he handed a gallon to Amy and me. “So, I always keep a few gallons in my truck. And I always have rags hanging around. They might not be clean, but they’ll do in a pinch.”
Melvin and I dropped to our knees beside Amy and we all began working to wash the filth away from Alice. Amy washed her face and hair while Melvin and I took each an arm. After we were done, we stepped back so Amy could clean her legs.
Amy had just finished getting most of the waste off of Alice when I heard a large vehicle rumbling toward us in the distance.
“It’s the ambulance!” I rushed outside to meet the medics, who arrived at the parking area within a minute. I waved for them to back the ambulance through the gate and toward the outhouse. When they had parked and exited the vehicle, I prepared them for what they were about to see.
I looked up when I heard the medics approaching with Alice on the spine board. They hadn’t bothered to get a gurney. Once she was secured in the back of the wagon, one of the medics headed for the driver’s door and the other made a beeline for me.
“I can’t say I’ve ever seen anything like this before,” he said grimly. “I’ve been to a lot of scenes and I’ve never smelled anything so horrible. How’d she get in there?”
“I think she jumped.”
“What?”
“I think she jumped in there to save her own life.”
“That’s crazy.”
“No,” I said. “It’s courageous. She’s alive today because she had the will to live and the nerve to do what had to be done to survive.”
“I guess you’re right,” he mumbled as he walked off.
I turned as Amy and Melvin walked up. I overheard Melvin asking her what had happened in the outhouse.
“I was minding my own business, relieving myself like any woman would, when I suddenly heard someone choking right up under my ass,” she said in exasperation. “It scared the shit out of me!”
Melvin laughed. “I didn’t know you were capable of screaming. A roar, maybe, but a scream?” He shook his head. “No way.”
“Let somebody cough under you while you’re on the toilet,” she said with a grumble. “It’s a vulnerable position to be in.”
“I’d rather be you than her,” he said wryly. “She nearly drowned in your urine.”
It was Amy’s turn to laugh, but she stopped dry when she saw the expression on my face. She frowned. “You wanted to tell us something?”
“Um…the sheriff’s office lost a deputy tonight,” I said slowly, hanging my head. “She was murdered.”
“What?” they asked in unison, the laugh lines immediately fading from their faces.
“It happened just outside of town.” I knew we smelled like shit—literally—but I wanted to go to the scene. “I need one of you to take me there.”
“You can jump in with me,” Amy said quickly, letting me know she wanted to go, too. She suddenly sucked in a mouthful of air. “You said she was murdered—who was it?”
“An officer named Jenny Billiot.”
“Dear God, no!”
“You knew her?” I asked.
“She used to come in with prisoners when I worked the jail.” Amy’s face was ashen and she seemed suddenly unsteady on her feet. “She was always so nice to me. She was nice to everybody. I…what happened?”
“I’ve told you all I know so far.” I studied her face. “Want me to drive?”
For the second time in one night, she didn’t protest. She simply dug into her pocket and handed me the keys to her cruiser.
CHAPTER 16
After Melvin locked the gate to the Waxtuygi Wildlife Nature Trail, I followed him down the bumpy road toward Cypress Highway. Neither Amy nor I had said a word since getting in her vehicle. Save for the occasional loose gravel that popped off of a tire and smacked the undercarriage, it was graveyard quiet inside the car. That’s why we both jumped when I reached the highway and my cell phone suddenly began to explode with text messages and voicemails that I hadn’t been able to receive while in the wilderness.
“Do you want me to see if it’s important?” Amy asked idly.
“Nah, they can wait.” I’d barely gotten the words out when Susan’s SAT phone began to ring. I glanced at Amy. “That one probably can’t wait.”
I reached for it and pulled it to my ear. “This is Clint.”
“Are you done? I heard you found the girl and I just saw the ambulance pass. Are you available?”
“Yeah, I’m on my way.”
She took a breath and blew it out. “So you heard?”
“Beth told me about it thirty minutes ago.”
“Did she tell you any of the details? Particularly, about the vehicle involved?”
“No.” My brow furrowed curiously. “What about it?”
“It’s registered to Chad Pierce. We don’t know for sure what happened because she never got on the radio, but it looks like she was stopping to help a stranded motorist. It turned out to be the same person who attacked Mr. Pierce and his daughter.” She paused and took another breath. “It was also done in the same manner, Clint. She was shot to shreds, ambush-style. There is some indication that she saw it coming because she had her hand on her pistol, but she never got it out of the holster.”
My shoulders slumped. “What makes y’all think it was a stranded motorist incident?”
“Because the hood is up and the flashers are on.”
That made sense, but we had notified the sheriff’s office. “Didn’t they get the BOLO we sent out?”
“One of the guys on her shift—a Deputy Bill Ridley—said they didn’t received the BOLO until later in the night. His partner found out about it and radioed to tell him, but by then they think Jenny was already dead.”
“Why wasn’t it put out immediately?” I demanded, my temperature beginning to rise.
“Bill said there was a lot going on in the northern part of the parish tonight and the dispatchers were swamped.” She sighed. “Mallory said the dispatcher who was supposed to send it out is catching hell right now from the deputies. They want her fired.”
I gripped the steering wheel with my left hand. We were dealing with a sadistic bastard and we needed to catch him before he killed again. The fact that he was willing to kill a cop to avoid arrest now placed him on a whole new level of dangerous, but that wasn’t the worst of it.
Police officers are trained to deal with the most dangerous of all criminals and they’re good at their jobs. This murdering coward would be no match for an informed and trained officer of the law. However, they couldn’t capture or kill what they couldn’t see. We had no description, no fingerprints, no DNA—nothing at all. He was a complete ghost. He could pass me on the street and smile, and I wouldn’t even know he needed to be put down. That made him lethal.
“We need to identify this prick,” I said. “Until we know who he is, we’re at a grave disadvantage. More officers could die.”
“I know.” Susan’s voice was somber. “We don’t even know his direction of travel. Gretchen came out here with Geronimo and they tracked straight to the water’s edge. He disappeared into the bayou.”
“What’re we doing to try and catch him?”
“The sheriff’s office has their water patrol en route and they put a chopper in the air.”
“Okay, I’ll be there in a few minutes.”
CHAPTER 17
I raced to the west side of town and had just taken a right turn off of Washington Avenue when I heard the chopping sounds of helicopter blades overhead. It was another minute before it came into view. The giant spotlight pointed down to the earth like an accusatory finger, probing the darkness in search of the killer.
Amy hadn’t said a single word since our earlier exchange. I parked behind a long line of cop cars and shut off the engine. “Are you okay?” I asked.
She was staring straight ahead, as though not seeing the bright flashing blue lights in front of us.
“That could’ve been any of us,” she said, turning slowly to face me. “I’ve always understood the risks associated with this job, and I accept them. No different than lumberjacks accept the risk of their jobs. But by all means, I do not want to die a single woman. I want to walk down that aisle—at least once—before I die. If I later get divorced and die on the job, at least they can say I was married once. That someone loved me enough to marry m
e.”
I couldn’t guarantee her anything, so I only nodded and stepped out of my car. There were cops everywhere. Mallory Tuttle, two other detectives, and Sheriff Buck Turner were standing on the eastern shoulder of the highway looking down at what must’ve been Deputy Jenny Billiot’s body. A group of patrol deputies huddled together on the western shoulder of the road. Most of them were crying. Gretchen Verdin and Geronimo, the best K-9 team in the area, were standing alone in the grass near the bayou. Susan, Takecia, Regan, and Baylor Rice, who was another officer with the Mechant Loup Police Department, were standing in the middle of the road, blocking traffic from the north.
Melvin joined Amy and me and we approached the scene together. Someone had attached one end of a strip of crime scene tape to the side mirror of the dark blue Grand Cherokee and secured the other end to Deputy Billiot’s cruiser. I stopped at the edge of the tape. The sheriff saw me and waved for me to join him.
Sheriff Turner was no politician. After spending his entire life working cattle, he had up and decided to run for sheriff. With no experience whatsoever in law enforcement or politics, he had done what no one else had been able to do in sixteen previous years—he had unseated the most popular sheriff in Louisiana. He had taken office a little over five years ago. He and I had worked well together during that time.
After I ducked under the crime scene tape and approached him, he stuck out his giant hand and I shook it. He didn’t even notice the foul smell emitting from the brown stains on my jeans and shirt.
“I wish we were meeting under different circumstances,” he said grimly, his voice quivering. At six-foot-three, 240 pounds, he was already a giant of a man, but his Stetson hat and worn cowboy boots made him seem even larger than he was. Add to that the single-action 1875 Outlaw Colt .45 revolver that hung low in a leather holster on his hip, and it looked like he’d just stepped out of a Louis L’Amour novel. This was not the kind of man I’d expect to be caught crying in public, but here he was, tears streaming down his cheeks. “How…um…how do you ever get used to this part of the job?”