by BJ Bourg
I wasn’t ready to call her a suspect yet, but things were starting to look pretty bad for her. After all, she was probably one of only a few people who could get close enough to Ralph to shoot him in the head while he was awake. And if he had been asleep at his desk, well, that didn’t bode well for her either, because who else could know that Ralph often fell asleep at his office?
Kim certainly had the opportunity to murder her husband, and there were no witnesses who could say she was home at the time of the murder. She did have surveillance cameras on her house, but I doubted she would let me look at those to verify her whereabouts at the time of the murder. I grunted. Based on my earlier conversation with Mallory, there was no doubt in my mind that a judge would deny a search warrant for the cameras.
As for motive, if any woman had a reason to kill her husband, it would be Kim. It was definitely not a justifiable motive—divorce would’ve been the more humane and appropriate response—but I had worked many cases where people had killed for less, so I had to consider public humiliation and infidelity as real motives in this case.
Lastly, there was the question of whether or not Kim had the means to carry out the murder. We had the murder weapon, but to whom did it belong? If the lab wasn’t able to raise the serial numbers, we might never know the original purchaser’s name. And without that information, we couldn’t even begin to start tracking down the person who possessed it last.
I stared for a last, long moment at the Plant residence, and then proceeded to the three gas stations Mallory had mentioned. With luck, they would have some helpful surveillance footage.
CHAPTER 17
Mechant Loup Police Department
Regan Steed had been sitting in Melvin Saltzman’s office for over an hour combing through video surveillance footage from the Mechant Hotel, but she hadn’t been having any luck. There were four northward facing cameras that took in the highway and the front of Ralph Plant’s law office, but the cameras were so far from the highway that everything past the hotel’s parking lot appeared grainy.
On three of the cameras, Regan was able to locate a vehicle that matched the description of Ralph’s Porsche pull into the parking lot at seven-forty-one in the evening, but she was only able to make that determination because it was still daylight. Once night fell, she could barely tell a car from a truck.
Regan was just wrapping up the eight o’clock hour when the door to Melvin’s office opened. She looked up to see Melvin standing there, a quizzical expression on his face.
“Did I walk into the wrong house?” he asked, a smile spreading across his wide face.
Melvin was a stout man and a rough-looking Cajun, but Regan had come to learn that he was a gentle giant when it came to his friends and the public in general. However, when a suspect decided to fight him, the roughness came out in him in a big way. Regan had known quite a few rough mountain boys during her time working as a police officer in Tellico Plains, Tennessee, but she’d never met anyone quite as tough as Melvin.
Unbelievably, she’d seen him jump into the bayou and directly on top of an alligator that had been circling a group of teenage girls who had wandered away from shore in a rubber raft made for swimming pools. They had both responded to the 911 call just as shift change was approaching. She had arrived a split second before Melvin, and her immediate reaction was to draw her pistol and shoot the giant lizard, but Melvin had hollered from the parking lot for her to spare the animal.
As the girls screamed from the raft and two mothers screamed from the shore, Melvin had calmly stripped off his boots, shirt, and gun belt. He’d then crept to the edge of the bayou and waited for the alligator to swim by again. When it did, he jumped right on top of it, and Regan had watched in horror as the water erupted into a violent struggle.
Regan had taken the opportunity to toss the girls a long rope she found nearby, and she’d pulled them to safety while Melvin and the alligator remained locked in a dance of underwater death. Once the girls were safe, Regan had stalked the edge of the water, pistol in hand, just waiting for an opportunity to kill the alligator that threatened her friend and mentor.
There had been a brief moment when everything had become deathly still and she feared the worst, but then Melvin had broken the surface of the water and begun dragging an eight-foot alligator to the shore. When he grounded the animal, Regan noticed that the shoestring from one of his boots was wrapped around the alligator’s mouth.
She knew she would never forget that moment as long as she lived, and she would also never even dream of trying something so dangerous. She had even said that to Melvin, but he had laughed her off and said it wasn’t dangerous at all. She had argued the point vehemently. They had finally agreed to disagree.
“I was looking over some surveillance videos for Clint’s murder case,” Regan explained, standing to gather up her things. “I can go in the conference room.”
“Nonsense.” Melvin waved for her to remain. “I’ll hit the road early so you can keep working.”
She thanked him and glanced at the time on her laptop. It was five o’clock. She had one hour of her shift left. She was hoping to have some news by the time Clint returned, so she jumped right back into it.
It was right around nine-thirty-six in the evening when a passing car applied brake lights and turned away from the hotel and into the law office parking lot. Regan leaned close and watched. Her heart raced with anticipation. Was the car simply turning around like the other two cars from earlier, or was this the killer?
To her delight, the car drove the length of the parking lot and parked in front of the building. To her chagrin, there was no way to make out what type of vehicle it was. Had it not been for the pair of headlights and brake lights, there would’ve been nothing but a vague blob on the screen to indicate something had been there.
Regan continued viewing the surveillance footage. The vehicle stayed put for a little less than an hour. At ten-twenty-one, the lights on the vehicle came on again. It whipped around, raced through the parking lot, and accessed Main Street without even slowing down. It headed north at a high rate of speed and disappeared into the darkness on the left side of the screen. It was bad enough that the distance made the vehicle appear grainy in the video, but the speed at which it travelled reduced it to a blurry glow when she paused the footage.
Regan cursed under her breath and settled back into the chair. She set the video to continue playing in fast-forward, watching the quad-screen carefully, but there was no more movement at the office until Gina’s Sentra showed up at seven-forty-five.
Disappointed, she shut down her computer, removed the flash drive, and then shouldered her bag. She was about to walk through the door when she heard Detective Amy Cooke’s voice sound from the dispatcher’s station.
“Where in the hell have you been? I’ve been waiting here for two hours.”
“I was checking surveillance cameras at three businesses in Central Chateau,” came Clint’s tired reply. “Orrin Cheramie told his girlfriend he ran into a friend at a gas station, but he doesn’t appear in any of the surveillance videos from those businesses. According to Mallory, those are the three stations closest to Orrin’s house.”
“So,” Amy began, “he either went to a different gas station, or he was busy killing Ralph at that time.”
“There’s a third option—he had nothing to do with the killing and he lied to Gina about his whereabouts,” Clint said. “I’ll have to interview him again to get some answers from him.”
Regan walked out of the office and saw Clint standing there with Amy. His slacks were stained, his shirt was smudged, and there were specks of blood on his left hand. Although he looked haggard, he smiled when he saw her.
“Got anything for me?” he asked.
Regan told him what she had found.
“Things just got a whole lot worse for Orrin Cheramie,” he said with a grunt. “Orrin left his house at eight and got back at eleven. Plenty of time to drive to town, kill Ralph,
set up the room, and then get back home with a case of beer by eleven.”
“I guess we’ll have to check every convenience store and gas station between here and his house,” Amy suggested. “I can do it before I head in for the night.”
Clint nodded his thanks and rubbed his thick brown hair. It was then that Regan noticed the scratches on his left wrist.
“Are you okay?” she asked. “You need to get that cleaned up.”
Clint twisted his arm and glanced at his wounds. “They’re just scratches.”
“I was wondering about that,” Amy asked. “What happened?”
“You remember Chet Robichaux?”
Amy nodded. “He’s the farmer who’s got the land off of North Project Road.”
“Yeah,” Clint said, turning to Regan. “We worked a murder case out on his property once.”
Clint took a moment to tell Regan the story, and then he continued explaining how he got the scratches.
“Well, Chet was parked alongside the road on his tractor when I was approaching town. He flagged me down to tell me someone busted open the door to his barn and stole a gas can. He said he figured it was someone who’d run out of gas, so he decided not to report it. He continued going about his day and then noticed that a metal drum on his property was smoldering.”
“Metal drums don’t smolder,” Amy said. “Maybe the contents of that metal drum—”
“I’ll sure be glad when you and Baylor finally get married and go off on a long honeymoon,” Clint said with a playful smirk. “I’ll finally get some peace and quiet around here.”
They all laughed.
“Anyway,” Clint said, “Chet uses the drum for mulching and it contained old food scraps and vegetation, so there was nothing in there worth burning. He approached the drum and found his gas can on the ground, but it was empty. He looked inside and”—Clint stared studiously at Amy—“found that the contents of that metal drum were smoldering.”
“What’d they burn?” Amy asked.
“It was hard to tell because everything had been reduced to ash, but I recovered the gas can and some of the ashes just in case something comes of it.”
Clint paused to reach into his pocket. He pulled out a plastic evidence bag and then continued with his story.
“I sifted through the ashes before bagging a pile of it.” He turned the bag until the object was visible through the side that didn’t have writing on it. The object was covered in soot, but the shape of it was obvious. “And I found this little silver cross inside. It was the only thing that survived the fire.”
Amy took the bag and examined it closely. “Why would someone burn a cross?”
Clint shrugged. “I’m guessing the cross was attached to whatever they were burning and they either forgot it was there or didn’t care.”
“Did you scratch yourself on the metal drum?” Regan asked.
Clint nodded.
Regan frowned. “Was it rusted?”
“Yeah, I guess. I didn’t pay attention, but it’s been out there for years, so I’m sure it was rusted. Why?”
“You’d better get those scratches cleaned up right away,” Regan warned. “And you should probably get a tetanus shot, too.”
Amy folded her arms across her breasts and smiled.
“He’s all caught up on his shots,” she said with great confidence. “The vet vaccinated him when he got that arrow in his ass a couple of months ago.”
CHAPTER 18
While Amy drove to Central Chateau to check more gas stations and convenience stores, I spent most of the evening calling Ralph Plant’s friends and relatives. Most of them spoke well of Ralph, but a few of his buddies said he had a habit of going too far with women.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if he was having an affair with a married woman and the husband found out and killed him,” said one cousin. “He preferred married women to singles, because they didn’t expect anything out of the relationship. He slept around with a single girl once, and she started talking about getting married and moving to Hawaii or some such nonsense. Ralph ended things right quick, but she then threatened to tell his wife, so he was forced to keep the affair going for another couple of months. She finally lost interest in him and moved on to some other man who had more money. He never messed around with single women after that.”
“How long ago was that?” I asked.
“I would say ten, eleven years.” The cousin paused, but then quickly added, “That’s not to say he stopped flirting with single women. He flirted with just about every woman he saw. It was exhausting. Back before I got married, I quit associating with him in public because I didn’t want women to think we were alike. After I got married, my wife would never let me get to within fifty feet of him.”
“Did your wife know him?”
“Oh, yeah, we all went to school together,” the cousin said, “so she knew him well. In fact, she’d had her share of Ralph encounters in school. She even slapped him in the face at a football game because of a crude comment he made.”
I grunted. “You’d think he would’ve learned back then.”
“Not Ralph. He never learned his lesson about anything. He thought he was God’s gift to women and he always thought he was the smartest man in the room.”
I wondered if I should ask the cousin if his wife was home between nine-thirty and ten-thirty, but decided against it. I didn’t want him to really believe she might be a suspect.
“Do you know the names of any women he was sleeping with?” I asked after a few more minutes of questioning him.
“None in particular. He tells stories about women he’s had, but he doesn’t name names and he’s vague about timelines and locations.”
After wrapping up my conversation with the cousin, I continued through the list and finished off with a brother named Fred who lived in Cuba, Alabama. I’d driven through Cuba before on my way to Tennessee, but I’d never stopped there.
“I’m sorry about the loss of your brother,” I said after I’d introduced myself. “If there’s anything I can do, don’t hesitate to ask.”
“Well, I’d like to know what happened to him.” Fred’s voice was deeply somber. “I’ve been trying to call Kim since this afternoon, but she won’t answer.”
“I spoke with her at about three o’clock and she mentioned going to the funeral home to make the arrangements,” I explained. “But that’s all I know.”
“All we know is that she called my mom earlier this morning to say that Ralph had been found dead in his office, and then she called back after lunch to say he had been murdered. I got off of work at four-thirty and I’ve been trying to call her ever since. I’ve left messages on the house phone and her cell phone, and I’ve texted her a bunch of times, but I’ve gotten no response.”
I thought it sounded odd, but then figured she might’ve taken some medication to cope with the grief and fallen asleep.
“If you’d like, I can have someone from the sheriff’s office go out there and check on her,” I offered. “I’m sure she’s probably exhausted, but we can do a welfare check to be sure.”
“I’d appreciate it.”
As I explained what details I was able to release without jeopardizing the investigation, I shot a text message to Mallory Tuttle asking that she send a deputy to check on Kim. She responded immediately with a thumbs up emoji. I then turned all of my attention to Fred.
Once I’d provided what I could, I began asking the routine questions I had for homicide investigations. Once I got to the reasons someone might have for wanting him dead, he paused for a long moment.
“I mean, I know he’s been having some problems in his life, but I don’t know if any of those problems were related to what happened to him.”
“What kind of problems?”
“Well, he got another DWI and he was initially worried about being charged with a felony, because that would likely get him suspended from practicing law,” Fred explained. “But I think the DA’s office ag
reed to file it as a second offense DWI, which would be a misdemeanor, so I’m pretty sure he wasn’t worried about that anymore.”
I nodded. “What other problems?”
“Well, I know he was seeing someone and things weren’t going as well as he’d liked. As you already know, Ralph’s married, and he said the woman he was seeing was also married. I can’t help but think his murder had something to do with that affair.” Fred hesitated for a moment. “Look, I don’t condone my brother’s behavior in any way, but that’s no reason to murder him, you know? If it was the husband, well, he could’ve just divorced the woman.”
“What about Kim?” I asked.
“What about her?”
“Is it possible she found out about the affair and killed Ralph?”
“I…I sure hope not.” Fred sounded suddenly disturbed. “Do you think she’s capable of doing something like that? Personally, I wouldn’t think she had it in her.”
“You can never tell with people,” I said. “I’ve seen people of all stripes kill for all kinds of reasons. Nothing surprises me these days.”
“I guess you’re right.” Fred’s voice seemed troubled, as though there was something he wanted to say but wasn’t sure he should say it.
“I can tell something’s weighing heavy on you,” I said. “Please tell me what you’re thinking.”
“It’s nothing. I don’t think it means anything.”
“Whatever it is, no matter how small it might seem, it might very well be the key to helping me catch Ralph’s killer.”
“You said his phone was missing, right?”
“That’s right.” I sat up in my chair. “Why? Does that mean something to you?”
“It’s just that he had this video,” Fred said. “There was a video on his phone.”
“A video?” My heart began to pound. “What kind of video?”
“It was an incriminating video of some kind. It incriminated somebody.”