by BJ Bourg
The doctor asked if I needed help, but I waved her off. Every move was painful, but I remained stoic. My head was pounding. The stab wounds throbbed. I couldn’t wriggle my nose without a stabbing pain shooting through my sinuses, but you couldn’t tell by looking at me.
“Clint, you’re a mess,” I said under my breath. I had refused the narcotic pain medication the doctor had offered me and decided to go with prescription-strength Ibuprofen. It hadn’t started working yet and I didn’t know if it ever would, but I didn’t care. I needed to get back to work.
When Susan returned, the doctor had left and I was still struggling to get my pants on. Every time I bent over, I swayed and lost my balance. I ended up on the floor twice, but kept doggedly getting back to my feet. The doctor said I’d suffered a concussion and should watch out for danger signs such as slurred speech, decreased coordination, nausea, confusion, and a few others. I noticed Susan regarding me with a concerned look in her eye, and I wondered if I looked worse than I felt.
“What is it?” I asked once my pants were on and she was helping me into my shirt. “Is one pupil larger than the other?”
“I’m just worried about you,” she said. “I’ve never seen you so…I don’t know, helpless.”
“Well, I’m gonna be a lot more helpless when this case is over,” I said with a twisted grin, “because I’m gonna sleep for a month.”
A warm smile played across her face and she leaned close to kiss my busted lips. The salt on her kiss burned my wounds, but I didn’t complain. When she pulled back, she placed a hand gently on my face.
“Let Amy and me finish this case,” she said. “You’ve been through enough. We can handle it.”
“I’ve got no doubt y’all can handle it,” I said, “but someone set me up and I won’t rest until that bastard’s behind bars.”
She nodded and swung a hand around my waist to help steady my walk. I didn’t argue or resist her. When we reached the door, I asked if she’d found Proctor.
“I did. I caught him in the hallway. He said he was going after them for attempted murder of a cop, but I told him not to bother. I told him you probably wouldn’t cooperate.”
I smiled. She knew me well. It was one thing to charge someone with resisting arrest to justify my use of force, but I would never file charges on anyone in a straight up fight.
“What’d he say about Shade?”
“He said he’ll make sure the sheriff hears firsthand about Shade’s heroics.” She paused as she reached for the door handle. “He said if Hayes even looks at Shade wrong, he’ll gut the man, pour syrup in his wounds, and then leave him naked on an ant hill.”
The unexpectedness of the comment caused me to erupt in laughter. Despite the pain I felt, I couldn’t stop. I was still laughing when Susan opened the door and led me out into the hallway. There were cops everywhere. Some were uniformed prison guards, others were SWAT officers in riot gear, and a few were plainclothes detectives.
We had almost reached the elevators to descend to the first floor when I heard my name. I recognized the voice before I turned.
“Damn, Clint, you haven’t changed a bit,” William said, his face cracking into a wide grin. “The swollen eye, the busted lips, the broken nose, the stab wounds everywhere—looks like a regular day of defensive tactics training.”
I smiled and walked forward on my own, trying my best not to favor my wounds. “What’s up?” I asked when I extended my hand.
After we shook and hugged like two brothers greeting each other after many years apart, he shot a thumb over his shoulder.
“I’ve got a prisoner who wants to talk to you,” he explained. “He wants to apologize and he says he might be able to help you solve Ralph Plant’s murder.”
“What?” I reached up and rubbed my swollen eye, wishing I could see from it. “Who is it? And how’d he know about the case?”
“It’s Ethan Bruce,” William explained. “He said he saw a news report naming you as a suspect in his lawyer’s murder. He said Ralph was the best lawyer he’d ever had and was his only chance of getting out, so when he heard that you’d killed him, he wanted to return the favor. Now that he knows you’re innocent and you’re the one trying to find the killer, he says he might have some info that’s useful. He said he’ll only give it to you, and he’ll only talk to you alone.”
“Okay,” I said. “Where is he?”
“I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” Susan interjected. “You’ve suffered a concussion and you’ve been used as a dart board. If something goes wrong…”
“I’ll be okay, Sue.” I smiled and put a reassuring hand on her arm. “You can stand right outside the door if you like.”
She hesitated, but then sighed. “Okay.”
“Hell,” I said over my shoulder as I headed for the hospital room that Ethan was occupying, “I’d fight him again if that’s what it took to get the information out of him.”
“Clint Wolf!” Susan said with a grunt.
CHAPTER 53
“Damn, man, what the hell happened to you?” I asked lightheartedly when I stepped into Ethan Bruce’s room and shut the door behind me. Although the man had tried to kill me mere hours earlier, I harbored no ill will toward him. I viewed my job like a professional boxing match—once the final bell had rung, the fight was over. “You look like you were hit by a train.”
Only the man’s right hand was chained to his hospital bed, because his left arm was in a huge cast. There was a large bandage around his head and at least fifty stitches across his face. His nose was a lot flatter than I remembered, and one eye was so bloodshot he was probably blind in it.
“You don’t look so good yourself,” he said, groaning through the pain.
“You should see the other guy.” I walked gingerly to a chair and dragged it beside his bed. After easing myself into it, I asked him what happened to his eye.
“You shoved your thumb through my orbital socket and into my brain,” he said dryly. “I didn’t appreciate it.”
I chuckled, but caught myself when the movement caused my head to split in half. After taking a deep breath, I took out my cell phone to record the conversation.
“No,” he said, waving his free hand. “This is private. No recordings. And if you ever say I told you any of this, I’ll deny it to my dying breath.”
I was tired and beaten and not willing to argue. With a nod, I slipped the phone back in my pocket.
“Okay, what’s up?” I asked. “What do you have for me?”
He cleared his throat. “Well, first, I wanted to say you fought a righteous fight. You’re one tough cop—I give you that.”
I didn’t respond. I couldn’t say he was also tough, because he had come at me with a pack of wild dogs rather than facing me one-on-one like a man. Since I didn’t have anything polite to say, I figured I’d just keep my mouth shut and wait to see what else he had for me.
After a long moment, Ethan shifted in his bed, cursed the pain, and then settled into the mattress.
“Before the detectives got here, I spoke to CO Rankin,” Ethan said, his voice pained. “He told me you’re not filing charges, so I won’t be charged with attempted murder of a cop.”
I nodded. “That’s right.”
“Why won’t you file the charges?”
“I’m no victim.”
He thought on that for a moment, and then continued talking.
“I’ve known Detective Proctor for a few years. He arrested me twice. Both times, he was fair about it. If there’s any cop I trust, it’s him. When he told me you didn’t kill my lawyer, I believed him.”
“Well, whether you believe it or not, I didn’t,” I said. “I’m the one trying to find the man who killed him.”
“You might be barking up the wrong tree.”
I cocked my head to the side. “Come again?”
“I think I know why he was killed, and I might know how to find out who did it.”
“Go on,” I said, intrigued. H
e definitely knew something, and I was hoping I could use it.
“I’m gonna tell you some things that can’t get out.” He turned to look directly at me with his one good eye and the bloodshot one. “I’ve studied law in jail and I know you need evidence. If I give you the evidence you need, will you keep Mr. Plant’s name out of it?”
I thought long and hard before I answered. If Ralph was involved in something nefarious and I could build a case against his killer without revealing said information, then I would gladly keep it a secret. But what if I needed the information to make my case?
“What do you mean?” I finally asked.
“If Mr. Plant was involved in illegal activity, would you make it public? He’s been good to me. I could never afford him, so he’s always helped me for free. I might do a favor or two for him, but never enough to repay him. I don’t want to drag his name through the mud, you know what I mean?”
“I can’t answer that question honestly unless I know what we’re talking about,” I explained. “If you tell me that Ralph was sleeping with someone’s wife and the husband killed him because of that affair, then that might become public at the trial. I certainly wouldn’t say anything about it to the media or anyone else, but trials are public hearings. That information would eventually get out.”
He was thoughtful. Finally, he nodded. “I understand what you’re saying. I guess I’ll just tell you what I know and trust that you’ll do right by him.”
“I will.”
“Okay, well, right before I got pinched for violating my probation this last time, I met with him about some pending charges,” Ethan explained.
“Exactly when was this meeting?” I asked.
“It was last Saturday, around noon. I think he was playing golf or something when he called to say he wanted to meet about my case.” He waved his good hand in the air. “Anyways, we were talking about my case when he gets a phone call. I couldn’t hear what the other person was saying, but it sounded like they were at the office and Ralph wasn’t happy about it. He left to go up front and then I heard them arguing in the lobby.”
Ethan paused to take a painful breath. He shifted in the bed to try and get comfortable, but it only seemed to cause him more pain.
“Anyway,” he continued, “after a few minutes, he came back in the room and he seemed really pissed off. He sat in his chair and stared out the window for a while. That was when he asked me about my, um, my hiding spots.”
“Your hiding spots?”
“Yeah.” He shifted in his bed again. “I kinda give him cocaine sometimes when he wants to party. It’s never a lot—just enough for private use. That’s the part I’d like to keep secret. I don’t think it had anything to do with his murder, so you shouldn’t need to use it.”
“Why was he asking about your hiding places?”
“He wanted to know if I ever hid my stash in a gun safe, but I told him no, that it would be too obvious. Besides, safes can be cracked. That seemed to worry him. He said he was having problems with someone. He said he had an incriminating video and he thought the person might try to come after it when he wasn’t home. He said the video was on his phone and on an iPad in his gun safe, and he asked if I thought that was secure enough. I told him no.”
“First, what kind of video are we talking about?”
“I’m not sure, but I think it was a sex tape. I wanted to see it, but he wouldn’t show it to me.”
I cursed under my breath. I was hoping he had seen it and knew the contents. Even still, my heart began to thump harder in my chest—so hard, in fact, that my aching ribs and sternum could feel it. This could be the big break I was looking for.
“Go on, what else was said?” I leaned forward, hanging on his every word and praying inwardly that Ralph had made another copy and hid it somewhere.
Ethan hesitated. “Will you use it against me?”
“What do you mean?”
“If I tell you my hiding spots, will you go search them?”
“Not at all,” I said. “And that’s one thing I can promise you. I’m only interested in who killed your lawyer—I’m not interested in your crimes. Besides, you don’t even live in my jurisdiction.”
A long pause. Finally, he said, “Okay, so I told him a couple places where I hide my stuff, and I figured he went and hid the sex tape there. I mean, not in my hiding space, but in a space like mine that was all his own.”
“Are you gonna tell me where it is or not?” I asked when he hesitated for another long moment.
“You gotta swear not to tell anybody around here about my spot,” he said. “If you do, they’ll find everything I got.”
“I swear I won’t.”
“Okay, well, I learned this from my grandpa, but I modified it a little to fit myself, you know?”
I nodded, trying to remain patient.
“My grandpa used to bury stuff around his property. Cash, some gold coins, canned goods, some guns—anything he didn’t want a thief to find and that he thought he might need when the world collapsed. He would oil the guns real good, put them in metal containers, and bury them about four feet deep in the ground. He would always plant a tree nearby—”
“Are you kidding me?” I asked incredulously, as images of us tearing up the entire Plant estate with excavators to try and find a sex tape flashed through my mind. “Are you saying Ralph buried this sex tape somewhere on his massive property and then planted a tree next to it?” I quickly shook my head to dismiss the idea. “There’s no way he planted a tree between Saturday and Sunday. He was too busy doing other things.”
Ethan leaned his head back on the pillow, but the slight movement caused him to wince in pain. “I told him I always put road kill over my stash in the yard—the more rotten, the better—instead of planting trees. That way, if a K-9 comes along, his handler will pull him away from it. Maybe look for a dead animal?”
I cursed under my breath, but suddenly stopped. “What’s the other hiding place?” I asked. “You said you told him about a couple of places. Where’s the other spot?”
“It’s not as good as burying stuff,” he said, “but I sometimes buy a gallon tub of ice cream—usually cookies and cream, so the surface is chunky—and I set it on the counter to melt a little. After it gets soft, I use a spoon to carefully push a baggie deep inside until it can’t be seen. Then I smooth it out like I’m pouring a concrete slab, I wipe the lid real good, and then I put it back in the freezer. When it hardens, it looks like new. I’ve had narcotics agents search my freezer plenty of times and never find my stash.”
We had never had a chance to search the Plant residence, so I had no idea if they had ice cream in the freezer or not, but I thought it was the best place to start. If there was none, then I’d have to assemble a team armed with metal detectors and go through the entire property. Maybe we’d get lucky and find a fresh patch of disturbed earth. I only hoped this convict wasn’t sending me into an empty rabbit hole.
“Did Ralph tell you anything at all about this video or who might be incriminated on it?”
“No, sir.”
You’re fighting me to the death early in the day and then calling me sir later in the day, I thought. I continued asking questions, pressing him for more information, but I couldn’t get much more out of him. He seemed to think Ralph was killed over the video, and I tended to agree. I just hoped he’d made another copy.
After I was satisfied I couldn’t drain anything more from him, I stood to leave.
“Detective Wolf, one more thing,” he said, stopping me, “I misspoke earlier.”
I groaned inwardly. In my view, misspeaking was the new form of lying. Rather than owning up to a lie, people nowadays copped out by claiming to have misspoken, when everyone knew damned good and well that they meant what they had said. As for Ethan, I could only imagine what he’d lied about.
“What’d you misspeak about?” I asked, wondering if it would derail my shiny new train.
“When I said you wer
e barking up the wrong tree,” he explained, “I should’ve said you were barking up the wrong skirt.”
“Come again?”
“That person who came into his office yelling at him?” he said, nodding confidently. “I couldn’t swear to it, but I’m pretty damned sure it was a woman.”
CHAPTER 54
Thursday, September 30
The Plant Residence
“My money’s on Gina,” Susan said as we converged on the Plant residence. Mallory was in the lead vehicle, Susan and I followed her, and Amy and Melvin were bringing up the rear.
“If I were a betting man,” I said, gritting through the pain as Susan’s Tahoe hit a bump, “I’d say Kim was screwing Doug, she paid him to knock off Ralph, and then she killed Doug because he was a loose end.”
“All of this because her husband had a sex tape of her?”
“Nope.” I shook my head. “I think Ralph has a sex tape of him and another woman—or man—and she found out about it. She started screwing Doug to get revenge and to get him wrapped around her little finger. You know how crazy men can get when a woman puts her hooks into him. I bet she could’ve gotten Doug to put on a suicide vest and blow himself up in the middle of—”
“You’re forgetting one thing Mr. Detective,” Susan said as she pulled to a stop behind Mallory’s Charger. “Doug attacked Kim and stole the iPad and gave it to someone else.”
“Or, they staged it to look like an attack.” I smiled. “I’ve worked more than one case where that exact thing has happened. It takes commitment, sure, but it happens.”
Susan acknowledged the possibilities as we dismounted and joined Mallory on the front steps of the Plant residence. It was now nine o’clock at night, and a little over an hour ago Mallory had obtained a set of keys and signed consent from Kim Plant to search her residence and property. Kim had also sent along a tearful apology for falsely accusing me of attacking her.