Clint Wolf Series Boxed Set 3

by B J Bourg

  There was still no sound from the house—not a peep—and there were no lights on, so I was beginning to suspect no one was home. I pulled out my radio and, in a low voice, radioed Melvin. “Come down the driveway north of the house and pull around the back. Let me know when you and Gretchen are in position and I’ll knock on the front door.”

  After a minute or two, he let me know he was on the move. Within seconds, I heard the low hum of his truck engine and his tires crunching on the shells. Every now and then a shell would pop against the undercarriage and make a clanking sound, but there was still no movement or noise from within the house.

  Once I cleared the concrete floor of the carport, I encountered more junk on the ground between it and the house. It was too dark to make out every item in my path and the going was slow, because I was trying not to make any unnecessary noises. I was still picking my way through the minefield of garbage when Gretchen’s vehicle cruised by the house, moving at idling speed.

  I took my eyes off of what I was doing for a split second to measure Gretchen’s progress. I wouldn’t want to use my radio near the doorway, so I needed to have an idea about when they would be set up on the back of the house. Feeling with my left foot, I stepped forward and was just turning my gaze back toward the house when the front driveway suddenly lit up like it was the daytime.

  Without thought, I rushed forward and threw myself to the ground on the right side of a set of steps that led to the raised porch. I hadn’t realized it, but I’d drawn my pistol and it was now gripped firmly in my right hand, ready for anything.

  My heart raced as I tried to determine the source of the light. Had someone heard me approaching and turned it on?

  I could tell the light was coming from somewhere above me. Leaning out a little, I caught sight of the fixture and sighed. It was a motion sensor light. Still, I waited for a full minute, listening. Nothing.

  Keeping a tight grip on my pistol, I moved to a crouched position and slinked up the steps, where the porch was cloaked in shadows. I felt better in the darkness—less exposed—and relaxed a little.

  The wooden porch creaked a little under my feet, so I moved toward the edge closest to the house, where it would be more firm. Once I had my back to the wall, I realized I was between two doors. I didn’t know which door was the correct one, so I decided to bang on the one to the right.

  For my efforts, I got no response. I banged on the frame again, still nothing. Next, I banged on the door to the left, but met with the same results. Either no one was home or they were hunkered down inside. I pulled out my radio and asked Melvin if there were any signs of life at the back.

  “Negative,” he said. “It’s quieter than a prayer service in an empty church.”

  I glanced down at my radio and wondered about that comment for a second, then told him I was coming around.

  I shoved the radio in my back pocket. Using my flashlight, I walked along the side of the house toward where he and Gretchen were set up with Geronimo. I scanned the back yard with my light, but there were no buses hidden there.

  “Where in God’s name is the bus?” I asked out loud, not expecting a response.

  Melvin indicated toward the north and across the shell driveway. I looked and saw the back of a rustic barn house. It had a curved roof and a light was glowing from a back window. “Let’s ask those people if they know what’s going on here. If they’re anything like my neighbors, they know everything that happens within a ten-mile radius.”

  Gretchen grunted. “My neighbor’s a pervert. I caught the bastard staring at me last year while I was cutting my grass in a bikini.” She paused and raised a hand while we started walking toward the barn together. “Before y’all say anything, I was just trying to get some sun for a cruise I was taking in May. I’m not the type to go lay out, so I figured I could get some work done while getting my tan on.”

  “You’re already bronze-colored, Gretchen,” Melvin said. “Why in the hell would you want to get darker?”

  “Ever heard of a farmer’s tan?” she asked.

  We both nodded.

  “Well, I’ve got a copper’s tan—my arms and face are a nice copper tone while my legs and stomach have faded over time, thanks to living in this God-awful uniform. But that’s more than y’all wanted to hear.” She waved dismissively. “Anyway, he was sitting in his screened-in porch with binoculars. I jumped off my lawnmower and marched over there, took away his binoculars, and smashed them on the ground.”

  I laughed. “What did he do?”

  “Not a damn thing. His wife wasn’t home, and I guarantee you he didn’t want me to have a conversation with her.”

  We had reached the barn and I walked to a garage door that had a doorbell on the frame. I pressed it and we waited. As we stood there, I pulled out my phone and checked the time. It was a quarter after nine.

  “I hope they’re not in bed,” I said.

  “If they were sleeping, they’re not anymore,” Melvin said, as a door slammed in the downstairs area and the automatic garage door rattled to life.

  We stood back as it opened. A pair of pale legs slowly came into view. As the door rose higher, we were able to see a young woman in her mid-twenties standing there shivering. Her hair was wrapped in a towel and she was hugging herself.

  “Is something wrong?” she asked, looking from me, to Melvin, and then to Gretchen. Her eyes softened when she saw Geronimo sitting quietly beside Gretchen. “Aw, he’s so cute! Does he bite?”

  “Only bad people,” Gretchen said wryly.

  She gulped and stepped back just a little.

  I shot a thumb toward Katrina Bradberry’s house. “We were wondering if you know your neighbors.”

  She glanced in that direction, nodded. “Mr. Ricky is my father-in-law and Ms. Katrina is my mother-in-law. Is something wrong?”

  “We need to speak with them, but no one answered the door,” I explained. “Do you know where we can find them?”

  The girl scowled. “Mr. Ricky works nights at the sugar mill, but Ms. Katrina drives a bus during the day. She’s usually home at night while Mr. Ricky’s at work.”

  “Well, the bus is gone.”

  “That’s odd.” The girl stepped out and craned her neck to see across the shell drive. “I’ve never seen that bus leave unless she’s been driving it, and it’s always parked under the carport at night unless she’s driving kids to a football game or some other school function. She usually tells us when she has to do that, though, and she didn’t say anything to me this weekend when I spoke to her. I do know she was sick on Monday, so I am surprised the bus is gone.”

  “Was the bus parked there last night?” I asked.

  “I really don’t remember. I mean, it’s always there, so I don’t even notice it anymore.”

  I nodded thoughtfully, wondering where on earth Katrina Bradberry could have run off to. “Have you ever heard any disturbances next door? Like an argument between your in-laws?”

  The girl shook her head.

  “Are you married to their son?”

  “Yeah—Lenny Bradberry. I’m Natalie.”

  “It’s nice to meet you, Natalie.” I gave a curt nod. “Is Lenny here? I’d like to ask him—”

  “No, he’s offshore. He was supposed to be home over the weekend, but they picked up another job.”

  “How long has he been gone?”

  “Oh, since right before the New Year. Like I said, he was due to come home last weekend—Friday night—but he called to say they’d been delayed. They do that a lot, but he gets paid well for the inconvenience, so I don’t complain.”

  “Other than you, do they have any other family around here—someone who might know where I can find Katrina?”

  “They do have a son who’s also named Ricky—everyone calls him Junior—but he’s a deadbeat. He’s lazy and he never does anything to help my in-laws.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Where can I find him?”

  “He lives way in the back behind the
house at the end of the shell road.” She grunted. “He’s been in trouble with the law before and he doesn’t help them with things around the house. Like, this one time, Mr. Ricky needed help moving their gas pump. He had to wait until Lenny got in from offshore, because Junior was too lazy to leave his house.”

  “What else can you tell me about Junior?” I asked.

  “I mean, all I know is that he doesn’t do much to help out, and he doesn’t work anywhere. They have a big yard to keep up and it’s usually Ms. Katrina who cuts the grass, because Mr. Ricky mostly sleeps during the day. Lenny helps out as much as he can when he’s home, but they can’t always wait for him to come in to cut the grass because it would get too long.”

  “What does Junior drive?”

  “A little car, two door. It’s brand new, courtesy of Mr. Ricky. I think it’s a Toyota something-or-other. It’s red, but the paint is messed up all over the hood because he already dropped something on it.”

  “Anything else you can tell us that might help?”

  “I don’t know. Y’all didn’t tell me what was going on.”

  “A girl went missing and she rides your mother-in-law’s bus,” I explained. “We’re just trying to see if Mrs. Bradberry knows anything about the little girl.”

  “Oh, wow…no, I don’t know anything else.”

  CHAPTER 25

  “Do you still need me and Geronimo?” Gretchen asked when we’d walked back to our cars. “I’m being called away to search a building. The deputy got an alarm call and he found a door busted open. He thinks the suspect is still inside.”

  I told her we were good and thanked her for the help. When Melvin and I were alone, I looked toward the back of the street. “So, do we talk to Little Ricky or Big Ricky first?”

  Melvin indicated with his head toward the back of the long drive. “If Katrina did take Rose, she’ll be here on the property and not at the sugar mill, so I say Little Ricky.”

  I agreed with him, and we began the long walk to the back. It took us about ten minutes to reach the little trailer at the end of the shell driveway. While it was dark as sin back there, the moon was bright enough that it wrapped the area in an eerie glow. We could make out most of the shadows around the clearing where the trailer was positioned, and I could see a small car parked near the front door.

  “He’s home,” Melvin whispered, referencing the loud music emitting from the trailer. Although the windows were all covered with aluminum foil, we could tell the lights inside were on, thanks to the dozens of tiny holes in the foil.

  Melvin motioned that he was going to check out the back, and I put my ear close to the door while I waited for him to scout the area. Other than the pounding of music, I couldn’t hear anything. I kept my eye on the front door and, within a few minutes, Melvin reappeared from my left. He had made the full round of the exterior.

  “There’s nothing there except some old junk,” he said. “The back yard for this trailer looks like the yard surrounding the main house, only to a smaller degree. These people must be hoarders.”

  “No sign of the bus?”

  “Oh, hell to the no. There’s no way a bus is fitting behind the trailer. I couldn’t find a path through the woods wide enough to fit a human, much less a bus. It’s really dense back there.”

  I frowned, wondering where the bus could be. It wasn’t back here and it wasn’t in the front, so what had become of it? I shrugged, stepped to the right side of the door. “You ready?”

  Melvin dropped his hand to his pistol, nodded.

  Moving my right hand closer to my holster, I reached across my body with my left hand and banged on the trailer door. I had banged so hard I rattled the exterior wall. Suddenly, the music stopped. I waited, but there was no other movement. I banged again. This time, we heard movement from the center of the trailer, and then footsteps stomped toward the entrance.

  In my peripheral vision, I saw Melvin crouch a little, ready for anything.

  “Mom?” called a male voice when the footsteps stopped. “Is that you?”

  I heard chain rattling and the knob jingled as the door was unlocked. When it opened, I saw a skinny kid peering outside with eyes that bugged. He jerked back when he saw me standing there.

  “You’re not my mom.” He jerked again when Melvin stepped into view. “Holy shit, what’s going on? Did someone complain about my music being too loud?”

  I glanced around, taking in the darkness. “There’s no one back here to complain.”

  “We’ve got neighbors through the trees to the north, and they called once because I was shooting a gun. The cops didn’t do nothing, though. They said I was far enough from any house not to cause a danger.” He swallowed. “So, what’s going on?”

  “Where’s your mom, Junior?” I asked, getting right to it.

  “I don’t know.” He shrugged his bony shoulders. “I haven’t been to the house in about a week. Maybe two. But the last time I saw her, she wasn’t feeling good. She was coming down with something and I was worried I’d catch it, so I stayed away. Ask Lenny. He might’ve seen her since then.”

  “Lenny’s offshore. What day of the week was it when you went there last?”

  “Um…what’s today?”

  “Thursday.”

  “Oh, God, I don’t know. It might’ve been Monday morning before I went to sleep.”

  “This past Monday?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s less than a week or two,” I said, trying to remain patient. “That’s only three days ago.”

  “Look, I don’t know when I saw her last. I just know she was sick.”

  “What did she have?”

  “Hell, I ain’t no doctor. I don’t know what she had.” He picked at a sore on his face. It began to bleed. “I think she said she threw up. She said something she ate might’ve made her sick. I don’t like it when people throw up, so I didn’t want to hang around, you know? I just took some food and left.”

  “Where’s her bus?”

  “Under the carport.”

  “What if I tell you it’s not there—that the bus is gone and so is your mom?”

  “The only time my mom takes it out at night is when she’s bringing the school kids to a football game or a band concert.” He nodded for emphasis. “Yeah, she does that a lot when it’s band season. That’s probably where she’s at.”

  “What about your dad?”

  “He works nights at the sugar mill.”

  “When’s the last time you saw him?”

  “I don’t know. He’s always at work when I’m awake.”

  “I take it you sleep during the day.” I said it more as an accusation.

  He grinned and I noticed his two front teeth were missing. “You know it. All the excitement’s at night anyways. If I sleep, I might miss out on some fun.”

  I asked a few more questions, mostly about how his mom and dad got along, and then asked if I could look around his place.

  “I mean, yeah, I guess. Do I have to let you?”

  “You have the right to refuse to let me search,” I explained. “But I can tell you this—we’re not interested in drugs or any other illegal activity you might have going on out here. Tonight, we’re looking for a young girl.”

  He threw his hands back instantly. “I ain’t got no girl! I can promise you that!”

  “So, is that a yes?”

  He hesitated.

  “Look, I don’t have the probable cause to get a warrant,” I admitted. “You can tell me to go to hell and I’d have to leave. I’m asking for a favor, just so I can be sure she’s not here. If you let me look for her, I’ll turn a blind eye to whatever you’ve got going on inside—unless it involves a danger to someone’s life.”

  “Are you screwing with me?”

  “Nope. You can film me with your phone if you like.”

  He fidgeted, picked furiously at his sore. A stream of blood was running down his face, but he didn’t seem to notice. “Uh, I guess it’s okay. You c
an come in.”

  I glanced at Melvin to see if he wanted to enter first, but he smiled and shook his head. “I’ll wait out here. You know, just in case we have unwanted visitors.”

  I grunted and climbed the steps, followed Junior into the trailer. The room I entered was a living room that was sparsely furnished. Junior led the way through a kitchen, down a narrow hallway, and into a bedroom. A bare mattress rested on the floor. There was a dirty blanket on the floor and a chair was situated near the head of the mattress. On that chair was drug paraphernalia—a syringe, a small spoon with burn marks on it, a hand torch, a plastic bottle of water, and a clear bag of what appeared to be heroin.

  “You said everything was invisible except the little girl you’re looking for,” Junior reminded me as he studied the expression on my face. “You promised.”

  I took a deep breath and exhaled, nodded. “Show me the rest of the place.”

  Once I’d gone over every inch of his trailer, I stopped near the front door and turned to him. “You said the last time you went to your mom’s house was to get some food, is that correct?”

  He nodded.

  “And she was confined to the bed, is that also correct?”

  “What’s that mean?” His face twisted in confusion.

  “Did she ever get out of bed while you were there?”

  “Oh, no.”

  “So, then, how’d you let yourself in?” I asked. “Do you have a key to the house?”

  “No, it’s hanging above the door frame by the front porch. I’m always losing keys, so that’s why I keep my house unlocked when I’m not here. I used to always lock myself out and I had to keep breaking in.”

  “Am I correct in assuming you have permission to go in and out of your mom’s house at will?” I quickly rephrased the last part of the question. “I mean, you can go in there whenever you want, right?”

  He nodded, not sure where I was going with my line of questioning. He didn’t seem very bright, but he did sense a trap.

  “Do you mind letting us look around your mom’s house?” I tried to make my proposition as cheerful as possible. “Just to make sure she’s okay. You said she was throwing up, so she might need a doctor.”