by B J Bourg
“But she’s not home.”
It was my turn to be suspicious. “How do you know that?”
Junior pointed at me. “You told me the bus is gone. If the bus is gone, then she’s gone.”
“It might’ve been stolen.” I was losing my patience now. “Do you mind taking me for a tour to make sure everything’s good?”
“Sure.” He cracked that toothless smile again. “And you won’t have to be blind when you walk through their house, because they don’t do drugs.”
CHAPTER 26
Katrina Bradberry’s house smelled musty when we pushed through the front entrance. Melvin elected to wait outside by the back door while we conducted a search of the place. He had given me a nod and let me know he’d take a closer look at things outside, where the air was fresher.
“This is the living room,” Junior said, walking right through the small room and toward a doorway along the far wall. He pointed to the right, where a hallway disappeared into the darkness. “This goes to the bedrooms.”
He flipped a light switch—the bulb gave off about as much glow as a dull flashlight—and I followed him to the first room on the right. He pushed the door open. “This is my dad’s bedroom.”
I nodded idly, then turned to him. “Wait—do your mom and dad sleep in separate rooms?”
“Yeah, they don’t like each other much.” Junior shrugged. “They used to always say they’d get divorced when I graduated, but they decided just to live in separate rooms instead. My dad told me once that it was cheaper to keep her, and my mom said she wanted to hang around and make him miserable in his last days. But I think the real reason they stay together is to make sure the property stays in the family. My dad says if they get divorced me and my brother would be homeless, and he doesn’t want that—none of us do.”
“Do things ever get violent between them?” I asked.
“Oh, no.” He shook his head for emphasis. “They argued a lot, but they never hit each other.”
Junior led me to his mom’s room next. This one was to the left of the hall. The rancid smell of stale vomit greeted us when he opened the door. He jerked back and fell into me.
“Oh, God, it stinks so bad!” He pushed his way past me and hurried back toward the other end of the hall, gagging as he ran.
I flipped on the light and frowned as I took in the scene. The bed was a mess. The sheets and blanket were twisted and hanging on the floor. There was a bucket near the head of the bed. Upon closer inspection, I could see it was the source of the stench. There was a plastic bag lining the bucket, and it was filled with vomit.
I pulled out my flashlight and aimed it around the bed and floor. “Damn,” I said out loud, “this poor woman was really sick.”
She had missed the bucket a few times, but hadn’t even attempted to clean it up. I used the camera on my phone to take some pictures around the room, and then I called Susan.
She wasn’t as cheerful as normal when she answered my call. I was tempted to ask what was wrong, but I knew this wasn’t the right time. “Hey, Sue, I’m out at Katrina Bradberry’s house searching it. There’s no sign of Rose, but it’s obvious that Katrina was terribly sick. In this condition, there’s no way she’s kidnapping anyone.”
“Do you know where she is?” Susan was all business.
“No, but I was wondering if you could contact all the hospitals in the area. That might be where she was heading in the bus when she left here yesterday morning. Her son said if the bus is gone, she’s gone. It was her only mode of transportation.”
Susan took a deep breath and exhaled it forcefully. “So, I guess you’re saying this is just another dead end?”
“I’m afraid it is.”
I could tell she was about to end the call, so I quickly blurted out that I loved her. There was a long pause, and then, in a quiet voice, she said, “I love you, too.”
Feeling a little better about things, I walked down the hall to find Junior. Instead of turning left into the living room, I turned right and found him sitting at the table, his head tilted back and a wet towel covering his face.
“Damn, I almost lost it back there.” He said when I stopped to stand over him. “I can’t handle that shit. Mom knows that about me.”
I surveyed the contents of the tabletop. There was a box of wheat cereal and a yellow container of sugar at the center, and a dirty bowl and spoon in front of one of the chairs.
“Who eats the cereal?” I asked.
Junior turned his eyes down to see where I was pointing. “That’s for my mom. It’s her favorite cereal and her favorite bowl. She’s been eating that for breakfast for as long as I’ve been alive. My dad used to ask her why she bothers getting healthy cereal when she just piles on the sugar, and she’d just tell him to shut his mouth and leave her alone.”
“Junior, are you even one bit worried about your mom?”
He sat there staring up at me with one eye, the towel dangling across his face covering the other eye. “I don’t know. I never really thought about it. I mean, she can take care of herself.”
“But she’s sick. Didn’t you think she needed a hospital or a doctor when you were here?”
He scoffed. “She never goes to the doctor. Now, can I get back to my house? I want to finish listening to my music.”
I fixed Junior with a hard stare. “Son, your life won’t end well if you keep shooting up. The way I see it, there’ll only be two outcomes for you—death or prison.”
His face was blank. “Mister, drugs is the only thing I look forward to anymore. Hell, if I couldn’t get high, I’d just as soon be dead.”
CHAPTER 27
“What do you think?” I asked Melvin as we stood watching Junior fade into the darkness on the walk back to his trailer. I pulled the zipper higher up on my jacket. The temperature had dropped a few more degrees and it was getting under my skin.
“He’s certainly a strange one. I checked everything around back, but there’s no place big enough to hide Rose.” Melvin spat on the ground. “I really thought this would turn up something.”
“Me, too.” I shook my head as I considered our only three suspects.
First, there was Michael Odom, who initially seemed to be our most likely candidate. He had cooperated fully and, as we had discovered, was apparently telling the truth about everything. I almost felt comfortable ruling him out as a suspect.
Francis Fitch had lived in the area and was a sexual predator, so he had shot high on my list of suspects, but he was now dead, and we hadn’t found a shred of evidence to connect him to Rose.
That only left Katrina Bradberry, but she was missing. That, in and of itself, was suspicious. She disappears, along with her bus, around the same time a girl who lives a few miles down the road also disappears—and it’s a girl who rides her bus. This couldn’t be a coincidence. Could it?
“Melvin, we have to find that bus.”
Melvin was thoughtful as we turned and walked toward our vehicles. “What if Katrina and Rose are in on this thing together?”
“What do you mean?”
“What if Katrina is helping Rose run away?”
I stopped walking. “Damn, that’s a good one. Rose could’ve sold some sob story about how mean her mom was, and Katrina could’ve felt sorry for her.”
“If that’s the case, then she’s not in any danger,” Melvin mused as we continued up the driveway. “But if it’s not the case, the poor girl’s probably already dead—and this Katrina Bradberry is either a killer or a second victim.”
“And she’s very sick—or at least she was very sick.”
“Do you think she’s got rabies?” Melvin asked. “Rabies makes you vomit and it makes you mean. Maybe she headed out on her bus route yesterday morning, picked up Rose, caught a glimpse of the moon in the sky, and then went all crazy. Just got pissed off at the world and took it out on Rose.”
“Don’t werewolves go crazy when they see the moon?” I offered. “I’m pretty sure people wit
h rabies don’t get pissed off when they see the moon.”
He shrugged. “It was worth a shot.”
I told him I was heading back to the command post, and slipped into my Tahoe. I called Susan as I drove. She still sounded cold.
“Hey, is Baylor still in the sky?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
“Can you get him to be on the lookout for a big yellow school bus? I’m not sure what’s going on with Katrina Bradberry, but I’d like to get my hands on her and question her just to rule her out.”
“Sure thing.”
“Did you have a chance to check the hospitals?”
“I’ve got Takecia calling them. She already covered Chateau Parish and she’s now working on the surrounding parishes.”
“Thanks.”
“Okay.”
Click.
I stared down at my phone, set my jaw. I was going to find out what was going on as soon as I got back to the Murdock’s home. I certainly hadn’t done anything to deserve that treatment from her, and I wasn’t going to continue taking it.
Oh, yeah, and what exactly are you going to do? I asked myself. Ask her nicely to stop?
I scowled as I pushed harder on the accelerator. I didn’t like disagreeing with my wife, and I hated it when she was mad at me—especially when I didn’t know what I’d supposedly done. Thankfully, it didn’t happen often, but every time it did, it ruined my day.
CHAPTER 28
12:30 a.m., Friday, January 12
4923 Old Blackbird Highway, Mechant Loup, Louisiana
41 hours missing…
Laura Murdock slipped quietly out of her bed, paused to hear if the movement had stirred Ronnie from his sleep. He was snoring softly and steadily. Saying a silent prayer not to be heard, she felt around in the darkness for her sneakers. Once she’d pulled them on, she located her heavy coat and shrugged into it. She buttoned the coat and moved to her dresser, where she felt for a beanie and gloves.
Next, she tiptoed around the bed to Ronnie’s side, where she eased the top drawer of his nightstand open, stopping often to make sure she hadn’t disturbed her husband’s sleep. The red light that glowed from the alarm clock enabled her to see the outline of the silver pistol resting in the drawer.
Laura knew the pistol was loaded, because Ronnie always said the only dangerous gun was an empty one. While she never fully understood what he meant by that statement, she did know every gun he owned was loaded.
The pistol felt heavy when she lifted it—heavier than she remembered. Ronnie had taken her to the shooting range when they first got married and he’d shown her how to use this gun.
“I don’t need you to win any pistol matches,” he’d joked, “I just need you to be able to defend yourself when I’m not home.”
“I’d rather use a baseball bat or a knife,” she had responded, acknowledging her fear of guns. She had done okay when she fired the first shot, but the bang scared her so much she dropped it and refused to shoot it again.
Laura had made no secret about hating guns when she first met Ronnie, and he knew the story well. The issue had all started when she was a young girl. She had been playing hide-and-seek at her uncle’s house with her cousin, Leslie, when Leslie decided to hide in her uncle’s closet. At the time, she just heard a gunshot and some screaming. Later, she learned that Leslie had found a gun in the closet and when she pulled on it, a hanger got hung up on the trigger and it went off, shooting Leslie in the chest. She died at the hospital later that night, and Laura was forever scarred.
As was his nature, Ronnie had been very understanding when she’d dropped the gun. She had apologized but he assured her it wasn’t a big deal. He explained to her that it was okay and they could come back whenever she was ready. That day had never come, and she wondered now if she would regret the decision to not learn how to shoot.
Laura trembled as she shoved the revolver in the pocket of her coat, being very careful not to touch the trigger with her gloved fingers. Ronnie had preached to her that she was never to touch the trigger until she was ready to shoot. In the past, she never thought that moment would materialize, but she now knew exactly when that time would come.
Ronnie was still snoring steadily when she made her way to the bedroom window. She started to move the blinds, but froze in place when they rattled. No one was in the house except for Ronnie, Seth, and her, but she knew Ronnie would never stand for what she was about to do. He would try to stop her, to talk her out of it, but she wouldn’t listen. And then he would tell Chief Wilson, and she would stop her. Laura set her jaw.
I can’t let that happen, she thought, if they won’t find my daughter, then I have to do it myself.
Working as stealthily as she could, she opened the window, removed the screen, and slipped out into the cold night air. Her house was two feet off the ground and the drop was farther than she anticipated. Her feet stung and her knees buckled when she landed and she plopped onto her butt. She grunted and scrambled to her feet, gazing up at the window. She was too short to reach up and close it, and that caused her great angst. If the cold wind woke up Ronnie, he would know she had slipped away and he would alert Chief Wilson.
Well, no time to worry about that now, she mused. I’ve got to get out of here as fast as I can.
Most of the volunteers had settled in for the night, so everything was quiet—too quiet to conceal any noise she might make. But she had heard the helicopter fly over the house a dozen times since darkness had fallen, and she would wait for it to pass again before she made her move.
Holding on to the back of the house, she crept along, making her way to the north side. Her car was parked in the front yard and if she could get to it without being seen, she could make her escape.
She had just rounded the back corner when she heard a voice from the darkness just around the front corner. She almost screeched, but caught herself, and flattened against the siding.
“I’ve got Takecia calling them,” she heard Chief Wilson saying. She knew the chief must be on the phone, because no one responded and she kept talking. “She already covered Chateau, and now she’s calling the surrounding parishes.”
Laura stood breathless and waited. A few seconds later Susan ended the call. She sucked in her breath as she wondered if Susan might head toward her, but she sighed in relief when Susan’s boots crunched in the opposite direction. She could see her car from the corner of the house and there was no one in her way. For a brief moment, she thought about sprinting to it and quickly driving away, but she knew that would attract attention. If that happened, the police would catch up to her before she could execute her plan—and that would further jeopardize her daughter’s life.
Laura stopped when she reached the front corner of the house and peered out. There was no one in sight. She took one step out into the open and paused. A low murmur of voices sounded from the closed tent, where some of the volunteers had retired for the night. Some had gone home but promised to return at first light, while others wanted to remain close in case their help was needed.
Laura took another step toward her car, and then another, and another. Before long, she was standing outside the driver’s door. After removing the glove from her right hand, she fished the set of keys from her pocket and hit the keyless remote. She quickly gasped and dropped to her knees when the headlights and taillights flashed brightly.
What if someone saw? Would they arrest her for what she was about to do?
As she knelt there in the wet grass—the moisture saturating her pant legs—she became overcome with anger and suddenly felt defiant. There was nothing wrong with her walking out of her house and retrieving something from her car. After all, she was not a prisoner; she was a victim. And what if she wanted to drive off and maybe search for her daughter? Or go pick up a midnight snack? Who were they to tell her where she could or couldn’t go? The last time she checked, this was still America. To hell with them!
Laura stood to her feet and jerked the door open. “I
’ll do whatever the hell I want,” she said in a low voice, “and I dare them to try and stop me.”
She slipped into the driver’s seat and pulled the door closed. Taking a breath, she cranked the engine. She glanced in the direction of the tent, but the noise had not attracted any attention. She then drove out of the yard, up onto the shoulder, and then headed north on Old Blackbird Highway.
She checked her rearview mirror often, but no one was following her. I did it, she thought, and now I’m going to bring Rose home—with or without their help!
CHAPTER 29
It only took Laura five minutes to reach downtown Mechant Loup, and a few more minutes to cross the bayou to the east side of town. Faleena had called her cell phone earlier in the day to apologize for everything, and Laura had learned from Faleena that Michael Odom lived in a green house off of Cypress Highway. Faleena had assured her that Michael had nothing to do with Rose’s disappearance, but Laura wasn’t convinced.
Laura turned her high beams on as she made her way south along Cypress Highway. She had gone about two miles when she saw a green house with a boat trailer and truck parked in the driveway. The truck matched the description of the one Seth said Michael drove.
“I’ve got you now, you little bastard!” Laura parked on the shoulder of the road and shut off her lights. She watched the house for a minute, but everything looked quiet. She peeled off her gloves so she would have better control of the gun, and then pulled the revolver out of her coat pocket. The metal was cold against her flesh.
“God, please give me the strength to do this,” she prayed out loud. Part of her wanted to just turn and drive away, but there was another part that wanted answers—that wanted to do whatever it took to get her daughter back. The police were bound by certain rules they had to follow. She was not. She could do things to Michael that the police couldn’t do—things that would force him to spill it all.