by B J Bourg
Resting the revolver in her lap, she pulled out her cell phone and then twisted in her seat so she could remove a piece of paper from her back pocket. It was a copy of Rose’s phone usage, and it contained Michael’s number.
With trembling fingers, she dialed the number and put the phone to her head. It rang and rang and rang, but there was no answer. It went to voicemail. Cursing, Laura ended the call and sat there staring at the house. What should she—
She jerked in her seat and screeched when the phone started ringing. It was Michael!
Laura hesitated, wondering if she could summon the courage to say what needed to be said. When it seemed the phone had rung too many times, she hurried and answered it.
“Chief Susan Wilson speaking,” Laura lied.
There was a pause. “Hello?”
“Hello, Michael, this is Police Chief Susan Wilson. I need to speak with you right away.”
“What’s this about?” Michael mumbled, clearly half asleep and confused.
“We have a few more questions about Rose, and we need to speak with you immediately.”
“Okay, I can talk.”
“No, we need to do this in person, and we need to do it now.” Laura paused, breathless, wondering if she had been too forceful. What if she had scared him off?
“I mean, I told the detective man everything I know.”
“Like I said, we have more questions and we need you to come down to the police department right away.”
“The one in Mechant Loup or in Central Chateau?”
“Right here in town,” Laura said, relieved that he was buying it. “We won’t keep you long. We just have a few questions for you.”
“I can drive myself?” He sounded surprised.
“Oh, yeah, just come on down in your truck.” Laura winced to herself, wondering if she had said too much.
“Okay.” Michael grunted and she could hear mattress springs squeaking in the background. “I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
Laura’s heart pounded against her sternum as she ended the call. Her breath was coming in gasps. She had never done anything like this and she didn’t know if she could actually go through with it.
“Do it for Rose,” she whispered, opening the door to her car. “Do it for Rose.”
The wind immediately blew into her car and whipped her hair around. She shivered and squinted, pushed her way out the door. She hurried across the front yard, staying hunched over to protect herself from the cold. The revolver was clutched tightly in both hands and she held it out in front of her body, aiming it in the direction of Michael’s front door. She needed him to step fully out of the house before he saw her. If not, she wouldn’t be able to confront him.
When Laura reached the back of Michael’s truck, she crouched low and hid there in the shadows. The wind was relentless and she was trembling uncontrollably, but she didn’t know if it was from the cold or her own anxiety. She was shaking so much that she didn’t think she could go through with the plan, and she was about to turn and run when she heard some noise from the front of the house.
She jumped in her skin when the door to the house slammed shut. Footsteps then shuffled toward her. Within a few seconds, she heard keys jingled from ten feet away.
This is it! she thought, and lunged out from behind the truck. In a voice that didn’t sound like her own, she screamed at Michael Odom to get on the ground.
“Do it now or I’m going to kill your sorry ass!” she hollered, shoving the muzzle of the revolver in his direction. The front of the pistol shook so much she thought she would drop the gun. “God damn it, get on your face!”
With a yelp, Michael threw himself back and tripped over his own feet. He fell hard, but immediately began scrambling on his back toward the house.
“What the hell is going on?” he wailed. “Who are you? What’s going on?”
“Stop moving or I’ll kill you!” Laura yelled, but Michael continued moving toward the door to his house. Closing her eyes, Laura squeezed the trigger and the gun exploded. “Stop it now!”
That got Michael’s attention. He stopped moving and threw his hands up in front of his face. “Please don’t shoot me! Please! What’s going on?”
Laura felt emboldened. She stepped closer to Michael and stood over him. “Tell me where my daughter is or I’ll murder you right now! Do you hear me? Where in the hell is Rose?”
“I don’t know!” Michael wailed. “I swear to God, I don’t know!”
“Liar!” Laura pulled the trigger again and fire spat from the barrel. Michael screamed so loud she thought she’d hit him.
“Please! For the love of God, stop this! I don’t know anything about Rose!”
“You’re lying!” Saliva sprayed from Laura’s mouth and floated on the wind. “If you don’t tell me where she is right now, I swear I’ll shoot you right in the dick!”
“No! Please, I don’t know!”
“I’m going to count to three and then you’ll never have sex again.” Laura pulled the hammer back on the revolver. She remembered Ronnie telling her the trigger was more sensitive when it was cocked, so she took her finger out of the trigger guard, but aimed the muzzle right at Michael’s crotch. “One!”
“Please no!”
“Two!”
“I swear to God, I don’t know—”
“Three!” Laura leaned closer and was about to pull the trigger when Michael started screaming that he would talk.
“Okay! Okay! I know where she’s at! I’ll tell you everything!”
Laura kept the revolver aimed at his crotch, but she straightened her finger along the side of the gun like Ronnie had taught her to do when she wasn’t ready to shoot. “Where is she?”
Michael’s eyes were wide and he swallowed hard. “I…I can take you to her, but you have to promise not to hurt me.”
Tears welled up in Laura’s eyes. She had to brush them away with her shoulder so she could make out Michael’s facial features in the dim light from the house. “Is she okay? Is she…is she alive?”
Michael hesitated for a long moment, and fury burned in her belly.
“As God is my witness,” she bellowed, gripping the revolver tightly. “I’ll murder you long and hard if you hurt my Rose!”
“No, no, she’s not hurt.” Michael lifted his hands in a pleading manner. Tears were streaming down his face. “She’s fine. She just doesn’t want to be found, that’s all.”
“Then where is she?”
“I…it’s hard to explain. I’ll have to take you there. I can show you, but I can’t explain where it is.”
“That’s bullshit!”
“No, I don’t know the address. And…and we have to get there by boat. It’s not far from my grandpa’s camp.”
Laura pursed her lips and studied the boy. He was trembling and she was sure the large dark spot in the area of his crotch was urine. She didn’t know how to drive a boat, so she would have to rely on him to get them there—and that meant she would have to be at his mercy. If he decided to crash the boat in a desperate attempt to escape, then she would be in real trouble. But she didn’t have another choice. If she called Chief Wilson or Detective Wolf, they would put her in jail and Rose would never be found.
“Get up,” she finally said. “We’re going for a ride. And if you’re lying to me or if you try anything stupid, I’ll kill you really slow and leave you out there for the alligators to eat.”
CHAPTER 30
When I reached the Murdock home, I parked on the northbound shoulder of the highway. It was almost one o’clock and the place looked dead. I slipped out of my Tahoe and strode across the highway, heading for the open tent. I could see a figure in the far corner sitting at a table, using a flashlight to illuminate something. It was too far away and too dark, but I was almost positive it was Susan.
I was right.
“Hey, Sue, what’s up?”
“Hey,” she mumbled, not taking her eyes off the map in front of her. She was tracing
a line between two points with an orange highlighter, and she didn’t even slow down.
I scanned the area under the tent. We were alone. The closed tent was nearby and I knew our words would travel, so I kept my voice low.
“I’d like to talk about what’s bugging you,” I said.
“Nothing’s bugging me.”
“Come on.” My voice was louder than I intended. “Tell me it’s none of my business, but don’t tell me it’s nothing. I’m not stupid.”
“I didn’t say you were stupid.”
“Then tell me what’s going on.”
“Now’s not the time.”
“Why do you get to decide the right time?” I asked. “I think right now’s a great time to get this out in the open.”
She looked up and her eyes flashed. She’d never looked at me that way before. “You want to do this now? Do you?”
I nodded, wondering what I was getting myself into.
“Very well, then.” She dropped her highlighter and reached for her back pocket. When her hand reappeared, it was holding her phone. I scowled, wondering what it was that she was about to show me.
After navigating her thumbs across her touch screen, she turned it in my direction and plopped it on the table.
“Explain that,” she said curtly.
I picked up her phone and saw that it was a short string of text messages, which began with Susan asking for a status of the search at Francis Fitch’s house. I didn’t immediately recognize the phone number from which the replies came, but it was clearly from an officer out at the scene because the response was thorough and it listed all of the items that were seized as evidence.
I looked from the phone to Susan. “What’s this got to do with me?”
“Just keep reading.”
I continued scrolling through and it was more of the same—until I reached the very last message, which had been sent to Susan’s phone at six o’clock yesterday afternoon. My blood ran cold when I read the message:
Hey, Clint. It was sooo good catching up with you. Thx for buying me dinner. You didn’t have to do that—it was supposed to be my treat. Anyway, I don’t know about you, but it seemed like we picked up right where we left off. Don’t be a stranger. Call me next time you come to La Mort so we can ‘catch up’ again. xoxo
“Holy shit,” was all I could mutter for a few long seconds. Finally, I handed her the phone and shook my head. “I’m guessing this is from Jennifer Duval, but I haven’t been in a restaurant with her in many years. She did call me and ask if I wanted to go eat out with her—she offered to pay for it—but I told her no.”
“Look, Clint, if you ate out with her, just tell me you did. Whatever you do, don’t lie to me.”
“I’m not—and I didn’t eat out with her. You can ask Lou. As soon as I left him at the boat launch I came to Mechant Loup.”
“I did ask him. He said y’all left the boat launch at five thirty.” She tapped her phone. “You got here at about six-thirty—thirty minutes after I received this message. You should’ve been here by six if you drove straight from the boat launch.”
“I checked out some back roads and old tractor sheds and I stopped to feed Achilles on my way in,” I said, trying to be patient. I didn’t like being accused of things I hadn’t done, but I was fully aware of how it might appear from Susan’s point of view. “Think about it, Sue—why would she accidentally send you a message that was meant for me unless she was being catty?”
“Well, I did wonder that at first, but then I remembered how our new cell phone numbers are one digit apart.” Susan’s eyes were still as hard as they were earlier. “She could’ve easily hit the wrong digit while trying to text you—people do it all the time. I’m constantly getting your text messages.”
“Sue, I’m sure Jennifer has my number programmed in her phone. This was no accident.” I stepped around the table and pulled a chair next to hers. I leaned close to her face. “Baby, I will never cheat on you, and the only things I’ll lie about are Christmas presents and birthday surprises.”
She was unmoved. “My mom didn’t think my dad would cheat on her either, but you know how that turned out.”
“I’m not your dad and you’re not your mom. This is us. If I don’t want to be with you, I’ll just leave you—but I’ll never cheat on you.”
She cocked her head to the side. “Is that supposed to make me feel better?”
“I don’t know what it’s supposed to do.” I leaned back in my chair, wanting to hide my frustration, but finding it difficult to do. “Look, I didn’t eat with that bitch, and that’s the truth. I won’t leave you and I won’t cheat on you. You can either believe me or not.”
“I’m not naïve and I know it happens all the time to people everywhere—especially cops. If it could happen to my mom, then it could happen to me.”
“I already told you—I’m a Wolf, and that means I mate for life.”
Susan’s brow furrowed slightly and I saw her face start to soften. “You wouldn’t lie to me about something like this, would you?”
“No.”
Susan turned her attention back to the phone and stared at it for a long moment. I could tell she was reading the text message over and over. “If what you’re saying is true—and I don’t know that you’ve ever lied to me—then this bitch is crazy. I mean, who does something like this?”
“She was mad when I told her no, and I guess it’s true that hell hath no fury…” I allowed my voice to trail off.
“After I have our baby,” Susan said slowly, “I’m going to drive to La Mort and pay her a visit.”
“And I want to watch.” I reached out and grabbed Susan’s hand. “So, is this why you’ve been treating me like I pulled the heads off your baby dolls?”
She lowered her head and frowned. “I mean, what was I supposed to think? What if you got a text message like that and the roles were reversed and you knew the possibility of it being accidentally sent to your phone was real?”
I was still a little peeved about not being believed, but I nodded anyway. “I guess I see your point.”
We both sat there in silence for a long moment. It was Susan who spoke first. “You know you wouldn’t survive if you did, right?”
“Huh? What do you mean?”
“If you ever left me—you wouldn’t survive.”
“Meaning…?”
“I would find you.”
I started to laugh, but stopped short when I heard screaming over the police radio. It was our dispatcher. “Chief, I just got a call of shots fired in Mechant Loup East—multiple shots and they think someone might be down!”
We began scrambling from our chairs just as the front door to the Murdock home burst open and Ronnie came running out.
“She’s gone!” he screamed.
“Who’s gone?” I asked, following Susan toward where her Tahoe was parked.
“Laura’s gone! She slipped out of the window while I was sleeping!”
“Oh, God, she’s going to kill that boy,” Susan said. “She’s going after Michael Odom!”
CHAPTER 31
Ten minutes later…
Susan’s tires screeched as she brought her SUV to a halt in front of Michael Odom’s house. I was out the door before she could put it in park. I took in the scene in an instant. Michael Odom was hooking up his boat trailer to his truck and Laura Murdock was standing nearby with a silver revolver pointed right at him.
“What’s going on, Laura?” I asked casually, moving slowly toward them. “Why are we here?”
“It’s him.” There was desperation in the woman’s eyes as she indicated toward Michael with the muzzle of the pistol. “He did it. He confessed and he’s taking me to her right now.”
Michael had stopped working on the boat trailer and stood trembling, fixing me with pleading eyes.
I nodded slowly. “Okay, then you did a good job. Why don’t you hand me the pistol now? We’ve got everything under control now.”
�
�I’m not too sure about that, detective. Had it not been for me coming out here, he never would’ve confessed.”
Michael started to open his mouth, but I held up my hand to shush him. “Son, the best thing for you to do is keep your mouth shut. You lied to me and, for that, you’ll suffer real consequences.” I turned back toward Laura, extended my hand. “He’s not going anywhere and we know the truth now, so you won’t be needing that pistol anymore. Why don’t you just hand it to me before someone gets hurt?”
Laura began chewing on her lower lip as she weighed her options. Her eyes were fixed on Michael and I could see they were filled with hate.
“If you shoot him now, we’ll never know the whole truth,” I said, not knowing what he had told her so far. I took a step closer. “Please, just give me the pistol.”
Laura let out a long sigh and she started to turn toward me. As she did, the muzzle of the revolver began swinging in my direction.
“Stop where you are!” Susan hollered from somewhere to my left. “If you turn that gun toward my husband, I’ll shoot you dead in your tracks!”
Laura screeched and threw her hands straight into the air, the revolver spinning free and landing on the concrete several feet from her. Before I could react, Susan had approached her and kicked her feet out from under her. Laura dumped to the ground in a heap and Susan had her cuffed in record time.
Michael dropped to his knees and wept. I walked over to him and placed a hand on his shoulder. “Are you okay?”
“I swear to God, Detective Clint, I didn’t do nothing to Rose. I only told Mrs. Laura that because she was going to shoot me in the dick.”
“I know, son.” I frowned as I watched Susan pushing Laura roughly toward her Tahoe, scolding the woman as she did so. “I know you had nothing to do with Rose’s disappearance.”
“I thought she was going to kill me.” Michael was sniffling and weaving. “I…it’s true what they say. I saw my life flash before my eyes.”