by B J Bourg
I helped him to his feet and pointed him toward the house. “Why don’t you go inside and pull yourself together. I’ll come in and get a statement from you in a minute. I want to talk to Mrs. Murdock first.”
The boy nodded and stumbled toward the front door of his house. As he walked away, I could hear Laura screaming in protest from the back seat of Susan’s cruiser.
“Don’t do it! You’re letting a murderer go free! You bastards!”
I marched to the door opposite of where Laura sat and slipped into the back seat. Before I could say anything, she began running her mouth, talking a mile a minute.
“He’s the one! He did it. He confessed. I did what you couldn’t do. You…you have rules and people won’t confess to you, but I made him talk. I…the gun, it scared him into saying what really happened. I broke the case. He can lead us to Rose. He told me where she’s at and he said she’s not hurt. Please, you’ve got to believe me—”
“Mrs. Murdock, I need you to focus—”
“No, he did it! We need to get out there—”
“Laura, shut your damn mouth!” The frustration I’d felt earlier over the whole Jennifer Duval situation rose to the surface and I took it out on Laura. I cursed her out and told her what an idiot she had been, accusing her of jeopardizing the search for her daughter. As I continued admonishing her, she broke down and began to cry. I suddenly felt horrible for what I’d just done.
“But…but he said he did it,” she said feebly. “He can take us to Rose.”
“He only told you that because you threatened to shoot him in the groin.” I paused and sighed heavily. “Look, there’s a reason we can’t employ those kinds of tactics in police work—there’s a danger of it eliciting a false confession.”
“But he said…” Her voice trailed off as she was overcome with sobs.
I frowned, not very proud of myself as I watched her cry like a newborn. Although she had seemed like a strong woman when I’d first met her, she was now broken. She was under a tremendous amount of pressure—more than any of the rest of us—and the uncertainty about her daughter was eating her insides like a cancer.
“Ma’am, I’m sorry for yelling at you.” My voice was soft, so soft that I wasn’t sure she could hear me. “I know you’ve had the worst two days of your life and you didn’t ask for any of this. I just can’t have you going all rogue on me. It could jeopardize the investigation. And if we have to chase you around and stop you from killing people, well, it’ll take us away from what we need to be doing.”
“But he did it, Detective Wolf, it’s him, I just know it is—and he admitted to it.”
I turned away and looked to Susan, who was standing outside of the Tahoe, her phone pressed to her ear. I could hear her talking, but I couldn’t make out what she was saying.
Staring down at my hands, I addressed Laura Murdock again. “Ma’am, I’m going to have to book you into our jail.”
“What?” In my peripheral vision, I saw her head spin around to face me. “Are you arresting me?”
I met her stare with a hard one of my own. “You almost killed a kid—an innocent kid, I might add—so, yes, I’m arresting you.”
“But…but I’m a victim. If I’m locked up, who’s going to look for Rose?”
“We’ll keep looking for your daughter, that I promise you, but you’ll have to stay locked up until a judge sets your bond.”
“When will that be?”
“Probably tomorrow morning.”
“What if I can’t afford to bond out?” she asked, the hopelessness of her plight beginning to sink in. “Will I be in prison with bad people? What if they hurt me? I’ve never been to jail before. I don’t know what to do. What if you need my help to find Rose? Seth will need me for sure, and what about Ronnie—”
“Look, I’ll keep you in the holding cell at the police department until you can afford to post bond, and I won’t put anyone else in the cell with you.” I paused before stepping out of the SUV. “And I’ll make sure to send regular updates on our search efforts and give you free access to a phone. Even though you went rogue and committed a number of felonies and almost killed someone, I understand your reasoning for it. I know how desperate you’re feeling right now. It doesn’t make what you did right and you’ll certainly have to answer for your actions, but I do understand.”
“I’d love to say that makes me feel better, but it doesn’t.” She hung her head. “I still think you’re making a huge mistake. In my heart of hearts, I know Michael’s involved. If Rose dies out there, it’ll be your fault.”
I stepped out and slammed the door shut. Before I could walk around to Susan’s side of the vehicle, she had already made her way to my side.
“I think we’ve got something,” she said. “I just got off the phone with Baylor. They flew over a dirt road that goes to an old fishing camp about five miles south of the Murdock home and they saw a bus parked on the side of the road. It looks abandoned.”
My heart jumped in my chest. “Is there a number on the bus?”
“It’s too dark to see from the air and they don’t want to land or put the light on it in case the bad guys are still around.”
“Did they check for a heat signature?”
Susan nodded. “There’s none.”
I was standing there pondering my next move when Susan pushed herself close to me. “Go check out the bus with Melvin. I’ll take Laura to the station.”
Melvin had pulled up a few seconds after Susan had knocked Laura to the ground, and he was in the house speaking with Michael. I started to turn away but stopped.
“Sue, are we okay?”
She frowned, nodded. “I’m sorry I doubted you.”
“I understand. I would’ve doubted you, too, if the roles were reversed.”
She gasped and feigned offense. “You’d better never doubt me, Mr. Man!”
CHAPTER 32
It was two-thirty in the morning and Melvin and I once again found ourselves on foot, trudging down an uneven rock road. We tried to make as little noise as possible, but it was hard to do in the darkness—especially since we kept twisting our ankles in a deep gouge in the road. We had tried to move to the soft earth along the side of the road, but the clumps of grass and weeds were thick and unforgiving, and the mud was so soft that we sank to our ankles, so it made the going much slower.
“What do you think we’ll find in the bus?” Melvin asked.
I had told him earlier that there were no heat signatures, but it didn’t necessarily mean there were no people in the bus—it just meant there were no live people.
“I don’t know. I just hope Rose is not in there.”
“I know. It would suck to have it all end like that, but, at this point, I’m starting to think we won’t find her alive.”
I was silent for a long moment. When we’d walked another twenty or so yards, I said, “Well, I’m not giving up on the kid just yet.”
He didn’t say anything, and we just kept pushing forward. I shoved my cold hands deep into my coat pockets and stared up at the sky. Clouds were gathering. Earlier, the road had been lit up from the moon, but it was now getting harder to distinguish it from the grass that lined its edges.
We were reaching a slight bend in the road when I saw a dark shadow looming ahead. I reached out and grabbed Melvin’s arm, pointed.
“I see it,” he whispered.
We both stopped and crouched low, waiting and listening. Not only was there no heat signature from the bus, but there was no sound. I whispered to Melvin that I was moving, and I felt him follow suit. Staying at a low crouch, we walked steadily closer. I kept my hand near my pistol in case we were walking into a trap.
When we stepped into the shadows of the bus, I realized we were approaching from the back. I studied the back corner of the bus and my heart sank to my knees. Even in the dim light, there was no mistaking the solid black number “99” contrasted against the bright orange paint. Damn, this is not good, I thought.
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After using some hand signals, Melvin and I split up. I made my way down the right side while he made his way down the left side. There was still no sound from inside the bus, and that worried me. I dreaded what we might find inside.
I had almost made it to the bi-fold door when I realized it was open. I couldn’t see Melvin or radio him, so I just kept moving forward—one step at a time, feeling my way through the tall grass, not even making a whisper of a sound.
I touched the edge of the door once I was within reach and peered around the side. The night sky shone a little through the windows above me, but it was dark in the doorway. I couldn’t even see the steps leading up into the bus.
I heard slight rustling of grass and saw a shadow appear around the front corner of the bus. There was no mistaking Melvin’s stout figure. When he was on the opposite side of the door, he leaned over and said the hood was cold to the touch.
“And the front passenger tire is blown to hell. It’s down to the rim,” he whispered. “I’m guessing the bus has been here a while.”
I considered that bit of information, then grunted silently. That would explain the deep gouge in the rocky road. The tire must’ve blown out on the highway and the driver turned down this road because there wasn’t a decent shoulder along this stretch of Old Blackbird Highway—but why come so far down the road if the bus was disabled? In my mind, there was only one logical conclusion—the driver wanted to conceal the bus.
“You ready to go in?” I asked Melvin in a low voice. I wanted to know what was inside, good or bad—hell, I needed to know.
“Ready as ever.”
I pulled out my flashlight and I heard his clear the pouch. I didn’t even bother drawing my pistol. Light flooded the driver’s seat when I flipped the switch on the flashlight. It was empty. Melvin gave me a tap to let me know he was right behind me, and I stepped onto the bottom step. The bus shifted just a little under my weight. I made the second step and then stretched out so I could see down the center aisle.
I sighed when I trained the beam of light between the seats. I could see the entire floorboard. It was empty. Next, I had to check the individual seats themselves, to make sure there weren’t any bodies concealed there.
I felt the bus shift behind me—a little more than it had when I’d boarded—and I knew Melvin was following me up the steps. We moved stealthily down the aisle, searching the left and then the right, until we reached the very back of the bus.
“She’s not here,” I said. “No one’s here.”
In the bright glow from my light, I could see Melvin scratching his head. “Where’s the bus driver?”
“And why did she turn down this road?” I shook my head, confused. Part of me wanted to think Katrina Bradberry had been disoriented from being sick and headed south from her house instead of north when she began her bus route on Wednesday, but Melvin had recovered the surveillance footage showing her heading north. It was clear that her tire blew out, but had it happened before she turned down this road or while she was on it?
“Hey, Melvin, what’s at the end of this road?”
“There’s an old fishing camp back there. It was a popular place for us to hang when I was a kid, because you could fish the marshlands and also break out into the Gulf of Mexico. But that camp has been closed for years—ever since I was in high school. The old man who owned it died and his kids shuttered the place. They posted No Trespassing signs and threatened to have anyone who went on their land arrested. It pissed off the old timers, that’s for sure. Most of them lived off the land and that’s how they would gain access to the swamps and the Gulf.”
“Do the kids ever go back there?”
He shook his head. “They don’t even live around here anymore. I heard one of them moved to New Orleans and the other—the son—moved to Texas, down near the border, I think.”
“Hmm…” I was thoughtful. “That would make it the perfect place to bring a kidnapped child.”
Melvin frowned. “Do you really think Rose was on this bus and that Katrina Bradberry kidnapped her?”
“I don’t know what to think, but we need to consider every possibility, and we need to search that camp.”
“I’m on it.” Melvin spun on his heel and headed for the front of the bus. “I’ll jog back and get my truck and meet you back here.”
“And I’ll go over this bus with a fine-tooth comb,” I mumbled, dropping to my knees. I began searching the floor in front of, and underneath, each seat along the row on the driver’s side. I knew the best way to conduct a thorough grid search was to focus on one painstaking inch at a time, but I was in hurry. At the moment, I was scanning the floor for the obvious signs that a kid had been there, but not any kid, Rose Murdock. Sure, there were things like pencils—some long, some short, some had erasers, some didn’t—and paper clips and random sticky notes, but nothing that could be linked to Rose.
I had made my way all the way to the front of the bus and was just crossing the aisle to the row on the passenger’s side when I heard the low rumbling of Melvin’s F-250. I dropped to my knees and aimed the beam of my flashlight under the first seat and did a quick scan. Nothing. I grabbed the top of the seat and pulled myself up off of the floor. I was about to move out of that row and into the aisle when my light reflected off of something shiny. I paused and cocked my head to the side, curious.
“What in the hell is that?” The item was pushed into the crack of the seat, but was not entirely hidden from view. I grabbed the shiny object and pulled it free. It was a badge holder clip and it was attached to a partial school ID—the top half. Grunting, I turned it over.
“Dear Lord, no!” I nearly dropped the ID when I saw Rose’s face displayed in the photograph.
CHAPTER 33
“Melvin, get in here!” I called. “Rose was on this bus. Katrina Bradberry did take her.”
Melvin clambered up the steps—not touching the metal handrail on his way up, so as to avoid contaminating it with his fingerprints—and stopped when he reached me. I showed him the ID card.
“Where in God’s name was that woman bringing Rose?” He looked through the front windshield, out into the darkness beyond. “And why did she take her?”
“I don’t know, but we need to get to that camp right away!”
I turned to squeeze by Melvin and heard more vehicles approaching. They were blacked out, so I couldn’t make out who they were. Before I could ask the question, Melvin spoke up.
“I called Susan and Amy and asked them to meet us here. That fishing camp covers a lot of territory, so we’ll need all the help we can get. I also radioed Baylor and asked him to get the pilot to do another flyover.”
I thanked him and walked out to the rocky road, where Susan was getting out of her Tahoe and Amy had just parked. I held up the photo ID. “It’s her, Sue. Rose was here—in this bus.”
“So, Katrina Bradberry did kidnap her.”
“It appears so.” I shot a thumb toward the bus. “We need to get a forensics team out here to process this thing. I want to know if there’s even a speck of blood inside. If not, I want to know if there have been attempts to clean it up.”
Even in the dim light, I could see Susan’s jaw set. “Does this mean Jennifer Duval is coming back to Mechant Loup?”
“I can call one of my old buddies and ask them to make sure they send someone in her place.”
“No.” Susan’s voice was firm. “I want to have words with her.”
I didn’t argue, and told her I’d leave the notifications to her. “Will you stay with the bus while we search the old camp?”
She hesitated, but then nodded. “I don’t like not being part of the action, but I guess someone has to remain with the evidence.”
I handed her the photo ID and, just as Amy was walking up, she started examining the edge that had been separated.
“Holy shit!” Amy said. “Does that belong to Rose Murdock?”
“Yeah.” I pointed to the separated edge. “But
only half of it is here.”
“I wonder where the other half is.” Susan held it up and pointed out how uneven the tear was. “It looks like it was bent back and forth until it could be ripped apart. I bet Rose did this. She left it behind on purpose—like a bread crumb.”
I gritted my teeth. That meant she knew she was in trouble and she was doing whatever she could to help us find her. I just hoped we weren’t too late.
I squeezed Susan’s shoulder and hurried away.
“Be safe,” she called after me. I only waved back at her.
I slipped into Melvin’s truck and Amy followed us down the winding rocky road. Although the headlights were off, we could clearly make out the road and stay on course, because the rocks were much lighter than the dark weeds that lined either side.
“If I remember right, the camp is about two miles farther along.” Although we were alone in the truck and no one could possibly hear us, Melvin was whispering. “There’s a main building that used to be a restaurant and bait shop, and then there are two rows of rental camps where fishermen and hunters would stay. If they’ve taken her back here, my guess is she’ll be in one of those camps. The old restaurant is too obvious and out in the open.”
I only nodded, lost in my own thoughts. For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out why some elderly bus driver—especially while she was deathly ill—would kidnap a young girl. Junior said she went wherever her bus went, so she had to have been on the bus when Rose was picked up. What if someone had boarded the bus after she picked up Rose—maybe at the next bus stop?—and taken her at gunpoint? I couldn’t imagine she’d argue if someone pulled a gun on her and told her to drive out here.
Within a few minutes, dark shadows seemed to rise up from the ground a few hundred feet in front of us and I could make out the shape of a large building.
“That’s the store.” Melvin pointed into the darkness to our right. “The camps are out that way.”
He continued driving until we neared the large building and then parked near an old gas pump and shut off his engine.