by B J Bourg
The metal object came to rest on the opposite side of the room just as I dropped into a crouched position and listened. Other than the gasp, there was no other sound. I was breathing through my open mouth, trying not to give away my location. I could hear labored breathing several feet from me and I trained my pistol in that direction, my index finger brushing against the trigger guard.
Moving in slow motion, I pulled out my flashlight and extended it away from my body to the left. I rolled it in my hand until the on/off switch was under my thumb. Here goes nothing, I thought as I flicked it on. When contact was made between the two contact strips in my flashlight, as was expected, electricity instantaneously flowed from the battery to the bulb and the whole room lit up. When the beam of light illuminated what was before me, I was shocked to my core, and it was my turn to gasp.
CHAPTER 6
I crouched there completely motionless for a full second, confusion flooding over me. I knew I was supposed to spring into action, but I was frozen in place, unable to comprehend what was happening, wondering if it was some kind of ploy, some kind of sick joke. There, on the opposite end of the shed, sat a woman with duct tape across her mouth. She was strapped to a chair, held in place by a length of thick chain. She was a well-dressed woman, wearing high-heel shoes, a skirt, and a fancy blouse, and her well-groomed hair was light brown and flowed down to her shoulders.
While she definitely looked out of place in this dirty old shed, that wasn’t what had me discombobulated. No, it was the cold fact that I knew this woman. Her name was Jennifer Duval, and she was an old acquaintance of mine. A woman with whom I’d spent a romantic Christmas weekend many years ago. A woman who, not so long ago, had sent a text message to my wife and started a fight between us.
As quickly as I’d been frozen in place, I broke out of my trance and rushed forward, reaching out to touch her face. Her eyes were half closed. They opened briefly when I touched her. My heart sank when I realized she was staring through me, unseeing.
I rested my flashlight on the ground and jerked my radio from my pocket and called for an ambulance, then dropped it to the ground and began peeling the tape away from Jennifer’s mouth. She groaned when the tape ripped at her lips and I stopped for a second. She began mumbling, trying to tell me something through the tape. Working from a different angle, I began tugging on the tape again. After pulling a little at a time, I was finally able to free her mouth.
“Jennifer, what happened? Who did this to you?”
Her eyes opened and widened when she saw me. She tried to lean away from me. “No…God no…don’t!”
“It’s okay, Jennifer. It’s me, Clint. Just hang on, okay? I’ve got an ambulance coming.”
Her eyes remained wide as her head swiveled on her shoulders, seemingly too heavy for the muscles in her neck. She began struggling against the chains that bound her to the chair. My attempts to calm her were futile, so I began tracing the links in order to find the ends and release her before she had a chance to hurt herself.
“Stop it, Carl,” Jennifer mumbled in a slurred voice, trying to push away from me. “Leave…alone! Leave me…me alone!”
Talking soothingly, I moved around to the back of the chair and dropped to my knees, fumbling with the chain. I finally found where the links came together behind her. I was relieved to see that the ends were merely twisted together and not connected with a padlock. I fought with the chain for about three minutes before I was able to pull them loose.
“You’re almost free,” I said, realizing Jennifer had stopped fighting and was just sitting there, breathing heavily. “Can you tell me what happened?”
Silence, then some mumbling.
“Jennifer, can you tell me who did this to you? Who is Carl?”
More silence.
I began peeling the layers of chain from around her and had just straightened to move to the front of the chair when she dumped forward, the weight of her body dragging the last of the chain from the chair. Letting out a startled grunt, I reached for her and caught her a split second before she face planted into the packed earth.
I slowly lowered her to the ground and turned her onto her back, cradling her head as I did so. Once she was stretched out, I pulled my hand back and frowned when I saw a dark, wet shadow across my palm. Fearing the worst, I pulled it into the glow of my flashlight and scowled—it was blood.
As though on cue, Jennifer’s body convulsed. She began vomiting and I quickly turned her onto her side to keep her from choking on the liquid spewing from her mouth. As I held her in place with one hand, I grabbed my radio and shouted to have the ambulance step it up, that I had an officer down and she was in great distress. The radio suddenly erupted in traffic, with Susan calling for Melvin to clear the road and make a path for the ambulance to get through to the east side of town, and someone asking who was down.
My cell phone rang from my pocket and I figured it was Susan, but I couldn’t answer it at the moment.
“Hang on,” I said to Jennifer. “Just keep breathing. Help is on the way.”
After vomiting, Jennifer just lay there gasping, her eyes closed and her body seemingly running on autopilot. With her head resting on the ground now, I grabbed my flashlight and examined the back of her head, which was wet with blood. Using my fingers to probe her hair, I felt a nasty gash in her scalp and I could’ve sworn I felt a soft spot. Blunt force trauma. Someone had bashed her head in with a solid object.
This ain’t good, I thought, real fear settling in the pit of my stomach. A blow like that could kill a person. The fact that she was vomiting and had lost consciousness was a bad sign. I needed to get her to the hospital soon, or it wouldn’t end well for her. Hell, she could die right here in my arms if help didn’t get here fast enough.
I breathed a sigh of relief when I heard sirens growing closer. The ambulance had apparently made it through the parade and was approaching at a high rate of speed, but—
I suddenly wondered if it was safe for the medics to approach the scene. I hadn’t seen any hostiles in the area, but someone had hit Jennifer and chained her to a chair, and that someone could still be lurking out in the darkness. I remembered Jennifer once saying her brother had moved to Mechant Loup, so I guessed this was his place, but where was he? I know she had told me her brother’s name more than once and had talked about him often, but that was years ago when we were partners. That seemed like a lifetime ago. It was all hazy. Had she said his name was Carl? Maybe, maybe not, but that wasn’t the most important thing right now. At the moment, the only thing that really mattered was the name of the person who had attacked her.
CHAPTER 7
The sirens could be heard just down the road, so I hurried outside and—keeping my hand close to my pistol—jogged to my Tahoe. Coco had scrambled from the cargo area and made her way over the seats to the front, where she now sat in the driver’s seat. She and Achilles were engaging in some heavy petting. I shook my head as I opened the passenger door and called for Achilles to follow me. He leapt from his perch and dropped lightly to the ground beside me. I had to issue several commands for Coco to stay in the truck before she finally stopped trying to force her way through the door to join Achilles. After closing the door, I led Achilles toward the entrance to the shed, where I told him to sit and stand guard. He obeyed.
I hurried inside to check on Jennifer before setting out to conduct a security sweep. She was breathing shallowly and was unconscious, but she appeared comfortable. My mind was racing as I turned away and made a quick check of the area surrounding the shed. Everything was secure and Jennifer’s attacker was nowhere to be found.
I then moved to the house and checked the perimeter. Although all of the interior lights were off, I knocked on every door and window I encountered. No one answered and everything was quiet inside. I even tried the knobs, but they were all locked.
It was quite possible Jennifer’s brother and his family had gone to the parade and wouldn’t be back until it was over, which
wouldn’t be for at least another hour. I didn’t like it, but I’d have to wait until they returned to finally get some answers. Of course, I didn’t know how much information they could offer, considering they weren’t here when Jennifer had been attacked.
“Where’s the injured officer?” called a voice from the curved shell driveway. I had just rounded the last corner of the house when I saw two medics approaching the back of the house, where the green garbage can was located. One of them, a heavyset woman with blonde hair, had a large red duffel bag hanging from her shoulder.
Coco was barking like crazy from the front of my Tahoe and I turned in the direction of the shed, where I could see Achilles’ dark figure silhouetted against the gray and weathered planks of the exterior wall. His ears were sticking straight up and he was fully alert, studying the medics suspiciously. They hadn’t noticed him in the next yard and I knew his presence would probably startle them.
“She’s in that shed.” I pointed toward the ancient building and called for Achilles to join me, telling him it was okay. He rushed forward, his body swaying as he loped effortlessly toward me, still studying the approaching medics.
“Holy shit!” exclaimed the blonde, stopping short and not daring to move lest Achilles view her as a threat. “He looks like a wolf.”
Without saying a word, I led Achilles to the Tahoe while the medics—relieved that Achilles was under my control—rushed toward Jennifer’s location. After my dog was secured in the front of my Tahoe with Coco, I joined the medics. They were on their knees beside Jennifer and were working feverishly. I heard one of them whisper to the other that it didn’t look good, and my heart sank. If Jennifer slipped into a coma or died, we might never know who did this to her.
“Is she…um, did she say anything?” I asked.
The blonde frowned and shook her head, a grave expression on her plump face. “She’s unresponsive. We need to get her to the hospital ASAP.”
I nodded and watched helplessly as they strapped her to a gurney and then loaded her onto a stretcher. Once they were done, I walked with them to the ambulance. Just as we finished securing her into the back, a marked police cruiser screeched into the driveway and Baylor Rice jumped out.
With less than four years on the job, Baylor was our newest officer and a transplant from the mountains of North Carolina—a town called Sylva, to be exact. For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out how a mountain boy could find his way to our swamps, but it had happened, and here he was, eager to help as always.
“What’s going on, Clint?” Baylor’s brown hair was short-cropped and so stiff that it didn’t budge in the wind that was blowing. His usually cheerful face suddenly fell when he saw the car. “Hey, I know that car!”
I cocked my head to the side. “You do?”
He nodded. “There was a female detective in the car—a Detective Jennifer Duval. She said she works for the La Mort Police Department. Melvin said it was okay to let her through, so I did. Isn’t she the same detective who helped with that case last year where—”
“Yeah, she was.” I sighed, explained what I knew so far. I stared out into the darkness when I’d finished speaking. There weren’t any nearby neighbors, so no one would’ve heard or seen anything. “I don’t know what brought her here, but she sure found trouble once she arrived. Did she say anything to you?”
“She said she was here to visit her brother.”
“Did she say what his name was?”
“No.” Baylor walked over to my Tahoe and studied Coco in the driver’s seat. He called over his shoulder, “Do you think Jennifer interrupted a burglary in progress?”
I shrugged. “The place is locked up tight, so if she did, she caught them early. They didn’t even have a chance to do any damage.”
“Is this their dog?”
I nodded.
“And the same one from the animal complaint earlier?”
“Yeah, her name is Coco. She must’ve known something was awry, because she clawed her way up and over the picket fence. I’m guessing the attackers were gone by then, because she went to the nearest neighbors for help. I imagine there would be a lot more blood if she would’ve clamped down on one of them.” I waved Baylor over to me and pointed out the single drop of blood in the driveway and the cast off on the roof of Jennifer’s unmarked cruiser. “It looks like she was surprised right here and took a nasty blow to the back of the head. It had to be without warning. Otherwise, based on my knowledge of Jennifer, there would be another body right here. Her hair and the back of her blouse soaked up most of the blood, but I’m sure there are more drops between here and the shed. I’d like to find them.”
Baylor nodded and removed a flashlight from his belt. “I’ll get on it right away.” He stopped before walking off. “It’s hard to believe I spoke to her less than an hour ago. Had I known this would’ve happened to her, I would’ve made her wait in traffic.”
Nodding idly, I pulled my phone from my pocket and called the police department. When Lindsey answered, she seemed distracted.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“Ants…that’s what’s going on. There’re ants all over the kitchen. I put a bag of cookies on the kitchen counter and they’re covered in ants.” She grunted and then apologized for the rant. “Did you need something?”
I asked her to run a name inquiry on the address and find out who the house belonged to. “I think it belongs to a Duval,” I explained, “because Jennifer Duval is the officer down and I know she has a brother in town. Baylor spoke with her earlier and she said she was en route to see her brother.”
If she was en route to see her brother, then why would he go to the parade? I wondered. Why wouldn’t he stay home to wait for her?
I posed the question to Lindsey while she searched the law enforcement database and our complaint computer. “Maybe she hates parades,” came the simple response. “I know I do. I’d rather get a root canal than stand along a parade route getting peppered with beer-soaked beads and having to stand next to old sweaty perverts—
“Oh here we go,” she said, interrupting herself. “I’ve got a previous complaint from that address. It’s another dog complaint that was called in by Donald Boudreaux—the same man who called in this dog complaint. Let’s see…” Lindsey paused while she read to herself. “Here it is—the man’s name is Carl Duval.”
I sucked in my breath. “So, Jennifer’s brother’s name is Carl.”
“Yep, that’s what it says here. I mean, it doesn’t say he’s Jennifer’s brother, but he’s the home owner. Takecia took the report when it happened and she issued him a warning about allowing his dog to roam at large.”
“Do you have his contact information?” I asked, wondering what Jennifer meant when she’d called me Carl earlier and told me to leave her alone.
“Yeah,” Lindsey said after a few seconds. “Here it is…”
As I wrote down his number, I wondered idly if Carl had attacked Jennifer. It was possible Jennifer was confused and didn’t know who hit her, but what if she had recognized her attacker? And what if it was her brother?
I tried calling Carl’s phone, but it went to voicemail after ringing several times. If he was still at the parade, there was no way he’d hear his phone. I called Lindsey back and asked her to run Carl’s name sideways to Sunday and find out everything she could about him. “If he ever spat on a sidewalk, I want to know about it, and I need to know every vehicle that’s assigned to him. Once you get it, put out a BOLO to everyone on the parade route. If anyone finds Carl, I want them to have him contact me immediately.”
“Got it.”
I thanked Lindsey and ended the call, casting a glance in the direction of Jennifer’s cruiser. I hadn’t found her cell phone in the shed or in her pockets, so I was hoping it would be in her car. It might help shed some light on her reason for being here, and it might help to answer other questions that swirled in my mind, such as, was there any animosity between Jennifer and Carl? If Carl h
adn’t attacked her, could it have been someone else she knew? Had she made any friends in town during her visits to her brother? Usually, people were friends before becoming enemies, so looking for friends was a good place to start in any investigation.
One thing was certain—this was a strange attack. I couldn’t remember ever working a case where someone had been attacked and then held captive in proximity to the kidnapping site. Who on earth would do something like that, and why? Why not just kill her outright? Did she have something they wanted?
My thoughts then went to Coco, who was sitting in the front of my Tahoe. Had it not been for her, we might never have found Jennifer in time.
I frowned. But had we found her in time?
CHAPTER 8
I retrieved some latex gloves from my SUV and pulled the keys I’d found out of my pocket. I hit the unlock button and heard an instantaneous clicking sound as the locks disengaged and the lights on the cruiser blinked. I walked around to the passenger side and, after inspecting the ground carefully to make sure I wouldn’t be stepping on any evidence, opened the door. I frowned when I saw a liquor bottle sticking out of the open purse that rested on the floorboard.
When Jennifer had opened her mouth to speak earlier, I thought I’d detected the scent of an alcoholic beverage, but I wasn’t sure. I think I didn’t want to believe it. I felt guilty enough about what I’d done to her years ago, how I’d ended things with her, that I didn’t want to believe she could have a drinking problem. While it certainly would explain the way she had acted when she’d come down to help on the Rose Murdock case last year, I didn’t want to believe her drinking had anything to do with me.
I sat on the edge of the passenger seat and checked the glove compartment, grunting wryly as the lyrics to one of Carly Simon’s greatest hits played in my head, “You’re so vain, you probably think this song is about you.”