by B J Bourg
Mr. Duval slowly raised his head and stared straight ahead. Although I was behind him and couldn’t see his face, I knew what he was thinking. If what I said was correct, then Carl had suffered a fate worse than death itself—he had been forced to watch his family suffer a brutal murder while he had been bound and helpless, unable to do a single thing to save them. As I studied the back of Mr. Duval’s head, I tried to imagine the scene out at Carl’s house that night. I knew Carl must have lost his mind after witnessing such a horrendous event. I wouldn’t have been surprised to learn he had asked for the shotgun blast to the head—begged for it even—just to end his emotional suffering.
“So, that means he didn’t hurt his sister,” Mr. Duval said in a faint and hoarse voice, one I could barely understand.
“That’s right, sir.”
He grunted softly, thoughtful. I glanced at Susan, who was standing behind me. She frowned, lowering her head. I knew what he was going through, but I didn’t know how he would handle it. Hell, I was sure even he didn’t know how he would handle the pain of it all.
“I can’t believe I doubted him, even for a minute. I knew there was no way Carl could ever do something like this, but I didn’t want to be a hypocrite.” He turned his head for the first time and I nearly jerked back when his eyes locked with mine. They were red with hatred. He didn’t even look human. “Who killed my children, Detective Wolf?”
I let out a long sigh. “I don’t know that yet, but I will find out, this I promise you. And when I do find them, I’ll make damn sure they get the death penalty for what they did.”
I knew my promise sounded hollow, especially to this man. He was a former detective. He knew there were some cases that couldn’t be solved, despite our best efforts, and he knew I couldn’t make that kind of promise.
As we stared at each other, our gazes locked intently and I noticed a difference in his eyes. A tiny flame seemed to appear deep inside each of his retinas. The light seemed to flicker just a little and almost went out, but then it grew stronger. I began to realize I might be able to save this man. What he needed was a mission—a reason to go on living. And what better reason was there than to pursue those who had murdered his children?
“But I can’t do it alone,” I said slowly. “I need your help.”
I could feel Susan’s head slowly turn to face me, and I knew what she was thinking. She was wondering if it was a good idea to allow the father of our murder victims to get involved in the case. Of course it wasn’t a good idea—it was a horrible idea—but I wanted to save this man. I wanted to show him that there was life after such a tragedy. The fact that he would suffer everlasting pain and grief was something he could figure out on his own and in good time. I just needed to keep him alive. It was the least I could do for Jennifer.
Jennifer…
“What is it?” Chuck Duval sat a little straighter and the flames in his eyes began to roar as he studied the expression on my face. “You just had an idea. What is it? Did you figure something out?”
“No,” I said slowly, “I didn’t figure anything out, but I do have a question. Why didn’t the killer or killers murder Jennifer? They had no qualms about killing women or children, so why keep her alive?”
Susan stared blankly at me. “I don’t know—why?”
“Maybe because she’s a cop, and they knew if they killed a cop we’d go all scorched-earth on them?” I paused, looked at Chuck. I had some other ideas, but I wanted his input. “Do you have any ideas?”
He was thoughtful and the color seemed to return to his face. Little by little, he was coming alive again and he wanted to help. “Tell me more about the crime scene.”
I gave him a brief rundown and he listened intently. When I was done, he nodded. “Carl had something they wanted, and they used his family to try and get him to turn it over. My guess is they killed Francine first to show Carl they were serious, and then they began executing Annie and the—”
Chuck got choked up and couldn’t finish his sentence. He took a breath. When he spoke again, he changed gears. “When they didn’t get what they wanted from Carl, they killed him and staged it to look like a murder-suicide. They were on their way to making a clean getaway when Jennifer arrived, so they grabbed her without intending to kill her.” He paused again, then shook his head. His voice was still weak, but it was growing stronger as he continued talking. “But I can’t understand why.”
“There was no forced entry, so they must’ve knocked on the door and then pushed their way inside, or they waited until someone came home and followed them in,” I said when he was done talking. “They locked up the house when they left because they had to make it look like a murder-suicide, like it was an inside job. When they encountered Jennifer, they couldn’t take her inside the house because they would have to break down a door or window, and that would ruin the staged scene. The first thing detectives look for is forced entry—it’s on every television crime drama.” I nodded thoughtfully. “I believe that’s why they took her to the shed—because they couldn’t take her into the house.”
“But why not kill her?” Susan asked.
“Something led them to believe she had information they wanted, so they were going to torture her in order to retrieve that info, but I think that’s when Coco got loose. I think she went at them and drove them away.”
“I don’t know what they wanted with my kids,” the elder Duval said. “I can’t imagine what they might’ve been involved with. Carl was a good kid and he never had trouble with anyone. He prepared taxes for a living and handled some accounts for a few of his lawyer clients in the offseason, so I’d hardly think it was related to his job. Jennifer, on the other hand, she’s arrested some shady characters, but she works La Mort. I think we can all agree that whoever did this was targeting Carl, but I’ve got no clue why.”
“What about Annie?” I asked. “Could they have been targeting her?”
He shrugged. “She’s a real estate agent. She never gets into trouble.”
“We need to find out what the killers were after.” I stared for a long moment at Chuck, not saying a word. Finally, I spoke but my voice was uncertain. “Would you like to join us at the police department and help us go through the files and computers we removed from Carl’s house? They might yield some clues.”
He glanced back at Jennifer’s lifeless body. “Just give me a little more time alone with my baby and then I’ll meet you in the parking lot.”
Susan and I honored his request and made our way out into the overcast afternoon. When we were seated on the same benches I’d sat on earlier with Kim, Susan asked if I knew what I was doing.
“I don’t know. I guess I just figured it would help keep him preoccupied. If I can keep him busy, I think I can keep him alive.”
“And if we identify the killers, what then?”
“We arrest them,” I said simply.
“What if Chuck gets to them first?”
“He won’t.”
We were both silent then. I knew what she was thinking, or so I thought. I figured she was reminded of the battle that took place out at my old house years ago. When she later mentioned not wanting Chuck to go through the same thing I’d gone through, my suspicions were confirmed.
Thinking back to that fateful night dredged up old feelings of anger that had lain dormant for years. I knew it was better that those feelings remained suppressed. I certainly didn’t want to unleash that beast again.
“Clint, did you hear me?” she asked after a long while. “It would be horrible for Chuck to go through what you went through.”
“I don’t know, Sue.” I stood and kicked the leg of the bench with the toe of my boot. “I found it to be very therapeutic.”
CHAPTER 20
Wednesday morning found me sitting at my desk buried in bank records, utility usage reports, and computer files. I had pored tirelessly over the documents for three days now, but hadn’t found a clue. Nothing that brought me any closer to finding th
e killers, if indeed there was more than one. Chuck sat across from me. He was doing everything he could to help me. Other than a trip to the city to make funeral arrangements yesterday, he hadn’t left Chateau Parish. He said he wouldn’t leave until the case was solved, and he didn’t care who liked it or not. Personally, I didn’t mind. We had one huge thing in common—we’d both lost everyone we loved, and I was hoping I could show him there was life after such a loss.
“How many more tries do you get at that thing?” Chuck indicated Jennifer’s cell phone with his head. We had tried unsuccessfully to guess his daughter’s four-digit pass code, and I knew we only had a few more tries before we’d be locked out of the device forever. I’d contacted a buddy of mine with the FBI to see if he had any thoughts, but he said they hadn’t had any success breaking into the newer model cell phones.
“I’m not sure, but it can’t be many.” I rested a stack of bank records on my desk and sighed. “I haven’t found anything worth exploring. You?”
Susan and I had put Chuck up in one of the rooms at the shelter in the back of our street. Thankfully, the shelter was empty at the moment and we weren’t inconveniencing anyone.
Chuck hefted the cell phone records in his hand. “There are some unknown numbers we’ll need to track down—some from Carl’s phone and some from Annie’s—but nothing looks overly suspicious. It looks like they each have a number they talked to on a regular basis, so I think we should pay them a visit.”
I dug out my note pad and scrolled through the pages until I found my notes from my interview with Kim Billiot. I had obtained her cell number and that of her husband, Jude. I had called Jude yesterday and he had verified what Kim had said, but couldn’t offer anything more. He said he had no clue what Carl wanted to show him, and he didn’t really care.
“If it wasn’t a deer head or an ice chest full of red fish, I wasn’t interested,” Jude had declared over the phone. “After Carl and Annie got into that argument, he suddenly lost interest in whatever he was going to show me. Now, he did seem different the rest of the night, like he was distracted about the safe, but he never spoke another word about it.”
As much as I pressed the man, he didn’t know squat.
“Are these the unknown numbers?” I asked, shoving my notebook in Chuck’s direction. He lifted his head to bring my notes within view of his reading glasses, and then grunted.
“Yeah, but I guess you already covered those bases.”
I told him what I’d learned. The more I spoke, the more twisted his face became. His eyes were still bloodshot from crying and they clouded up often as we worked, but there was genuine surprise on his face at the mention of Carl’s newfound wealth.
“That’s news to me. I don’t know of any scenario where Carl could’ve paid off his house early, unless he robbed a bank.”
We sat in silence for a few minutes, him probably trying to figure out where in the hell Carl could’ve gotten his hands on that kind of money, and me wondering how in the hell he couldn’t know about this. If Carl had come by the money honestly, why hadn’t he told his family about it? I cocked my head to the side. Maybe he did tell one member of his family, and maybe that was why they’d killed Jennifer.
After a long moment of pondering this, I gave up and turned back to the documents in front of me. I had gone through Carl’s debit transactions and was now examining copies of the checks he and his wife had written over the past few months. I began with the most recent, which was written two days before their murders, and worked my way backward. I was surprised by how many checks they’d written. Most of my bills were automatically drafted from my account and I used my debit card for everything else, same as Susan. As for Carl and Annie, it seemed checks were their preferred method of payment. Checks had been written for the light bill, the water bill, the gas bill, at Mechant Groceries, for flowers, and dozens of other transactions.
“I can’t believe how much Rebecca used her cell phone,” Chuck mumbled after we’d worked in silence for thirty minutes. “This pie chart breaks down how much data each family member uses, and my granddaughter’s eaten more than half this pie all by herself.”
I chuckled aimlessly, reviewing each scanned check carefully, being sure not to miss anything. I had made my way to December and noticed a check from the seventeenth that was made out to an individual person, rather than a business. I held up the page. “Does the name Philip Crenshaw mean anything to you?”
Chuck glanced up from his own records. “No. Why?”
“Carl wrote this guy a check for three thousand dollars on December seventeenth.” I placed the copy of the check in Chuck’s outstretched hand. “The notes section is blank, so it could be for anything.”
“I thought his friends said he was rich. According to this, he’s only got seven grand in his account.”
I nodded, but tapped the pages in front of me. “It gets better toward the end of the month, but I haven’t quite made it there yet.”
“How much better?”
I thumbed through the pages, stopped when I found the deposit I’d noticed earlier. It was in the amount of $250,000.00 and it had been deposited into Carl’s account on the twentieth of December. I handed that sheet to Chuck.
“How in the hell did he get his hands on a quarter million dollars?” Chuck’s tone was filled with incredulity. He studied the document, sliding his finger down the long list of transactions. Finally, he grunted his approval. “One week later he paid off his house. I’ve always told my kids to pay their bills first, feed their savings account next, and then do something nice for themselves, but to always live within their means.” After pausing to take a shaky breath, he continued. “That boy always did listen when I spoke to him. Now, Jenny, she was something else.”
I wanted to ask Chuck if he approved of Annie spending several hundred dollars on a single pair of jeans, but decided against it. “Who was the check from?” I asked instead. “Maybe they can give us some answers.”
“It looks like it was a cashier’s check from some Platinum Star Bank. Other than that, there aren’t many details.”
I knew the Platinum Star Bank well. It was in the central part of Chateau Parish and I’d had a serious run-in with the bank owner five years ago. Last I’d heard, the owner’s twin daughters, Maci and Traci, were now running the bank. I wondered if they knew who I was and if they would even speak to me if I went in seeking answers.
I glanced at the bottom right hand corner of my computer screen. It was almost noon now. “I’ll grab some lunch at home later and then track down this Crenshaw fellow,” I offered, “but first I want to get with the bank and see what they can tell me. What will you do while I’m gone?”
The older man sighed. He was tired and I knew his heart was hollow. “Well, I’d like to come along,” he said after a minute, “but I know that’s not possible. Maybe I’ll head back to the city for the night. I need to meet with the police chief. He wants to finalize some details for Jenny’s funeral. He swears it’ll be the biggest funeral in the history of the city.”
“While you’re in La Mort, can you dig around a bit? Talk to her friends and co-workers? Maybe she told someone why she came down here. Maybe someone knows the pass code for her phone.”
“I can do that.” He stood slowly to his feet, holding onto the table to steady himself. He was a strong man, but life had just kicked him squarely in the gut and sucked the wind right out of him. “I know where Jenny hides the spare key for her apartment. I’ll swing on by and search her place. See what I can find.”
I thanked him and led the way outside. It was sunny but a little chilly. I called Susan as I watched him drive away. She was across town writing a ticket to some kid who had been popping wheelies on the highway with his motorcycle.
“Have you heard anything around town?” I asked. “Anyone have any theories about what happened out at Carl Duval’s place?”
“No,” she said. “Not a peep. A few people asked me about it, but all anyone know
s is what they saw on the news. Are you sure this was a murder?”
“It has to be.” I mulled over the question while walking to my Tahoe. It was true that we hadn’t found the zip ties that had bound Carl’s hands, but the ligature marks on his wrists were real. I decided to change gears and asked if she was going home for lunch. She said she was and that she would be there within a few minutes.
“I’ll see you there.” I ended the call and tried to push the case from my mind, if just for a few minutes. I wanted to have lunch with my wife and daughter and I wanted to give them my undivided attention.
CHAPTER 21
Just as the past few months had seemed to fly by at lightning speed, so too did my lunch hour. I had to repeatedly tell Grace that Coco was not a horse. While Achilles was too big for her to climb aboard, Coco seemed to be the perfect size for her to ride. I tried to explain that she could hurt the dog’s back, but I had about as much success as the first men who had arrived in the Americas and had tried to communicate with the Indians.
“But the black pattern on her back looks like a saddle,” my mom had protested. “It can be confusing for a baby. I mean, I would want to ride her, too, if I was that small.”
I had only grunted and lifted Grace high into the air and carried her around like she was an airplane. She had giggled until she started drooling. I had been looking up at the time and took a stream of saliva directly to the left eye. That got a good laugh from Susan, which made Grace start chuckling so hard she began to cough.
After spending a full hour with them, I said my goodbyes and headed out the door. Once I was back in my Tahoe, I was all business again and my mind was completely focused on the case. I headed for the bank first, knowing their hours were shorter than most and wanting to speak with someone before they ended their work day.
In the unusually heavy traffic, it took me about thirty minutes to get to the bank. The parking lot was full and the lobby crowded. A bank manager glanced down at my badge from the other side of the counter. She quickly waved me toward the far right side of the counter.