James 516: A London Carter Novel (London Carter Mystery Series)

by BJ Bourg

  “Ten-four,” Corey called back. After a few minutes, he came back on the radio. “He’s got nothing on his person but his wallet, a pack of cigarettes, a lighter and a cheap pistol—a thirty-two caliber.”

  “That’s the murder weapon,” I said.

  Gina nodded and keyed up her portable. “LT, we’ve got a murder victim here—shot with a thirty-two pistol.”

  “Roger that,” Corey called. “We’ll recover the pistol, and I’ll send someone over to process that scene for y’all.”

  “Ten-four…thanks.” Gina fastened her portable radio to her belt and began performing a grid search east of the body. She’d made her way to a dried-out pedestal birdbath that was made of cement. “Hey, I found something here!”

  CHAPTER 29

  I rushed to where Gina stood. There—at the center of the birdbath—was a small stack of charred paper. The secret document our mystery caller had promised! “Shit!” I blurted. “Can you salvage any of it?”

  Gina pulled an ink pen from her pocket and carefully sifted through the pile of ash, training her flashlight on the edges of the paper that hadn’t been touched by the flame. “Most of it’s burned to shit,” she said idly, “but I can read some of the corners.”

  “What’s it say?” I leaned over her shoulder, nearly brushing against her back, straining to see for myself. “Can you make it out?”

  “In this corner”—she touched the upper right corner of the top page—“there’s what appears to be some kind of letter and number combination, maybe a license plate number?”

  “What’s the number?”

  “It looks like I, dash, zero, nine, zero, two, three, dash, ninety-one—whatever that means.”

  I pursed my lips, thinking. “When I first started with the sheriff’s office, we used to write our case numbers like that. If I remember right, the letter represents the month, the five-digit number represents the total number of complaints up to that point, and the two-digit number represents the year.”

  Gina studied the number. “So, this case would have happened in September of nineteen ninety-one?”

  “Yeah…twenty plus years ago. Can you make out anything else?”

  “No, that’s it.”

  “What about the other pages?”

  “It looks like there’re five pages total and they all have the same number at the top, right. Everything else has been reduced to ash.”

  I punched the sheriff’s number into my cell phone. When he answered, his voice was tired. “Please tell me you’ve got good news this time,” he said wearily.

  “Sorry, but the supposed secret documents have been destroyed. It looks like Captain Theriot got to them and burned them.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m looking at them as we speak.”

  “Are they completely destroyed?”

  “Everything but an old case number—I, dash, zero, nine, zero, two, three, dash, ninety-one,” I said. “Does that sound familiar to you?”

  “Please, London, I can’t remember what I ate for breakfast this morning. Do you really expect me to recognize a case number from twenty years ago?”

  “Yeah, you’ve got a point.” I looked back at the body of Wesley Guidry. “Oh, by the way, do you recognize the name Wesley Guidry?”

  There was a long moment of silence. Finally, Sheriff Burke cleared his throat. “What does Wesley have to do with this?”

  “He’s the dead guy. Apparently, he’s the one who made the anonymous call. Do you know him?”

  “Wesley Guidry was a detective when I was a narcotics agent. He quit the department about twenty years ago.” After another moment of silence, the sheriff asked, more to himself than to me, “What the hell was he trying to do?”

  “Did he have a beef with Captain Landry and all?”

  “Not that I ever heard about.”

  “You know, Captain Theriot thought he recognized the caller’s voice on the phone this morning. Did you?”

  “Did I what?”

  “Did you also recognize his voice?”

  “No. Why?”

  “Just wondering.” I watched Gina try to get all the ashes into a plastic evidence bag. “Sheriff, what about Captain Theriot and Guidry? Did they ever have problems?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What kind of marksmen were they?”

  “Average at best,” Sheriff Burke scoffed. “They would both struggle each year just to shoot a minimum score on their firearms recertification.”

  “Thank God for that,” I said. “If Theriot would’ve been a better shot, Bethany might not have been so lucky.”

  When Sheriff Burke didn’t respond, I asked him if he was still there. There was a long sigh on the other end of the phone. “I don’t know what to do anymore. It seems like my entire world is caving in. I’ve got cops turning in their badges nearly every day; my captains can’t show their faces in public for fear that they’ll get them shot off; the governor’s calling to find out what the hell is going on; the media is crawling all over this parish making crazy accusations. I don’t know, London. I’m thinking about throwing in the towel and letting the Feds come in and take over this whole mess.”

  “Don’t even think of it,” I said heatedly. “Give me more time—”

  “For what? So more of us can die?”

  “Sheriff, first of all, inviting the Feds in here won’t keep anyone safe. Second, I think this Wesley Guidry knew something and—”

  “Wesley ain’t talking. He’s dead!”

  “Yeah, he’s dead, but he already provided a major break in the case. We have a complaint number that’ll more than likely let us know why this shit is happening. Once we know why it’s happening, we’ll know who is doing it.” I paused. When he didn’t say anything, I continued. “My guess is that we’ll find even more information at his house. At least give me a chance to toss his house and do some research on that complaint number. If I don’t turn up anything solid within a few days, then I’ll step aside and let you call in whoever you want to call in.”

  “Wait, did you just say you’ll let me call in the Feds? Are you forgetting I’m the sheriff and you’re the deputy?”

  “Not at all, but you did say you owed me for saving your life, so I figured this was me cashing in on that debt.”

  There was another long sigh from the other end of the phone. “Okay…two days. If you don’t find anything definitive, we’re pulling out and letting the Feds get involved. Maybe they’ll burn the whole place down like they did in Waco and we’ll be able to come back in here and start all over, clean slate and all.”

  When I hung up with the sheriff, I called the radio room. A dispatcher answered in a strained voice.

  “Hey, this is London. Can you check an item number for me?”

  “Sure. What is it?”

  “I, dash, zero, nine, zero, two, three, dash, ninety-one.”

  The phone went silent except for the tapping of computer keys. “Nothing,” she finally said. “No record at all. I’m kind of new here, so let me check with my supervisor to see if I’m missing something.”

  A second later, Mallory, a dispatcher with almost thirty years, got on the line. “London, we won’t have anything from that far back. We would’ve destroyed it.”

  “What? Why on earth would y’all have done that?”

  “Sheriff’s orders. A few years back he ordered us to destroy everything prior to him taking office in 2000. We were running out of storage space, so he ordered the mass destruction. We went out to the hospital and used their incinerator—”

  “Shit, Mal…we need that information.”

  “Sorry, there’s nothing I can do about that.”

  My mind raced. “Hey, you’ve worked here forever. What do you make of the shit that’s going on? You have any theories about why this is happening?”

  “Hold on…I’ve got another call.” The phone went quiet, clicked and then Mallory was back. “We were on a recorded line, and I don’t want anyone hea
ring what I’m about to say. Look, I don’t know if I should be saying anything, but I think I need to tell you something. It means nothing to me, but it might mean something to you.” There was a pause and then she continued. “I’m not sure what’s going on, but I’m good friends with Carmella and she’s been acting a little strange lately, ever since the killings started.”

  “What do you mean by strange?”

  “She won’t go into any details, but she says this is some sort of revenge killing spree and she thinks her turn’s coming.”

  “By her turn, she means…”

  “She’s going to be killed. I told her it was nonsense, but she insists that this is the past coming back to haunt them.”

  “Did she ever say who’s included in them?”

  “No, and I don’t think she ever will. Whoever they are, she seemed to be afraid of them.”

  I pondered this information. Captain Carmella Vizier had spoken up in the meeting, but she had been shot down by Captain Theriot. Why? What did they both know? “Did she and Captain Theriot get along?”

  “She hated him. In fact, I think he’s the person she was most afraid of.”

  “Will she talk to me?”

  “God, no…and please don’t tell her I told you. She spoke to me in confidence.”

  Confused, I asked, “But why are you telling me all of this?”

  “You killed Captain Theriot, so you can’t be a part of them.”

  I flipped my phone shut and filled Gina in on what I’d learned. She listened while sealing the evidence bag that contained the remnants of the burned document. “Let’s talk to her when we get back,” she suggested.

  “Mallory doesn’t want her to know that she told me.”

  “She doesn’t have to know. We can bring all of the commanders in one at a time and interview them. When we get to her, we can just work her until we get the information. With Theriot dead, she might be willing to spill it.”

  “I don’t know…”

  With a gloved hand, Gina held up the set of keys I’d recovered from Wesley Guidry’s pocket. “Hey”—her face twisted into a scowl—“where’s his car?”

  I glanced around, trying to penetrate the surrounding darkness with my eyes. The keys jingled in Gina’s hands. A second later, headlights flashed in the distance and the faint sound of a horn blowing twice disrupted the tranquility of the night. I pointed toward the Payneville Bridge. “There it is—under the bridge! Good thinking.”

  “It’s just habit,” Gina said, slipping the keys in an evidence bag. “I have to use the keyless remote to find my car every time I go shopping.”

  Just then, Detective Melvin Ford drove up and parked near Gina’s car. We met him as he was stepping out of his unmarked cruiser, and he handed me my rifle. “Thanks a bunch,” I said and shoved my thumb in the direction of the body. “Can you keep an eye on our victim—make sure he doesn’t go anywhere?”

  Melvin stifled a chuckle. “Yeah, no problem.”

  “Lieutenant Chiasson’s sending a team up to work the scene,” Gina offered. “We’re heading up there”—she pointed along River Road—“to check out the dead guy’s car. After that, we’re heading to his house.”

  “Cool,” Melvin said. “Want me to meet y’all at the house when the crime scene team gets here?”

  I nodded, as I shoved my rifle in the back seat of Gina’s car. “The address is two zero six Dustin Street.”

  We jumped in Gina’s car and she shot up River Road, then stopped under the bridge beside the truck. It was new, but dirty. Gina pressed the UNLOCK button on the keyless remote through the evidence bag and the locks popped up. I pulled on a pair of latex gloves and carefully opened the driver’s door. Gina entered through the passenger’s door, and we sifted through the clutter in Wesley Guidry’s truck for over an hour, but found nothing that brought us any closer to finding out why our captains were being targeted.

  “Ready to check out his house?” Gina asked, tossing a stack of old receipts back into the ashtray.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  A wrecker driver was waiting across the street with orders to tow the truck to our motor pool. A patrol deputy was waiting with the driver and it was his job to escort the wrecker. Fifteen minutes earlier, Captain Theriot’s unmarked detective car had been located two blocks away and had already been secured in the evidence garage at our motor pool.

  I waved the wrecker driver and the deputy over and slapped the hood of the truck. “She’s all ready to go.”

  As they made preparations to tow Guidry’s truck, Gina and I slipped into her car. She turned off River onto Sixth and sped to Dustin Street. When we found his house, I had to look twice at the faded number on the mailbox. “At least,” I said, staring at the knee-high grass that surrounded a wooden house in desperate need of a facelift, “the house is messy like his truck.”

  Gina picked her way across the dew-drenched grass, swatting at the army of mosquitoes that rose up to greet her, and cursed under her breath. “Would it have killed him to cut his grass?”

  “Nope, but not cutting it did.” I followed Gina to a set of shaky steps. She donned a pair of gloves and removed the keys from the evidence bag and inserted one in the doorknob. After wiggling it in the keyhole, she was finally able to get the door open. An unfamiliar stench emanated from the doorway. Gina grimaced and covered her nose as we entered. She flipped the light switch and gasped. There were dirty dishes piled high in the sink, on the countertops and on the table. There were two garbage bags filled with trash on the floor and a third bag was still in the can, but it was overflowing. A few aluminum beer cans, a milk jug and a frozen pizza box were on the floor around the garbage can. The living room was littered with dirty clothes, newspapers, old frozen food cartons and more beer cans.

  “Do we have to search this place?” Gina wailed. “I mean seriously…this is a health hazard.”

  “Who lives like this?” I kicked an old bottle of orange juice out of the way as I walked across the kitchen. I pulled open the freezer. A few ice trays had been shoved in randomly and the inner walls of the freezer were covered with yellow ice from an exploding can of beer. A few frozen dinners occupied the rest of the space in the small compartment. The refrigerator was no better. A few packs of sandwich meat—two of them expired—and a jug of milk were among a horde of plastic containers that held leftover food. “Wesley’s housecleaner must’ve died twenty years ago and he never got around to hiring another one.”

  “From the smell of this place,” Gina agreed, “her body’s still in here somewhere.”

  We slogged through the house, searching one room and then the other, making sure to touch and examine every object in the place. We had finished his bedroom and were about to walk out the hallway when Gina pointed to a door at the end of the hallway. “Did you check that closet?”

  I shook my head, idly pushed a pile of dirty clothes aside with my foot and turned the knob. When I opened the door, I was surprised to find a spacious—but neat—room on the other side. This closet had been converted into an office and it seemed to be the only clean space in the entire house. A wooden desk and a row of filing cabinets lined the far wall. A computer monitor, a laser printer and a yellowed stack of newspapers were positioned neatly on the desktop. On a shelf above the desk was a row of books propped in place by a large three-ring binder.

  Gina whistled as she entered behind me. “It looks like we’re walking through a portal into an alternate universe.”

  I sifted through the newspaper articles. “These are all from 1991, with the—”

  “Holy Smokies!”

  I turned. Gina had shut the door we’d just entered and was gawking at a faded newspaper cutout taped to the back side of the door. It was a full-page article and there were a dozen photographs on it. I moved beside her and read the newspaper heading:

  ——

  DEPUTIES TO TESTIFY IN FEDERAL COURT TODAY

  ——

  There was a caption beneath the pho
tographs: Top Row: Anthony Landry, Trevor Abbott, Matt Garcia, Michael Theriot, Martin Thomas and Tyrone Gibbs; Bottom Row: Carmella Vizier, Lawrence Doucet, Ronald Day, Calvin Burke, Justin Wainwright and Wesley Guidry.

  The only commander not listed was Captain Carl Boutin—the commander of the detention center. I scanned the pictures. They were all younger, slimmer, had more hair and—

  I suddenly froze. Abbott, Landry and Wainwright’s pictures were crossed out. This was the hit list!

  CHAPTER 30

  “The date on the clipping is February third, 1992,” Gina said. “The complaint number on the burnt document was from 1991. That can’t be a coincidence.”

  I nodded and walked back to the desk, sifting through the pile of newspapers until I found the earliest date—September 7, 1991. There on the front page, above the fold, was what we’d all been looking for…a motive for the sniper killings. I read the story with mouth agape, heart pounding. When I reached the end of page one, I hurried and flipped to page five, where it continued. When I finished the article, I slowly shook my head, then handed the paper to Gina. “This is it.”

  As Gina read, I heard boots pounding along the hallway outside the door, drawing nearer. I palmed my pistol and pulled the door open—

  “Whoa there, tiger!” It was Detective Sally Piatkowski. “It’s just your friendly neighborhood detectives coming to offer a hand with this mess.”

  Detective Melvin Ford walked up behind her.

  “What’s going on back at the scene?” I asked.

  “Lieutenant Chiasson’s been on the phone with Sheriff Burke,” Sally explained, “and Sheriff Burke put him in charge of the detective division. He’s the new captain.”

  “The way they’ve been dropping,” Melvin blurted, “I think I would’ve turned the promotion down. Being a captain around here is more dangerous than tongue kissing a cobra.”

  We all snickered, and Sally continued, “Captain Chiasson has crime scene teams at each of the locations and they’re both almost done processing them. There were no real surprises at the scenes. We”—Sally shoved her thumb in Melvin’s direction—“went to the motor pool and searched that ex-cop’s car, but we didn’t find anything worth noting.”