by BJ Bourg
“You think they’d mind if we took it for a spin?”
I studied the boat from the doorway, turned slowly to Dawn. “What if the baby’s inside?”
Her eyes widened and she mouthed, “What if the killer’s inside?”
I palmed my pistol and took two steps into the boatshed, and Dawn did the same. The smell of creosote singed my nose hairs. The air was cooler inside, and peaceful. Other than the water lapping the sides of the Boston Whaler in hypnotic intervals, there were no other sounds in the structure. We waited for a minute, or so, until our eyes had adjusted to the interior darkness, and we moved closer to the boat. I winced as our boots echoed off the wooden boards underfoot and reverberated against the tin roof overhead. If the killer was in the boat, he’d be able to easily pinpoint our location.
I paused again when we were directly beside the boat. Dawn touched my shoulder to let me know she was ready. Taking a deep and silent breath, I lunged over the side of the boat and dropped to a squatting position, scanning the area with my pistol. Dawn landed lightly on her feet beside me and scanned the opposite area. Nothing. We holstered our weapons and searched every cargo bay and cubby hole we could find, but there was no sign of the baby.
When we jumped out of the boat, Dawn began taking pictures as we walked around the area, careful not to step off the edge of the wharf. Some of the boards on the deck were fresh, as though they’d recently been replaced.
I surveyed the walls of the boatshed. A smattering of garden tools hung from wooden pegs. There were rakes, shovels, posthole diggers, and even a double-bitted ax. Everything had a place and every peg was occupied. Some of the wooden planks on the walls were also fresh. Nothing had blood on it.
After leaving the boatshed, we made our way around the expansive property, searching every inch of every portion of it, but there was no sign of the baby. I looked at the smoldering outbuilding—it had apparently served as someone’s home long ago—and then at Dawn. We both nodded and rushed inside. The smoke was so thick it was difficult to breathe and the heat from the charred remains was unbearable in places, but we covered our faces and gutted it out, searching each room of the old, abandoned structure. Dread filled my heart, because I knew a baby wouldn’t be able to survive that environment, but relief replaced it when we reached the back room without finding a body. We turned to head back to the front when a crackling sound caught my attention.
“What the hell is that?” I asked.
Dawn listened for a moment and then her eyes grew wide. “This place is on fire!”
We rushed to the front of the building, but came to an abrupt stop when we saw the entire room engulfed in flames, blocking our escape. Dawn turned and pushed me toward the back.
“The window in the back! Let’s go!”
As the flames spread behind us and the smoke got thicker, we managed to feel our way—coughing and wheezing—to the back of the structure. A faint rectangle of light broke through the darkness like a beacon and we headed straight for it. The window panes were void of glass and brittle from rot, and Dawn jumped easily through it, landing in a heap on the ground. I landed on top of her and she grunted as my weight crashed into her. Mumbling an apology and trying to catch my breath, I rolled over onto my back and stared as the flames licked toward the blue sky, devouring what was left of the building.
Dawn radioed dispatch to report that the structure had rekindled, and requested the fire department.
CHAPTER 9
“I’m hungry,” I said after the fire fighter had arrived and we had finished loading our gear into the trunk of my cruiser. “Want to grab something from Mary’s Seafood?”
Dawn took one last look at what could’ve been our final resting spot. “That was close,” she said, her brown hair drenched in sweat and her face stained with sooth. “Not the way I’d want to go out.”
I nodded my agreement and we got in my cruiser. It was hot, and the cool air felt good blowing from the vents as we drove to Mary’s Seafood. We rode in silence, both of us realizing how lucky we’d been, but quickly shook it off when we arrived ay Mary’s. During our meal, we discussed what our next move would be and the possibilities of finding the baby alive. Captain Theriot had called back and said the autopsy on our Mr. Doe was scheduled for later that afternoon, but we knew it wouldn’t reveal much, other than how he died—and we already had a pretty good idea what made his heart stop ticking. If Mrs. Doe—or Janice Prince—didn’t wake up soon, finding the proverbial needle in the haystack would seem like better odds than finding the baby.
“What if she doesn’t wake up...ever?” Dawn asked.
I considered this, even as I tried to imagine Samantha out in the world all alone at six months old. I shuddered, dismissing the thought because I didn’t want to go there in my head. It was too disturbing. “We’ll have to try and work backwards from the scene, recreating their every action. We need to find out who their friends are, who their enemies are, where they worked, in what hospital they delivered the baby, the babysitter’s name...all of it. We need to find a picture of the baby so we can post it on the news and send out an Amber alert. We can’t leave a single stone unturned.” I stabbed the table with my finger for emphasis. “We need to find this baby, and we need to find her soon before she ends up like her dad.”
“We have to find a family member or a friend so we can gather some of that information,” Dawn suggested. “That’ll be our best chance of finding the child.”
I nodded, hurried through my food. When we were done eating, we drove to the detective bureau in Payneville to offload the evidence. The bureau was situated in the western wing of a large building that also housed the patrol division and the administrative office of the sheriff’s office. The portion of the building the detectives occupied contained two interview rooms, a large open area with eight individual cubicles, a spacious evidence room, and a large plush office for Captain Michael Theriot.
Cradling several bags of evidence in one arm, I punched my code into the security pad with the other. We carried the bags through the empty bureau and set them on a long table in the evidence section, began filling out forms and logging evidence into the lockers.
When I came to the photo album, I held it up with a gloved hand. “Let’s have a look-see.”
I placed the old photo album on a large piece of butcher’s paper and carefully opened the charred cover. Inside, I found pictures of Janice Lynne Leggett from birth up through her marriage to Bill Prince. I carefully examined each of the photographs, trying to learn as much as I could about the couple.
Some of the first pictures in the book were of Janice in the hospital on the day of her birth. Her dark reddish hair sparkled against her pale scalp. I was surprised at how cute she was at birth. It had been my observation that it took several months to grow the ugly out of newborn babies. Sure, everyone said babies were beautiful when they were first born, but they were supposed to say that. The fact was that newborns looked like they’d spent nine months soaking in a bathtub filled with gray paint. The only thing beautiful about them was the miracle of birth.
I flipped through the pages and watched as Janice grew a little with each new one. I found a page that was labeled six months. It was on the six-month picture that I first noticed it. I held the album up to the light where I could see the picture better. There was a bright red dot on little Janice’s neck. It was shaped like a heart and was about the size of a pea, located just below the jaw line. It looked like a blood blister. I flipped to the next page, where she was a month older. The dot was still there. I returned to some of the earlier pages and found the same dot. I flipped page after page and, as Janice got older, the blood spot grew fainter, but still visible.
“Did you notice a birthmark on our Mrs. Doe?” I asked.
Dawn shook her head, scribbled numbers onto an evidence bag. “All I saw was blood and broken flesh.”
“We might be able to identify her by this birth mark—or not, if she isn’t Janice Prince.” I shru
gged, continued flipping through the pages. There were pictures of Janice and Bill on their wedding day, on their honeymoon, during vacations, at home, and just kicking around town. I scowled when I flipped to the very last page. “There’re no pictures of the baby.”
“That’s strange.”
I nodded. “Especially since it’s their first. Parents go camera-crazy over that first kid. Hell, I must’ve wasted several thousand pictures on Samantha’s spit, and they—”
“Spit?”
“Yeah, I’ve got pictures of saliva dripping down her chin, the side of her mouth, in her nose, on the—”
“She’s going to kill you when she gets older. You know that, don’t you?”
I waved her off. “My point is that they don’t have a single picture of their baby or of Janice pregnant. Women usually can’t get enough pictures of their swollen belly.”
“That does seem strange,” Dawn agreed. “Maybe she’s pregnant and they didn’t have the baby yet. Most parents start outfitting their baby’s room long before the little carpet-crawler arrives.”
She was right, I knew. Debbie had begun picking colors for the baby’s room while waiting for the results to appear on the e.p.t stick. “Captain Theriot will be pissed if we jumped the gun,” I said.
Dawn shrugged. “It wouldn’t be the first time he got pissed about something.”
“Can you imagine calling to tell him we found the baby—in the mom’s belly?” I shook my head. “He’d probably need a straightjacket to keep from breaking something.”
When I was done with the photo album, I packaged it and placed it in an evidence locker, turned to the next piece of evidence. It had to have been two hours later when I watched Dawn place the final evidence bag into a locker and slam it shut. She got up and I followed her to our cubicles and we each took a seat at our own desks. Her desk was directly beside mine and was separated only by a narrow hallway. We called it our temporary office, because we worked mostly out of the substation in Seasville.
The first thing I did was dial my old house number. No one answered. I then called Debbie’s cell phone. Still no answer. What if she’s intentionally ignoring my calls? I pursed my lips and tried to keep my cool. If there was one thing I’d always hated about Debbie, it was her ability to shut down and ignore me for hours, even days.
Dawn slid toward me in her chair, held up a computer printout. “I ran the names Bill Prince and Janice Prince and found two addresses registered to them; an old address in Arkansas and the current address on Lakeview Court. I compared social security numbers and they matched. They moved here in January of 2004.”
“Where in Arkansas did they live before?”
“They’re registered together under only one address in Arkansas, and that’s on Old Locke Road in Mountainburg. They lived there from 2002 until 2004. I did some cross-checking and it appears they’ve been in Mountainburg their entire lives. Janice’s maiden name is Leggett—like in the pictures—and I found some Leggetts that shared an address with her in the nineties. Bill’s family is from Mountainburg, too.”
“They’re only registered together under two addresses?”
“Yeah, it looks like the first time they lived together was in 2002.”
“So, they’ve been together for five years?”
Dawn shrugged. “You know how that can be. Assuming the information in the system is correct, they’ve been together for five years. We’ll have to verify everything.”
“If this turns out to be them, we’ll also need to contact the police up there and ask them to make face-to-face notifications.”
“I’ve already been in contact with a detective from up there and she’ll be standing-by until we know more.”
CHAPTER 10
When the time came for the autopsy, Dawn and I stepped out of the office with our notebooks and we headed to the coroner’s office. I parked in front of the building and checked my phone while waiting for Dawn to gather her camera bag and the cadaver printing kit. Still nothing from Debbie. When Dawn was ready, we walked across the lot and knocked on the front door of the coroner’s office. After a few seconds, someone buzzed us in and Doctor Peter Wainwright met us at the counter.
“Good afternoon, Detective Luke,” said Doctor Wainwright. “Follow me to the back and I’ll see if I can get you out of here before suppertime.”
As usual when Dawn was around, Wainwright didn’t notice me—but neither did most men. When Dawn walked into a room, every head turned and every heart stopped, but she took it in stride.
We followed Doctor Wainwright down a long corridor and into the last autopsy room on the left. The room was large and bright and smelled of a powerful disinfectant. There were three metal tables positioned at the center of the room. Only one of them was occupied. Doctor Wainwright walked up to the table where Mr. Doe’s body lay. “Do you have any idea who this unlucky man is?”
“No, we’re not sure,” Dawn said. “He was found on the side of Route Twenty-Three east of Jasper—no clothes, no identification. We’d like to roll his prints and collect some DNA to try and identify him.”
“That won’t be a problem. I’ll get hair and blood for you and you can roll the prints whenever you like.”
Dawn looked at me, raised an eyebrow. I smiled and took the cadaver kit from her. She didn’t like fingerprinting live people, much less the dead. “They never listen when I tell them to relax,” she’d always say. “They try to help you roll their fingers and all they do is screw things up and I have to start all over again.” As for the dead, she complained that their fingers were too stiff and she couldn’t bend them like she wanted.
Donning latex gloves, I placed the kit on the table beside the body and flipped it open. Mr. Doe had been cleaned off and looked a bit different minus the gobs of dried blood that had previously covered his body. Even cleaned off, though, I couldn’t make out his facial features, because they were sunken.
Once I’d rolled his prints, I handed the cards to Dawn and packed up my stuff, moved out of the way. Doctor Wainwright’s assistant had arrived and they both suited up for the autopsy. After shaving Mr. Doe’s head and allowing Dawn to take detailed photographs of the entire body, Doctor Wainwright made the “Y” incision in the chest and began his examination of the vital organs. When he was done, he incised and peeled back the scalp to expose the victim’s skull. Retrieving a bone saw, he cut away the skull cap and popped it off, revealing the damaged brain.
“He lost a lot of blood,” Wainwright said, “but this is the culprit that killed him.” He held the brain for Dawn to see. I had to step close in order to see the large deep-purple blotch that covered a large portion of the mushy organ. “Blunt force trauma to the head with epidural hematoma,” he continued. “Whoever beat him surely wanted him dead. This is one of the more severe beatings I’ve witnessed in my many years of doing autopsies.”
“Can you tell what kind of weapon was used?” Dawn asked.
“There are no discernible tool marks, with the exception of a few linear and crescent marks that could be from some type of ring.” Doctor Wainwright placed the brain on a tray, directed his attention back to the body and his assistant. They threw miscellaneous body parts back into the gaping hole in Mr. Doe’s chest and roughly sewed him shut. When they were done, Doctor Wainwright turned and handed Dawn several glass vials that contained blood and hair samples. The name Mr. Doe and a Magnolia Parish Coroner’s case number were written in red on a white label attached to each of the vials. “As always, it was a pleasure doing business with you.”
I grunted my disgust and followed Dawn out into the afternoon sunshine.
CHAPTER 11
Magnolia General Hospital
As we walked through the automatic sliding doors of Magnolia General and took the elevator to the third floor, I wondered why Debbie hadn’t returned my call. She’s probably just pissed off as usual, I thought, but then a cold thought crept into my head. What if something’s wrong? What if something bad happened
to her and Sam? Debbie had been known to drive a little careless when she was angry and a brief sense of panic filled my chest.
The elevator doors opened into the Intensive Care unit and I had to push the thought from my head so I could focus on the task at hand.
“Hey, Jill,” Dawn called to the charge nurse who sat at the square island of desks. The island was situated at the center of a large hallway and served as the nurse’s station. Eight large rooms with sliding glass doors surrounded the nurse’s station. Several nurses clad in matching scrubs bustled about the area with clipboards in their hands. One stood over Jill, asking a question while pointing to something on the chart.
Jill Knight was an older woman with solid white hair. She turned from the nurse who was talking to her and smiled when we stepped out of the elevator and approached her station. “Look, it’s my favorite two detectives.”
“I bet you say that to every two detectives you see,” I said.
“Only to their faces.”
The nurse standing over Jill smiled at me and said, “I miss you. When are you going to come stay with us again?”
She looked familiar. I thought about it for a second and then remembered—she was the new nurse who’d started working during my last days in the ICU. “Hopefully never,” I said with a grunt. She nodded her agreement and waved before walking off.
“I think she likes you,” Jill said. She seemed to love playing matchmaker with married people and had tried to convince me to leave Debbie for Dawn while I was heavily medicated and in her care. It was no wonder she was on her third failing marriage.
“So,” Dawn interjected, “how’s our victim?”
“Not good. She’s still critical. Her brain was swelling from the beating she took and it wouldn’t go down, so we had to do surgery to relieve the pressure.”