by BJ Bourg
“Did he tell you about any future plans he might’ve had?” I asked.
“He did mention wanting to take a trip up to Arkansas next month. He had been talking about returning to Arkansas, but I did not think it was something that would happen in the near future.”
“Any chance you would have a picture of Shelby?”
“Shelby? Who is Shelby?”
“Shelby Prince. Bill’s baby...his little girl.”
“Bill had a baby?” Neal’s eyebrows furrowed. “No, I think you have the wrong person. Bill never mentioned having a child, and he would have.”
Dawn glanced over at me. “Well, sir, I think that’s all we have for now.”
I stood and shook Neal’s hand, led the way out the office. Just as we reached the doorway, Neal called after us.
We stopped, turned. Garth’s chin was quivering.
“Please find out who murdered my friend,” he pleaded. “Bill was the only person who ate with me, or who talked to me about things outside of work. He was a good man and a good husband. He did not deserve this.”
“We’ll do everything in our power to get these bastards,” I assured him.
Garth pursed his lips. “Thank you.”
We walked outside and trudged through the gravel parking lot. Large trucks and machinery moved about the yard, kicking up dust with their large tires. I had to raise my voice to be heard over the noise. “Why didn’t Bill tell anyone about his baby?”
“That’s a good question.” Dawn paused by the passenger’s door to my car. “Men are usually proud of their kids—proud of what they made. You know how y’all are with that macho stuff—My kid’s tougher than your kid. My kid can eat more than your kid. My kid’s muscles are bigger than—”
“Yes, we’re proud of the kids we’ve made,” I said, laughing. “So why wouldn’t Bill brag about his daughter?”
“Maybe she’s not his daughter. Maybe he found out Shelby wasn’t his.”
“And did what...beat his wife and kidnapped the baby that wasn’t his? Was that before or after he beat himself to death?”
“Maybe the real dad found out Shelby was his and took her. Maybe—” Dawn’s cell phone screamed from her pocket.
I waited patiently as she listened, nodded, then disconnected the call. “The DNA results are in…our victims are Bill and Janice Prince.”
“Damn, that was quick.”
She slid a thumb across the screen of her phone. “Let me call Tricia.”
I drove in silence while Dawn spoke with Detective Tricia Clark. She turned to me when she hung up. “Bill’s mom is recovering. They should be leaving tomorrow morning and arriving in the evening.”
“Shit, I hope we have something promising to tell them when they get here.” I drove in silence until I reached the hamburger and seafood joint on the outskirts of Beacher, pulled into the crowded parking lot.
We stepped out and Dawn took in the aroma. “God, it smells good!”
Grilled beef and fried seafood clung to the afternoon breeze and tickled my nostrils. I held the door for Dawn and we hurried inside, both eager to get a bite of food. As the parking lot indicated, the dining area was nearly full. We found a tiny two-person table in an obscure corner of the room and took our seats. A few of the patrons had waved at me as we’d walked by and Dawn made a comment about me being a regular celebrity because of the news conference.
“Those guys don’t even watch TV,” I said. “They know me because I’ve arrested all of them.” I pointed across the room to a large man with bushy hair and a nasty, permanent scowl on his face. “You see him?”
Dawn nodded.
“He beat the shit out of his grandma and when I got there he broke for the woods. I had to chase him about two miles through the swamps before I caught up to him.”
“Did he fight?” Dawn asked.
“Did he fight?” I echoed. “That dude would rather fight than...well, never mind. Yeah, he fought. You see that scar over his eye?”
She squinted. “Yeah.”
I pointed to my right elbow. “I had to jump up in the air to reach his face, but when I brought my elbow down on his forehead, he dropped like a sack of potatoes.”
“I’d just shoot him,” she said positively.
A young waitress walked up holding a nearly empty ticket book. “Can I get your drinks while you look over the menus?”
“We actually know what we want,” Dawn said. “We want two burgers fully dressed and two orders of seasoned fries, with lots of salt. Two Cokes.”
The waitress glanced from Dawn to me, a quizzical look on her face.
“I love it when she takes charge,” I said, “but I want a shrimp on bun, dressed, add onions, and a lemon aid.”
Not amused, the waitress gathered up the menus and walked off.
I looked at Dawn, frowned. “We need to find Shelby. She’s out there somewhere alone...maybe in danger.”
“I checked with Karla earlier and they’ve turned up nothing so far.”
“How does a baby just disappear into thin air?” I shook my head. “If she was dead we’d know by now, I’m thinking. Someone would’ve smelled her.”
“Unless...”
I lifted an eyebrow. “Unless what?”
“What if someone just shoved her in the garbage? She could be in a plastic bag in the landfill and no one would be the wiser.”
My heart sank. “We need to check the landfill!”
Dawn nodded, groaned when her phone screamed from her pocket again.
“You’re popular today,” I said.
“Hello? Yeah, this is Detective Dawn Luke. Wait...what? Okay, right away!” She jumped to her feet. “We have to go now! Janice Prince is out of the coma!”
CHAPTER 23
I dropped a twenty dollar bill on the counter and we rushed out the door. I left most of the tread from my rear tires on the pavement as we sped out of the parking lot. With lights flashing and siren blaring, I zipped in and out of traffic and raced toward Magnolia General Hospital. Dawn worked the phone as I drove, notifying the Sheriff, Detective Tricia Clark, and Captain Theriot. She also told Captain Theriot her theory about the landfill and he said he’d get a team on it immediately.
“I feel bad that someone else has to go trudging through rotten garbage because of us,” Dawn said.
I nodded, my eyes sharp as I drove, darting from the road ahead to each of my three mirrors, always aware of the surrounding and approaching traffic. “They might curse us at first, but if they find that baby, they’ll be happy to help.”
Before we knew it, we were screeching up onto the hospital’s emergency room entrance ramp. I shut off the car and threw it in park. We jumped out and darted through the automatic doors and into the elevator. We traveled upstairs in what seemed like slow motion and when we stopped, the doors inched open.
“Come on!” I said.
When the doors separated enough for us to squeeze through, we rushed to the nurse’s station.
Jill Knight was shuffling some papers. She looked up when we walked into the ICU. “Y’all got here quick! Come, I’ll take y’all to her.”
“Is she responsive?” I asked, matching Jill’s quick pace.
“Her jaw is still a little swollen and she’s a little groggy, so it’s difficult to understand what she’s saying at times, but she’s fully alert. The swelling in her brain has subsided and Doctor Barrios thinks she’ll make a full recovery.” Jill stopped just outside the room and turned to me. “She was asking for you.”
“Me?” I was puzzled. “She doesn’t even know who I am.”
“She asked to see the cop who saved her life.”
I remembered the desperation I’d felt that night, the way her blood tasted, the hopelessness of the situation. I nodded. “Okay, let us in.”
Jill slid the door open and led us inside. Janice looked up when we walked in and her eyes immediately watered. She pushed a hand in my direction. I walked slowly across the room, took her hand. She
squeezed tight, stared into my eyes. “You saved...you saved my life.” Her voice was raspy. “You were my angel. Your face was the last thing I saw. I’ll never forget you—for as long as I live, I will never forget you.”
Janice squeezed my hand and I squeezed back, not knowing exactly what I should do at that moment. She blinked back tears. “I know you have some questions for me,” she said. “But before I answer them, I have to know...”
She clamped her eyes shut. Her chin trembled uncontrollably, as she tried to muster up the courage to ask the question that no parent should ever have to ask.
I leaned close to her. “Do you want me to just tell you?”
Without opening her eyes, she nodded.
“I’m very sorry, but we don’t know where she is. We’ll need your help to find her.”
“What about Bill? Where is he? You said he was okay. Where is he?”
I looked at Dawn. She shrugged and I turned back to Janice, not sure if she could handle the information. “We need to concentrate on finding Shelby. We searched every square inch of highway where we found you and Bill, and there’s no sign of her. Do you have any idea who might want to take her?”
Janice squeezed her eyes tighter, shook her head. She couldn’t contain the tears that pushed through her lids. After several moments, she wiped her face and looked up at me. “What about Bill? I need to know about Bill. You said he was alive.”
I hesitated.
“Please, I need to know.”
I lowered my head, shook it. “I’m sorry. He’s gone.”
Janice gasped and her body went limp. Her face was twisted into a long, silent cry. When it seemed she would have to take a breath or pass out, her chest finally convulsed into violent and retching sobs. I didn’t know what to do, so I stood there staring at the floor as she wept. At one point I glanced at Dawn, but she only shrugged as if to say she didn’t know what to do either, so we both stood there waiting.
When a long time had passed, Janice fought to regain her composure. She was breathless and weak, and barely opened her eyes. “Please catch these men and kill them. Don’t ask questions, don’t hesitate—just kill them.”
I frowned. “I can promise you we’ll do our best to catch them and see that they get the death penalty, but I can’t—”
“I don’t want them going to trial,” she hissed. “I want them dead! I know you already saved my life and you don’t owe me anything, but I need you to do this for me!”
I realized I had to be agreeable in order to get her cooperation, so I nodded. “Okay, I’ll do what you want me to do, but I need your help to find out who they are and where to find Shelby.”
After another long moment of waiting, Janice relaxed, leaned her head back to stare at the ceiling. She remained in that position for five long minutes. “I’m ready,” she finally said. “I’ll answer your questions.”
I glanced over at Dawn. She held a hand recorder and nodded to indicate she was ready. I turned back to Janice. “I want to get right down to it...do you know the men who did this to you?”
Janice shook her head. “No, and they were wearing masks, so I wouldn’t know them if I saw them again.”
“Okay, tell me what happened, as much as you can remember and in the order it happened.”
“Bill and I were...it had been a little while since we had...well, we were in the process of becoming intimate. We were in bed and we didn’t have anything on, because we were about to, you know, make love.” She paused, swallowed hard, winced in pain. “We had the baby monitor on, so we could hear Shelby. She was just down the hall, in the next room. I remember Bill was whispering to me, he had to whisper kind of loud because we had a fan on next to the bed. Bill was always hot, even when the a/c was on sixty, and he always had to have that damn fan on.”
I watched as Janice moved a weak hand to her bandaged head and wiped tears from her face. “Bill was whispering to me that he had missed me since I got pregnant,” Janice explained. “He told me how beautiful he thought I was, but he suddenly stopped talking and looked up. He asked me if I heard it, but I didn’t know what he was talking about. I told him to forget about it, that it was nothing, but he didn’t.
“Bill leaned over and turned off the fan. Through the baby monitor, we could hear some whispering in Shelby’s room. It sounded like two men talking. Bill jumped up—he didn’t even put on any clothes—and he just ran out the door. I grabbed the sheet and ran after him. Before I got to the room, I heard screaming and a lot of noise. Shelby started crying because of the ruckus. When I ran in the room I saw...” She began crying again.
“It’s okay,” I said. “Take your time.”
After several minutes, she continued in an agonizing voice. “Shelby was crying and I could see Bill struggling with this man who was in our house, in our baby’s room. The man punched him and he fell to the ground. I started screaming at him, asking him what he was doing in my house. And then I saw the other man standing there. He grabbed me and put his hand on my mouth. The sheet fell off of me and I was trying to get away so I could cover up, but I couldn’t get away. The other man kept beating Bill and kicking him while he was on the floor and I was afraid he was going to kill him. I kept struggling and fighting and I managed to break away from the man who was holding me and I ran and jumped on the other man’s back.” She shook her head. “That man was mean! He threw me off of him and I fell to the floor. When I got back up he hit me really hard. I just remember feeling a lot of pain and then everything went dark.”
Tears fell free as Janice recounted the horror. “It hurt so bad and I was so scared.”
After giving her more time to calm down, I asked, “Did they say anything to each other? Like, did they call each other by name?”
Janice was thoughtful for a while. She finally shook her head. “I don’t remember any specific names, but I know they referred to each other by something. I got the impression they were nicknames.”
“Do you remember what gave you that impression?”
“I don’t remember. I’m sure it’s because the names were odd, you know? It was all such a blur and I was just so worried about Shelby and Bill that I wasn’t really concentrating on everything they said.” Janice took a deep breath.
I wondered if I should continue, if the questioning was too much for her at that time. I voiced my concern, but Janice shook her head.
“I want to continue. I need to continue.” Tears welled up in her eyes again and she cried softly. I began looking around the room. As though reading my mind, Dawn walked up with a handful of tissues. I handed them to Janice and gave her some time to rest. After a minute or two, I continued my questioning.
“Do you remember anything else after he punched you?” I asked.
“Nothing. The next thing I remember was waking up in the dark. Mosquitoes were biting me and I was all alone. It felt like I was in wet grass. Not long after that was when you came.” She turned her head to stare directly at me. “I never thought y’all would find us. I thought I would die out there. I owe you my life.”
Embarrassed, I changed the subject. “How were the men dressed? If you can remember.”
“They were both dressed alike. They had on jeans, long sleeved shirts, and some kind of mask.”
“Was there anything unique about the masks?”
“No. They just looked like regular ski masks, like you would buy at the hunting store.”
“What about their build? Height? Weight?”
“One of them was about tall like you, but a little slimmer than you. The other one was bigger. Shorter, but bigger. He was the one who hit so hard. It looked like he lifted weights or something, or he could’ve just been fatter than the other guy. It was hard to tell with their shirts, because they were loose on them.”
“Could you tell if either of them had scars or tattoos on any areas of their bodies that might’ve been exposed?”
Janice shook her head. “I could see their hands and parts of their faces around the eye
holes, so I could tell they were white men, but I didn’t see any scars or tattoos.”
I paused, thinking. “Okay, had you noticed any suspicious people or vehicles around your neighborhood in the days or weeks before this happened?”
“No. Our neighborhood is pretty quiet since everyone moved away. The only families left are those who work in the oilfield.”
“Have you or Bill had problems with anyone lately? Or received any strange phone calls or e-mails?”
“Nothing at all. That’s what I don’t understand. We’ve never had problems with anyone.”
I hesitated, wondered if she was ready for my next question. “Ma’am, do you...do you have any idea who would want to take your baby?”
Janice choked up and began crying. She shook her head, wailed as she spoke. “I...I don’t know! I don’t know where she is! Can you please find her? Please find my baby! I want her back!”
I pursed my lips. “We’re going to find these people and we’re going to get Shelby back to you. I promise.”
“Please bring her back! And when you find them, you need to punish them!”
I was quiet for a long moment while she sobbed. When her cries were reduced to silent sniffles, I took her hand. “Look, your family is en route here. As soon as they get into town, we’ll have someone set them up in a hotel and get them to the hospital. I do have to tell you, though, that Bill’s mother is in the hospital. She—”
“It’s her heart, isn’t it?”
I nodded. “How’d you know?”
“She’s had heart problems since she was much younger. Will she be okay?”
I looked up at Dawn, who nodded.
“She’s in stable condition at Mountainburg Memorial,” Dawn said.
Janice nodded. “Thank you for everything.”
I squeezed her hand one last time and stood to walk out of the room.
“Detective,” Janice called weakly from the bed.
I stopped and turned.
“Where’s my husband?” she asked in a frail voice.
I started to remind Janice that her husband was dead, but caught myself. “Bill’s at the coroner’s office, ma’am. He’ll be there until you’re ready to plan the service.”