Lucky Thirteen (The Raiford Chronicles Book 1)

by Janet Taylor-Perry

  Brow furrowed, Chris remarked, “Dr. Fairchild said she had a bad day. I’d say the worst if she’s been abducted by our killer.” She searched the closet and commented, “She has a conservative wardrobe.”

  “Really?” Ray asked holding, up a couple of dangling pieces of jewelry. “These aren’t earrings, Chris. What are they?”

  “Belly button rings,” she answered. “So, Miss Sloan has her navel pierced.” Short dark blonde hair touched the base of the agent’s neck as she shrugged. “No big deal, Ray. Lots of people have body piercings.”

  “I bet Dr. Fairchild doesn’t know.” Ray sniggered. “Maybe Miss Sloan has a really wild side.”

  Chris cocked one eyebrow. “Maybe it just makes her feel pretty. Most of the men I know think belly button rings are sexy. Don’t you?”

  He puckered his lips. “Yeah, on perfectly tight abs.”

  “She’s an athlete according to Dr. Fairchild. I bet her abs are perfectly tight. I’m checking the bathroom.”

  Chris came out to find Ray banging the side of Larkin’s computer. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “It’s password protected,” he growled. “I wonder what she’s hiding on here. I don’t know enough about her to guess her password.”

  “Well, bring it along. We’ll get our techno geeks to get in. There was nothing significant in the bathroom. She has no prescription drugs, not even the pill. Of course, she could be like me and carry that in her purse. She had some acetaminophen and some ibuprofen, nothing stronger, and some Benadryl and Neosporin and Band-Aids. She’s not a drug addict.”

  “Not an alcoholic either. There’s a bottle of white wine and some margarita mix in the refrigerator and a bottle of Cuervo Gold above the stove. Dr. Fairchild said she liked margaritas.”

  “Yes. One thing is for certain, though. She’s not here.”

  “Yeah.” Ray gusted a sigh. “That was too much to hope for. Allons.” He waved his hand forward.

  She gave him a half frown at his use of French.

  “Let’s go,” he clarified.

  After thoroughly searching Larkin Sloan’s house, which included taking her computer, Ray bagged the cat’s food, but decided to get a new litter box and litter.

  Chris questioned, “Are you seriously taking the cat with you?”

  “Somebody has to take care of him.”

  “Then why don’t you just come by and feed him?”

  “No, he needs to feel secure.”

  “Ray, it’s a cat.”

  “He’s special to Larkin!” Ray said defensively. “He was a lost cause until she came along. I will not let her be a lost cause.”

  Chris gave Ray a puzzled look, dipping one eyebrow. “You’ve finally lost it,” she said.

  “Lost what? My mind?”

  “Your objectivity. You’re obsessed.”

  Stubbornly, he picked up Cyclops. “Maybe. But look at this animal. God forbid, but if Larkin Sloan is dead, nobody else will want him.”

  Chris sighed. “I guess you’re cat sitting.”

  The strange trio drove to the parish lockup. On the rather cool, damp day, Ray left the cat in the car with a scratch under his chin and instructions not to tear up the seats. As if he understood, the animal curled up on the back seat.

  ♣♣♣

  Dupree Parks had nothing to do but think about the mess he was in. For the moment he was alone without a cellmate. “I tried to be a gang banger, but that didn’t work. What now? What am I? A smart kid criminal?” He smiled ruefully at the thought. “That’s not really funny.”

  I’m a criminal, but I’m a man of my word and fiercely loyal to and protective of those I love. Dupree shook his head. There’re just very few people I love. Mostly, I’m a loner. I don’t fit into any group—not even a gang. I ain’t as street-wise as they are. I don’t like to hurt people.

  “I’m sorry, Momma. You’re a tigress who never gives up and fights for my survival. You threatened some of my brothers with a loaded shotgun. You filed assault charges on that asshole ex-husband, Dwight.” Oh shit! If I get sent to the big house, he’ll be there. I’m a dead man. He sighed and fought back tears. “I blew my last chance and broke your heart.”

  Dupree kicked the wall at the thought. “I wanna be somebody—and get outta this place.”

  Is that dream truly like a raisin in the sun, shriveled and dried up by my own hand. He murmured, “I’m so sorry, Momma. I need Divine Intervention.” Poverty is a quagmire and already holds my foot fast. The quicksand will just suck me under. I won’t be like Walter Lee Younger and rise above shattered dreams. “Damn it.” I can’t even admit to my friends I actually read A Raisin in the Sun and liked it and understood it. I did this to myself and that makes me angrier than anything else. “God, why am I so bad?”

  His mood grew surlier by the minute. By the time the guard came to get him, Dupree sat at the bottom of his self-imposed pit.

  “Couple of cops here to see you, boy. Straighten up.”

  Dupree curled his lips in a snarl as the guard slapped cuffs on him.

  The prison guard escorted him to an interrogation room devoid of all color except the clothing worn by visitors or inmates. Chris sat in one gray folding metal chair at a table, and Ray leaned against the wall. Dupree plopped into the other chair and promptly announced, “I ain’t talking to y’all without my lawyer.”

  “Really? I’m Detective Reynolds. Do you have something to hide?” snapped Ray.

  “Like what? I ain’t done nothin’.”

  “Like the whereabouts of Miss Sloan.”

  “Whatcha talkin’ ’bout?”

  Reynolds stopped slouching. “Miss Sloan, the teacher you assaulted yesterday, is missing. Where is she?”

  Missing? He shook his head. “I don’t know,” Dupree practically screamed. “I didn’t do nothin’ to that bitch! The last time I seen her, a guard was takin’ her to the office. They brung me here ’bout twenty minutes later, and I been here ever since. Now, I ain’t talkin’ no more without a lawyer. You gotta give me one, and you gotta pay for it ’cause I’m too poor. I ain’t stupid. I know my rights.” He brought his cuffed hands against his chest.

  “You think you’re smart, don’t you?” The detective leaned on the table, his eyes two inches from the young man’s face. “Like what? Fooyay! I think you’ve graduated to the big time. Agent Milovich, how does aiding and abetting a kidnapping and murder sound to you?”

  “Serious. This is Louisiana. Could get the death penalty.”

  Agent? FBI? Dupree turned his head to break eye contact. He began to fidget, but said nothing. That man’s got the crazy eyes. Dupree shivered perceptibly. He looks familiar.

  Ray stuck his head out the door and spoke to the guard. He came back in and leaned against the wall in complete silence. He stared at Dupree. The tension resulted in a Mexican standoff between Ray and Dupree. Chris watched curiously. After fifteen minutes of utter quiet and Ray’s gaze never faltering from Dupree, the boy slammed his fists onto the table and screamed, “Fuck you, man! Don’t look at me like that! Look…that man…he gave me a crisp Benjamin to do something to upset her so bad she’d leave school. I didn’t mean to hurt her, just upset her!”

  “What man?” Ray jumped on the little tidbit. “What did he look like?” He pushed himself from the wall.

  “I don’t know.” He shrugged. “He was white. ’Bout your size and…” No. It can’t be. Dupree stopped as a look of horror spread across his face.

  “And what?” Ray prompted, leaning on the table with both fists resting on the cold metal.

  Oh, shit! Dupree scooted the chair away from the madman so near him. “Man, it was you!”

  “What?” The detective jerked up straight.

  “Man, it was raining at the bus stop. This white guy same size as you, wearing a hoodie, gave me a hundred dollar bill to get Miss Sloan so upset she’d go home. Said he’d meet me today to give me another hundred if I succeeded. I’m tellin’ you, it was you! Where’s my
hundred?”

  “Why on Earth do you think it was me?”

  “’Cause, man. I ain’t never seen nobody with eyes that blue. Man, them was yo eyes!”

  “Bullshit!”

  Chris looked back and forth between the men, her expression total shock. “Oh, hell, no!” said Ray.

  His shoulders slouched. Ray walked out of the room, hunched in dejection. He bumped the shoulder of the public defender as he came in.

  ♣♣♣

  Dupree reiterated, “I ain’t lyin’. That man looked like Detective Reynolds, ’cept he was real scruffy.”

  “I believe you,” said Agent Milovich.

  The attorney that entered said, “I believe my client asked for a lawyer.”

  Dupree looked surprised at the turn of circumstances. Chris continued, “Dupree, are you aware that twelve women have been murdered?”

  “Yeah. I seen it on the news.” He laced his fingers together on top of the table. “Do you think this guy done it? Is he gonna kill Miss Sloan?”

  “Maybe.”

  That ain’t good. His heart raced. Dupree knitted his eyebrow together. “I’m real sorry I helped him. But a hundred”—He waved a hand in the air—“Two hundred could feed me and my momma a while. Miss Sloan—she cool. She a feisty l’il ole thang. I like her. I’m real sorry, but I ain’t lyin’. Hey, do you think you could get me a pencil and some paper? I think I’ll write about what Miss Sloan wanted us to and give it to her when you find her. She be real spunky. I bet she’ll find a way out, and I’ll tell her I’m sorry. But I ain’t lyin.” More relaxed, he leaned back in the chair.

  “One more question,” said the FBI agent.

  “No,” the lawyer objected.

  Dupree said, “It’s okay.”

  Chris nodded. “Where’s the hundred dollar bill?”

  “Cashed it in at the store for smaller bills. Lotsa places won’t take big bills.”

  The agent cringed. Damn it. No chance for fingerprints.

  Chris got a pencil and some notebook paper for Dupree before she left. Dupree did write, but nobody would ever know Dupree Parks was most afraid of having his dreams wither and die like a raisin in the sun. He hid the essay under his mattress, and, with his own feeling of futility, prayed he would get one more chance and Larkin Sloan would be found alive.

  ♣♣♣

  Outside the rain had returned, but Ray welcomed the refreshing drops on his face because they would hide the tears he could not stop. He heard steps behind him and his partner’s voice, “Ray?”

  Chris withered under the gaze Ray gave her. All the pain in the world seemed to show in his crystal blue eyes, and it pricked her to the core. Oh, my friend. She swallowed hard.

  He whispered against the distant roll of thunder, “For almost a year I’ve looked at pictures of dead women and felt sick. I take a prescription acid reducer every day to keep an ulcer at bay. I throw up at least once a week from either my stomach or a migraine. I take migraine medication two or three times a week. I take Ambien just to sleep without nightmares. But nothing I’ve experienced hurts as much as that one accusation I read in your eyes. You of all people.”

  “Ray,” she said in an apologetic tone, “for the record, where were you?”

  “Talking to number twelve’s boyfriend with his mother and the school counselor present.”

  “I knew that. I just wanted to hear the words.”

  Nonplussed, he looked at Chris. “I don’t understand. This was just another exercise in futility.”

  Chris argued, “No, it wasn’t. I believe the kid. We now at least have something to start with. We have a white man about six feet tall with blue eyes. You said he knew something. You were right.”

  They got into the car. Cyclops mewed a greeting. Ray thought his feeling of futility might pass. This was a clue, the first that would add to Ray’s stress level.

  ♣♣♣

  Late in the afternoon, Ray and Chris drove into the cheap apartment complex where Maurice Lambert lived. The cab driver had been rendered unconscious and left at the back door of the very hospital where his fare was last seen.

  A man of about sixty admitted the police officers and answered their questions to the best of his ability.

  Holding up a recorder, Ray asked, “How did you come to be at the hospital?”

  “I took a guy there,” Lambert replied with a nod.

  “Where did you pick him up?” Ray continued.

  “Near St. Ignatius.” The cabbie shrugged. “He seemed a little odd, but I thought that was why he was going to the hospital.”

  “Odd how?” Ray frowned.

  Lambert scratched his head. “He seemed a little out of it, but he had on expensive clothes.”

  “Describe him, please,” Chris requested.

  “About six feet, in need of a shave, blue eyes.” The cabbie scowled toward Ray. “He looked a lot like you, Detective.”

  “Oh, my God,” grunted Ray. “Go on.”

  “He had on a hooded sweat shirt, the kind lots of serious runners wear, not cheap, and blue jeans. I took him to the hospital and suddenly felt his hand over my face. There was a sweet smell. I woke up at the back door of the hospital.”

  Ray nodded. “Did you at any time see a petite red-haired woman?”

  “No. I went on into the emergency room and got examined. The doctor said I’d been drugged. I called the dispatcher and another driver picked me up. My cab was around the corner from the taxi office.”

  Examination of the cab turned up a few long red hairs, but there were hundreds of fingerprints as would be expected in a taxicab. Ray figured the assailant had used chloroform. He knew from the video, the man had worn gloves at least part of the time.

  ♣♣♣

  Ray and Chris made one more interviewing stop that evening. Chris had found an address for Bradley Tisdale. They knocked on the door of a small, well-kept house not far from St. Ignatius. They heard a man’s and a woman’s laughter inside. An attractive man with dark hair and strange lavender eyes opened the door. “Yes?”

  Both investigators showed their badges. An unexplainable feeling of annoyance with this man made Chris begin the questions. “Bradley Tisdale?”

  “Yes.” Brad nodded.

  Trying to keep her tone even, Chris asked, “The one who’s dating Larkin Sloan?”

  Brad grimaced. “Not as of night before last. Why?”

  “Miss Sloan is missing.” Chris whipped out a small notepad. “We’re questioning anyone who might have information.”

  “Do I need a lawyer?” Brad came onto the small porch and closed the door behind him.

  “Do you?” asked Ray, giving the man a once over and finishing with a half snarl on his lips.

  Eye twitching, Brad answered, “I haven’t seen her since I took her home. We had an argument. She’s miss goody-two-shoes. We don’t click. I broke up with her.”

  “How did she react to that?” Chris asked.

  A cocky shrug preceded, “I haven’t heard from her.”

  “Excuse me?” said Chris. “You broke up with her and she didn’t react?”

  Brad shifted from foot to foot. “I left her a voicemail. Now, if there’s nothing else, I have company. If you have any more questions, I’ll come see you with a lawyer.” He stepped inside and closed the door on the law enforcement.

  “What a prick!” Chris exclaimed.

  “Yeah,” Ray agreed, “but he doesn’t know a thing. And his eyes aren’t blue. Let’s call it a night.” As they walked back to the car, Ray dialed Dr. Fairchild’s number and told her they would be at the school the next day.

  ♣♣♣

  Interviewing thirty-five teachers and staff at St. Ignatius proved frustrating. Ray had secretly hoped one of them would resemble him. None did.

  Mr. Manning was the last interview of the day. The man with blond hair and hazel eyes looked worn out. It appeared the assistant principal was feeling guilty for having left Larkin Sloan to take a taxi.

&nbs
p; Ray sighed and began, “Mr. Manning, you didn’t do anything wrong, so relax. There was no way you could’ve anticipated Miss Sloan’s abduction. However, did you see a cab and driver at the ER?”

  “A taxi pulled in shortly after us. Why?” Manning asked.

  “Did you get a look at the driver?” Ray asked for clarification.

  The assistant principal nodded. “Old guy.”

  “How about the passenger?” Chris interrupted.

  “No. I was focusing on getting Miss Sloan inside.” Manning twisted his hands together.

  Chris asked again, “Was the cab still there when you left?”

  “Um”—Manning squinted his eyes as he thought—“I don’t recall seeing it.”

  Ray rubbed his head. He could feel another migraine, or it might be the same one that had never completely stopped. He puffed out his cheeks. “Thank you, Mr. Manning. I think that’s all for now.”

  Mr. Manning nodded sadly. “Let me know if I can do anything to help. If I had just stayed with her…”

  “Don’t blame yourself,” said Chris with a compassionate pat to the man’s shoulder. The assistant principal left the authorities to move to the next phase of their investigation.

  ♣♣♣

  Ray’s irritation escalated as reporters bombarded him with questions at the station the next morning. “I hate these assholes,” he muttered to no one. When one of them clutched his arm to get his attention, he snapped, “I will make a statement in half an hour on the front steps. Until then, I have nothing to say.” He glared at the young man. “Let go of me.” The reporter lifted both hands as the cop’s tone and bright blue eyes burned into him.

  Half an hour later, Police Chief Gerard, Agent Milovich, and Detective Reynolds appeared as a united front on the front steps of the police station. Since Ray had promised to make a statement, he took the microphone.