by BJ Bourg
I could hear Achilles barking inside from the moment I stepped out of the Tahoe. “I’m coming. I’m coming.”
Achilles was pushing against the walls of the crate and whimpering as I got the door open. I quickly drew my pistol when I realized my back door had been kicked in.
I crossed the living room and squatted beside the crate. I allowed Achilles to lick my left hand through the wires while I trained my pistol toward the back of my house and listened for any signs of movement. I heard nothing but the sounds of my heart beating heavy in my chest and Achilles’ panting. I leaned toward Achilles and, in a low voice, said, “Quiet, boy.”
I tiptoed into the kitchen. Once there, I glanced back at Achilles. He was sitting with his ears perked up, watching my every move. I figured he’d still be barking if an intruder was inside, but I couldn’t be certain. I slipped into my bedroom and scanned the area with my pistol at the ready. Nothing appeared disturbed. My gun closet was closed. I opened the door and checked on my gun safe. Everything was exactly as I’d left it. I sighed, holstered my pistol and returned to the kitchen. A quick check of my personal stuff revealed nothing had been taken.
I examined the back door. It looked to have been kicked in. Could it have been the work of the suspicious person from the woods? I let Achilles out and, together, we walked into the backyard and looked around. Achilles marked his territory and sniffed around the perimeter of my property, but he didn’t seem alarmed. I tried to pierce the shadows of the trees, but saw nothing that looked suspicious. There were no sounds out of the ordinary.
“Did you scare them off, little tiger?” I asked. Achilles’ head whipped around at the sound of my voice and he loped toward me. I rubbed his ears. “You kept our place safe, didn’t you? You deserve a good treat for that. I might grill you a thick steak later on—show off my cooking skills to Chloe.”
When Achilles didn’t respond, I went into the little work shed behind my house to retrieve my tool belt and a box of nails. The door was unlocked, and I frowned. I thought I’d remembered to lock it. I opened the door expecting my stuff to be missing, but everything seemed to be there. I grabbed the tool belt and strapped it around my waist, then shook my head. My career as a construction worker had been so brief that I hadn’t had a chance to wear out the leather on the pouch.
“Get inside, boy,” I said to Achilles, and he complied. “I have to hurry and get back to work.”
I followed him in, repaired the door jam and reattached the knob. When I was done, I tugged on it to test its strength. It was solid—enough. I tossed my tool belt and the box of nails in a bottom cabinet, fed and watered Achilles, and locked the front door on my way out.
I then headed back to the office and waited for Susan to call. I didn’t have to wait long.
“You’re not going to believe this,” she said when I answered the phone.
“What?”
“I got the deed to the plantation house and…”
“And what? Who does it belong to?”
“You…it belongs to you.”
I nearly dropped the phone. “What are you talking about?”
“It’s…it’s in your wife’s name.”
I opened my mouth to respond, but nothing came out. Michele had never told me she owned anything, much less a big plantation home. Why did you keep that from me?
“Clint? Are you there?”
“Can you bring the paperwork in? I need to see it.”
“Sure thing. I’ll be there in a jiffy.”
The phone went dead—like my mood. I stared blankly at the wall, unsure what to think or what to feel. I don’t know how long I stared, but Susan walked in before I moved.
“Clint? Here it is.” She slid the paperwork across the desk toward me.
I hesitated. I didn’t know if I even wanted to look. With hands that shook slightly, I picked up the stapled papers and saw that it was an Act of Sale. From the looks of the form, the parties involved had printed it off the Internet and then found a notary to execute it because the notary’s name had been handwritten on pre-designated lines throughout the form and was impossible to read.
I forced myself to look at the buyer’s name. My heart sank even further when I saw that Michele had signed her married name, which meant she’d made the sale behind my back. When did you do this? How? The woman I loved, the mother of my child, was a fraud. “I can’t believe she did this behind my back. I trusted her! When would she have even done this?” My mind was a mix of confusion, hurt, and anger. I checked the date—six months before her murder.
“Well,” Susan said softly, “maybe she was trying to surprise you. Did she ever come here to visit her dad without you?”
I shrugged. “Sure. A lot.”
Susan raised an eyebrow. “Maybe she purchased it on one of those trips. If she were trying to surprise you, she certainly wouldn’t do it while you were with her.”
I flipped through the form until I found the sale price, then shook the document in front of Susan. “The house cost five hundred thousand dollars! There’s no way we could afford that.”
Susan lowered her dark eyes. “Did you see who the seller was?”
I thumbed back through the form, caught my breath. “Hays Cain! What the hell was she up to?”
“There may be a good explanation, Clint. Don’t start doubting—”
“The only two people who could explain it are dead.”
“What about the witnesses or the notary?”
I shook my head as I studied the notary’s signature. “It’s chicken scratch. I can’t make out. Can you?”
Susan took the form and inspected it.
I rubbed my eyes, felt dizzy. Why did you lie to me?
Susan frowned. “I can’t make this out.”
I felt betrayed. I thought I’d known everything about Michele—at least everything that mattered. She certainly knew everything about me—even the things that didn’t matter. I looked up at Susan. “Would you hide this kind of thing from your husband?”
“I’m sure there’s a good explanation for this, Clint. If she didn’t tell you, it was for a reason.”
I sighed. “Whatever the reason, I’ll never know now. She’s gone. I’ll never be able to ask her about it.”
We were both quiet for a while and then Susan said, “Well, there is one positive thing that came out of this revelation.”
“What could that possibly be?”
“We don’t need a search warrant for the property. It now belongs to you.”
I mulled it over for a long moment. I finally nodded. “Why don’t you take Melvin out there and start searching the place?”
Susan stood, hesitated. “What are you going to do?”
I grabbed my Tahoe keys. “I’m going pay my father-in-law a visit. He’s got to know something about this. Hell, it was probably bought with his money.”
We walked outside, and I watched Susan amble off and get into her Charger. I then drove to the courthouse, but had to wait in my father-in-law’s lobby for about twenty minutes before being buzzed through the door.
The tall, brown-haired woman who opened the door smiled. “Judge Miller will see you now.”
She pointed the way down a narrow hall and into a cozy office, where I found Nick Miller sitting at a large desk cluttered with books and legal-sized documents. He looked up from an official-looking file. “What are you doing in these parts, Clint?”
“I need to talk to you.” I hefted the Act of Sale in my hand, then tossed it on the desk in front of him.
Nick ran a wrinkled hand through his stringy salt and pepper hair. “What’s this?”
“What do you know about the plantation home at the end of Paradise Place?”
Nick folded his hands like a tent in front of his mouth. “Paradise Place…is that the street on the southern end of Mechant Loup?”
I nodded. “That’s the one. The road is lined with cane fields—both sides of the street—nearly all the way down, and at the end of the st
reet there’s a large plantation home.”
“I don’t know that I’ve been back there since high school. That road used to be popular with us teens, if you know what I mean. I didn’t realize that house was still standing. It was in bad shape when I was a kid—can’t imagine what it looks like now.” Nick picked up the Act of Sale. “Why do you ask?”
“Because it belongs to Michele.”
Nick Miller swallowed hard, and I thought I saw his eyes glisten. He cradled the papers in hands that trembled slightly and thumbed through them carefully, as though he thought some part of Michele was still attached and he didn’t want to disturb her. “I…I had no idea. Where’d y’all get the money for this?”
“I have no clue,” I said.
Nick looked up at me. “What do you mean?”
“I didn’t know anything about it. I thought you gave her the money.”
“How’s that possible? It was purchased before Michele…before she passed, but after you two were married. You must know something about it.”
I hung my head. “She kept it from me.”
“Michele wouldn’t do that.” Nick slid the Act of Sale back toward me, nodded positively. “She was an honest girl. She’d never keep something like this from you. You had to know about it.”
“The date on it is six months before Michele was killed. It had to be when she came out to visit you.”
“Unfortunately, I was always working. She’d call Sandra before Sandra passed and they’d go shopping or do whatever it was that they did.” Nick sighed. “Maybe Sandra would’ve known something about it.”
Great, I thought. Everyone who knew about the sale was dead. I thanked Nick and left. It was starting to drizzle, so I drove a little slower on the way back to the office. I had a lot on my mind, and none of it had to do with the case at hand. The rain began to fall harder and it matched my mood perfectly.
CHAPTER 41
The only person at the police department was Lindsey. She was sitting at her desk reading a book and it wasn’t the same one from Monday.
“Damn, you read a lot.”
She jerked and yelped at the sound of my voice. “Shit! You’re like a ninja! I never hear you walk up. Why can’t you drag your feet or wear squeaky shoes like a normal person?”
“I don’t know.” I looked around, as I brushed the rain from my face. “Is Susan out at the house on Paradise?”
Lindsey nodded, bent a corner of the page and closed her book.
“How many books do you read each week?” I asked.
“As many as I can. Probably four a week, depending on how thick it is.”
“Damn, that’s a lot.” I ducked into my office and grabbed my camera. I checked the battery and memory card. The battery was full and the memory card nearly empty. I then headed for the door.
“Are you going to the kidnapping scene?” Lindsey asked, without looking up.
“Yeah. Hold down the fort while I’m gone.”
She shoved her hand in my direction, a note dangling between her fingers. “Tell Melvin to stop ignoring his wife’s calls. She wants him to pick up some pickles, peanut butter, cherry tomatoes, and mayonnaise on his way home.”
I screwed my face into a knot, took the note and shoved it into my pocket. “That’s a strange combination.”
“Pregnant women for you. My sister had a baby and she had all kinds of weird cravings. She would think about two or three different types of foods and they just didn’t seem right to her unless they were all mixed together. Crazy.”
I thought back to when Michele was pregnant with Abigail. I’d been shoved violently awake many times in the middle of the night and sent on urgent missions to find dark chocolate bars, and not just any dark chocolate—it had to be exactly seventy-two percent cocoa. I shook my head, frowning as the images of Abigail being gunned down rushed into my mental theater. I shook my head to clear it and hurried out the door.
As I stepped out onto the front porch, I cursed myself for not parking in the sally port. The rain was falling heavier, and I wondered if it would disrupt the ceremony on Friday. This brought me hope. “Maybe I won’t have to see that prick after all.”
Hitting the unlock button on the keyless remote, I sprinted to the Tahoe—as though running would somehow minimize the amount of rain that fell on me—and jerked the door open smoothly. Once inside, I closed the door and pushed rivulets of water off my face and forehead.
“What a perfect day for this shit.” I pulled onto the highway and travelled the few miles to Paradise Place.
I drove my Tahoe around to the back of the house. Shoving my camera under the front of my shirt, I sprinted for the back door. Cold droplets splashed against the back of my neck and slid down my back. I shivered, pushed through the screen door and slowed to a stop. I shook the rain off me like a wet dog, and stomped my feet on the hollow wooden porch to dry them.
I looked up to see Susan and Melvin at the door with guns drawn. I raised my hands; they relaxed.
“Shit!” Melvin said. “We thought the killers were back.”
I nodded and joined them inside. The lights were on, and I cast a curious glance around. “There’s power here?”
Susan nodded. “Whoever comes here apparently shuts the power off at the outside breaker when they leave.”
“Did y’all find anything?”
“Follow me,” Susan said.
She and Melvin hurried up the spiral staircase to the second floor, and I followed. There was a huge room to the right of us with a large wooden table positioned at the center of it. Seven chairs were situated around the table.
I pointed to the furniture. “I didn’t notice the table and chairs last night.”
“I didn’t either.” Susan made a beeline for what looked like a newspaper at the head of the table. She snatched it up with gloved hands and handed it to me. “You need to see this.”
“What is it?” I pulled on a pair of latex gloves Melvin handed me and took the newspaper from Susan. I gasped when I realized what the article was about. It was at the top of the front page—big as shit—and the article was accompanied by a large picture of me. I didn’t need to read it. I knew what it said, could cite it from memory.
A woman, her child, and an unidentified man were all killed last night after gunshots erupted inside River Seas Seafood Restaurant on the corner of Twenty-Third and Rank. Witnesses inside the restaurant say four masked men who were heavily armed stormed the establishment and demanded money from the cashier. According to one witness, an off-duty cop interceded and things turned deadly.
“I don’t know what he was thinking,” said the witness, who agreed to speak under the cover of anonymity. “The cop started fighting with one of the robbers and it looked like he was getting the best of the robber. Then one of the other robbers grabbed this little girl—I think it was the cop’s daughter—and threatened to shoot her if the cop didn’t stop fighting. The cop stopped, but the man killed the girl and the lady right there in front of him. The robbers ran out, but the cop caught one of them and somehow got his gun away and killed him. It was terrible.”
“All we wanted to do was go out to dinner and celebrate my daughter’s birthday,” another witness told reporters, “but then those men came in with masks on and tried to rob the place and all hell broke loose. If somebody in the place would’ve had a gun, those thugs could’ve been stopped.”
This most recent robbery is the fourth in a string of restaurant robberies that have occurred in the city over the past three weeks, and authorities believe it is directly related to the riots sparking up all over the state. It is the first robbery to end in bloodshed. Governor Lester Katz said the actions of the off-duty officer most likely escalated the situation and caused the deaths of the woman and child. He would not comment when asked if his anti-gun policies and denigration of the police were to blame for the riots that have been popping up all over the city.
“There is no direct evidence that this incident had anything to do w
ith the comprehensive gun laws that have been enacted as a result of my commonsense approach to governing, and my tireless efforts to keep the people in my state safe,” Katz said today in a statement. “Rather, the evidence suggests the off-duty officer’s actions were ill-advised and directly contributed to the deaths of the victims at the scene Had everyone in the restaurant complied with the robbers’ demands, no one would’ve been hurt.”
The police chief said his police officer did what he was trained to do, and, using strong language, he rebuked the governor’s assertion. “It’s easy for [Governor Katz] to sit up there in the safety and security of his mansion and fan the flames of police hatred—a mansion that is being protected by the very police officers he is throwing under the bus. But we will no longer stand for this type of lawlessness. It’s time for us to take back our city. I’m ordering all of my men to carry their firearms everywhere they go—on duty or off-duty. If anyone interferes with them, they are to meet force with force. I am also encouraging every law-abiding citizen in this city to exercise their right to bear arms and protect their family and property. Beginning today, we are waging war on the lawless thugs who have taken over this city and we are going to bring peace back to our streets. Enough is enough!”
The governor could not be reached for follow-up comment on the police chief’s accusations and plan of action.
The names of the victims were being withheld pending notification of loved ones. The robber killed at the scene was identified as Thomas Parker, a convicted felon who was paroled three years ago after being convicted of attempting to kill a police officer on the east side of the city during a daytime shootout. Police have named Parker’s three brothers, David, Simon, and Taylor as suspects in the restaurant robberies. Anyone with information on their whereabouts is urged to call police on their toll free hotline.
CHAPTER 42
Susan put her hand on my arm. “I’m sorry you had to see this garbage again.”
“I’ve read this article a thousand times,” I said. “Seeing it isn’t a big deal. But what I want to know is…” I paused and slowly scanned the room. It was empty except for the table, chairs, and the lone newspaper article. “What the hell is it doing here? In this house—a house that’s in Michele’s name?”