by BJ Bourg
The second thing I noticed as we got closer was the camera attached to Isaac Edwards’ head. “Is that a GoPro?” I asked.
Melvin, who had arrived before us and already roped off the scene, wiped sweat from his forehead with the tan sleeve of his uniform shirt. “It sure is, Chief. I think we just got a major break in this case.”
I resisted the urge to immediately rip the headgear off his head. Instead, I directed Melvin and Susan through the process of documenting the scene and searching for evidence. It was a simple scene—a man in extremely short shorts shot through the back with an arrow after checking his mail. Based on the blood around the body, he had been shot with the same type of three-blade mechanical broad-head as Betty. I lifted his shirt and the large wound canal through his body confirmed my suspicions.
When we’d finished searching and photographing the scene and surrounding area, Melvin recovered the mail while Susan and I took measurements.
“Hey, Chief,” Melvin called from his knees in the driveway, “Isaac’s going to be late for jury duty in February.”
I looked up from the body of the elderly man and watched as Melvin carefully placed a jury duty subpoena in an evidence envelope.
“You think he killed himself to get out of jury duty?” Susan asked.
I stifled a grin, not wanting any neighbors to see us laughing at a murder scene. Neighbors. I scanned the street. It was empty. “Who called this in, anyway?” I asked.
“Some kid on a skateboard found him,” Melvin said over his shoulder. “The kid’s mom called.” Melvin had located more mail under the hedges where the wind had blown it. A little thick in the belly, he had to take a deep breath and hold it as he bent to retrieve the envelopes. When he straightened, he exhaled and wiped more sweat from his face. “That boy was scared stupid. Said he had just waved to the man a minute earlier and told him good morning, and when he saw him again he was dead on the ground. I asked him if he saw or heard anything suspicious, but he said everything was quiet.”
Melvin went inside to search the house next, while Susan and I finished measuring the position of the victim’s body in relation to the surrounding area. Based on our recreation of the scene, it appeared the arrow had been fired from across the street. I walked to the edge of the road and surveyed the area. A ditch separated an empty lot from the street. The lot stretched for about two hundred feet from the ditch and was lined with trees on the backside. One lone tree was situated near the middle of the lot. The leaves were still thick and hung low to the ground. I nodded. That was the spot.
When Melvin came outside and announced there was nothing of evidentiary value inside the house, I said, “Can you call your canine buddy—Seth, right?—and see if he can pick up a track from that tree? It’s got to be where the killer fired the arrow.”
Melvin, who was always eager to please, nodded his head. “I’m on it!” He turned and walked up the street to make the call.
Susan had finished what she was doing and joined me near the body. I pointed to the GoPro camera. “You ready to see what’s on that thing?”
Nodding, she squatted beside the body and eased the camera from the man’s head with her gloved hands. We then walked to my Tahoe and she removed the mini SD card from the GoPro. Digging her laptop from one of her bags, she shoved the mini into an adaptor and plugged it into her computer. Within seconds, she’d pulled up the video files from the GoPro.
We watched as Isaac walked up the driveway—the camera bobbing up and down with each step—and to Lacy Court. He faced toward the back of the street and then his pale and wrinkly legs suddenly came into view as he bent to stretch. When he straightened, it appeared he nodded to himself and then broke into a nice jog toward the back of the street. His pace was steady and brisk—not at all what I would’ve expected from someone his age. He didn’t slow down until he reached the end of the concrete road, where he turned around and headed toward the front of the street.
“Rewind it to the end of the street and pause it there,” I told Susan. When she did, I studied the picture, which was crisp and detailed. Where the concrete ended, a dirt road began and extended for what looked to be a mile, or so, until it reached a line of trees. On either side of the dirt road were deep ditches separating the road from fields of rich grass that were bordered by thick lines of trees and shrubbery. A barbed-wire fence stretched from a locked gate to the tree lines on either side. They were littered with No Trespassing signs and other signs warning that violators would be prosecuted to the fullest. There were a few good hiding spots from which an archer could launch an attack, so I wondered why the killer hadn’t shot Isaac when he reached the back of the street. It was possible the killer staged in that area and stalked Isaac from there, so I covered every inch of the screen, searching for the tiniest hint of a human’s presence. There was none. I sighed, motioned for Susan to continue the film.
Isaac maintained his impressive pace toward the front of the street. He passed dozens of houses, most of them sprinkled with Halloween decorations. Every yard was manicured, every tree and bush trimmed to perfection. Nearly every driveway had at least one car—most had multiple—but no one was outside except for one man toward the beginning of the street. He could be seen opening the door to a white SUV and stepping out. He was too far from the camera for me to make a proper identification, but the house and four cars in the driveway would make him easy to find.
When Isaac reached Main Street, he turned and made his way back down Lacy Court, turning once more at the end of the street. Not wanting to miss anything, we watched every minute of his hour-long jog and were nearing the end of the video when a sandy-haired kid on an oversized skateboard popped into view. His hair was bushy and he appeared dirty and he was scooting away from Isaac. “Is that the kid, Melvin?” I asked when the boy turned and whisked toward Isaac.
Melvin, who was waiting for his buddy from the sheriff’s office to show up with a K-9, walked over and confirmed it was the kid. “That’s the little shit. He looks like he’s up to no good.”
“Yeah,” Susan agreed. “If he hasn’t been arrested yet, he will be.”
“Maybe seeing this dead body will scare him straight,” I said, shooting my thumb toward Isaac Edwards.
“Maybe he’s the killer,” Susan countered.
I glanced down at the indicator bar at the bottom of the video player. We were nearing the end of the footage. “If someone doesn’t pop up soon and shoot this man with an arrow, I’m going to start thinking it was the kid.”
Susan and I leaned closer to the computer screen—our mouths open with anticipation—as we watched Isaac draw to within a hundred yards of his house. He suddenly broke out into a sprint, as though he were trying to finish strong, and didn’t slow down until he reached his driveway. He walked back and forth in front of his house a few times and then his arm came into the camera’s view, appearing to wipe sweat from his head. He shouted, “Not bad for an old man,” and then—
“What the hell?” Susan blurted.
CHAPTER 18
“You’ve got to be shitting me!” Susan said.
“We should’ve known it was too good to be true.” I sighed, staring at the blank computer screen. Isaac Edwards had turned the camera off moments before his murder. Had he known what was about to happen, would he have left it running? A car approached behind us and we turned to see a sheriff’s office cruiser with a large “K-9” emblem on both front doors approaching the scene. It stopped a few feet behind my Tahoe, and Seth stepped out.
Seth was a young fellow with a shaved head and he was dressed in dark blue BDUs. I remembered him from a year earlier when he and his runt of a German shepherd named Coco had helped us recover a dead body from Bayou Tail. He’d told us that Coco was strictly a cadaver dog, so I wasn’t surprised when he opened the back door and a large black and tan German shepherd bounded out.
Seth put him on a long leash and made his way to where we had moved to the side of the road. He shook each of our hands an
d greeted us like it had only been a few weeks since we’d last spoken. He nodded to his canine companion. “This monster’s name is Buddy, and he’s as mean as he looks.”
Melvin nodded his head up and down. “I can vouch for that! I wore the bite suit a few times when Seth was first training him and he nearly ripped my arm off.”
I didn’t argue and I didn’t want to find out how mean he was. I pointed to the tree. “We’re thinking the killer fired from that vantage point,” I said. “No one has gone near the tree, so everything’s still fresh.”
Seth nodded his approval and turned to Melvin. “You gonna cover us?”
Melvin looked at me and I gave him a “thumbs up”. He grinned and followed at a safe distance behind Seth as Buddy began working side to side, his nose buried in the grass. When they reached the tree, Buddy sniffed around, but didn’t alert on anything. Seth began directing him in linear sweeps across the property and Buddy finally alerted on a spot in the grass directly across from the victim’s body. They then set off toward the tree line, hot on the trail.
Susan and I waited at the scene until a coroner’s investigator arrived to transport Isaac Edwards’ body to the morgue. While Susan got the information from the investigator, I stepped away and, although it was Saturday, made a call to the district attorney’s office. The answering machine picked up telling me they were closed for the weekend. Next, I called Reginald Hoffman’s cell phone. It rang to voicemail and I left yet another message for him. I was becoming increasingly frustrated with him, and I was sure he’d be able to hear it in my tone of voice. I swiped my finger across the screen to shut down my phone and watched Susan jotting information in her notebook. She had saved my life on more than one occasion in our short time working together and I was not going to let her go down for doing her job.
When Susan was done and the coroner’s investigator had driven away, we pulled down the crime scene tape and headed toward the front of the street. I stopped when we reached the house with the white SUV, and stepped out. Susan walked around the Tahoe and we strode up the driveway together. “How are you and Chloe getting along?” she wanted to know.
“We’re getting along great.” I was tempted to ask about the day she showed up at my house, but decided against it.
“You’ve been with her—what?—a little over a year now?”
I nodded and knocked on the door to the house. Susan stepped to the right and I stepped to the left. Within seconds, the storm door was sucked inward as the main door opened. A man stood there in gray slacks and a light blue dress shirt. He frowned. “Can I help you?”
I explained that we were working a death case involving a jogger in the neighborhood. “Did you notice anything suspicious or out of the ordinary this morning?”
“A jogger?” The man scratched his head, ruffling his thinning white hair. “Are you talking about Isaac? I saw him running this morning. Did something happen to him? I always said that poor bastard would have a heart attack running around like he does. He’s too old for that shit. ”
“I can’t release the identity of the victim at this moment,” I explained, “but if you saw anything out of the ordinary—anything at all—it might help us answer some questions.”
The man was thoughtful. “I left for the store early this morning. The neighborhood was quiet when I left. Other than Isaac and some hunter, there was no one else in the area.”
I felt my ears perk up. “A hunter?”
The man nodded. “His car was parked off of Main Street, just south of Lacy Court.”
“How do you know he was a hunter?” Susan asked.
“He was wearing an orange hunting cap.”
“Did he have a weapon?” I asked.
“I didn’t see one, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t have one. When I pulled out of the street, he had just stepped out of the driver’s door and walked around to the trunk of his car. He was still leaning in the trunk when I drove away.”
“Have you ever seen him before?” I asked.
“No. I mean, I don’t think so.”
I frowned. “Would you recognize him if you saw him again?”
“I didn’t get a look at his face, but I did see what kind of car he was driving.” The man looked up toward the ceiling of his carport, as though trying to recapture the image. “It was a faded green Thunderbird. Old—at least fifteen years or better—and the paint was chipped in places. It definitely stood out.”
“You said you didn’t see his face,” Susan began. “Are you sure it was a man?”
“Hmm…” The man rubbed his face. “You know, come to think of it, I don’t know if it was a man or woman. I guess I just assumed it was a man because he was wearing a hunting cap.”
“Did you assume anything else?” Susan wanted to know.
“No, I did not,” the man said curtly.
“How tall was this person?” I asked.
He shrugged. “I couldn’t tell. He was leaning into the back of the trunk mostly.”
“What about the build?” I pressed. “Thin? Heavy? Medium?”
“That was hard to tell, too. He was wearing some bulky clothes, like camouflage, and he probably looked bigger around than he really was.” The man nodded his head. “Yeah, I remember thinking it was odd he’d be wearing all that bulky clothes in this heat.”
Despite our probing questions, the man was unable to remember more than he’d already provided, so we left our cards and asked him to call if he remembered anything.
Next, we headed to Chateau General Hospital, which was twenty minutes north of town. Well, everything was north of town. To the south, there was nothing but acres and acres of marshland separating the town from the Gulf of Mexico. As for me, I was starting to buy into the hype. I never dreamed of working or living in a dead-end town like Mechant Loup, but it was growing on me faster than weeds in the summer. It was peaceful here…and slow. I’d grown accustomed to the pace of small town Louisiana and didn’t think I could ever go back to the rat race of the big city. What killed me most was the idea that Michele and Abigail would’ve loved this place. Why didn’t we move here when they were alive? I frowned and tried to change the subject in my mind. “Focus on your work,” I thought to myself.
I managed to distract myself by trying to figure out a possible link between Betty Ledet and Isaac Edwards, and before I knew it we were at the hospital. Once I parked, I sat for a moment staring at the front entrance. I didn’t relish what we had to do, and I could tell Susan felt the same way.
“I never know what to say,” she said, and then was quiet for a long moment, lost in her own thoughts. I could hear her soft breathing and felt her eyes on me. When I turned, our eyes locked. “You don’t have to do this, Clint. I can take care of it. After all you’ve been through…”
I pursed my lips, shook my head. “I appreciate you offering, but I need to do this.”
We entered the hospital through automatic sliding doors. It was much cooler inside, but the smell of freshly cut grass and oak trees was replaced by a strong disinfectant that singed my nose hairs. The lady behind the help desk was elderly and dressed in a plain blouse and dark brown polyester pants. She looked too old to be working of her own free will. I figured she needed the money to supplement her social security pay or she had a grown kid living at home.
The woman’s eyes grew a little wider when she saw our uniforms. She asked if she could help us. Her voice was soft and sweet—like my grandmother’s before she passed away when I was young.
“We need to speak with Stella Edwards,” I said.
She scanned a list of extensions, then called someone and spoke briefly. She looked back up at us and smiled, her false teeth extending farther than seemed natural. “She’s in room two twenty-two.”
We made our way up the elevators and to the hospital room, where we found Isaac’s wife sitting up eating lunch from a plastic tray resting in her lap. Her face and arms were pale and gaunt, and her skin was stretched tight over her collarbones. Sh
e didn’t look strong enough to even lift a fork full of food. When she turned toward us, her hand paused in midflight and her eyebrows arched upward. “Are y’all here about the accident? I already gave my statement to the other deputies.”
“No, ma’am,” Susan said. “We’re here about a different matter.”
This caused Stella to place her fork down. It clattered against the plastic tray as concern lines appeared on her face. She started wringing her hands. “Is it Isaac? Is it? Please tell me he’s okay.”
Susan moved closer to the bed and placed a hand on Stella’s arm. “Ma’am, there’s been a terrible accident.”
“No.” Stella began shaking her head from side to side. “No, don’t say it. It’s not true. No, I refuse to hear it. He’s fine. He’ll be here after his run.” Even as she tried to sound sure of herself, tears began to flow from her eyes and rain down her cheeks. “Y’all have the wrong person. It’s not my Isaac.”
“We’re so sorry Mrs. Edwards,” Susan said in a soft voice. “Your husband was murdered this morning.”
Stella’s gasp was throaty. What little life she had left seemed to drain from her. “Murdered?” Her head sank against the white pillow behind her and tilted away from us. “Oh, God…no! Not my Isaac!”
She wailed in silence for several long minutes. When she had somewhat regained what composure she had, Susan asked about Isaac’s habits.
Stella took a deep and quavering breath. “He has his coffee with the paper every morning. We would then go for a run. Now that I’m hurt, he runs alone. After we run, we piddle around the house. Isaac does yard work or finds something to repair. He’s always fixing something—whether it’s needed or not.” Stella chuckled through the tears. “He can’t wait for my car or his truck’s engine light to come on so he can figure out what’s wrong with it. He has one of those little car computers and he says it gives him some codes and he gets to figure out what they mean. He loves a challenge. Always has. After lunch, we usually watch a little television and then he takes a nap while I knit. That’s about all he does.” Stella stopped and was thoughtful, as though going over his routine in her head. She lifted a finger. “Oh, there is one other thing. Once a month he goes to M & P Grill for a shrimp po’ boy or soft shell crabs, which are his favorite meals. I’m allergic to shell fish—my throat swells up if I even smell it—so a few months ago I suggested he start going out for seafood.” She paused and wiped tears from her face. “I hate that I can’t cook his favorite—”