by BJ Bourg
I thought about it. The frigid temperature in the camp would’ve slowed the rate of decomposition, which meant the men had been dead longer than they appeared. I quickly made the calculations in my head and guessed the approximate time of death for the three men was about a week. If my calculations were correct, Daniels could’ve shot Betty Ledet and Isaac Edwards, as well as Frank Rushing’s corpse, but there was no way he shot Ava Harper or Susan. Was he working with someone else? Did that someone kill him and his brothers because they were getting careless? Or developing cold feet?
“Chief?” Melvin pressed. “What do you think?”
“I don’t know what to think.” We hadn’t gotten any test results back on the arrows that were shot at Susan and Ava, so we didn’t know for sure if Gregg Daniels’ DNA was on them. If his DNA did appear on those arrows, someone very well could have killed him and then transferred his DNA to all of the arrows in an attempt to frame him for the murders. I looked at the a/c unit in the bathroom window. Whoever killed him had attempted to decelerate the decomposition process. I suddenly realized why…they didn’t want us to know when Daniels was killed!
“Find the motive, find the killer,” Melvin said, interrupting my thoughts. “That’s what you always say. Who would want Gregg Daniels and the jurors dead? What do they all have in common?”
“Now you’re thinking like a detective,” I told Melvin, as an idea started to form in my mind. There was one person who might want all of them dead. I shot a thumb toward the front of the camp. “Tell Amy and William we’re clear and that we have a crime scene to process.”
Melvin nodded and hurried off. When he was gone, I squatted on my heels in front of Gregg Daniels and stared at the arrows protruding from his body. The shot to the groin was indicative of sexual vengeance and that was more than a little coincidental. Sighing, I called Isabel Compton. I figured she was probably sleeping—since she’d been up all night digging through their storage facility—but she answered on the second ring.
I told her where I was and explained what we’d found.
“Holy smoke!” she said. “He’s dead?” I told her he was and she stammered for a bit before asking, “Then who in the hell killed the jurors?”
“It’s still possible he killed some of them and another person shot Ava and Susan,” I said, “but there’s one other person who might have a motive to kill Gregg Daniels and the jurors.”
“His lawyer?” she asked.
Shit! That was the only other person involved with the case that I hadn’t considered. Of course, it didn’t seem plausible to me that a lawyer would risk the death penalty or a life sentence simply for losing a case. And why would he kill his client? No, that doesn’t make sense.
“I never thought of the lawyer,” I admitted. “I was actually thinking of someone else—the person who lost the most.”
There was a long pause on the other end of the line as Isabel tried to figure it out. Finally, she gasped. “Shut up! You don’t think it was the victim, do you?”
“I do.” I nodded for emphasis, even though she couldn’t see me. “I need everything you have on the case, including the victim’s home address. I need to find out who she is and try to figure out if she could be capable of murdering innocent people.” I paused, and then asked, “Can you also send me the lawyer’s information? Just in case.”
Isabel said she would fax the entire file to my office right away. I thanked her and hung up.
CHAPTER 46
It was closing in on three o’clock when Amy and I began processing the crime scene. Melvin and William had set out to retrieve the pirogue and move our vehicles closer to the camp. After they were done, Melvin came into the camp and found us measuring the bathroom. “William’s heading home to get some sleep,” he said. “Can I help with the scene?”
I nodded, handed him the camera. “Shoot the other rooms if you don’t mind. Make sure to get close-ups of the injuries.”
Melvin slung the camera over his neck and walked out the bathroom. Amy and I continued measuring the scene and we were done within the hour. As I was walking out to pick up my measuring kit, something on the kitchen counter caught my eye. It was an envelope addressed to Gregg Daniels. The handwriting was messy, but I could make out the return address—it was the state prison. With gloved hands, I fished out the letter and began reading. It was from an inmate who had shared a cell with Daniels. The inmate was congratulating Daniels on his release and bragging about what he would do when he got out, too. After reading it twice, I shoved the useless letter back in the envelope and then stared at the address for a long moment. I’d accessed every database available to law enforcement, but couldn’t find Daniels at this address, so how’d the killer find him? I pondered this as I set about picking up the rest of my gear.
When we were done inside, Amy and I went out to the driveway to inspect the green Thunderbird. After donning a fresh pair of latex gloves, I tried the doorknob, but it was locked. I asked Amy if she had noticed any sets of car keys in the house.
“None,” she said.
I thought about this for a minute. “Someone else has been driving this car, and they still have the keys.”
With her left hand, Amy slowly pushed some blonde locks behind her ear and scanned our surroundings, her right hand resting on the grip of her pistol. “You think he’s out there right now watching us?”
I penetrated the shadows of the surrounding trees with my eyes, stopping on each bush to be certain it wasn’t a human armed with a bow. “Let’s wrap this up while there’s enough light to watch our backs,” I said.
Amy retrieved a slim jim from my Tahoe and we broke into the Thunderbird. An orange hunting cap was on the passenger’s floorboard, along with a set of dark sunglasses. Other than that, the car looked clean. We tried to pop the trunk with the release button we found in the glove compartment, but it wouldn’t work without the key. I called a tow truck to impound the car just as Melvin was walking out of the camp. “All done inside,” he said.
Just then, I heard the sounds of tires popping on shells and car engines approaching. I turned and saw three hearses pulling up. Melvin, Amy, and I walked to greet the chief investigator for the coroner’s office—at least that’s what the badge clipped to the front of his belt said—when he stepped out of the lead hearse. He was an old guy with large-rimmed glasses and a skeletal frame. We led him into the bathroom first and I thought I heard his bones creak when he knelt on the floor beside the toilet. He lifted Daniels’ shirt, felt around on his torso, and drew a circle over the liver with a permanent marker. Next, he removed a large thermometer from a leather bag he carried and stabbed it into Daniels’ flesh.
After a few moments, he lifted the thermometer and jotted some notes in a worn notepad. Grumbling to himself, he repeated the process on each of the bodies, not saying an intelligible word throughout. When he was finished, he looked up at me, his eyes magnified by the glasses. “Well, um, you see, um, it looks like they’ve been deceased for, um, for a week or more, could be ten days. The low temperature, um, in this here house, um, helped to slow the, um, the rate of decomposition.”
I nodded slowly. Gregg Daniels didn’t kill anyone. He was only a patsy.
The investigator left the house and returned a few minutes later with his assistants and a gurney. After stretching the body bag on the floor next to the toilet, they tossed Gregg Daniels inside. Leaving the bag unzipped to allow room for the arrows, they loaded him onto a gurney and then wheeled him out to one of the wagons. They returned a few minutes later for Howard, and then Farrell. When all the bodies were locked in the wagons, the investigator handed me a piece of paper with some scribbling on it. “The autopsies will, um, be this evening, um, this evening at about six-thirty.”
Melvin strolled beside me and we watched them leave.
“That guy doesn’t look well,” I said. “He belongs in one of those bags.”
“Yeah, someone needs to tell him he died a week or two ago.”
While I checked the crime scene to make sure we hadn’t overlooked anything, Melvin wrapped the exterior in crime scene tape and posted a notice on the door prohibiting anyone from entering. We met back up in the driveway and I paused by the door to my Tahoe. “You want to attend the autopsies for me?”
He said he would, and I dragged my camera from the front passenger’s seat and handed it to him. “We need those arrows sent to the crime lab and worked up as soon as possible. Of course, I wouldn’t be surprised if they came back clean. Whoever’s doing this is being careful not to leave even the slightest trace of evidence behind.”
When Melvin was gone, I turned to Amy. “Are you coming with me?”
“Unless I have to walk back to the office,” she said.
We didn’t say much as we drove away from the scene, both of us lost in thought. I was hoping the report from Isabel had arrived and I wondered what it would reveal. I knew I had to proceed with caution, because I had absolutely no evidence to prove anyone’s involvement. Well, except for Gregg Daniels. If evidence never lied, then a dead man killed at least two people and shot a corpse.
Amy broke the silence to apologize for her stomach grumbling and I remembered lunch. I offered to grab some burgers, fries, and milkshakes from M & P Grill. She groaned. “I love that place!”
Changing course, I called in the order and parked in front of the restaurant three minutes later. I handed Amy my card and asked if she could pay for the food while I made a phone call. She nodded and jumped out. While she was gone, I pulled out my phone and called Chloe. Without telling her too much about the case, I let her know I hadn’t been killed by Cupid. She didn’t like that I used the “k-word”, but said she was relieved. I told her we were still on the hunt, and that prompted a dozen questions I couldn’t answer. I promised to tell her more when I could and told her I had to go.
After I hung up with her, I called Mayor Dexter Boudreaux and gave him an update on the case. He had a dozen questions, too, but I answered all of his. When we were done, I navigated to my Contacts screen and searched my phone for a number from my distant past. When I found it, I sat there with my thumb poised over the green button, wondering if I should press it.
CHAPTER 47
My hand shook as the phone rang. I didn’t know if it was due to the nature of the call or because of who I was calling. Finally, a clicking sound let me know the call had been connected, but there was a long moment of silence. I cleared my throat, said, “Hello? Are you there?”
“It’s been years, Clint…years!”
I frowned. “I know and I hate to bother you, but I didn’t know who else to call. Everyone I knew from the bureau either retired or—”
“Wait—so, after all these years of nothingness, you’re calling for a favor?”
“I’m sorry, Jen.”
Jennifer Duval and I had worked as partners for three years before hooking up after one of our division Christmas parties. We’d both been single at the time—she was still single as far as I knew—and neither of us had anyone worth spending Christmas with, so we’d spent it together. It was a great weekend filled with lots of sex, food, and relaxation, but she wanted more than a three-night stand. When I told her we couldn’t carry on like that and still remain partners, she offered to transfer to another division or leave law enforcement altogether. I told her she shouldn’t make life-changing decisions after a weekend fling, but she said she’d been having feelings for me for over a year, and our intimate time together only solidified them. Work was awkward after that weekend, but things got downright uncomfortable when I met Michele.
“Please give me one reason why I don’t hang up on you right now,” Jennifer was saying to me. “One good reason.”
I couldn’t think of any, so I simply kept my mouth shut, cursing myself for making such a monumental mistake.
“I called you every day after Michele died,” Jennifer said, “but you ignored all of my calls. I must’ve left a hundred messages, but you never returned any of them.”
“I was in a bad place,” I said meekly, remembering the missed calls and the many messages of condolences. I felt guilty about not taking her calls, but I figured she was trying to get with me. When I’d first told her I met Michele, she had quit speaking to me and immediately transferred to a different partner in a different division. It was at least a year before she would tell me hello in passing, and another year before she would hold a conversation with me. Before long, she started getting too friendly—making sexual jokes or trying to bring the conversation back to that weekend—and I’d have to cut her off and remind her I was engaged to be married. It always seemed to piss her off and she’d say I was overreacting and for me to “lighten up”.
There was a sigh of resignation on the other end of the phone. “I’m sorry, Clint. It just hurt my feelings the way you shut me out of your life. Some of the other guys mentioned hearing from you, and when you never called or even answered when I reached out to you…”
I thought I heard her voice crackle and guilt tugged at my very core. We had been such great friends before that Christmas together and it was my fault for ignoring the advice of an old wise man, who once told me, “Son, you can mix rum and coke or peanut butter and jelly, but you can never mix friends and sex.” When I’d asked about friends with benefits, he had snorted. “Sex ain’t no benefit, boy; it’s a sacred privilege, never to be taken lightly.”
“No, Jen,” I said. “I’m the one who should apologize. I thought you wanted to pick up where we left off and I wasn’t ready to move on—”
“Don’t flatter yourself,” she said. “Sure, I would’ve picked up right where we left off that Christmas, but I’d never tell you that. I wouldn’t want it going to your head.”
We both laughed and she asked why I was calling.
“Well, I’m working in Mechant Loup now and—”
“I understand y’all don’t have televisions down there in swamp country, but the rest of us saw your face plastered on every news channel south of Canada last year.” She laughed again. “We all know where you work now, Clint.”
“Touché,” I said, continuing. “So, this stranger rolls into town asking about me and he tells one of my officers he needs to deliver a message. I go out to their location and this guy tells me he did time with Simon Parker, and Simon says he’ll see me again soon—claims he’ll be getting out of jail.”
I heard some shuffling in the background and she repeated what I’d said, apparently writing it down. “Okay,” she said, “let me check on this for you. I’ll get back to you by the end of the week.”
I thanked her just as Amy was exiting M & P Grill with a large bag of food. I was about to hang up when Jennifer stopped me.
“Yeah?” I asked.
“It’s good to hear from you. It really is.”
CHAPTER 48
There weren’t as many news vans staked out in front of the office when we arrived, and that made me happy. We were coming and going so much that they quit trying to follow us and, instead, just waited for me to funnel information to them.
Lindsey was waiting for me when Amy and I walked through the door. She stood from her desk and held out both hands. In one hand there was a thick stack of paper with a faxed cover sheet and in the other there was a single sheet of paper with a list of names and dates on it. Isabel’s name was on the cover sheet attached to the thick stack, so I knew that was the Gregg Daniels file. I studied the names on the single sheet of paper, recognizing a few of them from minor cases I’d worked during the year. I also saw Isaac Edwards’ name toward the bottom of the sheet and became curious. “What’s this?” I asked.
“You’re being audited,” Lindsey said flatly.
“I paid my taxes.” I handed it back to her. “Send it back.”
She laughed and explained that the administrators of the law enforcement databases conducted spot checks each year to ensure officers were using the system properly and not abusing their privileges.
&nb
sp; “So, what do I have to do with this?” I asked, not having time for such pettiness.
“You need to provide the case number and the reason for each search. I’ll then send it back and we’ll be all clear.”
I grunted and hurried into my office, tossing the sheet to the side. I settled into my chair and dropped the case file on my desktop, eager to begin researching it. The file might hold the key to the murders and could provide us with everything we needed to put the killer away—if it was the victim who did it. I fished out the attorney’s information and called Amy into my office, handed her a letter containing his information. “Can you look him up and see what he’s been doing lately?”
“Sure.” She took the sheet and walked out.
I turned my attention back to the file and read how Sandra Daniels had filed two complaints against her estranged husband, Gregg Daniels, and he had been tried twice for raping her. In the first trial, he had been found not guilty by a jury of his peers, who believed the former cop when he took the witness stand and said the sex with Sandra was consensual. I read a newspaper article and more paperwork before turning my attention to the second case file that detailed a brutal attack and vicious rape. The day after being freed on the first charge, Daniels tracked Sandra down at her house and attacked her. As I read the details of the cowardly act, I was happy he was dead and hoped he suffered greatly.
I was still sifting through the file when a shadow fell over my door and I looked up to see Susan standing there. I jumped to my feet and rushed around the desk to greet her with a hug. “Hey, how are you?”
When I released her, she cracked that crooked smile of hers and nodded. “The doctor says I’m good as new.”
“Thank God!” I smiled big, unable to contain my relief and excitement. “I’m so glad to hear it.”
Susan walked around me and stared at the mess on my desk. Four three-ring binders were open and spread out. “I heard you found Gregg Daniels dead,” she said.