by Rick Reed
“I’m sorry about Bitty. If there’s anything I can do while I’m—” Liddell said.
Dusty cut his sentence short. “Thank you. I’m okay. Well, as okay as I can be.”
Jack said, “We’ve talked to Sheriff Guidry and—”
“He called me,” she said before he could finish. “He said he asked you two to help with the investigation. That’s very unusual. I’m not even sure it’s legal. And with Liddell being her old partner, that might constitute a conflict of interest. But I guess that’s on Sheriff Guidry. Not my call.”
Jack exchanged a look with Liddell. “That’s part of the reason we’re here,” Liddell said. “You and Bitty were tight. And we can’t seem to get any information from the PD.”
She blew across the top of her mug and took a careful sip. “I don’t know how much help I’ll be,” she said. “Does your partner know about—you know?” she asked Liddell.
“Do I know that you and Bitty were a romantic item? Yes,” Jack answered. “That means you know more about her than anyone.”
“You would think so,” Dusty answered. “Liddell can tell you. She played her cards close. She didn’t talk about her work much.” Dusty gave a short unamused laugh and said, “Oh yeah, she’d complain about the brass, or some particular asshole she was taking down, but she didn’t go into details.”
Liddell clasped his hands on top of the table. Without any expression, he said, “Yeah. I guess she could be like that.”
Dusty stared out the door looking toward the dirt bikes and the Harley. Jack could imagine her wanting to be anywhere away from here.
She asked, “What do you want to know?”
“How long ago did you two separate?” Jack asked, and she didn’t appear to take it personally.
“Four months ago,” she said. “We weren’t having any particular problems. We just decided to go our separate ways.” She scoffed as if she’d just thought of something funny. “Maybe if we were having problems it would have been better. Maybe I could have understood.”
“So she’s the one that suggested it?” Jack asked.
“It wasn’t like that,” she hurriedly said. “I told you it was a mutual decision.” She put her mug down and crossed her arms, eyeing him. “Is this an interrogation, Detective Murphy?”
Jack smiled. “When my wife calls me Detective Murphy, I know I’ve pissed her off.”
She laughed and said, “I’m sorry. I don’t know what I was thinking. I’d be asking the same questions if I was in your shoes. I just wasn’t expecting it, that’s all.”
“And I apologize if I came across wrong. I’m glad you understand,” Jack said. “You’re a detective, so why don’t we just talk? That’ll be easier for both of us, and there won’t be any guns involved.” He smiled at her.
She asked Liddell, “Is he like this at home? Wow!” She took a breath, let it out, and said, “Okay. You probably want to know if she and I had a fight. No, we didn’t. We never fought, and what I meant before was that not fighting was part of the problem. We had grown apart, and it seemed we didn’t care enough to even disagree. But fighting? No.”
“Forgive me for asking personal questions, but was she seeing someone else?”
Dusty gave a short laugh that Jack recognized as a defense mechanism. If you can laugh about it, it doesn’t hurt as bad. You see cops standing around at crime scenes, smiling or telling each other jokes, and it’s easy to mistake this defense as callousness. Cops can’t afford to fall apart at every death they go to.
“No. At least not that I knew of,” Dusty said, and added, “Did anyone hate her or want her dead? No. Everyone loved her.” She picked up a napkin from the table and dabbed at her eyes. “That girl had some pretty hairy cases. Put away some really bad guys. Dangerous guys, you know. One or two of them might have meant her harm. But what they did to her would take a sick mind. Someone with no feeling. Whoever did that to her was in a rage, or a psychopath. It would have to be someone big and strong. She was a tough cookie.”
“Do you know how she was killed?” Jack asked, hoping she knew more than they did.
The question surprised her. “You don’t know how she was killed?”
Jack said, “I’m just trying to see what you know.” He knew what Liddell had told him. The crime scene was off limits to them, and it seemed even Sheriff Guidry didn’t know any of the details.
Dusty eyed him. “I’ve heard what everyone else has heard. They’re keeping a lid on this. But you know how rumors are. I heard everything from she was shot, to she was stabbed, to she was eviscerated and dismembered.” She touched Liddell’s hand. “You found her. You would know.”
“Yeah, I found her,” Liddell said and squeezed her hand. “Before I could call it in, a guy named Barbierre Tasered me.”
“Barbie, huh?” She snorted, and her mouth turned down at the corners in distaste. “That figures. He shouldn’t be allowed to carry that thing, much less a gun. He’s about—no, he is crazy. Well, let me tell you about Barbie. He wants to be a detective. He sucks up to Troup like Troup is a lollipop. Once he gets sicced on you, he can’t be pulled off. He’s crazy and sadistic.”
“You said a person in a rage or a psychopath. Do you know someone like that?” Jack asked.
She thought about it. “Barbie. You think it was Barbie?”
“Do you think Barbie is capable of doing that?” Jack asked.
“He’s capable, I guess, but he wouldn’t have any reason. I mean she wasn’t any threat to him.”
“Troup?” Jack asked as if an afterthought.
“Troup. Huh. Funny you should mention him.”
“Funny how?” Jack asked.
Dusty took a sip of her coffee and made a face. “My doctor is on my ass about too much caffeine.” She went to the sink and poured hers out. “You guys need a warm-up?”
Both men declined and Jack asked again, “Funny how?”
Dusty took a drink from the faucet and sat again. “Troup was one of ours. I mean with the Iberville Sheriff. Liddell should tell you about him.”
“He did,” Jack said.
Dusty continued. “Well, she and Troup had issues in the past. Liddell got on his bad side too. The Sheriff’s Department was investigating Troup for murdering a bookie. I think he blamed her and Liddell for getting fired.”
“I know all that,” Jack said.
Dusty said. “Don’t you see? Troup had a reason to kill her.”
“That happened almost eight years ago, Dusty,” Liddell said.
“They say revenge is a dish best served cold,” she said.
“What about Doyle Doohan? Troup’s partner in crime. Whatever happened to him, anyway?” Liddell asked.
Jack and Liddell sat quietly, waiting for her to continue.
She said, “I heard Troup’s the detective working this. I haven’t heard anything about Doyle. He probably hates you as much as Troup, but Bitty said he was kind of a doofus, wasn’t he?”
“You’re right about Doyle, and about Troup. He is working the case,” Liddell confirmed.
“Troup’s Whiteside’s pet. I mean Chief of Police Whiteside. She’s so full of herself it isn’t funny. Why would she hire him in the first place? Couldn’t be for his personality or looks.” Dusty rubbed the back of her neck and said, “Barbie was the first to show up at the scene of the murder. Right? Barbie would do almost anything to get Troup’s approval. He’s like Robocop on meth.”
What she was saying made sense, and they didn’t have a better suspect. If either Barbie or Troup killed Bitty, the other one was in a position to cover it up.
“What if Barbie knew she was dead before you got there?” Dusty mused. “He could have killed her and was anxious for her body to be found? I mean, he was on duty. It would give him an alibi if he were working. I don’t think that’s even his beat to work.”
She twisted her coffee cup in a circle and raised an eyebrow questioningly.
Liddell said. “We had a case like that didn’t w
e, Jack?”
Jack remembered the case. A married cop killed his girlfriend because she threatened to expose the affair. He bludgeoned her to death and bludgeoned her dog to death when it tried to defend her. The asshole poured gasoline on them and set them on fire. But the fire didn’t catch because he had shut the door to the bedroom, and the flames blew themselves out. The cop waited all night to hear a fire department dispatch but when none came, he returned to the house and set the fire again. This time he was successful. Good detective work caught him, and he was tried and convicted. He did all of this while he was on duty. He’d even faked some car stops to have a dispatch record for an alibi.
And something Liddell had told him stuck in his mind. The killer cop in Indiana referred to himself as Robocop. Liddell had told him that Barbierre acted like Robocop. Now Dusty said the same thing. Coincidence?
“Have Barbie and Bitty had any interaction? Recently? In the past?” Jack asked.
“Do you mean were they friends?” Dusty asked. “I don’t know. She’s kept her personal life to herself since we broke up.”
Liddell said, “Bitty was outspoken. Did she think Barbie was an ass-kisser too?”
“It’s common knowledge. Barbie doesn’t exactly hide his admiration.”
Jack asked the question Liddell hadn’t brought up, and so far, Dusty hadn’t mentioned. “Was Bitty involved with Voodoo?”
This time Dusty was caught off guard. Her mouth tightened into a straight line and her eyebrows rose. “Voodoo? You mean like the walking dead and spells and that kind of shit?”
“Voodoo symbols have come up in the investigation a couple of times,” Jack said. With Evie. On the wall at Bitty’s. And again at Cotton’s. Cotton said Bitty had been asking questions about Voodoo. Maybe she was investigating some Voodoo fanatics. Someone was sending a message that they didn’t want the attention, or they were making it look like it was Voodoo related.
Dusty said, “Katrina did more than wipe out some businesses and homes. It washed away civilized behavior too. You’ve heard the stories about cops deserting New Orleans, or stealing whatever they wanted. Rapes, murders, and robberies were commonplace. And not just in New Orleans. Look around and you see signs of it everywhere. Graffiti on garages, school walls, sidewalks sometimes. Probably just kids though. I don’t think anyone here really truly believes in that crap.”
She seemed to weigh her next words before she spoke. “If you’re asking did she believe in Voodoo, or practice it, I would have to say no. She wasn’t wired that way. Don’t get me wrong. She wasn’t an atheist or anything. She believed in a higher power. But she mostly believed in herself. She wasn’t one to ask for blessings, or love potions, or zombies, any of that hocus pocus.”
“So, you didn’t know anything about the Voodoo symbols in Bitty’s house?”
Dusty gave him a cautious look. “I heard some rumors, but I thought that’s all it was. You know how cops like to talk.” She asked Liddell, “Was there stuff there?”
Liddell held his hands up. “I don’t want to be one of those rumor sources, Dusty. I’m hoping you won’t tell anyone we talked to you. We’re trying to fly under the radar.”
“Sure,” she said. “But if you need another partner helping out, I’m willing.”
Jack said, “Thanks. We’ll let you know.”
“I’m serious,” she said. “You have to trust someone. And I can get a lot of information that you can’t get. Liddell hasn’t worked here for ages. People won’t talk to him as easily as they will to me. And they won’t talk to an outsider.”
She was right about that. He had no reason not to trust her. Still, he’d have to keep an eye on her.
“Okay,” Jack said. He wrote his cell-phone number on a napkin and gave it to her.
“I just ask one favor of you,” Dusty said. “Don’t tell the Sheriff or anyone that I’m helping you. The other cops will feel more comfortable talking around me if they don’t feel like they’re being grilled. Liddell, you know some of these guys believe you killed her, don’t you?”
“Point taken,” Jack said. She was right about that, too.
“I’m just saying you should be careful who you talk to,” she said to Liddell.
“One more thing, Dusty,” Liddell said. “Have you heard my niece is missing?”
“Your brother Landry has been making himself a pain in the ass with the PD. Nothing has come across my desk yet, but I heard talk. Figured she’d come back because Landry had quieted down. Sorry for being blunt,” she said and spread her hands.
“No offense taken,” Liddell said. “He speaks his mind.”
“Her name is Evelyn, right?” Dusty asked.
“She goes by Evie. She’s fourteen. I don’t have a picture with me, but I’ll send you one if you can help out with that too. Landry said the PD took a report, but they haven’t entered her into the system. Cotton said we should talk to you.”
“Those lazy assholes,” Dusty said. “I can make the report. Tell Landry to call me.”
“So, Bitty didn’t mention Evie?” Jack asked.
“I told you. We haven’t talked for a good while. Besides, Bitty never talked about what she was working on. I guess if she was looking for a missing kid she would have asked me, but she didn’t.”
They went out the side door, and Jack took in the surroundings. “This is some place you have here.”
She smiled. “Three hundred acres. Twelve-acre lake. I had to put some money into improvements, but look at it. It’s my dream. When I retire, I’ll never leave. Have groceries and everything I need delivered.”
“That’s every cop’s dream, isn’t it?” Jack said. “One thing I forgot to ask. When was the last time you talked to Bitty? A week, a month?”
“It’s been a while,” she said.
“How long of a while?” Jack pressed.
“A couple of weeks at least.” Tears welled in Dusty’s eyes, and she turned her face away. “I can’t believe she’s gone.”
“Okay. I’m sorry if I caused you any grief this morning. Call us if you hear anything,” Jack said, and he and Liddell left.
As they were driving down the gravel road, Jack asked Liddell, “How well do you know Parnell?”
Liddell stopped at the intersection with Highway 1, and asked, “What’s on your mind, pod’na?”
“I just wondered how she could afford a place like that. Three hundred acres, a big house and a lake. The house alone probably goes half a mil. And did you see the motorcycle and dirt bikes? It must cost a fortune to keep the grounds up. If she didn’t inherit a lot of money, I’m curious where it came from.”
“I don’t know if she comes from money,” Liddell said. “You know there’s a lot of old money down here. Oil, cotton, sugarcane, you name it. She could have a fortune stashed away, but if she does I didn’t hear about it from Bitty. In fact, Bitty had kind of insinuated that Dusty had to move in with her. She didn’t come right out and say that, but it’s the impression she gave, you know? Maybe I’m way off base.”
“Did Bitty ever mention Dusty being loaded? Or for that matter, why Dusty would move into Bitty’s house and not the other way around?”
“I never asked about it,” Liddell said. “Not my business. At least not then.”
“Did they get along?” Jack asked.
“They seemed to be happy. No big fights that I can remember or that Bitty told me about. You know. Typical domestic stuff.”
“Did Dusty ever cheat on her?” Jack asked, and this time Liddell almost stopped the car.
“She never let on if Dusty did,” Liddell said. “We should have asked. But Dusty probably would have denied it. I mean, how many cheating spouses or partners admit something like that?”
“I’m just thinking out loud here, Bigfoot. You know these people better than I do. But I thought it was strange that she never once said Bitty’s name. It was always ‘she’ or ‘that girl’ or ‘her.’ That’s a way of distancing yourself from the victim. And sh
e was evasive, answering a question with a question. I have the feeling she’s holding back on us. And how the hell did she know that you found her early that morning?”
“Police grapevine?” Liddell suggested.
It was a possible explanation.
“And she didn’t seem too interested in Evie’s disappearance. I mean she is the Missing Persons detective. She’d heard that Landry was raising Cain with PPD, so when she didn’t see a bulletin why didn’t she call Landry or PPD and look into it?”
“Maybe she has the Larry Jansen disease,” Liddell said.
Larry Jansen was a rumpled-trench-coat-wearing wannabe-Columbo who was the Missing Persons detective for the Evansville Police Department. He was slovenly, lazy, and corrupt. His idea of finding a missing person was to wait for them to come home and call him. If anything, Jansen should be listed as a missing person. He was hardly ever seen around police headquarters.
Liddell turned left on Highway 1 and headed west. “Let’s eat. I can’t think when I’m hungry.”
Jack laughed. “In that case, I’m surprised you ever think.”
Chapter Sixteen
The Plaquemine Police Department cruiser pulled in front of the Crown Vic and slammed on its brakes. Another PPD cruiser came up from behind and pulled almost against their bumper. The officer behind them got out of his car and stood at the back-passenger side of the Crown Vic. The officer in front walked toward the driver’s door, hand on his sidearm and a serious look on his face. He made a circular motion with his hand indicating Liddell should roll down the window. Liddell powered down his window.
The officer leaned in the window and said, “The Chief wants you two in her office.”
Liddell kept his hands in plain view on the steering wheel. Jack had seen the police cars in the side mirror and stuck his Glock .45 under his leg.
Liddell smiled at the officer and said, “We were just on our way to eat. You can join us and we’ll go see the Chief.”