by Harper, Chap
Cover and Interior Design by Smoking Gun Publishing, LLC
Copyright © 2016 Chap Harper. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior written permission of the copyright holder, except for brief quotations used in a review.
This is a work of fiction, and is produced from the author’s imagination. People, places and things mentioned in this novel are used in a fictional manner.
ISBN: 978-1-940586-28-1
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016938776
Visit us on the web at www.smokinggunpublishing.com
Published by Smoking Gun Publishing, LLC
Printed in the United States of America
Acknowledgements
I am sure that Chalmette, Louisiana is a wonderful town with beautiful people, but I had to pick a place for the Louisiana Sportsman’s Super Store. And, a home for the bad guys. The area has a waterway and is close to New Orleans, so I used it as a location. My apologies if I demeaned your community in anyway. It’s just a story, just a book, and devoid of most anything truthful. I do hope the people of St. Bernard Parish enjoy reading the novel solely for entertainment.
Chap Harper
May, 2016
Dedication
This book is dedicated to my adoptive city of Hot Springs, Arkansas. The city’s history is rich and matched only by the lives of the great people that live there now. There is always something going on.
Chapter One
Royal, Arkansas - August 2014
The singing of sexually-frustrated tree frogs and crickets stopped instantly as the blast of a shotgun shredded the night air. Only seconds before, Vikki Jackson, a pretty, flaxen-haired young woman, had answered a knock on the screen door of her raggedy-ass mobile home. Without hesitation, she swung open the old torn screen door to confront the man she now hated. Quince, her estranged husband, raised the twelve-gauge weapon he held hidden next to his leg. Vikki didn’t have time to react. Buckshot exploded in her chest, leaving a gaping hole. The small child she had been holding on her hip slid from her grasp and landed on a frayed Razorback floor mat, screaming and holding his arm where an errant double-aught buckshot pellet had grazed him.
The shooter wasn’t finished. He stepped over the child and burst through the ripped screen door propped open by his wife’s body and fired a round at a man running to the back of the trailer.
“Goddamn it! Missed the fucker!” he mumbled.
In case the fleeing man was going for a gun, the shooter placed his back flat against the hallway wall to make less of a target. He slid along the wall until he came to a bathroom and noticed a plunger sticking out of a toilet. The smell of shitty diapers and a backed-up commode stung his nostrils. He pushed two more shells into the Remington Wingmaster and listened for the man, but heard only Pat Sajak: “Oh, no! You’ve hit bankrupt. I’ll need that half-a-car back,” from a sixty-inch flat screen TV which covered half the living room. It was set on loud.
Using the entrance of the bathroom as cover, he looked in the direction of what he knew to be the master bedroom. He moved his head out of the doorway and glanced to the rear. Shots exploded from a pistol. One bullet struck him in the jaw, ripping out teeth and exiting through his cheek.
“Fuck—fuck—fuck!” he said, spitting out blood and broken teeth.
Something told him to fall to the floor in the hallway to return fire from a lower level. It was not one of his better decisions. The .40 caliber Glock slammed rounds into his body from the back of the trailer before he hit the floor. He could feel his body shutting down.
“Die, ya mother fucker!” yelled the man in the back room.
Still conscious, the dying man lifted his gun and pumped out two blasts. One caught the other shooter in the face. A couple of big lead pellets lodged in his brain. The man yelped and fell backward onto the bed. The second blast destroyed a framed Elvis painting on the back wall above the bed. The King, decked out in a matador outfit, red cape and sword, stood erect, facing the attacking bull. Several large holes sadly marred the black velvet background and the ass end of the bull.
Both men and the woman lay dead. The baby stopped screaming and crawled around the porch trying to pet a small yellow dog that sniffed at the corpse and licked the puddle of blood oozing from the woman.
An hour later, two Garland County Sheriff’s patrol cars and an Arkansas State Trooper vehicle skidded to a stop in front of the trailer. The yellow dog scrambled under the mobile home, his tail tucked under him. A neighbor had rescued the baby and placed him with the dead woman’s sister. She lived a few miles away, in a classy doublewide—it might give the kid a better chance in life.
Corporal Lester McFarlin opened the door of his cruiser and grabbed a notepad attached to a metal cover. Lester looked more like a senator or CEO of a large company than a lowly corporal in the Garland County Sheriff’s office. Standing over six feet tall, with blond hair and piercing blue eyes, he easily could have been a movie star filming on a set that day. Lester looked at the old mobile home and saw the siding was marred with algae growth, plywood covered a busted window, and rotted-out tires hung below the sad structure. He walked up to the porch, stepped over the dead woman and walked into the trailer. The neighbors who picked up the baby said they had found two more bodies. After checking out the other two corpses, he left the trailer just as a crime scene photographer entered. How badly had a person screwed up in their photography class to get this gig? Lester thought.
Outside, the superior officers and the state policeman were interviewing one of the relatives. The officers couldn’t be bothered stepping over dead bodies when they could question people and boss around the rest of the law enforcement staff. According to the relative, the dead were Vikki Jackson, her almost ex-husband Quince Jackson, and Vikki’s live-in boyfriend Marvin Burt. No one was sure who the baby daddy was, and no one much cared. Meth was found in the ex-husband’s pants pocket and baggies in his truck.
Lester held up the baggies and a jar half-filled with a white crystalline substance.
“Don’t dey know dis shit’ll rot out jer teeth?” Lester said, in his best redneck voice.
The officers smiled and continued to talk among themselves. Three people bailed out of a Garland County Coroner’s vehicle that pulled up, with a stretcher and body bags. At the same time, a young sheriff’s officer, carrying a pistol in one gloved hand and a shotgun in the other, exited the trailer. Lester stopped him.
“Check those guns. See who owned ’em. Quince was a felon… clearly wasn’t following the rules,” he said.
In writing his report, Lester followed a five-step process: interview, examine, photograph, sketch, and process. He never deviated from this protocol, and although his reports were impossible to read by anyone else, they were the most accurate of all the officers’. However, the senior level had little respect for his supervisory skills. He could not evaluate the reports of fellow officers because he couldn’t read. Lester had taken the test for advancement to sergeant for five consecutive years, failing every time. They refused to give him the test orally, since the point was to measure reading comprehension. The leadership believed he had reached his capacity for advancement in rank, yet they loved the way he solved crimes. In this area, they considered him a genius, not unlike a savant. At age twenty-six, Lester not only wanted to advance in rank; someday, he wanted to make a run for the sheriff’s office.
Lester knew he had problems and was dead-set on fixing them. His first problem was hearing loss. Raised in Mountain Pine, Arkansas by parents who were caring but dirt poor, he had a severe ear infection at age two and
lost part of his hearing. When he was five, he was riding in his parents’ car without a seat belt when a pickup truck t-boned them. Mrs. Lilly McFarlin, pregnant with Lester’s brother, died along with the unborn baby at the hospital a few days later.
Little Lester had minor internal injuries, which healed quickly, and more severe head trauma which left his brain with residual impairments. He started school early in the morning and stayed after school to work with the teachers to keep up with his classmates. Although he took part in class discussions and appeared to be intelligent, he could barely read, even in high school. He passed tests given to him orally, but had trouble pronouncing and recognizing words. His teachers knew he had severe dyslexia but were not equipped to help him. They tried using a special font, but it didn’t make things better. Since Lester’s dad had no health insurance, he could not pay for long-term treatment by speech and hearing specialists. Without sustained treatment, Lester would not be able to improve. Adrian McFarlin, Lester’s dad, had worked part time at the Weyerhaeuser plywood mill in Mountain Pine until the plant closed in 2006. Afterwards, he worked as a day laborer and sometimes earned income as a fishing guide.
A family friend helped Lester land a job at the Sheriff’s Department and kind instructors coached him through the training academy. Finally, twenty-one years after the car accident that caused his head injuries, group health insurance, combined with his personal savings, would cover the cost of the medical care he needed.
The day after the shooting in Royal, he saw an ad in the paper. Although he couldn’t read the ad completely, he saw a pretty girl and translated her name as Debi Green. The word “dyslexia” in the ad looked like “aixelsyd” until he used his mirror to reverse the letters. He had seen that word his whole life. When he called to make an appointment, the lady on the phone was pleasant and faxed him a medical history questionnaire. She said to fill out what he could, and she would ask the rest of the questions in person.
I think she wants to see just how fucked up I am.
Lester went to her office the next day and sat down in a waiting room decorated in modern chrome and butter-yellow leather furniture. By calling customer service, he found his group health insurance would pay for everything except the co-pays. Even though Lester couldn’t read most of it, the brass sign outside her office stated, “Debi Green MMSLP, Speech, Language, and Pathology.” She had started her speech therapy business just a month earlier at age twenty-four, and was eager to recruit new clients.
At first, she thought Brad Pitt was in her waiting room. She directed Lester into her office, blushing when he shook her hand. His tall stature, thick mop of blond hair, broad shoulders and deep blue eyes almost caused her to freeze. His smile was engaging, with a slight crookedness at the corner of his mouth. A man that good looking should be a lawyer or actor. She squirmed in her leather chair when she addressed him.
“Uh…Mr. McFarlin, I want to thank you for trying to fill out your medical history form…was it difficult? Please know that I used the OpenDyslexic font to make it a little easier.”
“Everything in print is hard for me…always was. I’ll show you a secret weapon I use,” Lester said. He pulled a scratched metal mirror out of his back jeans pocket.
“What I do, you see, is look straight on first and then turn the word to the mirror and read the mirror as the backward print next. Sometimes, between the two looks, I might know it or can figure out the word.”
“So, Lester, you have been told you have a mirror form of dyslexia.”
“Ma’am, I’ve been told that I have every form of it available to get. Between my hearing loss at two-years-old and the car wreck that killed my mom and busted my brain, I’m pretty fuck—I mean, messed up. Sorry, I hang around a bunch of cops.”
“That’s okay. I’m going to give you some exercises to work on that might help with simple words and phrases. I’d like to schedule you for a hearing test and an MRI. You okay with that?
“Yes…I guess so.”
Lester might have bathed in acid if this pretty girl suggested it. He would have the two tests completed later in the week. As he walked to his car, he couldn’t get over her beauty. She had coal black hair that flowed down below her shoulders, an olive complexion, and soft brown eyes that made him both comfortable and horny. Lester wanted to kiss her lips—and they were spectacular—movie star lips—big and somewhat pouty—especially her upper lip. He was willing to risk arrest just to kiss her once. Debi had an hourglass figure with adequate breasts pushing hard against the top of a purple blouse. Surely his friends at the department could get him off from a little sexual battery charge. There was a good chance she was single as the only ring she wore was a dinner ring on her little finger. On the bookcase behind her desk, Lester had seen a picture of her and some guy in a tan summer suit. He knew there wasn’t much of a chance he could ever be with her. However, he didn’t plan to stay a lowly deputy and be perceived as a loser. She most likely wouldn’t be in his life when the changes happened, but whatever it took, changes were going to occur. He couldn’t wait to be in her office again—across from those lips. She had given him cards with words and pictures that he would quickly memorize.
Lester was Debi’s last patient for the day…and her only patient. The office space she had rented a month ago with her dad’s help was close to a hearing aid office and an optometrist. She had completed her Master’s in Speech and Hearing at the University of Arkansas, where she had met Brad Thomas. He was a Sigma Chi and she was a Tri Delt, which meant something then but very little now. They were pinned in college, but Debi gave the fraternity pin back to him after graduation. He had become an intellectual property attorney with a large firm in Dallas. Brad wanted Debi to live with him and set up her practice there. She didn’t know anyone in Dallas and imagined herself at home with screaming kids while he entertained clients (male and female) at night. Her life would be a horror movie. Although her parents and friends were in Hot Springs, she didn’t know anyone to date there. Lester was probably the best looking man she had ever seen…even compared to the herds of preppy fraternity guys she knew in college.
Brad was the last man she had sex with, and that was almost six months ago. She knew she couldn’t date Lester. The client-therapist clause in her professional license contract would cause her to lose her practice just as it was beginning. Debi could sense the pheromones floating in the air between them while he was in her office. She knew what steps had to be taken if there was even a chance they might go out someday, but wasn’t sure she should do it yet. Maybe it would never happen. Forget it, she told herself. She locked up her office and headed to her empty apartment.
Chapter Two
“Here’s the report on the two guns we picked up after the shooting,” Becca Valdez said, placing the report on Lester’s desk. She walked away, swaying her hips so he would notice. Lester had taken her out a few times and might again when horniness overtook common sense. Some in the department thought she was actually a “professional” who did police work on the side. Lester wasn’t sure, but she hadn’t charged him…yet.
He turned in his chair and handed the report to Little Richard, who wasn’t little. His name was Rich, but nicknames flew freely in this department of cut-ups. Rich Roberson was huge—linebacker huge—and black. He had finished college at nearby Henderson University in Arkadelphia where he was an all-conference linebacker. His dad was a state policeman in Little Rock and Rich wanted to follow in his footsteps. The reason he came to Hot Springs was to learn from Lester, as did several other officers. Lester was a cult hero to many in law enforcement.
“Would you read this to me, please?” Lester asked. Everyone knew he couldn’t read and why, so most didn’t give him any grief. They also knew he was the best investigator on the force and in the city of Hot Springs…probably in the whole state. Local police would ask to “borrow” him on big investigations. Little Rock police had driven to Hot Springs ten times to get him for murder cases. Dallas flew him there f
or a case which he solved in just a few days. He saw crime scenes the way a blind person uses a heightened sense of smell, sound, and touch. Lester visualized a scene frontward and backward all at the same time. Most cops are lazy, wanting to bag the bodies and go for coffee. Lester solved many crimes because he worked his ass off chasing down minute details and investigating areas most cops would never dream of following. He had a kit for collecting tiny pieces of evidence. White plastic sticky sheets in various sizes picked up items from beds, floors, parking lots, and of course, bodies. He collected so many samples that his “kits” had to be stored in bins until all the items could be processed. Prosecutors loved him. From pubic hairs to DNA from toilet seats, he never provided too little evidence. Maybe he worked extra hard to make up for his dyslexia, or maybe he was just damn good at what he did.
If he were a supervisor, not only would he have to read his officers’ reports, he’d have to write his own reports in a language only he could understand and decipher. Around the office it was called “Lesterese,” and there wasn’t a Rosetta Stone on earth to help with translation. He sure as hell couldn’t read anyone else’s report. His mirror technique only worked for a few words at a time and was painstakingly slow.
Little Richard began reading. “Both guns were registered to a small gangster wannabe from New Orleans named Tony Evola. Some arrests for petty crimes but no convictions. Don’t know much about him but will check further.”
“That goddamn Katrina washed a lot of badass people into Arkansas after 2005. I guess some good ones, too,” Lester said. He knew local artists and business people who had moved to Hot Springs after the storm and actually contributed to the city.
“Can I do some research for you, Lester?” Rich always wanted to help solve one of Lester’s cases, but so far this wasn’t a case. The sheriff had named the file Domestic Shooting by a Jealous and Estranged Ex-Husband, and closed the matter. Done, go on to something else.