by BJ Bourg
CHAPTER 4
Three hours later…
I was covered in black fingerprint powder as I squatted behind the bar with Amy. After processing the scene and relinquishing the body to the coroner’s investigator, Amy and I had set about dusting everything that could’ve possibly been touched by the killer—including the floor. We’d recovered some smudges and a palm print from the bar, two fingerprints and a few smudges from one of the tables, and four prints from the register. All of the other tables and the rest of the bar were void of prints and had circular streak marks, which told me Mitch had cleaned up the place prior to being shot.
“Whoever did this wasn’t very savvy,” Amy surmised. “They didn’t even wear gloves.”
I was staring thoughtfully at one of the fingerprints we’d recovered from the register. It was of great quality, and that had me puzzled a bit.
“You’ve got a strange expression on your face,” Amy said, tugging at the front of her uniform shirt. She always kept the top three buttons undone, and that often drew the ire of local townswomen, especially when they caught their husbands or boyfriends staring.
I handed her the print. “This print is perfect.”
She studied it and shrugged. “Okay?”
“More evidence that the murder happened before the rain started—or the shooter was already inside,” I explained. “We need to find out who was here last night and into this morning.”
Amy nodded and stood to her feet. “I’ll start canvassing the businesses, looking for surveillance cameras.”
“Good idea.” I followed her outside, where it was cool and cloudy, and watched her head across the street to one of the businesses. When she disappeared inside, I loaded my gear into my truck and decided to give the bar one more pass-over in an attempt to locate the spent shell casing.
I ducked under the crime scene tape tied to the front posts and opened the screen door. The spring squealed as it jerked the door shut behind me. It was a sound that brought back fond memories of rushing out the door at my grandpa’s house when I was a kid. The sound of the spring and the door slamming shut behind me signaled freedom. Unlike youngsters nowadays, I couldn’t wait to go play outside. My mom or my dad—when he was home from offshore—often had to hunt me down and drag me back to the house when the sun went down. Sometimes, I fought back.
I made my way back to the kitchen and dropped to my hands and knees. I couldn’t help but think we’d missed something. The shell casing had to be here somewhere. Using my flashlight, I went over the scene again and again, beginning in the kitchen and working my way out into the hallway and then the dining area. Knowing how casings can ricochet off of walls and roll along hardwood floors or get stuck under boots and carried away, I crawled under the bar counter and began searching the floor inch by inch—
“Breakfast is on me, Mitch!” called a loud and hoarse voice from the doorway. “I’m buying today!”
I snapped upright and jumped to my feet, turning my attention toward the door. A drunken man was standing on wobbly legs across the counter staring back at me. His face was thick and red. The curly white hair on his head grew down into his beard, where it completed a white circle—well, it was white save for the stains on his moustache and chin. I recognized him as one of the local drunks named Jack Billiot who lived on the east side of town near the water. He pointed a long crusted index fingernail in my face. “You don’t work here.”
“And you must be blind.” I walked around the counter. “Didn’t you see the police tape? This is a crime scene.”
Jack’s eyes grew wide when he saw the pistol on my side and the badge clipped to the front of my belt. He scurried backward toward the door, his brown sandals dragging the ground. “No need to get physical,” he said.
He hurried to where a rusted bicycle was leaning against one of the columns out front. His white pants were stained and drooped low on his waist, and I was thankful his jacket covered his backside. I watched him throw a leg over the bike and he pushed off to a shaky start. His pedals didn’t quite make a full revolution before he crashed into a garbage bin and fell over. He seemed to be moving in slow motion as he dropped to the ground. I had to stifle a chuckle.
Jack got up cursing. He pulled a rag from his back pocket and wiped down the seat. I wanted to tell him his pants were already stained, but resisted and started to turn away instead. I had to go over the scene once more and—
I suddenly froze and spun around. Something had fallen from his shirt pocket when he pulled out the rag and I realized it was money. “Wait a minute, Jack,” I said, hurrying toward him.
Jack stumbled and fell to the ground again. He covered his puffy face with his stained hands. “Please, don’t hit me.”
Grabbing his arm, I helped him to his feet. “Don’t be stupid.” I reached down and retrieved the bill from the sidewalk. It was a hundred. He had to be the only drunk in town with that much money on his person. Hell, I didn’t have that much cash on me and I had a job.
“Where’d you get this?” I held up the money. “And don’t tell me you worked for it.”
“Found it.” Shrugging, he pointed to the north. “Over by the bakery.”
“When?”
“This morning.”
“Show me.” After frisking him for weapons, I locked the front door to the bar and walked beside him. The stench of stale urine drifted across the few feet that separated us. Jack led me to Granny’s Oven, a bakery down the block, and then he shuffled down an alley toward the back. He stopped and pointed toward a fence that loomed ahead. “Found it right there. On the ground.”
“When?”
“It was this morning…about an hour ago.”
My heart pumped like a piston. I felt that a break in the case was near. I carefully checked the alley, digging through the two garbage cans positioned near the back door to Granny’s Oven, but there were no clues—nothing but some old food in the cans and a stray cat running around on the opposite side of the fence.
Before I threw in the towel, I decided to speak to Granny. I told Jack to wait for me on the bench in front of the bakery and I pushed through the front glass door. The sweet smell of wedding cake icing tickled my pallet, but that’s not why I loved this place. I smiled at Granny. “Got any brownies?”
She shook her gray head and laughed. “My dear, people buy them faster than I can make them.”
I pulled up a stool and shoved a thumb over my shoulder. Her usually glowing face turned to ash when I told her why I was there and asked if she recognized Jack Billiot.
She pulled at the buttons on the front of her shirt. “You think those murderers might come here?”
“I don’t think so. Do you recognize that drunk?”
She looked past me and squinted against the sunlight pouring through the front window. Finally, she nodded. “Everyone knows Jack Billiot.”
“Did you see him around your place this morning? Maybe out by the back door in the alley?”
Granny shook her head. “I went outside to feed the cat this morning and didn’t see or hear anything.”
“Well, he said he found some money in the alley near the fence.”
Granny scoffed. “That’s unlikely. There was no money on the ground when I went out there.”
“Do you have surveillance cameras out back?”
“I sure do.” Granny led me to a back room and pulled up the footage from earlier. It didn’t take us long to fast-forward through the video file from that morning. The ground in that area was bare of anything, and nothing ever popped up as we blew through the footage.
I scowled. I didn’t think Jack was capable of murder, but I’d known of drunks who would do anything for their next drink, and not all of it was as “respectable” as murder. If he didn’t find the money behind Granny’s, then where’d he get it? And why would he lie about it? Could it be he killed Mitch for his money?
“Have you seen anything suspicious over the past few days?” I asked. “Strange vehicles? Peop
le acting weird? Anything out of the norm?”
“No. I spend most of my time out back in the kitchen. I can’t see anything from back there.”
“Any customers who weren’t regulars?”
“You mean other than the tourists who come in here every day?” She ran a finger along her wrinkled brow. After a while, she shook her head. “I can’t think of nothing out of the norm. I sure am sorry.”
I nodded and thanked her, then walked out onto the sidewalk. “You lied to me, partner,” I said to the figure stretched out on the bench. I had to shake him several times to stir him from his nap.
Jack dragged himself to a seated position and wiped his crusty eyes. “Where am I?”
“You’re fixing to go to jail if you don’t start talking.”
While waiting for him to say something, the radio in my back pocket scratched to life. I pulled it out and told Amy to go ahead with her radio traffic. She told me to call her cell phone.
When I got her on the line, she said she might have stumbled upon something. “I just spoke with the teller here at Cig’s Gas Station,” she said. “It seems a wino came in this morning and bought eight hundred dollars worth of lottery tickets.”
CHAPTER 5
I whistled out loud. That was a lot of money for lottery tickets. “Would this wino have a name?” I stared at Jack as I waited for her answer, and soon my suspicions were confirmed.
“Yeah, it was Jack Billiot.” Amy explained how the teller said Jack had sat at a corner table—one of only a couple tables in the store—and began scratching off the tickets. “She said he was wet when he came in and he sat in the store for about two hours scratching off those tickets. He’d win a few dollars and immediately buy more tickets, and then go back to scratching. He was making such a mess that she was finally forced to kick him out.”
“What about all the tickets?”
“He went out into the parking lot to finish scratching them off. When he had scratched the last of them, he left the pile of tickets on the ground and rode off on an old bicycle. She had to go clean up the mess he left behind.”
“What time did he leave?” I asked.
“About thirty minutes ago.”
I pulled my phone away from my ear and checked the time. It was already almost noon. I asked if there was anything else, and she said there wasn’t. I ended the call and folded my arms across my chest. “Jack, you have the right to remain silent…”
Jack’s eyes widened as I read him his Miranda rights. When I was done, he stammered for a few seconds before words finally trickled from his mouth. “What…what did I do? Why am I going to prison?”
“For starters, you made a hell of a mess out at Cig’s,” I said. “It seems you spent eight hundred dollars on lottery tickets and then left the trash in the parking lot when you were done going through them. That’s littering.”
He shook his head from side to side. “That wasn’t me. I didn’t even go to Cig’s.”
“Are you sure it wasn’t you?”
He nodded his head vigorously. “I’m positive.”
“Well, that’s good,” I said, forcing a fake sigh. “Now the teller won’t have to split the winning ticket with you.”
It took a few long seconds, but realization finally hit him. “What winning ticket?”
“It’s possible whoever bought all those tickets overlooked one and the teller scratched it off.” I nodded slowly for emphasis. “Do you want to guess how many millions she might’ve won?”
“That’s my money!” Jack’s face turned from red to purple. “Those are my tickets. She can’t have that money…it’s all mine!”
“Sorry, but you didn’t even go to Cig’s this morning, so it can’t be your ticket.”
“Wait, I remember now…it was me. You had me confused when you started reading those rights to me. I did buy those tickets, so the money is for me.” A huge smile split his round face in half. “It’s the break I’ve been waiting for. Now I can buy a car and get my kids back—”
“Look, you won’t be buying anything if you don’t start telling me the truth.” I sat on the bench beside him and watched people walk by, some of whom were here for the holidays. A few of them turned their heads to stare at us. “I already know where you got the money to buy the lottery tickets, but if you want me to believe you own the winning ticket, I need to hear you say it.”
He stared down at his thick fingers and took a heavy breath. “Okay, I’ll tell you everything.”
I sat there waiting, wondering what he did with the gun and what would possess him to shoot someone now, at the age of nearly seventy. He’d spent most of his life drinking alcohol and being lazy. The only offenses on his record were alcohol-related, beginning with a DWI when he was eighteen. After his third DWI offense four years later, he did some jail time and never obtained another driver’s license. I’d only been in town for about two years, but Susan and Melvin said he had been a bum as long as they could remember.
“Okay, here it goes…I found the money.”
I forced a smile, trying to remain patient. “Where did you find it? And don’t say the alley, because I already know that’s a lie.”
“No, it wasn’t in the alley.” He shook his head for emphasis. “No, sir, I found it in the bar.”
If I would’ve been Achilles, my ears would’ve perked up. When he didn’t elaborate, I told him to go on and explain.
“Well, I went to the bar yesterday morning like I always do and I spent most of the day there. I left to go for a ride and I came back in the afternoon like I always do.” He paused to scratch his puffy nose. “It started raining and I couldn’t leave, so Mitch let me sleep in one of the booths. He told me he’d wake me up when the rain stopped, but no one was around when I woke up. It was still raining a little and the wooden door was wide open. I called out for Mitch, but he didn’t answer. I walked around the bar to see if he was back there, but he wasn’t.” He took a labored breath, as though talking took up too much energy. “I saw the money just sitting there on the counter and there was a note from Mitch telling me it was a gift. Wait—no, it was a payment. I had done some work for him a while back and he said it was to pay me back for all the work I did.”
That explained why the killer didn’t track water into the bar—he was already in the bar. “Who else was in the bar with you and Mitch?”
“No one.”
“That’s not possible. Someone had to be inside with y’all.”
Jack picked his nose and then stared at the tip of his finger to see if he’d recovered anything. After rubbing his hand on the front of his shirt, he shook his head. “Nope, it was just me and Mitch. It was a quiet night…probably because of the rain.”
I leaned close to Jack. “Look, I need you to think hard about your answer, because this is really important. Someone had to be in the bar with y’all, so who was it?”
“I already told you…it was just me and Mitch.”
That would mean he killed Mitch. I straightened beside him and pierced him with my eyes. “Jack, did you touch the register at all?”
He shook his head.
“Are you sure?”
“I’m positive.”
I grabbed one of his beefy hands and turned it upward so I could see the pads of his fingers. While I couldn’t ascertain with my naked eyes that his prints were a match, they were the same general pattern as the ones Amy and I had recovered from the table and the register. I bent his index finger back and jerked it upward. “Then why is this fingerprint on the keys of the register?”
Jack’s red face turned a shade whiter. “If my fingerprints are on the register, then somebody must’ve took my finger and pressed it against the register while I was sleeping. And the same person must’ve put the money on the counter for me to take.”
I let go of his hand. “A more likely scenario is you opened the register and stole the money—but that was after you shot Mitch in the back and killed him.”
Jack threw himself back a
gainst the bench. “What are you talking about? I would never shoot Mitch.”
“Well, someone did, and—according to your own statement—you were the only one inside the bar at the time of the killing. You already admitted to stealing his money, so why don’t you—”
“Killing?” He shook his head in disbelief. “What are you talking about? Are you saying Mitch is dead?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying, but you already knew that.”
Jack hung his head so low I thought he was going to pitch forward off of the bench. “If what you’re saying is true and Mitch is really dead, then where am I going to get my free beer?”
CHAPTER 6
I studied the aged alcoholic and frowned. While he certainly had the opportunity to commit the murder and he had just confessed to stealing the money, I still didn’t have a murder weapon and I couldn’t fathom what reason he would have for killing off his liquor supply. He seemed genuinely surprised to learn of Mitch’s passing and he had stumbled into the bar earlier calling out to Mitch, which would suggest he didn’t know the man was dead. Still, I had to be sure.
“Jack, what would you say if I told you I found the gun that killed Mitch and your prints were all over it?”
He shook his head from side to side. “I would say that’s impossible.”
“Why’s it impossible?”
“Because I’ve never touched no gun.”
“Never?”
“Nope…never.”
I sighed and slapped his back. “Okay, old timer, why don’t you stand up and put your hands behind your back?”
“Are you arresting me?” He didn’t move. “I told you I didn’t kill Mitch. I loved him like a son.”
“You also told me you stole his money, so you’re under arrest for felony theft.” While I was fairly certain he hadn’t committed the murder, I wanted him on ice until I could sort things out.
Once he was handcuffed—I put them in front so I could process his hands—I walked him to my Tahoe and had him sit in the front seat. I then swabbed his hands for gunshot residue and secured the swabs in an evidence container. “Did you wash your hands since you stole the money?” I asked.