by BJ Bourg
After hanging up, Susan and I made small talk for what seemed like a couple of hours. She kept turning the conversation back to the wedding. While I looked forward to marrying her, the planning was turning out to be as painful as watching her shop for clothes. She asked about the color of my tuxedo, the type of filling in the wedding cake, the number of guests, and who I wanted as my best man.
“It doesn’t really matter,” I said patiently. “Whatever you choose is fine with me.”
My response brought a stern look from her. “I feel like you’re not participating in the process,” she said. “It’s as though you don’t want to do this.”
“I do want to marry you,” I insisted. “I just don’t care about the small details. Whatever you decide is fine with me.”
“I can’t make every decision.” She twisted in her seat and folded her arms across her chest. “I need you to dial in. I need answers and I need them now.”
“Fine…red, chocolate, five, Melvin.”
“You’re not wearing a red tuxedo, I already told you we’re not going to have anything chocolate on our cake, and the guest list is already over eighty.”
“Then why’d you ask what I wanted?” I shook my head in exasperation. “Why don’t you just tell me what I’m wearing and what we’re eating?”
She settled back into her seat. “Melvin’s a good choice.”
I began laughing and she glanced sideways at me before cracking a smile of her own. “I’ll meet you halfway—if you wear a white tuxedo, we can have chocolate filling.”
“Done!” I turned up the radio and whispered, “Now, that’s how you negotiate.”
“What’d you say?” she asked suspiciously.
I ignored the question and began singing along with an old country song that talked about a lady leaving her teardrops on the jukebox.
CHAPTER 50
Foster Blake’s Residence
Mechant Loup, Louisiana
I killed the headlights and nodded as I pulled up to the Magnolia Parish Sheriff’s Office patrol car stationed outside of Foster Blake’s house. It was a young deputy I didn’t recognize.
“Any movement from inside?” I asked.
The deputy shook his head. “The living room lights went out at nine, right about the same time the back bedroom lights came on. Those lights went dark a half hour ago.”
I heard the quiet hum of an engine behind me and glanced in my side mirror. Melvin was cruising up behind us with his truck blacked out.
Melvin had called us two hours ago to say Matthew had eventually allowed him to roll his prints, but none were a match to the prints found on the murder weapon. Befuddled, I began to wonder if Foster had murdered Mitch after all, and decided it was time to bring him in once again. I hadn’t wanted to take any chances, so I had called Melvin thirty minutes ago and asked him to meet us at the Blake residence.
When Melvin reached the back of my Tahoe, he shut off the engine, stepped out, and squeezed between my truck and the patrol car. He said hello to the deputy, whom he addressed as Juan, then turned to me.
“Want me and Juan to take the back door?”
I nodded and slipped out of my truck. Susan left her crutches behind and limped toward the driver’s side. I started to suggest that she stay with the truck, but realized it would be futile.
All was still except for a cool breeze that was blowing in from the north. Stars sparkled in the clear sky above us and lit our way as Susan and I approached the front door. Melvin signaled on the radio when he and Juan had reached the back. I glanced at Susan. She had placed most of her weight on her left leg and wrapped her fingers around her pistol.
Putting my own hand on my pistol, I stood to the left side of the door and was about to rap loudly on the frame when I thought I heard a scream from inside.
“Was that—?” I began to ask when Susan reached forward and jerked the storm door open, sending the locking mechanism flying across the porch. A second scream sounded from inside and I immediately stepped back and shot a kick toward the wooden door. It wasn’t as pretty or as technically perfect as one of Susan’s push kicks, but it got the job done and the door went crashing inward.
Palming my pistol, I rushed through the doorway before the last slivers of splintered doorframe could hit the ground. A quick glance around the dimly lit living room revealed nothing of interest. Susan had just caught up to me when a bloodcurdling scream sounded to my right from somewhere deep in the house. I headed in that direction. A faint glow of light emitting from an open door toward the end of a narrow hallway guided my steps. As I drew closer, I could hear a gurgling noise and it also sounded as though someone or something were thrashing about on a plastic surface.
Taking a breath and lifting my pistol higher, I rounded the corner and stepped into the room. I gasped out loud at the scene before me. In the corner of the room directly to my left, Pearly Blake was crouched on the floor. Her eyes were wide with terror and she was fixated on the bed, where a woman stood over the bloodied body of Foster Blake.
I turned in that direction and saw a familiar woman holding a large kitchen knife high in the air. My jaw dropped and I had to blink to make sure I wasn’t seeing things. The woman was about to bring the knife down into Foster’s chest, so I quickly recovered and hollered for her to stop what she was doing.
She paused and turned her eyes toward me. They were hollow and evil. Her face split into a wicked grin. My finger tightened on the trigger.
“I mean it—drop the knife or I’m going to shoot you.”
The woman hesitated for a moment as she glanced down at Foster, who was struggling for air. His hands clutched wildly at the mattress as he stared wildly about. He twisted in pain and desperation, fighting to stay alive, but I knew it was no use. He had already lost too much blood.
Satisfied that Foster was taking his last few breaths, Kimberly Bernard sighed and dropped the knife. She turned toward me—her face speckled with blood—and smiled. “Now, after all these years, I’m finally safe.”
Susan stumbled to a halt behind me and cursed out loud when she saw Kimberly standing over Foster, covered in blood. “What the hell is she doing out of her wheel chair?”
CHAPTER 51
Two hours later…
I stepped into the interview room at the police department and glanced down at Kimberly. She wore a red prison jumpsuit and her head was resting on the hard desktop. She didn’t move when I closed the door and walked around the desk. I kept a wary eye on her, knowing she’d played the part of a helpless woman quite well. After I was seated, I knocked sharply on the desk.
Kimberly stirred and pushed to an upward position. Her eyes opened slowly and she squinted up at me. “What’s going on? Why am I here? Foster tried to kill me, so what I did was justified.”
“Nice try, but that won’t work.” I leaned back in my chair and studied the woman before me. “You killed an innocent man, Kimberly.”
“Foster wasn’t innocent!” The words spat from her mouth. “He was an evil man. Didn’t you hear what he did to Matthew?”
“I did, but he still didn’t deserve to die—and neither did Mitch Taylor, who’s the innocent man I’m talking about.”
She frowned and brushed at her hair with a left hand that was folded forward. “I didn’t mean to kill that poor man. I thought he was Foster.”
I had noticed she walked with a bit of a limp when I was leading her to my car, so she hadn’t been completely faking. I pointed to her hand. “Is that a result of Foster pushing you?”
She nodded and raised her right hand. “It took me five years to be able to use this hand again, and over seven to walk without assistance. Foster stole my life from me. We each only get one life to live, and he robbed me of mine. I had dreams when I was a little girl. There were things I wanted to do with my life, but he stole it all from me.”
“If you could walk again, why’d you pretend not to have the ability?”
“We were afraid of what he’d do to
me if he knew I’d recovered.”
“Who’s we?” I asked.
“My grandpa and me.” A tear slid down her face. “When we found out my mother was sick and wanted us to come visit, my grandpa told me it would be best if I let on like I did when I first got injured. He said Foster would try to finish the job if he knew I could tell people what really happened.”
“So, he knew all along?”
Kimberly nodded and brushed at the tears that rolled steadily down her cheeks. “I saw him pack his pistol and bullets and I knew he was going to try to harm Foster. I didn’t want him getting in trouble and I…well, I wanted to get my own revenge, so I stole his pistol and tried to shoot Foster myself. I figured my grandpa would have a solid alibi and no one would suspect a girl who was wheelchair-bound.” She frowned. “It sounded like the perfect plan, but then Foster had to switch shifts with that man.”
“Desmond knew you could walk,” I said. “Didn’t you think he would suspect you if Foster turned up dead?”
“He didn’t think I had it in me. No one did.” She shrugged. “I just wanted to stop Foster from ever hurting anyone else, and I wanted him to pay for what he’d done to me.”
“Well, now he has, but your grandpa’s dead, your brother’s in the hospital, and an innocent man is also dead.”
Kimberly began sobbing. “I’m so sorry for all the pain I’ve caused. I just wanted to make everything right. Foster was such a mean man, and I just knew he was still hitting my mom. I thought if he disappeared then we could all become a family again. I just wanted us all to be together without having to worry about him hurting one of us.”
“Did Matthew know you could walk?”
She shook her head. “Grandpa didn’t want anyone to know. And I didn’t even know Matthew saw everything.” She paused and frowned. “Well, if I did know it at one time, I forgot. My memory has played tricks on me from time to time, and I still have tingling and numbness in my left arm and leg.”
I glanced down at the notebook in front of me. I needed to know she was telling me the truth. “How’d you get to the bar on the night you shot Mitch Taylor?”
“I took Matthew’s car. Everyone had gone to bed early and they were all exhausted from the long drive, and my mom was stressed out because of the fight with Matthew and Foster.”
“Where were you when you shot him?”
“I was standing out in the rain. I had stepped in this puddle of water and my shoes got all wet. I remembered worrying that everyone would see my wet clothes and know I had done something wrong.”
“What’d you do about the clothes?”
“I tossed them in the dryer when I got back to the house, and then I slid back onto the sofa bed in the living room. When everyone woke up in the morning they didn’t notice anything was wrong.”
“You said you thought the man was Foster,” I said slowly, trying to trick her. “But he must’ve turned around when you entered the bar, so you had to know you had the wrong guy.”
“No, I didn’t go inside. I shot him through the screen. He never turned around. He just ran deeper into the place.”
I smiled inwardly. She was telling the truth. “What’d you do when he ran off?”
“I started to follow him so I could make sure he was dead, but then a man sat up in one of the booths. I didn’t think anyone was inside and it scared me. I left in a hurry—before he or that man could call nine-one-one. I found out later on the news that I’d shot the wrong man.” She lowered her head. “I feel terrible about what happened. I didn’t mean to hurt anyone else.”
“What about the shooting behind the bar? Did you do that, too?”
She shook her head. “Grandpa noticed his gun was missing and sixteen bullets had been removed from his box of ammunition. When he started looking for it, the first place he checked was in my bags. He then checked under me in my wheelchair and found it. He demanded to know what I’d done. I didn’t want to tell him, but he was so mad and I got really scared. When I told him what had happened, he said he’d have to make it look like someone else had done it.”
“Is that when he went out and took some shots at Foster Blake and Joyce Reynolds?”
“I don’t know. He told me the less I knew the better.”
I pondered this information. Finally, I asked if she had loaded all sixteen cartridges in the magazine.
“Yes, sir.”
I asked a few more questions and then stood to leave.
“Wait,” she said, reaching out with her hand, “what will happen to me?”
“I’m afraid you’re going to jail.”
“But he would’ve killed me as soon as he found out that I could talk—that I could tell everyone what he did. Now that my grandpa is gone I was going to have to stay with him and my mom, and there’s no way I could fake it for long. I did what I had to do to save my life. It was self-defense.”
“While I think he got what he deserved, there’s no possible way you could know for sure that he would kill you, and we can’t go around preemptively murdering people.”
“But what will happen to me? I mean, what’s next?”
“You’ll be booked into the parish jail and a bond will be set. If you can’t post bond, you’ll sit in jail until your trial date.”
“And then?” Kimberly’s face had turned to ash. “What’ll happen at the trial?”
“You can hope the jury will feel sorry for you and go for a lesser charge.” I shrugged. “Considering the circumstances, you might have a shot.”
After gathering up my notebook and file, I stepped out into the hallway and made my way to the dispatcher’s station, where Susan was sitting in a chair typing the arrest warrant. She looked up when I walked in. “Well? Did she confess?”
I nodded. “I feel bad for her.”
“Yeah, I do, too.” Susan shot her thumb toward the waiting area, where Pearly was waiting to be interviewed. “But I feel worse for Pearly. She just watched her daughter—who she thought was bound to a wheelchair—stab her abusive husband to death. The poor woman doesn’t know whether to be excited or depressed.”
“Well, I’m excited that this case is solved.” I gently squeezed Susan’s shoulder as I walked toward the waiting area to finish up. “Once all the paperwork is done, I’ve got to plan myself a wedding.”
NOVELS BY BJ BOURG
Clint Wolf Mysteries
But Not Forgotten
But Not Forgiven
But Not Forsaken
But Not Forever
But Not For Naught
But Not Forbidden (May/June 2018)
Magnolia Parish Mysteries
Hollow Crib
Hollow Bond
London Carter Mysteries
James 516
Proving Grounds
Silent Trigger
Bullet Drop
Elevation
Blood Rise
Stand-Alone YA Mystery
The Seventh Taking
About the Author
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BJ Bourg is an award-winning mystery writer and former professional boxer who hails from the swamps of Louisiana. Dubbed the "real deal" by other mystery writers, he has spent his entire adult life solving crimes as a patrol cop, detective sergeant, and chief investigator for a district attorney's office. Not only does he know his way around crime scenes, interrogations, and courtrooms, but he also served as a police sniper commander (earning the title of "Top Shooter" at an FBI sniper school) and a police academy instructor.
Bourg’s debut novel, JAMES 516, won the 2016 EPIC eBook Award for Best Mystery, and BUT NOT FORGOTTEN was a finalist for the same award in 2017. Dozens of his articles and stories have been published in national magazines such as Woman's World, Boys' Life, and Writer's Digest. He is a regular contributor to two of the nation's leading law enforcement magazines, Law and O
rder and Tactical Response, and he has taught at conferences for law enforcement officers, tactical police officers, and writers. Above all else, he is a father and husband, and the highlight of his life is spending time with his beautiful wife and wonderful children.
http://www.bjbourg.com