by BJ Bourg
Pearce stopped to wipe his eyes again before continuing. “While we were tying down the old man, Shelton checked on the girl and said she was still alive. We wanted to get her some help, but we were worried we’d go to jail for killing the old man.”
When Pearce stopped again to take a moment, it was more than Dawn could handle. “What the hell happened to the girl?” she asked. “Who is she? Where is she?”
“We don’t know.” Pearce explained that they had driven to the woods on Wilton’s three-wheeler and dirt bike, with Shelton driving the three-wheeler and Wilton driving the dirt bike. Pearce had ridden on the back of the three-wheeler. “Wilton brought Shelton back to his house so Shelton could get his truck. When they got back to the lumberyard, we loaded the girl in the bed of the truck and Shelton told Wilton to crash the three-wheeler into the canal. Wilton didn’t want to at first. He said he would get in trouble if the body was found strapped to his three-wheeler someday, but Shelton told him to report it stolen.”
“Why’d he want to sink the three-wheeler with the body?”
“It was the only thing heavy enough to drag the body to the bottom and keep it there.”
Pearce leaned back in his chair as though he was done and a weight had been lifted from his shoulders.
“And the girl?” I asked.
“Oh, we dropped her off at the hospital in Seasville and hauled ass.”
My eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”
“I mean we dropped her off. We opened the tailgate and carried her to the sidewalk, and then we left.”
“You just dropped her there like a sack of shit?” Dawn asked incredulously. “Did she even have her clothes on?”
Pearce shook his head slowly. “The old man had ripped all of her clothes off. We gathered up everything from the lumberyard and later burned it at Shelton’s house. He didn’t want to leave any evidence behind.” He was thoughtful, then said, “We never did find her panties, though. We figured they got wrapped up in the blanket with the old man.”
“And you never found out who the girl was?” I asked.
“No.”
“Did it make the news?”
“Not that we heard.”
“Didn’t any of you recognize her from school?”
“We all went to Magnolia Life Learning Academy and I think she went to public school. I’d never seen her before that day or after.”
“Do you even know if she lived or died?”
Pearce shook his head. “I don’t know anything more than I’ve already told you.”
“Why didn’t y’all go to the police and report what happened? From what you’re saying, y’all acted in defense of the girl, so that would’ve been a justifiable homicide.”
He grunted. “We didn’t know shit about the law. All we knew was we killed a man and would live the rest of our lives in prison if we got caught.”
“I guess you now know that Wilton didn’t sink the body to the bottom of the canal?”
He sighed. “When I heard the news story about the remains of an old man being found in a shallow grave in Lower Seasville, I knew that lazy bastard had screwed us over.”
I rubbed my chin, mulling over everything he’d said. Something finally occurred to me. “What was the old man doing there?”
Pearce shrugged. “My guess is he was stealing wood.”
“Why do you think that?”
“That hammer Shelton hit him with? He found it near a pile of neatly stacked wood. It looked like the old man was stacking it up to steal. And then we found a boat tied up in the canal. There were some creosote planks in the boat, too, so it looked like he was making a bunch of loads.”
“What happened to the boat?” I asked.
“It should still be at the bottom of the canal with the hammer. Shelton threw the hammer himself and he told Wilton to sink the boat. It was an old wooden thing—junk, really. We would’ve driven it somewhere else to sink, but we couldn’t find the keys for it.”
I glanced at Dawn, and she nodded. “We need to get some divers in that canal first thing tomorrow.”
I nodded and turned back to Pearce. I spent another twenty minutes getting more details from him, and then I studied the notes I’d taken. I looked over at Dawn. “You have anything else?”
“Yeah, why were you at Shelton’s camp?” she asked.
“I stopped at the bar to see him, but they said he wasn’t there. I was about to leave when someone ran in screaming that something bad had happened to him. They said they saw an ambulance turn down the street to his camp, so we all went out there to see for ourselves.”
“Why’d you go by the bar to see him?”
“Because he’s my friend.”
“I think it’s more than that,” Dawn said. “I think there’s a connection between Theodore Simoneaux’s murder and Shelton’s murder, as well as Wilton’s murder.”
“I do, too, and I was going talk to him about it. When I found out Wilton was murdered with his pants open and his stuff exposed, I knew right away it had something to do with the old man. I wanted to talk to Shelton so we could try and figure it out.”
“And why should we believe you?” she asked.
“I don’t care if you believe me or not. If I don’t find out who killed my friends fast, I’m next. They’re coming after us for killing the old man. The more I think about it, the more I believe it’s got to be a member of his family, but I just don’t know how they figured out it was us.”
I shook my head. “That’s not what’s going on here. We found Mr. Simoneaux’s body after Wilton was killed, so his family had no clue he was murdered until after the fact. But you, on the other hand…”
“I already told you I didn’t kill my friends. I would never hurt someone I love.”
“Do you love your wife?” I asked.
Pearce’s eyes narrowed. “What’s that got to do with anything?”
“That’s an up or down answer. You either love her or not. Why’s it so hard for you?”
“It’s not hard. I love her, but I don’t know what she’s got to do with this.”
I pulled the New Orleans warrant out of my folder and slid it across the desk. “You just said you would never hurt someone you love, yet you strangled the wife you’re supposed to love.”
He shook his head from side to side. “That’s a bullshit charge. We were in New Orleans for Mardi Gras when that happened. She was real drunk and falling all over. This float was passing by and she started screaming at them to throw her some beads. When no one would throw anything in her direction, she pulled up her shirt to try and flash them.” He removed his glasses and rubbed his sweaty face. “I was mad, sure, but I didn’t strangle her. I tried to get her to stop, but she pushed me away. I was reaching for her shirt to pull it down and my hand accidentally touched her throat. That’s when she started screaming that I was choking her. There were some cops nearby and they tackled me to the ground. They punched me and kicked me after I was handcuffed. It was horrible.”
“Where’s your wife stay now?” I asked.
“At home…with me in Jasper. She went to the DA’s office in New Orleans and dropped the charges, but the state picked them up. She’s going to testify in my favor.”
We pressed him a bit more on his role in the murders of Wilton and Shelton, but he didn’t give us anything useful. He seemed genuinely afraid that he was going to be killed next. He didn’t even argue when we told him he was under arrest.
“That’s the safest place for me right now,” he said, “until y’all catch the person who’s doing this.”
“Until we catch the killer?” I smirked. “Dude, if you’re convicted, you’re going to die in prison. Life without parole.”
Pearce gasped violently, as though the air had been kicked from his gut. “Life in prison? What are you talking about? It was self-defense for that girl—you said so yourself.”
“A jury’s going to have to decide this one.” I stood to my feet. “Get up. You’re going
into a holding cell until you can be transported to the detention center.”
CHAPTER 48
Wednesday, October 10
I met Dawn at the Seasville Substation first thing in the morning. She was wearing tight jeans and a button-down shirt when I found her in the evidence processing room. She looked as tired as I felt, but her brown eyes were fully alert.
“Did you get the keys from the sheriff?” I asked.
She held up an ancient ring of keys and asked if I was ready.
I nodded and followed her down a long corridor at the southernmost end of the building.
We had stayed up late into the night writing the arrest report charging Pearce Vidrine with the murder of Theodore Simoneaux. He had identified a picture of the bat we recovered from the lumberyard as being the same bat he used to beat Mr. Simoneaux and he said Mr. Simoneaux was wearing glasses when they first saw him. He also thought the panties we recovered were the same panties the girl was wearing before Mr. Simoneaux ripped them off.
Once we were done with Pearce, Dawn had conducted an exhaustive search of our computer systems, but the records didn’t go back thirty years. That was when she’d told me about the secret room.
“There’s a room in the attic above the substation with at least twenty large filing cabinets and a stockpile of guns,” she had said. “I’ve never been up there, but Brandon told me about it once. He said there are case files that go back at least sixty years.”
It had been too late to start last night, so we’d agreed to check it out first thing this morning.
“The entrance is supposed to be through here,” Dawn said when we reached the door to an abandoned cleaning closet. She pushed an old mop bucket and a piece of panel out of the way and leaned back to allow some light into the closet. There, behind the panel, was an old wooden door. “Well, here does nothing.”
She shoved the key in the lock and tried to turn it, but it wouldn’t budge. She jiggled it a bit, but it still wouldn’t move. She tried one of the other keys, but met with the same result. When she had almost reached the last key, she finally found one that worked. The knob was sticky, but she easily twisted it and then forced the door open.
I flipped the switch on my flashlight and aimed the light up a long, narrow stairway. Cobwebs hung from the ceiling and across the opening, They were thick as moss.
“It looks like a haunted house,” Dawn said, reaching for the mop in the bucket. Swinging it like a sword, she fought forward and cleared a path through the thick webs. When we reached the top of the landing, she fumbled with the key ring and finally found the correct key to the door that stood between us and whatever mysteries lay on the other side.
The hinges screamed in protest when she pushed the door open. A strong musky smell greeted our nostrils and a wave of heat enveloped us. The beams from our flashlights looked like light sabers as they slashed through the darkness of the large space. Every surface in the room was covered with at least a quarter inch of dust. The air was thick and I could almost smell the black mold in the place.
A long row of filing cabinets were positioned against the wall to the left and a homemade gun rack with individual slots lined the entire right wall of the attic—and every slot had a long gun leaning against it. Handguns hung from pegs on the wall and there were at least twice as many of those as there were rifles and shotguns. Tags were attached to the trigger guards of each of the weapons and I walked over to inspect one.
“These are all evidence,” I said. “And some are damn nice weapons.”
Dawn just mumbled something as she scanned the labels on the drawers of the filing cabinets. Finally, she called out that she’d found a cabinet from thirty years ago. Shuffling through the smaller keys on the ring, she finally found one that unlocked the drawers. “What month do you think the murder happened?”
I joined her and peeked over her shoulder. “They were about to graduate, so maybe April or May?”
She pulled out an oversized folder and handed it to me. “This is May. I’ll check April.”
She plopped down on the floor with her folder, and I sat beside her with mine. Shoving our flashlights under an armpit, we each began perusing the case files, reading the headings one at a time, slowly slogging through the thick pile of paperwork. Before long, sweat formed on my forehead and began dripping on the files.
“Shit, I’m leaving my DNA everywhere,” I said, stopping to wipe my brow.
“Me, too.” Dawn fanned herself with one of the files and checked her phone. “It’s only been twenty minutes.”
“I haven’t even made a dent in my stack.” I placed the file I’d just finished reading to the side and grabbed the next one, settling in for the long haul.
We worked until lunch, ate a quick meal, and then returned to the mountain of files. It must’ve been nearing three o’clock in the afternoon when I checked the subject line on a file and stopped dead in my tracks. “Wait a minute, this might be it.”
I turned it so Dawn could read, too. The subject line read, “Girl found nude, possible rape.”
My heart began to race as I read the narrative. A nurse on a smoke break stumbled upon a nude girl lying on the sidewalk outside of Seasville General Hospital. The girl—who was only referred to as “16-year-old juvenile female” in the report—was found unresponsive and there were bruises and abrasions covering her body. The nurse summoned help and they brought the girl into the emergency room, where they began treating her minor injuries, as well as trying to get her to regain consciousness. All attempts failed and she remained in a coma for a week. She woke up from the coma with no memory of how she’d come to be in the parking lot of the hospital and no recollection of the preceding events. The last thing she remembered was getting home from school that day.
Dawn leaned over me and pointed toward the bottom of the first page of the report. “Her mom reported her missing later that same day.”
I followed her finger and read the part where a Linda Blais had contacted the sheriff’s office to report that her daughter disappeared from the back yard. Mrs. Blais was at work and had received a call from her daughter to say she’d gotten home from school and would be reading in the back yard. When the woman got home from work, her daughter was nowhere to be found. There was nothing but a book on the ground near the swimming pool. The deputy easily made the connection between the missing person case and the nude girl located at the hospital. Mrs. Blais later identified the girl as her daughter.
“Where’d she go missing from?” Dawn asked.
“Her back yard.”
She playfully elbowed me in the ribs. “You know what I mean.”
I flipped through the pages of the report until I found Linda Blais’ address. “Holy smokes…she lived on Ender’s Lane.”
CHAPTER 49
It was almost knockoff time and we were exhausted when Dawn turned her cruiser down Ender’s Lane. We had run an address inquiry for Linda Blais and confirmed she was still living at the same address.
I pointed to Dawn’s clothes, which were rumpled and covered in dust, same as mine. “Do you think she’ll believe we’re cops? We look more like beggars.”
“At this point, I’m so tired I don’t even care. If she doesn’t believe us, we’ll go home and come back tomorrow in a marked cruiser and full uniform. We can even blow the siren if we have to.”
Linda Blais’ house was toward the end of the street and on the right. It was small, but the gray paintjob was fresh and the yard was manicured. I remembered seeing it and thinking it was one of the nicer yards in the area when we’d driven to the back of the street to search for the old man’s grave.
A small brown car was parked under an open carport and a handicapped ramp led to the side door. Access to the front door was blocked by a large rose bush, so we proceeded under the carport. Before we reached the handicap ramp, the storm door opened and a tall woman with an air of confidence stepped outside. Her skin was smooth and her body sculptured. She wore painted-on leggin
gs and a skimpy tank top that revealed way too much of her abundant cleavage. She couldn’t have been more than fifty, and I quickly did the math in my head.
“This could be our victim,” I said out of the corner of my mouth as we approached the woman.
Dawn nodded and waved.
“Well, hello.” The woman’s smile was radiant. “It looks like I’m having a better day than you two.”
Dawn apologized for our appearance. “We’ve been searching through old files back at the office and it’s urgent that we speak with someone about a case we found.”
“Sure.” The woman’s expression turned curious. “I was about to go out, but I’ve got time. Come on in.”
We followed her into a small kitchen and she pointed to a round wooden table pushed into one corner of the room. “Care for anything to drink? I’ve got water and protein shakes.”
Dawn waved her off. “We’re fine, thanks.”
The woman grabbed a bottle of water and joined us.
“We’re looking for a Linda Blais,” Dawn began. “It’s about her daughter who went missing thirty years ago.”
The woman touched her chest. “I’m Linda.”
My head snapped up in disbelief. Without thinking, I blurted, “How old are you?”
Realizing the outburst was complimentary, Linda blushed. “I’m almost sixty.”
My jaw must’ve been hanging, because Dawn kicked my foot under the table. I apologized. “I thought you were the sixteen-year-old girl in the report.”
“I had Cindy when I was fourteen.” Linda frowned and there was sadness in her eyes. “Some people considered her a mistake, but I considered her a blessing. She’s the only child I ever had and the best thing that ever happened to me.”
Dawn slid the report across the table. “We needed to talk to you about the day Cindy disappeared.”
“I don’t understand. Cindy was located later that same day.”