But Not Forlorn: A Clint Wolf Novel (Clint Wolf Mystery Series Book 7)

by BJ Bourg

  I was ten steps away when the man slipped through the large painted glass doors. Pausing by the door so he wouldn’t think I was following him, I glanced back at Susan one last time. She was staring right at me with a quizzical expression on her face. I shot my right hand to my face—thumb to my ear and pinky to my mouth—to signal for her to call me, and then pushed through the door.

  Careful to act nonchalant, I strode down the steps with my head down, but my eyes were studying the church parking lot. It wasn’t hard to find the man. He was walking briskly toward my left, digging for his keys as he hurried along. I was parked in the back, but I needed to see what kind of car he drove and what direction he—

  “Detective Wolf,” called an excited voice. “Are you any closer to solving the Lance Beaman murder case?”

  “No comment.” I turned left to make my way around the back of the church. I could feel the presence of the news reporter behind me. The man in gray had stopped near a light blue car and was quickly getting inside. I turned on my heel to face the reporter. “Is there a reason you’re following me?”

  The woman pulled up short. “I just wanted to ask you a few questions.”

  “I’m not going to answer them. Is there anything else?”

  She hesitated, then shook her head.

  “Great, if there’s anything else I can help you with, just go ahead and contact the office.” I whirled around and made the corner of the church, but not before I saw that the man was heading north on the highway in his blue car. There was a red bumper sticker on the right side of his back bumper, so I knew it would be easy to identify his car.

  My phone rang just as I reached my vehicle and fired it up. Without looking, I knew it was Susan. “I think I’ve got something,” I said as I reached the highway and turned north, trying not to squeal my tires and alert the reporter that I was on to something. “I’m heading north on Main following a blue car with a red bumper sticker.”

  “Who’s in the car?”

  “I don’t know—a man who spat on Lance’s coffin. I need you to secure that casket and collect the man’s DNA.”

  There was a pause on the other end and I could almost feel Susan turning to look toward the casket. “A man spat on Lance’s coffin in front of his family?”

  “Yeah, but no one seemed to notice.” I tapped my brakes as the blue car slowed for a red light up ahead. I glanced at the space on the rear bumper where the license plate should be. There was a hand-written sign stating the license had been applied for. That was illegal and it was enough to justify a traffic stop, but I didn’t want to blow my cover. I didn’t care about a traffic violation—I needed to know if this man was a killer. “Can you recover the DNA and have it sent to the lab? If it matches to the DNA from the lighter, we’ve got our man.”

  “Sure, but it could be days before we get the results back—even if they put a rush on it.”

  “I know.”

  “What are you going to do in the meantime?”

  I shoved on my sunglasses so the man wouldn’t see me studying his face in his rearview mirror. “I’m going to find out who this man is and why he hates Lance.”

  “Okay—just be careful.”

  CHAPTER 33

  Once I’d swiped my thumb across the screen to end the call with Susan, I tossed my phone into the cup holder. The man had driven forward when the traffic light turned green. He glanced into his mirrors occasionally as we ventured into Central Chateau, but he didn’t seem bothered by the fact that I was behind him. He was traveling a few miles under the speed limit, so a line of cars had gathered behind us.

  On the rural roads of our parish, many folks considered the speed limit signs suggestions rather than rules, and most of them ignored the “suggestion” to drive fifty-five miles per hour. Now, two bikers decided to pass us up in a no-passing zone. They zipped past me and were overtaking the blue car when I saw the driver window slide down. The man shoved his hand out of the window and flipped off the bikers while laying on the horn.

  I scowled. Why are you so pissed off about being passed up when you’re driving under the speed limit?

  The bikers returned the one-finger salute and sped off, their engines roaring like lions. The man continued cruising along until he came to Lincoln Highway, where he headed west toward St. Claiborne, which was an outlying town in Chateau Parish. We traveled for about twenty minutes before his left blinker flashed brightly. He turned onto a two-lane road and I kept going straight through the intersection, watching him with one eye as I kept the other on the road.

  When he was out of sight, I made a u-turn in the middle of the road and sped back to the intersection. Two cars had turned in behind him, and they provided cover for me. I remained about a quarter of a mile behind the last car and followed for about two miles, at which time the man in the blue car made another left onto a narrow shell street that was lined on either side by trailers and mobile homes. A faded wooden sign at the entrance to the street announced that he was entering Beasley Trailer Park. Another sign warned that visitors should drive five miles per hour to keep the dust down, or risk being banned from the property.

  I pulled to the shoulder to give him space. When I thought he’d gone far enough, I turned in and made my way at a crawling pace. The shell road snaked along, making sharp turns to the left and right as it zigzagged toward the end of the trailer park. I had almost reached the end of the street—it felt like it had taken an hour—when I spotted the blue car in front of a brown and tan trailer. The man had parked near a large green garbage can with the number “626” painted on the side of it. He was just shutting off his car, so I quickly pulled into a bumpy driveway about a block away and on the opposite side of the street.

  “Can I help you?” asked an elderly lady wearing a garden apron and holding a basket of what appeared to be fresh-laid eggs. I had been so busy watching the man exit his car and disappear from my sight around the trailer that I hadn’t noticed the woman working in her yard.

  Thinking quickly, I leaned out of my window. “I’m sorry, ma’am, but I’m looking for a friend of mine. Is this Beasley Trailer Park?”

  “It is.” The woman switched her basket from one hand to the other. There were a lot of eggs in it, and I imagined it must’ve been heavy. “Who’s your friend?”

  I turned back toward the blue car. The man hadn’t reappeared. I shoved my thumb toward the trailer. “You know what? I think that’s it over there.”

  The woman scowled. “Are you sure about that?”

  “I’m pretty sure.”

  “Well, I’m pretty sure it ain’t.” She stepped closer and glanced into my Tahoe. “Are you an officer?”

  “I am. I’m working undercover and I’m not doing a very good job of it, am I?”

  She grunted. “So, this bit about your friend, is that your cover story?”

  I sighed, shot my thumb in the direction of the blue car once again. “I need to know the name of the man who lives in that trailer.”

  “The name’s Delvin Miller. I knew he wasn’t your friend, because he doesn’t have any friends. The man’s a recluse. He’s never had a visitor as long as I’ve been living here.” She indicated with her head toward a neighboring trailer. “Mona’s been here longer than me, and she says she’s never seen a visitor either. He’s got no family, no friends, no nothing. He comes and goes from time to time, but most days he just stays home.”

  “And he lives alone?” I asked.

  She nodded.

  An idea suddenly occurred to me. “Do you mind if I park my unit here?”

  “For how long?”

  “A few minutes.”

  The woman shrugged. “I guess so. As long as I can get out later. I need to make a grocery bill.”

  “I won’t be long.” I thanked her and dropped from my Tahoe, headed across the street. Delvin’s trailer was positioned perpendicular to the shell street, and all I could see was the back and front end of his residence. I kept a wary eye on the windows and back d
oor as I approached. When I reached the opposite shoulder, I fell into an idle stroll, trying to appear as a random fellow out enjoying the afternoon sun.

  More of the front yard came into view as I drew closer to the trailer. For the most part, it was well groomed and free of littler, something I couldn’t say about many of the other trailers in the area. It became obvious by the hand-painted signs that Mr. Miller didn’t appreciate trespassers and he owned a gun—or, at least, he wanted violators to think he owned a gun.

  I had finally reached the garbage can and was about to push the lid open when it caught my eye. The sun was high in the sky and I squinted to try and make out what I was seeing. Still not sure, I put a hand to my forehead and stepped forward, straining to make out the two objects that were positioned side-by-side and toward the rear of his property. I sucked in a mouthful of air when I realized what they were.

  At the center of the yard there was a large, round bed of loose rocks that were held in place by a circle of larger rocks. Buried at the center of this bed of rocks, and facing the front door of the trailer, were twin crosses that stood at least four feet tall. They were made of solid wood and painted red. They each bore a name, but they were too far away for me to make out the names.

  I scanned the front of the trailer, cocking my head to the side to listen for any sound of movement from inside. There was none. Crouching low so as not to be seen from the nearest window, I slid along the trailer, taking one step at a time and then stopping, listening to see if my actions had brought a response from inside. When it hadn’t, I moved another step closer to the center of the trailer. After a few long minutes, I was directly across from the crosses and could read what was painted on them.

  The one on the left read:

  Lacie Marie Miller

  Born: September 21, 1979

  Murdered: June 16, 1997

  The one on the right read:

  Macie Marie Miller

  Born: September 21, 1979

  Murdered: June 16, 1997

  I immediately pulled out my phone, took several pictures. My mind raced. If these crosses bore the truth, Delvin Miller’s twin daughters had been murdered twenty years ago, at the age of seventeen. I hadn’t been in this parish for many years, so I wouldn’t have been around when the murder occurred, but I wondered why I hadn’t at least heard whisperings about it. Just the news that a pair of twins had died on the same day would live on for many years, but being murdered together? That’s the kind of thing that could turn into folklore.

  Once I had the pictures I needed, I scurried along the trailer, making my way back to the garbage can. I reached it just as I heard some footsteps pounding inside the trailer. It sounded as though they were heading for the front door.

  Working quickly—my pulse racing—I lifted the lid on the garbage can and peered inside. There were two plastic bags, and both were filled with garbage. I grabbed the bag that seemed to have the most garbage, lowered the lid carefully, and then headed up the street. I heard a door slam from somewhere behind me and quickened my pace. While I wasn’t worried about a confrontation, I certainly didn’t want my cover being blown. If Delvin was our killer, it was best if he didn’t know we were on to him.

  I glanced over my shoulder just as I reached my Tahoe. All was clear. I opened the back gate and tossed the bag inside. The woman in the garden apron was sitting on her porch.

  “Did you get what you needed?” she asked.

  I nodded, asked if I could camp out in her yard for a while.

  “Just as long as you move when I need to go to the store and then when I get back.”

  CHAPTER 34

  “Susan, can you meet me at Beasley Trailer Park in an unmarked car?” I asked, giving her the address.

  “Isn’t that in St. Claiborne?”

  “It is.” I explained what I’d found in Delvin Miller’s yard and told her about the bag I’d lifted from the garbage. “I’m keeping an eye on the trailer and can’t leave until we know if this is our guy or not. I need someone to go through the trash and find his fingerprints, then have it compared to the print from the lighter.”

  “You need someone to do your dirty work, is that it?”

  “I guess you could say that.” I shifted in my seat when I saw movement in the area of Delvin’s trailer, but settled into place when I saw a large gray cat stroll out from behind the trailer. “I called the sheriff’s office and asked them to run everything they could find on Delvin Miller. I also called Mallory and asked her to check their records for a murder of a pair of twins dating back twenty years.”

  Mallory Tuttle was a detective with the Chateau Parish Sheriff’s Office, and she was one of Susan’s friends.

  I could hear Susan react on the other end of the phone. “I’ve never heard of twins being murdered in Chateau—and I don’t care how long ago it happened. It could’ve been fifty years and people would still be talking about that kind of thing. The fact that it supposedly happened while I was alive makes me think it didn’t happen here.”

  My phone buzzed in my ear. I glanced at the screen. “I have to go,” I said. “The sheriff’s office is beeping in.”

  “Okay, I’ll meet you there in twenty minutes.”

  I pressed the green dot on the screen to answer the call. “What’s the good news?”

  “Clint, I ran a criminal history check on the name you gave me, but turned up nothing.”

  “Does he have a driver’s license?”

  “Yeah, a Louisiana one, but he’s never even had a ticket as far as I could tell—at least not here. If he got one in some small jurisdiction it wouldn’t show up on my records.”

  I nodded thoughtfully, thanked her and hung up. While Delvin was clean, it didn’t mean he didn’t kill Lance. I’d worked a number of homicide cases where the murder I was investigating happened to be the first criminal act the suspect had ever committed. People killed for any number of reasons. If I was a betting man, I’d bet that Delvin’s apparent hatred of Lance Beaman had something to do with those two crosses in his yard. Of course, just because he spat on the man’s casket didn’t mean he was the one who put him in it.

  I was tempted to walk right across the street and knock on the trailer door, but I needed some sort of evidence before I made contact with him. If Susan could recover one of his prints from the contents of the garbage bag and then match it to the lighter, I’d have the leverage I needed. So, I just sat there watching and waiting.

  Susan showed up about twenty minutes after we’d hung up and I gave her the garbage bag. She called me an hour later to say she’d recovered several fingerprints from an empty aluminum soda can, a plastic jar of peanut butter, and a glass jar of pickles. She’d concluded that the prints were from the same person. “I made a one-to-one digital image of the prints and emailed them to the lab,” she’d said. “They’re supposed to get back to me within the hour.”

  That was almost three hours ago. The sun was starting to set to the west and lights were starting to flicker to life up and down the street. A light came on in Delvin’s house, but the curtains were drawn and I couldn’t see inside. The woman in whose yard I was parked came out several times to check on me. On one of her trips, she’d brought me a plate of fried pork meat atop a heaping mound of rice and a cold bottle of root beer. I must’ve been hungry because that was the best pork I’d ever eaten. I thanked her repeatedly, but she just waved her hand dismissively. “I can’t have you dying of hunger on my watch,” she’d said. “That would ruin my reputation.”

  It was completely dark when Susan finally called back. “It’s not his print,” she said simply.

  She said it so nonchalantly that I had to blink several times before the news sank in. “Wait—he’s not our killer?”

  “I didn’t say that. I just said it’s not his print.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Have you heard from Mallory?” She’d deliberately ignored my question.

  I sighed. “Not yet.”

  “I
f I know her, she’s still searching. She won’t stop until she finds something, and she’ll call you as soon as she does.” Before hanging up, she told me she was heading home. “I have to check on one of our residents at the shelter. Her husband bonded out today and I need to make sure she doesn’t make contact with him and give away the location.”

  I sat staring at Delvin’s trailer for a long moment. While I didn’t have a shred of evidence to suggest he killed Lance, I knew for a fact he’d spat on the man’s casket. That had to mean something.

  To hell with it! I fired up my engine and drove straight for his driveway. Before I could talk myself out of it, I dropped from the Tahoe and marched to the front steps. I banged loudly on the door. I was out of my jurisdiction, so I didn’t identify myself. Instead, I stood back and waited for him to answer the door.

  “Can I help you?” Delvin said when he pushed the door open. He had a cautious way about him, and he kept part of his body shielded from my view. There was no doubt in my mind he had a pistol in his left hand, which was hidden behind the door.

  “I’d like to talk to you about Lance Beaman,” I began slowly, studying his face as I mentioned the name. The wrinkle lines on his face disappeared as his expression hardened.

  “What about?”

  “I saw you at the funeral and I realized there was someone out there who hated the bastard as much as I did.” I saw his face relax a little and I stepped closer to the door. “I’m not ashamed to say I rejoiced when I found out he was dead—especially when I found out how he died. If anyone deserved to burn to death, it was that evil prick.”

  “What do you want from me?” he asked.

  “I just wanted to know what it was that he’d done to you,” I explained, thinking quickly. “My therapist said I should seek out like-minded individuals with whom to discuss my feelings. She thinks it would be productive, but I believe hatred loves company.”