by BJ Bourg
“But which one?”
“I’m not sure, and I don’t know how we’ll find that out now—they’re both dead.”
“Billiot’s dead?”
I explained what Susan had said about Jack. “He was one of the town drunks…” I allowed my voice to trail off, stopped with my mouth open. “Wow, it makes perfect sense now. That’s probably what led to his life of drinking.”
“I’ve met Beaman a few times and he didn’t seem to be bothered by anything,” Mallory said. “His life was going great.”
“It could mean he wasn’t the driver,” I offered, “or—if he was driving—he’s just a cold-blooded prick.”
“It had to be him or Billiot.”
“Billiot died of natural causes, Beaman was murdered.” I plopped the pictures on Mallory’s desk. “If this is the motive we’ve been looking for, then someone thought Lance was driving the car that night.”
Mallory shook her head. “I’ve gone over this entire file—page by page—and everything says Wainwright was driving. Hell, even the newspaper clippings put him as the driver. Whoever killed Beaman either knew something we didn’t know or they killed him for a different reason.”
“It could be Miller. He might’ve been frustrated that Pauline wouldn’t use the information he provided, so he decided to take matters into his own hands. Unless…” A thought suddenly occurred to me. “What do sinners do right before they die?”
Mallory shrugged. “Pray for God’s forgiveness?”
“No, but along those lines…”
“I give up. I don’t go to church.”
“They confess their sins.”
Her expression was blank as she stared at me. “I’m not following you.”
“If Jack Billiot knew he was going to die, he might’ve confessed his sins to someone.” I quickly jotted down a checklist of things to do first thing in the morning, and the top thing on that list was to speak with the hospital staff to see if Jack had had any visitors before he died. “If he got word to Miller that Lance was driving, he would’ve put a bull’s eye on the Lance’s back.”
CHAPTER 37
Tuesday, May 2
Chateau Parish General Hospital
I sat in the hospital parking lot staring at Takecia’s report as though I hoped some hidden clue would jump off the page and smack me in the face. It was a simple report, as reports go. She had responded to a medical emergency at Jack Billiot’s house on the east side, and was met at the door by his mother, who led Takecia to a back bedroom where Jack was struggling for air. Ox Plater had shown up moments later with Cole Peterson and another firefighter, and they went right to work on Jack. They stabilized him and kept him alert until the medics arrived to transport him to the hospital. Takecia had resumed her duties and received a call from the hospital later letting her know Jack had died.
Before heading to the hospital and interviewing the hospital staff here, I had stopped by the fire department and spoken with Ox and Cole. Ox hadn’t heard Jack utter a word the entire time they were there, but Cole did say he remembered Jack’s mother kissing him after he was stabilized, and Cole thought Jack whispered something in her ear.
“I couldn’t make out what he said,” Cole had recounted, “but I do know he said something.”
Ox had shaken his head. “I didn’t hear a damn thing, but, of course, I’ve got this bum ear.”
I had then come to the hospital and interviewed two nurses and a doctor, but they said Jack hadn’t had any visitors from the moment he came in until the time that he died. Now, I needed to check with Jack’s mother. If I was right and Jack had revealed the truth about who was driving the truck twenty years ago, that information could’ve gotten into the wrong hands and led to Lance’s murder. A short list of suspects was dancing around in my head, and that list began with Delvin Miller. Other possibilities were siblings, aunts or uncles, and grandparents.
I did wonder if either of the girls had boyfriends from back then who might still be traumatized by the loss, and I made a mental note to look into that angle. Twenty years was a long time for a boyfriend to be hanging on to the past, but I knew how hard it had been for me to deal with the loss of Michele, so I wasn’t going to overlook anything. It was one thing to break up with someone after a relationship had turned sour, but to lose that person in the middle of a flourishing relationship—it was like freezing time in its tracks. Although things had gotten easier over time, I still had my moments of guilt about moving on with Susan, so it was a constant battle for me.
I drove straight to Delvin’s house after leaving the hospital, knocked on his door.
“You again?” He scowled, but stepped back and let me enter his trailer. “What do you want now?”
I glanced down at his hands and then visually examined his waistline. He didn’t appear to be armed. “As a father of two victims,” I began, taking a seat across from him at the table, “I thought you had the right to know about an update to the case.”
He raised his eyebrows. “An update? What are you talking about? Their case has been closed for twenty years.”
“Well, there’s been a new development.” I took a breath and studied his face. “Carl Wainwright wasn’t driving that night—he wasn’t the one who killed your daughters.”
Delvin’s face grew so pale I could almost see through him. “What do you mean? How could you possibly know that?”
I pulled out my cell phone and accessed my images, flipped to the one I’d taken of the red shoe. “This is Carl’s shoe. It was on the ground outside the back passenger door, but then it disappeared in this picture”—I scrolled to the next photo—“and then reappeared in this one.”
When he saw the photo of the shoe on the driver floorboard, he gasped out loud. “Someone set him up?”
“That’s what it looks like.”
His voice was weak. “But…if he wasn’t driving, then who was?”
“It was either Lance or Jack.” I continued studying his face as I allowed him to process that information. He looked genuinely shocked. “You had no idea, did you?”
He shook his head. “I’ve lived all this time blaming Carl Wainwright for their murders. Don’t get me wrong, I blamed Lance and Jack for being with him, but Carl was the driver and he was the one I hated most. Now I…I don’t know who to hate.”
“Look, I need your help. I believe Jack made contact with someone and told them Lance was driving the car that night, and I believe they murdered him over it.”
Delvin nodded idly. “Okay…what do you need from me?”
“I need to know who else might still be hurting over the twins’ deaths. Are there any other members of your family who still grieve over them? Any friends from high school? Ex-boyfriends, perhaps?”
“No, there’s no one else but me. The rest of the family and their friends have all moved on with their lives. My beautiful girls have been forgotten.” He frowned and his eyes misted over. “As for me, I’ve truly been given a life sentence. I’ll hurt until the day I die. Actually, every day gets even harder than the last. My chest gets so tied in knots sometimes that I think I’m having a heart attack. And it pleases me, because I hope for it, but…but I’ve never been so lucky.”
Only you, right? I thought, watching Delvin fall apart on his side of the table. No one cares about the girls anymore except for you.
I sighed and leaned back in my chair, allowed my eyes to drift out the open door to the crosses. I needed to eliminate Delvin as a suspect once and for all, but I’d need his cooperation to do so. I already knew his fingerprints weren’t on the lighter, but that didn’t necessarily mean he wasn’t the killer. There was a slim chance the lighter wasn’t connected to the murder at all.
“Mr. Miller,” I said when he stopped crying for a while, “do you mind if I borrow your pistol for comparison purposes?”
He wiped his eyes. “Compare it to what?”
“Someone took shots at one of our officers last Tuesday. I’d like to make sure i
t wasn’t you.”
“It wasn’t.” Delvin stood. “Thank you for stopping by, Detective. I appreciate the update.”
I hesitated, but Delvin wasn’t backing down. He was done with the conversation and he wanted me gone. I nodded and stood to leave. “If you killed Lance,” I said, “I’d understand. A jury would understand. It wouldn’t be right, but everyone would certainly understand.”
“Thank you for stopping by, Detective.”
I walked out and dug my cell phone from my pocket, called Susan. “It might be Delvin Miller, but I can’t be sure.”
“How’d he take the news?”
“I really believe he was surprised to find out, but I don’t know who else would have the motive to kill Lance.”
“Maybe we’re missing something,” Susan suggested. “Maybe it has nothing to do with the twins.”
“Nothing to do with the election, nothing to do with the crash—nothing to do with anything.” I fired up my Tahoe and backed out of the driveway. “I’m running out of places to look, Sue.”
She was silent on the other end, then finally asked where I was heading.
“I’m going to pay Jack Billiot’s mom a visit. See if he didn’t reveal anything to her before he died.”
“Well, I have to work late tonight. I’m covering for Melvin.”
That immediately got my attention. “Melvin? Why—what’s wrong? Is he okay?”
“Oh, yeah, everything’s fine. That support group he joined is having another emergency meeting tonight at the Mechant Loup Fire Station and he wants to attend. He said it helped him the last time.”
“What’s the emergency?”
“Cole Peterson is struggling.”
“That’s good that he wants help.” I remembered how the kid looked on the night of the fire, and he didn’t look so great when I spoke with him earlier.
After telling Susan I’d probably be late, too, I ended the call and headed south, wondering if Jack’s mom would be a dead end. So far, this was shaping up to be a cold case, and the one thing that scared me more than anything else was having an unsolved murder on my hands. If I couldn’t solve this case, it would mean I’d failed the victim and his family—and that wasn’t acceptable, even if Lance was a horrible person.
CHAPTER 38
It was a little past eleven when I pulled into Jack Billiot’s driveway. I shut off the engine, glanced at the house. It was a narrow structure wrapped in brick that was painted green. An aluminum awning extended the entire width of the house, with the left corner hanging precariously. Three steps that were about two feet wide led up to a screen door that appeared flimsy and old. The grass was long. An old ice chest was on the side of the house and I imagined it used to hold Jack’s beer.
Wondering if Jack’s mom was still living there, I jumped out and strode to the steps. Since her old van wasn’t in the dirt driveway, my expectations were low. The screen door was locked, so I banged on the framework. Nothing moved inside. I banged several more times, but no one came to the door. I walked around to the back door, did the same, and met with the same results.
After talking to some of the neighbors and learning that the van had left an hour earlier, I drove to the office to comb through the case file. I had a pizza delivered and worked through lunch, going over every report that had been generated and analyzing every piece of evidence we’d recovered. I called the lab and found out that the DNA from Delvin’s saliva didn’t match the DNA from the lighter. I asked the lab technician to send me photos of the lighter after it had been cleaned up, and they appeared in my inbox twenty minutes later. I printed them out and scattered them across my desk. While there were no initials or other obvious identifiers on the lighter, it did appear unique—
I suddenly twisted in my seat and snatched up my desk phone, dialed the number to the Mechant Voice, which was our local newspaper. “Ali Bridges,” I said when a man answered the phone. I glanced at the time on my computer screen. “I need to speak with Ali right away.”
I was put on hold for a brief moment, then Ali came on the phone. I’d first met Ali when she served as an intern for my former girlfriend, Chloe Rushing, and she now worked as a top reporter for the Mechant Voice.
“Ali, this is Clint,” I began. “If I send you a picture, can you get it to print before today’s paper goes out?”
I could almost feel her checking the clock. “Can you get it to me in five minutes?”
My fingers raced across the keyboard and I was hitting the send button within thirty seconds flat. “It’s on the way to your inbox now.”
“I’m guessing this is about the murder?”
I told her it was and expressed how important it was to identify the lighter. “Someone, somewhere, has to recognize that lighter. I need them to call me immediately if they know who it belongs to. They can remain anonymous if they want to, but I’ve got to know who owns it.”
I heard a ding on her end of the call. “Got it! It’ll hit the newsstands this afternoon.”
I thanked her and turned back to the file on my desk. I couldn’t help but remember that Delvin Miller was a smoker and he had been using a disposable lighter when I interviewed him. Could the lighter we recovered be his? But even if it was, who would know about it? The man didn’t associate with many people, so if he was the killer, there was a chance we wouldn’t be getting any tips at all.
After poring over the file for another two hours, I moved to Susan’s office and shared what was left of the pizza with her, then headed outside. I walked down the street to buy a copy of the Mechant Voice before returning to my Tahoe. I smiled my appreciation when I saw the lighter splashed across the entire top half of the front page. I’d given Ali my cell phone number as a contact and she’d printed it in bold at the end of the article. I checked my phone now, made sure the ringer was turned up.
I then drove to Jack’s house and nodded when I saw the old van in the driveway. It was almost six o’clock and I wondered what Mrs. Billiot was doing inside. On a regular day, she might’ve been cooking dinner for her and Jack, but I imagined her evenings of late were lonely.
I only knocked once on the screen door before the main door slowly opened. Jack’s mother peered from the slight opening and asked what I wanted. I’d only seen the woman a couple of times and didn’t think she knew who I was.
“It’s Clint Wolf, ma’am…with the Mechant Loup Police Department. I need to speak with you about Jack.”
“My Jack’s dead and y’all are still harassing him! Why don’t you just leave him alone?”
“No, ma’am, I’m not here to harass anyone. I just need to find out if he said anything to you in his final moments. If he had any last words.”
She didn’t step from behind the door, but I could see her frowning deeply. When she didn’t answer, I asked the question again, then added, “I know there was something he said in his final moments, and I need to know who might’ve heard him.”
“Who told you that?” It was more of an accusation than a question, and I knew I had struck a nerve.
“It was about what happened twenty years ago, wasn’t it?” I pressed. “He shared his secret, didn’t he?”
“You need to leave here…now!” She spat the words and was about to slam the door shut when I hollered for her to wait. My voice had changed so suddenly that it shocked her into inaction. “Excuse me?”
“Look, ma’am,” I said softly, “I know Jack has been troubled ever since that car accident. It ruined his life…I know it did, and so do you. It wasn’t his fault that he drank every day. It was the only thing he could do to cope with what happened. I just need to find out—”
“What do you know about the accident? Did he talk to you?” She allowed the door to swing wider. “Did you see him before he passed? Did he say something to you?”
I frowned. “No, ma’am, I wasn’t around when he passed, but I knew him…and he was a good man. He was troubled, that’s for sure, but he was good at heart.”
“
He was.” She dabbed at her eyes with a corner of her shirt, said, “It was Lance, he said to me. It was Lance who was driving the car that killed those girls. I asked him what he was talking about, but that was all he said. He just went quiet after that and I thought we’d lost him.”
“Ma’am—and this is really important—did you tell anyone what he said? Anyone at all?”
She shook her head. “Who would I tell?”
I chewed on my lower lip, thoughtful. A growing uneasiness was starting to form in the pit of my stomach. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answer to the next question, but I asked it anyway. “Did anyone overhear what Jack said to you?”
Jack’s mother lifted a hand to her throat. “Um, I don’t know for sure, but I think so.”
“Who?”
“Let me see…an officer got here first and then two or three people with the fire department showed up before the ambulance did.”
My heart thumping in my chest, I asked again who heard what Jack had said about Lance.
“I…I’m not sure. They were in and out. The officer got here first and then the firemen and then the ambulance people. I wasn’t really paying attention to them. It…I was just so upset about Jack, you understand? I didn’t really keep track of who was there when he was talking.”
“I understand,” I said idly, thoughtful. An idea suddenly occurred to me and it made the feeling in my stomach even worse. Hoping I was wrong, I turned and headed to my Tahoe, snatching my phone from my pocket as I did so. While firing up the engine, I called Mallory. She answered right away.
“This is Mal—”
“What’s the name of the deputy who got burned trying to rescue the twins?” I asked, interrupting her introduction. “You said a deputy was injured trying to save them—I need his name.”
“Why? Do you think it has something to do with the murder?”
My phone beeped while she was talking. I quickly glanced at the screen and saw that Melvin was trying to call in. I’d have to call him back. “I’m not sure. I just need his name.”