by BJ Bourg
“I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but my girlfriend, Chloe, was murdered the other day.”
His face was thick and blank beneath his Elvis Presley hairstyle. “I was sorry to hear about it. No one should have to endure that pain.”
“And I’m sorry you had to also endure that same pain.”
He only nodded and stared at me, waiting for me to get to my reason for being there. I knew better than to be confrontational, because that would get me nowhere. I had to make him feel like I needed his help.
“I understand Chloe went into your office sometime on Wednesday,” I said. “I was hoping you might tell me what she was after. It might help me retrace her steps and hopefully lead to the killer.”
“I thought that Simon Parker fellow murdered her and then you justifiably killed him in your home. At least, that’s what the sheriff’s office reports indicated, and it was the basis of my decision to not bring charges against you.” Bill leaned back and folded his arms across his belly. “Was that a mistake on my part?”
I didn’t need anyone to point out the idle threat, but I didn’t take the bait. “You see, sir, it turns out Simon Parker didn’t kill Chloe.” I told him about the hidden recorder and how it was connected to Megyn’s murder. “It seems Chloe was looking into your wife’s murder when she was killed herself.”
Bill waved his hand dismissively. “That case has been closed for twenty years. Lance Duggart killed my wife and he’s spending the rest of his life in prison where he belongs.”
“Would it surprise you to know that Lance Duggart was having an affair with your wife?”
The veins in his temple began to throb and I knew he was getting angry. “My wife was not having an affair with that creep! That bastard broke into my house, raped my wife, and then brutally murdered her.”
I looked toward the door and leaned close, lowering my voice. “I’m sorry, but I don’t want anyone to hear any of this. After all, it’s no one’s business.”
He looked over his shoulder, suddenly remembering that we were sitting in a public café. Lowering his own voice, he said, “Jolene never met Duggart. Even if she had, she wouldn’t have had an affair with that piece of shit.”
“So, the relationship with Isaiah Wilson was her only indiscretion?” I thought Bill was going to reach across the table and punch me in the face, but he managed to hold it together.
“That animal stalked and raped my wife!” He glanced over his shoulder and then turned his red eyes back to me. “He’s lucky he died in the ring, because he would’ve died in jail otherwise.”
Ignoring his last comment, I pulled a folder from where it had been tucked in the back of my beltline and placed it on the table. I opened it and removed the sheriff’s office report from twenty years earlier. “I understand the murder weapon containing your wife’s blood was found in Duggart’s garage and his DNA was linked to her rape.”
Bill nodded again, but his face was still red with anger.
“If Duggart wasn’t having an affair with your wife at that time, then who was?”
“Son, if you think I’m going to sit here and let you disparage my wife, you’ve got another thing coming!”
I leaned back and raised my hands. “I’m sorry, but that’s not my intention. I’m just trying to solve a murder—nothing more, nothing less. I want to keep your wife completely out of it, but I need to know what Chloe was after, because it might lead me to her killer.”
“Are you saying you think Chloe’s murder was connected in some way to my wife’s murder?”
“Absolutely.” I told Bill about the conversation I’d had with Duggart, but I left out the part about his mistress. I wanted to save that for later.
“The man’s a rapist and a murderer, so you can take everything he said and wipe your ass with it.” Bill’s face twisted into a sneer. “If I had my way, he would’ve gotten the death penalty and he wouldn’t be around for you to interview anymore.”
“During the course of this investigation,” I began, trying to keep Reginald out of it, “I’ve obtained information about a receipt you found in your wife’s possession before she was killed.”
“Receipt? What receipt?”
“Oh, I think you know the one—it was a receipt from a hotel room in the city for a trip you knew nothing about.”
Bill’s eyes narrowed. “Who told you that?”
“Who told me is not as important as who she was seeing,” I explained. “It seems Duggart never took her to the city, so she had to be seeing someone else.” I paused and let him process that information before continuing. “Or, maybe the receipt wasn’t for your wife after all. Maybe it was your receipt.”
“Son, you’ve got some wild theories. If you don’t watch it, you might find yourself in some real trouble. After all, you just murdered a man in cold blood, so I would tread very softly if I were you.”
“Except you’re not me and I’m not you. Now, are you going to tell me who you were screwing, or am I going to have to guess?”
“I don’t like your tone of voice.” Bill pushed his empty coffee cup and plate of half-eaten beignets to the side and rose to his feet. “I hereby put you on notice that I will be launching a grand jury investigation into your actions with regard to the shooting death of Simon Parker. Now, you try to have yourself a good day.”
“What do you think Isabel’s husband will do when he finds out you were sleeping with his wife?”
“You ought to be ashamed of yourself!” Bill’s face turned to crimson. “After all she’s done for you, you’re going to sit here and slander her good name? Is this how you’re going to thank her for fighting for you and that Wilson girl? Do you realize I almost fired her for standing up to me on your behalf? Do you?”
While a strong feeling of guilt cut me to the core, I couldn’t let him know it. I stood and faced him with a confidence I didn’t feel. “Are you going to make me tell Isabel’s husband, or will you face this head-on like a man and leave her out of it?” Bill didn’t say a word, but he also didn’t walk away, so I figured I had him contemplating his options. “When Jolene cheated on you with Isaiah, it nearly killed you. I know you loved her and I know she hurt you, but you gave her a second chance. And what did she do? She squandered it. You knew she was sleeping with Duggart and you confronted her about it. She promised to break it off, but she didn’t, so you ran into Isabel’s arms.” I paused and nodded for emphasis. “You thought if only you could get revenge on Jolene it would help to even the score—perhaps make the pain go away—but it didn’t.”
“You don’t have a clue what you’re talking about.” Bill’s eyes were bulging and I knew he was on the verge of exploding.
“Then deny coming home early from the conference to find the house empty. Deny waiting in the shadows for her to return from her rendezvous so you could attack her. Deny ripping her clothes off to make it look like a rape, knowing her boyfriend’s DNA would be all over her. Deny planting the knife in—”
“You go to hell, Clint Wolf!” Bill spun on his heel and stormed out of the private room, nearly ripping the door from its hinges as he did so.
I stood staring after him and slowly pulled out my phone. “Did you get all of that?”
“Yeah,” Susan said. “It was pretty intense, but he didn’t confess to anything.”
“I know.” I sighed. “We need concrete evidence before we can go after him, but how are we supposed to get that?”
“Let’s lean on Isabel and see what she has to say. She might even be in on it.”
“Damn, Sue, she’s been good to us—she really has.”
Susan agreed with me and I walked outside to find her standing on the sidewalk near my Tahoe. We both put our phones down when we met up and I frowned. “Is there a way we can get to Bill without involving Isabel?”
“A wise man once told me if you find the motive, you find the killer.” Susan shook her head. “If Isabel’s the motive, there’s no way we can keep her out of it.”
/> CHAPTER 49
After grabbing a bite for breakfast, Susan and I drove to the sheriff’s office and met with Mallory.
“Do y’all think Isabel’s involved?” Mallory asked after we told her everything we knew to that point.
Susan and I traded looks and I shook my head. “She doesn’t strike me as the type to go killing off her competition.”
“What if Jolene was threatening to tell Isabel’s husband?” Susan suggested. “That would be reason enough to kill her.”
“But why kill Chloe?” I asked.
“Chloe was about to expose her relationship with Bill, which could blow the Duggart case wide open.” Susan reached back to fix her ponytail. She had elected not to braid her hair into cornrows that morning, because we had been in a hurry to leave. After she was satisfied with her hair, she pointed to the case file on Mallory’s desk. “She’s got motive, so we need to figure out if she had opportunity.”
“Opportunity to murder is one thing, but if someone other than Duggart killed Jolene, they’d need to possess the knowledge that Duggart was having an affair with Jolene and they’d need the opportunity to hide the murder weapon in his garage.” I folded my arms across my chest. “Bill fits two out of those three elements. We just need to figure out if he had the opportunity to hide the murder weapon.”
“Not so fast,” Susan said. “If Jolene told Duggart who Bill was sleeping with, doesn’t it make sense that Bill would tell Isabel who Jolene was sleeping with?”
Susan had taken a seat on a leather sofa in Mallory’s office and I dropped beside her, my mind turning over every piece of information I’d learned about the case. We all sat in silence for a few minutes until it finally dawned on me. “The knife—we start with the knife that killed Jolene.” I jumped to my feet. “Where’s Doug?”
“He’s been reassigned to patrol,” Mallory explained. “He got drunk one night after you shot Simon and started running his mouth in a bar, telling everyone in the place that they could commit cold-blooded murder if they wanted, just as long as they dragged the victim in their house first.”
I scowled. “Well, one of us needs to talk to him about that knife, and it probably shouldn’t be me.”
Susan and Mallory nodded their agreement.
“What are we trying to find out?” Susan asked.
“We need to know what made him look in the garage.” I rubbed my chin, remembering what I’d read in the file and the pictures I’d seen. “He found that knife in such an obscure place. It was either dumb luck, good detective work, or he knew it was there.”
Susan’s head snapped around. “Do you think Doug’s involved in this? That he planted the knife or—”
“Oh, shit!” Mallory leaned back in her chair. “Why didn’t I think of that? Bill Hedd is Doug’s uncle. He and Doug’s mom are siblings.”
I snapped my fingers, remembering how Reginald said Doug wouldn’t even consider Bill as a suspect because he was the DA. What if the real reason was that Bill was his uncle? “Get his ass in here and interrogate the shit out of him!”
“What’re you going to do?” Susan asked.
“I’m going to have a long conversation with Isabel.”
Susan pulled me aside before I left. “Look, if we clear her of any involvement in the murders, let’s try to minimize the damage to her personal life.”
I nodded my agreement. “She’s been a strong advocate for us and I’d hate to cause her any undue hardship.”
“Right, but don’t let your guard down, either,” Susan warned. “She seems all nice and innocent, but she might be a cold-blooded killer on the inside.”
I smiled to let her know not to worry and left the building. I headed north again to the district attorney’s office, enjoying the sunshine on my face and the wind blowing my hair through the open window as I drove. My mind wandered to Michele as I traveled the lonely highway. How I wish you and Abigail would still be around to see days like today.
CHAPTER 50
An hour later…
Susan sat beside Mallory and they both stared at Doug, who slouched in the chair across from them in the interview room. He looked different in a uniform, and Susan noted how the buttons on the polyester shirt strained to hold the flaps together. It must’ve been a while since he’d worn it and he hadn’t had the chance to upgrade to a larger size.
“Why am I here?” Doug sneered at Mallory. “What’s the matter? You didn’t screw me over enough by having me kicked out of the bureau? What are you trying to do now—get me fired?”
Susan put a hand on Mallory’s arm before she could reply. “Doug, would you prefer to speak with me alone?”
Doug’s face softened a little. “I mean, I’m not sure what this is about, but I don’t trust her anymore.”
Susan turned to Mallory, who nodded and left the room.
When they were alone, Susan opened the folder containing her copy of the Duggart file. She removed the initial investigative report and slid it across the table. “Do you recognize this report?”
Doug studied it and nodded absently as he skimmed the pages. “Yeah, this was a long time ago, when I first made detective.”
“As I understand it, there was some bad blood between you and Reginald Hoffman over this case.”
“Reggie was a know-it-all. He kept telling me I was going soft on Bill because he was the district attorney. He told me I needed to treat him like any other husband of a murdered wife.” Doug leaned back and grunted. “Dumb bastard ‘bout shit his pants when he realized he’d wrongfully accused the district attorney of murdering the wife he loved.”
“Did Reginald think your relationship with Bill was clouding your judgment?”
“It didn’t cloud my judgment. When I interviewed Bill, I treated him like any other suspect—I approached him with respect and pretended to believe he was just a poor grieving husband. I certainly didn’t want to scare him into asking for a lawyer or shutting down.” He shook his head. “Being nice to a murder suspect doesn’t mean your judgment is clouded—it means you’re a smart interviewer.”
Susan nodded and asked again about Reginald’s perception of Doug’s relationship with Bill.
“He didn’t know Bill was my uncle. Hell, no one did until that chief investigator job came open. I applied for it, but Bill did some research and found out he couldn’t hire me because of nepotism rules.” Doug sneered. “Reginald really thinks he got the job because of his great detective work, but he didn’t even solve the Duggart case—I did—and the only reason Bill hired him was because he couldn’t hire me.”
Susan could hear the resentment in Doug’s voice—could almost feel it leaking from his pores. She removed a supplemental report Doug had generated toward the end of the Duggart investigation. “What about this report?”
“Yeah, this was the supplement I wrote when we executed the search warrant on Duggart’s house.”
“So, you’re the one who found the murder weapon and that knife is what sealed Lance Duggart’s fate, right?”
Doug nodded.
Susan removed a picture of an open toolbox from the file. The rusty box had seen better days. The tools inside were covered in a rusty film and there were cobwebs in the corners. It looked as though the tools hadn’t been used in ages. Resting atop all the tools was a new knife covered in dried blood. After studying the picture, she slid it to Doug. “Is this what it looked like when you found it?”
Doug glanced at the picture and immediately nodded.
Susan pointed to the cluttered garbage around the toolbox. “How was it that you were able to find the box under all of that clutter? I mean, what made you think to look under that junk?”
Doug shifted in his seat. It was a slight shift, but Susan caught it.
“Well, you know how it is,” he said, buying time. “When you execute a search warrant, you make it a point to touch everything in the place to be searched. That’s what I did—I didn’t leave a stone unturned or a pile of garbage untouched.”
Susan removed another picture from the file. This one depicted an overall view of the garage. “Is this what the garage looked like when y’all left?”
Doug nodded. “That’s how it looked when we pulled out.”
She pointed to several piles of undisturbed garbage scattered around the garage. “If what you’re saying is true, why didn’t you rummage through all of these piles? It appears to me you went straight to that pile and then stopped—as though you knew exactly where the murder weapon would be.”
Doug fidgeted in his seat again, hesitating for a brief second before answering the question. “Look, when you find what you’re looking for, you stop searching, you know? The murder weapon happened to be in the first pile I searched.” He shrugged. “After finding it, there was no need to rummage through the other piles of garbage. After all, I could tell no one had been through there in a while.”
“Earlier, you said it’s your practice to touch everything in a place to be searched, did you not?”
Doug was squirming now. “Look, Susan, you know how it is. Sure, you usually touch everything during a search, but if you find what you’re looking for, why go through the trouble? We knew the murder weapon was a knife. Once I found it, we were done. I mean, none of the other detectives went through the garage either, so I don’t know why you’re giving me shit over it.”
Susan decided to change her angle of attack. “Why were you mad that Clint didn’t go to jail for killing Simon Parker?”
“Are you kidding me right now?” Doug threw his hands up. “Clint murdered that man! He put a gun in the man’s mouth while he was lying helpless on the ground and shot a hole through the back of his head. He should be in jail, not running around wearing a badge.”
“Clint killed a murdering piece of shit who was—and would’ve continued to be—a menace to the public at large. He risked his freedom to save God knows how many future victims.”
“A murderer is a murderer, and he’s no different than Simon Parker.” He pounded his chest and then waved his arm around. “We don’t get to play judge, jury, and executioner out here. We’re the law, not vigilantes. I believe in the system and I swore an oath—”