by BJ Bourg
“I don’t see Dickie,” Susan whispered from beside me. I could tell she was scanning our surroundings in search of him. Melvin and Takecia were out in the fog somewhere. We hadn’t heard from them since Takecia told Melvin she was fine, but I knew they were probably also trying to track Dickie and Patricia.
“This is the last time I’ll say it, Patricia—drop the gun!”
Still holding the shotgun in her right hand, she lifted her left hand. “Okay, okay…I’ll surrender,” she called loudly. “I’m going to drop my gun and walk over to where you and your girl are standing by the tree with the two forks.”
She was signaling our location to Dickie!
I caught movement to my right and whirled around as fast as I could, but Dickie had already drawn a bead on Susan. Even as the muzzle of my rifle moved toward him, I knew I would be too late. Panic started to set in. I opened my mouth to speak—to tell Susan to get down—but the words weren’t coming fast enough.
All of a sudden, and just as Dickie was pulling the trigger, the water beneath him exploded in violence. The bullet splattered harmlessly against a tree trunk a few inches from Susan’s face, but Dickie wasn’t so lucky. The biggest alligator I’d ever seen was back, and Godzator had latched onto Dickie’s right thigh. His scream was shrill and deafening.
“No!” Patricia turned angrily in our direction and lifted her shotgun. I whipped my rifle around and fired from the hip, cutting loose with three rapid-fire rounds. I heard the report of Susan’s rifle beside me. She fired at least two rounds. Patricia reacted to each of our shots by flinching, and then she dropped to her butt in the water, the shotgun falling from her limp hands. Her mouth moved, but no words came out. Her eyes slowly slid shut and she crumbled under the surface of the water.
Dickie’s screams had been reduced to a low moan. We moved in his direction, hoping to fight off Godzator and rescue him, but he was beyond help. The large beast had ripped a chunk of flesh from Dickie’s neck and blood was squirting freely from the wound.
“Should we shoot it?” Susan asked, her finger poised on the trigger of her rifle. “That is Godzator, right?”
I nodded, surveyed the area. “Let’s get out of the water before he comes after us.”
Susan didn’t argue. We hurried to where we’d last seen Patricia and I reached down to search for her in the water, but winced in pain and quickly straightened.
“Are you okay?” Susan asked.
I took a deep breath and a sharp pain stabbed at my ribcage. “I think I broke a rib.”
Susan nodded and reached under the water. While she felt around for Patricia, I kept an eye out for Godzator. I didn’t want to shoot him, but I also didn’t want to be eaten today. Susan found Patricia’s shotgun first, handed it to me. Next, she came up with the woman’s arm. “I’ve got her!”
I grabbed Patricia’s other arm and helped Susan drag her toward the camp, which was some eighty yards away now. I kept looking back over my shoulder, expecting to see those large eyes and snout sticking up out of the water and bearing down on us, but we made it to the camp without being attacked. Just as we arrived, Melvin and Takecia were wading through the water toward us, guns in hand.
“Clint!” Melvin rushed forward to help us with Patricia’s body. “Are you okay?”
“Godzator’s in the water,” I said to Melvin. “We’ve got to get out of here.”
I’d never seen him move so fast. He hooked his arm around Patricia’s neck and pumped his legs like pistons, churning toward the dock and ripping her from our grasp. Susan and I struggled to keep up with him, but couldn’t. We finally scurried up the ladder after him and fell to our backs on the landing, tired and breathless.
In spite of my exhaustion, I couldn’t help but notice how the water had plastered Susan’s shirt to her body, revealing all of her curves. Her breasts rose and fell with each breath she took—
“Damn, Clint!” Melvin’s voice ripped me from my thoughts. He was pointing toward the holes in my shirt. “She got you good.”
Grunting, I sat up and lifted my shirt to examine my vest. I fingered each of the jagged rips in the vest and could feel the pellets, all nine of them—double-aught buckshot. None had gone through, but the pain was intense and I had to force myself not to wince with each breath I took and every move I made.
“You’re lucky,” Takecia said. “I knew of one cop who was shot with buckshot and all of the pellets got stopped by the vest except one. The one that didn’t get stopped hit two vital organs and killed him.”
She was right—I was lucky and I knew it.
“What happened after the initial shots were fired?” Melvin asked, shoving the toe of his boot against Patricia’s body to make sure she was dead. “I caught sight of her heading back toward the camp, so Takecia and I gave chase. When we got here we couldn’t find her. At first I thought she’d set up a trap, so we took our time approaching and searching the house, but it was empty. We had just finished the search when we heard the second volley of gunshots. That’s when I realized we’d lost her in the fog and she must’ve doubled back to ambush y’all.” He paused to wipe a bead of nervous sweat from his forehead. “We didn’t know what the hell was going on or what we’d find when we got back to the pirogues.”
A pounding of boots on hollow planks brought our attention toward the network of boardwalks leading away from the Raymond camp and through the swamps. The morning sun had mostly burned off the fog, so visibility had increased. Through breaks in the thick cypress forest, we caught glimpses of the four Chateau deputies making their way toward us. One was a sergeant and they were all on the SWAT team. When they reached our location, their eyes collectively moved to Patricia’s lifeless body.
“So that’s what all the commotion was about.” The sergeant hoisted a large duffel bag higher on his shoulder. “We would’ve gotten here earlier, but we ran into a heavily armed group of men heading this way. Apparently, they were summoned to fight beside the Raymond clan. They were told someone was trying to steal their land.”
I glanced in the direction from which they’d come. “Where are they? Did y’all have to engage them?”
The sergeant shook his head. “When they realized it was a law enforcement matter, they lowered their weapons. I didn’t want them changing their minds and jumping us from our six o’clock position, so I asked them to temporarily surrender their weapons. They agreed and I promised to leave the weapons here for them to retrieve later.”
I thanked them and then looked out over the swamps toward where we’d last seen Godzator and Dickie. “Melvin, why don’t you and Takecia stay here with Patricia’s body?”
He followed my gaze. “There’s no way you’re getting back in that water!”
“You’re right.” I shot my thumb toward the deputies. “Susan and I will follow them along the boardwalks and hitch a ride to your boat. We’ll retrieve the pirogues and then meet y’all back here so we can process the scene and try to recover Junior’s body and what’s left of Dickie’s.”
“And after that,” Susan said, “we’re getting dressed for a wedding.”
CHAPTER 47
Sunday, April 16
I stood there all alone, fidgeting. The sweat was beginning to build in the palms of my hands. I wiped them on the tail of my black coat, wondering if it was a violation of wedding protocol. The tux I’d rented was fitted perfectly and the black shoes shined like glass, and I hated all of it. I felt better in loose-fitting clothes that were disposable. I preferred boots that were broken in and rugged. If I got a stain on the tux or scuffed the shoes, I’d probably have to pay extra, and that was something I certainly didn’t want to do.
“How’re you feeling?” asked Isabel Compton out of the corner of her mouth from several feet away. She was the First Assistant District Attorney for Chateau Parish and she officiated weddings in her spare time. She was a loyal friend in the district attorney’s office and it was an easy choice for Susan and me.
“I’m ready to eat,” I said, lou
der than I’d expected. My mom gasped and shoved a finger to her lips. She was sitting in the front row with my adopted dad and the man who’d raised me, Ezekiel Wolf, and he chuckled when he saw how Mom responded.
They both knew I didn’t like being the center of attention, but here I was, standing at the front of a room that was arranged to face my direction. I couldn’t wait for Susan to join me, because then every eye would be on her.
I scanned the front row and smiled when I saw my sister and my biological father sitting beside Susan’s mom. They all smiled back and Susan’s mom wiped away a tear that had rolled down the side of her face. In the row directly behind them, Amy Cooke and her boyfriend were seated beside Melvin’s wife and their daughter. In the next row back was Lindsey, Beth, Baylor Rice, who was one of our dayshift officers, some girl I’d never seen before, and Mayor Cain.
When I’d introduced all the members of our department to my biological father, Garvan, he had taken a look around and asked, “If the whole department’s here, who’s guarding the town?”
That’s when I’d introduced him to Sheriff Buck Turner, who had been so kind as to send a deputy and a dispatcher to handle complaints in Mechant Loup until Baylor and Beth could get back to the police department. He had also sent a team of detectives to help us process the shooting scene on Tuesday, and it allowed us to finish in half the time it would’ve normally taken.
In addition to law enforcement officers, we called in a team of alligator trappers who searched high and low for Godzator, but he had once again disappeared. When they gave the green light, we went into the water to recover Junior first and then what was left of Dickie. It was a gruesome recovery and we were able to fit Dickie’s body parts into a child-sized body bag.
The autopsies were straightforward. Doctor Wong completed them Wednesday morning and turned over the projectiles from Patricia and Junior. Once we delivered the projectiles to Tracy Dinger at the crime lab, we were able to determine that I had fired the fatal shot that killed Patricia, and Susan had killed Junior.
Armed with all of the evidence, we had worked overtime to complete our reports before the wedding, and they were now sitting at the district attorney’s office for review.
I caught Sheriff Turner staring at me. When our eyes locked, he pointed to his rib cage, mouthed the words, “How’re your ribs?”
He had come by to visit me in the hospital once we’d wrapped up the investigation and got back to town. I didn’t want to go, but Susan insisted, saying she wasn’t taking a chance that a broken rib might puncture a lung and ruin the wedding. Since she put it that way, I begrudgingly agreed to visit the emergency room. After two hours of waiting and x-rays, I was given a clean bill of health—or, rather, the news that several of my ribs were bruised, but nothing was broken. I was given discharge papers and a prescription for pain killers, but the prescription went in the garbage without being filled.
I was about to give Sheriff Turner a “thumbs up”, but music suddenly began playing and I turned toward the long hallway that led into the reception room. Melvin and Takecia were walking arm-in-arm in exaggerated fashion, like you were supposed to during a wedding.
Since Melvin and I had been through so much over the past few years, I was proud to call him my Best Man. Takecia and Susan had shared several pints of blood and sweat in the gym as sparring partners, and she was the obvious choice for Maid of Honor. Other than Melvin and Takecia, we invited about twenty-five close friends and family and called it a day. We wanted a short and simple ceremony and, so far, things were working out just fine.
After Melvin took his place beside me, Takecia moved off to my right and we all faced the back of the room as the bride’s song began to play. My heart thumped with anticipation in my chest. At Susan’s insistence, we had traveled to the cruise ship terminal in separate vehicles and I hadn’t been allowed to see her in her wedding dress. Hell, I didn’t even know what it looked like or what color it was. She had gotten with her mom and my mom and they’d kept it a closely guarded secret. Once, about three weeks ago, I’d walked in the living room at home while they were discussing it and they thought I overheard something about the dress. Even though I swore I’d heard nothing, they scrapped the dress they had decided on and went with something else.
But the time had finally come and I would get to see my bride in all of her glory. To me, she was beautiful in her fighting clothes, in her police uniform, in her pajamas, or even in a burlap sack. It didn’t matter what she was wearing, but I knew this moment was important to her. It was special—like the day she’d put on a dress to deliver me a cake on my birthday. She had gone through all of this trouble for me, and I couldn’t wait to see what she’d done with herself.
As the song played on, the double doors at the back of the room slowly opened and I caught my breath when I saw her. I wasn’t a good judge of wedding dresses, but I knew she made that dress look more beautiful than it ever could on anyone else. She seemed to float through the opening and her eyes searched the front of the room until she saw me. She smiled warmly and the dimple on her left cheek seemed to sparkle. She never took her eyes off of me as she moved forward and I couldn’t look away. From the second she said she would marry me, I knew how lucky of a man I was, but it wasn’t until this very moment that it really hit home for me—I would get to go to bed next to her every single night and wake up with her every morning for the rest of my life.
“I know I didn’t do anything to deserve you,” I said silently, “but I’ll thank God every day for being so generous and bringing me such an amazing wife.”
I smiled wider. She was about to become my wife…and I loved the sound of that.
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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
But Not Forlorn (Aug/Sep 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
Click here to visit BJ's website and join his mailing list to get the latest news on upcoming releases, appearances, and more.
Like BJ Bourg on Facebook
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 Order 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
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