by BJ Bourg
“I guess so.” Betty folded her arms across her chest and met Susan’s gaze. She had changed into dress jeans and a loose-fitting blouse. She now wore makeup—lots of it.
Susan decided to question her again right there in her front yard, but—try as she might—she couldn’t get Betty to admit to having an affair with anyone. She repeatedly professed her love and unwavering devotion to Dillon.
“I’m not that type of girl,” she said to Susan. “I would never cheat on my husband.”
Although Betty contradicted herself a few times and Susan even caught her in an outright lie at one point, she continued to insist that she was faithful to her husband and that there had never been a man at Phoebe’s house when she would visit.
“Every now and then, we just like to get together and have a girls’ night out,” she said flatly. “I’m sure you know how that goes.”
After Susan realized it was a waste of time interviewing Betty, she and I proceeded to Phoebe’s house. Once again, I let Susan do all the talking. While Susan was as skilled an interviewer as there was, Phoebe was as stubborn a person as I’d ever seen—equally as stubborn as Betty. Even when faced with absolute proof of the contradictions between her story and Betty’s story, she never wavered in her denial.
At one point during the interview, Susan suddenly asked, “How many times have you slept with Betty’s boyfriend?”
“Never!” Phoebe blurted.
That question came right after Phoebe had finished answering a different one about Logan Pitre and whether or not she’d ever spoken with him.
“Has he ever flirted with you?” Susan asked smoothly, without blinking an eye. But it was too late—Phoebe had recognized her error.
“I…I meant to say that she doesn’t have a boyfriend,” Phoebe said after stammering for a moment. “Betty would never do that to Dillon. She saw how much it hurt me when Burt cheated on me. She would never do that herself.”
Although Phoebe tried to show confidence in her statement, I could see that there was a sense of sadness in her eyes. She was fiercely loyal—I had to give her that—but it appeared she did not approve of her friend’s extramarital affairs.
Susan worked every angle she could find, but Phoebe would not budge. She simply would not give up her best friend and former sister-in-law.
“We only need to know the name of this mystery man so we can question him about Ty,” Susan had finally said as she began to wrap up the interview. “We don’t care about the affair and no one will ever find out.”
Phoebe had grunted and said, “That’s what you think. Word travels so fast in this town that Dillon will find out long before you even get to the front of the street—and he’s way out in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico.”
When Susan pointed out that Phoebe had all but admitted Betty was having an affair, the woman only shrugged and said, “I’d die before giving up my friends. Now, if you want to know about my ex, I’ll tell you every single one of his dirty secrets, beginning with how he’s hiding his earnings from the IRS. For years now, he’s been accepting cash for certain jobs and not reporting it.”
CHAPTER 45
“You’ve got to admire her loyalty,” I said when we stopped at M & P Grill to pick up plate lunches for everyone at the office. The restaurant served a seafood dish every Friday, and today it was shrimp spaghetti, corn, garlic bread, and a small salad.
“I guess so.” Susan carried the individual food containers while I carried the cans of drinks. “I’d die with your secrets.”
“Not me,” I said with a shake of my head as I steadied the drinks against my chest with one arm while I opened the door with the other hand. After setting the drinks down on the console, I climbed into the driver’s seat. “I’d sell your secrets to the first tabloid that paid me ten bucks.”
She chuckled. “And what secrets do I have that are worth ten bucks?”
I thought about it as I pulled to the edge of the parking lot. When traffic had cleared, I drove onto Main Street and scowled. “I can’t think of a single secret you have that you wouldn’t want people to know. You’re as close to perfect as anyone I know.”
“Please!” she said with a grunt. “I can give you a long list of names who’ll fight you over that statement.”
“There might be some people who don’t like you, but you don’t have any embarrassing secrets.”
“For starters, I wouldn’t want anyone knowing that I murdered a poor innocent frog that one time.” Even mentioning it made her shiver a little. The look of disgust was so real on her face that I didn’t even laugh. “And I wouldn’t want them knowing that I’m forever afraid of frogs now and that I have to throw my boots around like a crazy person to make sure one hasn’t crawled inside.”
While my face was stone cold expressionless as I drove, my insides were in stitches. At dinner one night on a cruise ship during our honeymoon, Susan had told me that her fear of frogs stemmed from an incident that happened when she was a little girl. She used to wear these little red boots every time it rained, and one day the ditches had flooded and she was in a hurry to go play outside. She had kicked off her sandals and shoved her right foot into the boot, smashing a frog that had crawled inside. She had described the scene in great detail, and seemed really disturbed by it all.
“Your secret is safe with me, Love,” I said as we stepped from my Tahoe and trudged up the steps, carrying the food with us. “They’d have to pay me a hundred dollars to reveal that one.”
She took a step away from me to create some distance and then shot a fast, but playful, round kick to the back of my leg. It didn’t hurt because she didn’t want it to hurt, but the potential was certainly there.
“You’re lucky I want another baby,” she said playfully as we pushed through the door. “Otherwise, I would’ve aimed for your bread basket.”
I laughed. Lindsey looked up from the book she was reading and saw us enter with the food. We barely had time to drop the food in the break room when she was making an announcement over the intercom that lunch was served.
“Hey, Lindsey, is that Clint?” Amy shouted from her office. Her voice sounded as demanding as ever, and I was glad to hear it. “Is he back from interviewing that girl?”
I followed the sound of her voice and found her approaching the door to her office at a slow walk.
“Oh, good, you’re here.” She stopped and teetered where she stood when she saw me, putting out a hand to regain her balance. “Now I won’t have to bust my ass in front of everyone—just you.”
I stepped forward to help steady her, but she waved me off.
“I’ve got it,” she said in a voice that told me not to argue. “I need you to see something.”
I waited until she had lowered herself into her chair. I then crowded her side of the desk, looking at her computer monitor.
“Okay, so I ran every name you had in that little notebook, but nothing stood out as odd. No one had priors for kidnapping or murder, and nothing in their past suggested they would grow up to be some sadistic killer.” She minimized the screen that was up and maximized another. “I began checking their social media footprints. I’ve learned that J-Rock couldn’t rap for shit, Neal likes taking pictures of money and rings, Ty likes to write poems about shrimp boats, and two of your witnesses are screwing each other.”
She said the last part so casually that I wasn’t sure I’d heard right. “Wait…what?” I asked.
After sliding the mouse back and forth across the desktop and making some images disappear while others appeared, she finally stopped and leaned back when she located the picture she was looking for. It was of a birthday party and there were dozens of people in the room. I recognized Betty Watts sitting at a picnic table. She was holding a small saucer with a piece of cake on it in her left hand. She held a fork poised in her right hand. I leaned forward to study the other pictures carefully. I pointed to a man sitting on the opposite end of the table from Betty.
“Is that Nikia Bil
liot?”
“It sure is.” Amy nodded and smiled triumphantly. “He’s screwing Betty. Well, she could be screwing him. I’m not positive about the exact arrangement. Either way, they’re doing the nasty and she’s married—but not to him.”
I scowled and studied the picture again. They were on opposite sides of the table, and Nikia wasn’t even looking at Betty. His eyes were focused on the piece of cake in front of him.
“How do you know that?”
Amy pointed to another man who sat close to Betty. “You see this guy?”
I nodded.
“That’s Betty’s husband, Dillon, and he’s doing the talking in the picture,” she said. “Is Betty looking at Dillon?” Without waiting for me to answer, she said, “No, she’s looking at Nikia. Everyone else is looking at Dillon, but she’s looking at Nikia.”
“Come on, Amy,” I said, studying the picture for a third time. “How can you deduce that by simply looking at this picture? She could be looking at Nikia because he said something in response to what Dillon was—”
I suddenly stopped talking and clamped my mouth shut. More importantly than whether or not they were sleeping together was the fact that they knew each other.
“Hold up,” I said slowly. “So, the woman who almost hits Ty in her car is at the same birthday party as the man who calls in a tip to the police department about Ty being on the opposite side of town, when, in fact, Ty was eventually found behind her house?”
Amy shot me with an imaginary pistol. “Bingo!”
“Huh!” I leaned back and pondered the meaning of this new revelation. Had Nikia really seen Ty Sunday morning, or had he called in a fake report to throw us off the scent? By drawing us to the east side of town, it had delayed the discovery of Ty’s body. Had that been the plan all along? Was he hoping we’d never find Ty? That was a strong possibility.
“Now, it could be a coincidence,” Amy said when I didn’t speak again. “This is a small town, so it’s quite possible that the fact that they were sleeping together and also involved in this case is purely coincidental, but, like Clint Wolf always says, I don’t believe in coincidences!”
Amy had changed her voice to mimic mine, and she did a horrible job of it.
“I don’t sound like that,” I said.
“Oh, yes you do sound like that,” Amy sang, and then immediately spun her chair around to face me. “You need to get Nikia back in here right away. By my estimation, he’s got some explaining to do.”
I nodded, still wondering if Nikia was capable of murder and torture. It didn’t take me long to make up my mind. He was a wife-beater, so I figured he was capable of anything.
CHAPTER 46
I drummed my foot impatiently on the floorboard of Susan’s Tahoe as she drove us to Nikia’s house thirty minutes later. Along with Lindsey, Baylor, and Amy, Susan and I had taken time to devour our food before heading out. One thing I had never been told in the police academy was that cops should eat, sleep, and use the bathroom every chance they got, because they never knew when they would get the chance to do any of it again.
Such had been the story of my life, and it began immediately upon hitting the streets of La Mort as a young patrol officer. I had missed more meals during that first month than I had during my entire lifetime. But that had not dissuaded me from making a career out of law enforcement work—it had only helped me modify my behavior to maximize my preparedness.
“Do you think he’ll run?” Susan asked as she crossed the bridge and entered the east side of town.
I grinned inwardly. The sole reason I’d asked her to drive was so I could spring out of the vehicle in a hurry if Nikia decided to run.
“I don’t know,” I admitted, “but if he does, I’ll get to him first.”
“And do what with him?” she asked. “We don’t have a warrant, so he’s got every right to run from us. For all we know, he could be simply going for a fast jog.”
She was right. I had no authority to chase the man down and tackle him into custody. Sure, he might have called in a false complaint, but it was also possible that he had simply made a mistake about the man’s identity. Even if he had intentionally lied to me about Ty being in his neighborhood, I would never be able to prove it unless he confessed—for how could anyone ever prove what another person did or did not see? Without evidence of a crime, I could not establish probable cause for an arrest. That meant he could tell me to take a flying hike and there was nothing I could do about it. If he simply refused to talk or asked for a lawyer, our conversation would be over—and so might this case.
“I might not be able to tackle him,” I said mischievously, “but there’s no law that says I can’t go for a jog with him and catch up to him. If he believes he’s about to get face-planted into the concrete and gives up, who am I to argue?”
Shaking her head, Susan parked in front of Nikia’s house. I glanced toward the street where he claimed to have seen Ty walking. Something about what he had said suddenly set off alarm bells in my mind.
After taking a quick glance toward Nikia’s house and seeing no movement, I walked to the street where Ty had supposedly been walking on Sunday morning. I could feel Susan’s presence beside me, but I knew she would also be keeping an eye on Nikia’s house.
“What is it?” she asked me when I stopped near a power pole on the corner.
“Nikia described what Ty was wearing, and he even claimed to have seen a rip in Ty’s shirt as he walked right past this area.” I stopped talking long enough to indicate the power pole next to us. “There’s no light on this pole. How in the hell could Nikia have seen all of that detail in the dark?”
“That’s a very good question, and one I’m sure he’ll be eager to answer.” She indicated Nikia’s house. “He just peeked out of the window.”
I nodded and—after taking a picture of the pole—we approached the house. I was sure Betty had called him by now and told him what she had told us, but as long as we could get him talking, we should be able to get the truth out of him. He had been in the system before, and—while an idiot—he would be able to recognize when we had him dead to rights, and he would be looking to make a deal. While we didn’t make deals with suspects, that sure didn’t stop them from trying to deal with us. Fingering someone else for a crime was always a bargaining point with criminals. If I was a gambling man, I would bet my house that he’d throw Betty overboard if it meant he would get the only life preserver.
Susan and I took up positions on either side of the door and I knocked loudly on the wall of the house.
“Nikia, it’s Clint Wolf,” I called. “I need to talk to you about Ty.”
The door instantly swung open. Nikia stood there staring down at us, fidgeting and licking his lips. “Where’s that mean wolf you had with you last time?”
“He’s home.”
“Well, that’s good. At least now I don’t think you’re here to kill me.” His voice cracked when he spoke. He coughed to clear his throat. “I…um…I heard y’all found him. Is it true what they’re saying?”
“And what’re they saying?” I asked pointedly.
“Well, I heard he was killed—murdered.”
“Yep, this is a homicide investigation,” I said, lifting an eyebrow. “That’s why everything you say from here on out is very important. You wouldn’t want to go down as an accessory to murder, am I right?”
He shook his head hastily from side to side. “Oh, no, I didn’t have nothing to do with no murder! I ain’t going down for no killing!”
“That’s good to hear.” I sighed, as though happy to hear that he wasn’t involved. “I know that’s not how you roll. Do you mind coming down to the police department? You might be able to help us figure some things out.”
“I don’t know if I can be of any help.” He licked his dry lips. “I don’t really know anything. I saw the man walking in my neighborhood on Sunday morning and I did the right thing and called it in, but that’s all I know.”
“Okay, well, if you insist.” I took a step forward. “We can do this inside your house, but I’ve got to warn you—anything I see in plain view is fair game.”
“Um, how long do you think this’ll take?” he suddenly asked, glancing over his shoulder as though he were trying to remember if he’d left any drugs or other paraphernalia lying around. “I mean, if I agree to go down to the police department?”
“It shouldn’t take more than an hour.” I shrugged. “Maybe less. It all depends on how much you can help us. We’ll give you a ride back, so you don’t have to worry about driving.”
After quickly locking his door and closing it behind him, he rubbed his hands together. “Okay, I’m ready.”
CHAPTER 47
On the drive to the police department with Nikia Billiot, Susan and I made small talk with the man, trying to get him to feel at ease with us. I didn’t like talking to him, considering the type of person he was, but in order to obtain information from suspects, witnesses, and victims, detectives had to be cordial to all types of people—the good, the not so good, and the absolutely despicable.
We arrived at the police department a short time later and I pointed the way to the interview room, letting him go first. Once the three of us were seated inside, I advised him of his Miranda rights and began asking him about the night he saw Ty. I pressed him on his description, asking if he was positive about the articles of clothing Ty was wearing.
“Yep, that’s what he was wearing,” he said with a nod of the head. And he happened to be right.
“Where were you when you saw him?” I asked, studying my notes as though trying to find the answer.
“I was sitting on my steps smoking a cigarette,” he said.
“How far away do you think he was?”
“Oh, I’d say ten or twenty yards.” He thought about it, and then nodded. “Yeah, I played football in middle school, and I’d say he was about twenty yards away.”