But Not For Lust

by BJ Bourg

  “A tire thumper?” I asked.

  “Yeah, that’s it!”

  “Where is it now?”

  “I don’t know.” Nikia shook his head from side to side. “After we left the field, he drove me home and told me to keep my mouth shut or he would do to me what he did to Ty.”

  “Was that the last time you saw him?”

  He nodded. “He went back offshore Sunday night and I haven’t seen him since.”

  “Was that the last time you spoke to him?”

  “Yeah.”

  “If you knew Ty had been murdered in that field west of town,” I began slowly, leaning across the table, “then why’d you send us on a wild goose chase on the east side of town? You wasted a lot of our time.”

  Nikia melted into his chair. “My buddy told me to do that.”

  “Your buddy’s been offshore since Sunday night,” I reminded him.

  “Yeah, he called me from work and told me he was hearing things.”

  “What kind of things?”

  “He was hearing that search parties were breaking out all over town,” Nikia explained. “He knew it would only be a matter of time before y’all found Ty, so he wanted time to move the body deeper into the swamps. He asked me to do it, but I wasn’t about to go back there.”

  I studied him for a long moment. “What’s your buddy’s name?”

  CHAPTER 52

  Nikia hesitated.

  “I need your buddy’s name,” I said impatiently. “If you can’t provide a name, I’ve got to assume you did everything you attributed to this imaginary friend.”

  “Dillon Watts.”

  He said the name so suddenly that I wasn’t sure if I’d heard him correctly. “What was that?”

  “Dillon Watts,” he repeated.

  Susan and I both looked at each other. I turned back to Nikia and asked, “Aren’t you screwing his wife?”

  He lowered his head and nodded shamefully.

  “So, you’re the one sleeping with Dillon’s wife, but he kills Ty instead of you?” I asked skeptically. “That doesn’t make much sense. Why didn’t he kill you?”

  “I don’t know!” Nikia threw up his hands. “When he came to my house all pissed off, I did think he was there to kill me. He was supposed to be offshore until this coming weekend. I was shocked to see him. I thought my reaction gave me away.”

  “Were you screwing Betty Friday night?” I asked pointedly.

  “Yeah.”

  “Where’d y’all hook up?”

  “At Phoebe’s house in the back of Ty’s street.”

  “Were you with her when she almost ran over Ty?”

  Nikia scowled. “Huh?”

  “She almost plowed over Ty on Friday night when she was leaving her sister’s house,” I explained. “That would’ve been after y’all hooked up. Were you with her then?”

  “No.” He shook his head for emphasis. “I left Phoebe’s house first and walked home. I didn’t even know nothing about that.”

  “But you had to have gotten in her car at some point, because your prints were on the passenger’s side door.”

  “She picked me up on the way to her sister’s house,” he explained, “but I walked home. She brings me home sometimes, but that night I walked.”

  “Did you see Ty when you walked past his house?”

  “No.”

  I was thoughtful. “You were screwing Betty, so why didn’t she tell you about almost running over Ty?”

  “She normally would have.” He scowled. “I haven’t talked to her since Friday. I tried calling her on her hide-away phone Sunday morning to find out what the hell happened with Dillon and why he barged into my house, but it went straight to the message saying she doesn’t have a voicemail set up.”

  “What hide-away phone?” I asked.

  “Oh, she keeps this second phone hidden in a hole behind the toilet so Dillon doesn’t find it.” He grunted. “She had it long before we started talking, so I guess she’s been messing around on him for a while. I asked her about it a few times, but she said I was the first person she ever messed around on Dillon with.”

  I leaned back and considered this revelation. We had checked Ty’s phone and it had only communicated with one number—his mom’s—so there was no way Betty was talking to him from her throwaway phone.

  “Do you think Ty was messing around with Betty?” I finally asked, realizing how absurd the question sounded. In his state of mind leading up to his murder, Ty had been in no condition to have a relationship.

  Nikia scoffed. “Hell, no. She wouldn’t look twice at Ty.”

  “And why’s that?” I fixed him with stern eyes. “What makes you so much better than Ty?”

  He recognized something in my tone and decided not to answer. He simply lowered his head and whimpered.

  “Well?” I pressed. “What makes your ugly ass so special? Why would someone like Betty Watts be interested in a loser like you?”

  My words got under his skin like I knew they would. He sneered and let out a wicked laugh.

  “It’s simple—I give her what Dillon can’t.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “She likes it rough.”

  “Come again?” I asked.

  “She likes to be slapped around and have her clothes ripped off of her.” He shrugged. “Some girls like it rough, and she’s one of them.”

  “And I’m guessing you were thrilled to oblige her.” I fixed him with a stern expression. “So, if I’m hearing you correctly, you’re saying Dillon isn’t a wife-beater like you. Isn’t that right?”

  He squirmed in his seat. “Look, she asked me to do it. I didn’t do nothing wrong. She liked being slapped and having her hair pulled. She wanted me rip off her shirt and bra. Who am I to deny a lady in need?”

  He said the last part with a smirk that I ignored. I needed to stay focused on the real issue and not be sidetracked by my disgust for this idiot.

  “Look, Nikia, I need you to think really hard,” I said after a while. “Why did Dillon do this to Ty?”

  “I already told you,” he said, not even lifting his head. “I don’t know!”

  “There has to be a reason.”

  He only shook his head.

  I glanced at Susan. “Can you think of anything else we need from this prick?”

  Susan nodded and began asking some follow-up questions. When she was done and I had made notes of the information, she turned to me and shrugged.

  “That’s all I’ve got,” she said.

  Nikia finally lifted his head. He looked from Susan to me, his eyes hopeful.

  “So, is that it?” he asked. “Can I go home now? I mean, since I cooperated and all? Can you use me as a witness?”

  “You can’t be serious.” I pulled an arrest report from one of the desk drawers and placed it on the table between us. “You’re under arrest for principal to first degree murder.”

  CHAPTER 53

  Two hours later…

  Susan and I greeted the young secretary and told her our reason for being there. The woman smiled warmly and asked us to have a seat in the lobby. She said her boss would be out shortly to meet with us, and that he was expecting us.

  After booking Nikia Billiot and calling for a transport van to take him to the parish jail, I had figured out which oilfield company employed Dillon Watts. I called, spoke with the owner, and let him know I was in possession of an arrest warrant for his employee. When I told him the charge was First Degree Murder, he had gone deathly silent on the other end of the line.

  “Are you sure you’ve got the right Dillon Watts?” asked the man, who went by the name Tex. “He’s the best derrickhand I’ve got. The man’s as tough as the pipe he fits and he ain’t scared of shit, but a killer? That doesn’t sound like the Dillon I know.”

  “Well, I don’t know what his motivation was,” I said, suddenly going over all of the facts in my mind and searching for a hole in our case, “but a judge signed a warrant, so we’
ve got probable cause to believe it was him.”

  “Okay, then,” he said with resignation in his voice. “How do you want to play this one?”

  We tossed a few ideas back and forth and came up with a plan. We both agreed it would be better to have Dillon brought to us, rather than Susan and I flying out to the rig, so he had promptly put a helicopter in the sky to retrieve Dillon from the platform on which he worked. It was located sixty miles away in the Gulf of Mexico, so Tex told me to take my time getting there.

  “It’ll be a couple of hours before we get him to the office,” he had said. “But I promise you this; he won’t have a clue what it’s about and you’ll be able to get the drop on him. This happens all the time. We fly our roughnecks in for all sorts of reasons. I told the rig manager to tell Dillon we had another land job for him. We pulled him off the rig last weekend for the same reason, so he won’t suspect a thing.”

  That news was golden, because it helped us verify that Dillon had made an unexpected trip home for the weekend, and this removed any potential alibi defense his lawyers might try to raise later. As it was, Tex’s words were starting to haunt me and I began to wonder if we had the right guy. After all, what evidence did we have—other than Nikia’s word—that Dillon had committed this atrocious crime? And what motive could he possibly have for doing what he did to Ty?

  Upon my request, Tex had gotten his secretary to fax a copy of Dillon’s hitch schedule to our office and I’d secured it with my investigative file. Afterward, Susan and I had headed south on Old Blackbird Highway, stopped for a milkshake at a restaurant called Fantasy Slip, and were just now taking our seats in the lobby when the door swung open.

  A short man—whose voice was louder than he was tall—stood there dressed in tight jeans, a tighter shirt, and an oversized cowboy hat. Had anyone asked me, I would’ve said he was trying way too hard to live up to his name, which, I suspected, he’d probably given to himself.

  “Come on in,” he said, sweeping his hat from his head and bowing slightly in Susan’s direction. I saw her grimace, but Tex didn’t seem to notice as he continued talking. “I just got word that they’ve touched down at the helipad. They’ll be here momentarily.”

  When we stepped into his plush office, I glanced around. “Is it customary for your workers to meet you in here?”

  “No, you’ll meet him out back in the yard.” He shot a thumb over his shoulder toward the window. “My port captain’s got an office back there. They’ll call Dillon in and start giving him his new assignment. We’ll wait a few minutes and then you and your partner here can walk in and do your thing.”

  I nodded, glancing past him and out the window. The sun was shining brightly out there and I could see a few men milling about. “Did you tell anyone he’s wanted for murder?”

  “No,” Tex said. “I’m the only one who knows.”

  “Good.”

  Tex started making small talk while we waited. I remained standing so I could watch the activities in the yard. I was only half paying attention to what he was saying. I left Susan to do most of the talking, but she didn’t sound interested in what Tex had to say either.

  After a few minutes of idly listening to Tex talk fondly about his kids back home in San Antonio, a beat-up truck pulled into the yard and parked in front of the office building. A thick man stepped out. He wore a thick, gray sleeveless button-down shirt, loose-fitting jeans that were stained with grease and oil, and a blue hardhat that bore a dozen different stickers. It looked like a high school student’s lunchbox. The man tilted the dark sunglasses up on his forehead and trudged around the truck like a large bear heading for its den.

  “That’s Dillon,” Tex said with excited anticipation.

  I pointed and asked, “Is there a back door to that office?”

  He shook his head. “No, there’s only the one way in and out. Once you walk through that door, you’ll have him cornered.”

  I didn’t know how much I liked the sound of that, but with Susan beside me, I was certain the both of us could take down that big tree—well, pretty sure, anyway.

  “Okay, do you want to take us to the office?” I asked, waiting for Tex to stand.

  “And risk being murdered?” He shook his head vigorously. “No, thank you. Just head back to the lobby, take a right instead of a left, follow the long hallway to the door with the window, and you’ll be in the yard. Good luck and please don’t tell Dillon we set him up. Just make it look like you happened to show up at the right time.”

  I nodded and spun on my heels, rushing out the door and heading straight for the back of the building. Susan was less than a step behind me, and I could tell she wanted to be right beside me to make sure I didn’t cross any lines. I knew I wouldn’t, but I sure wanted to see this guy get what was coming to him. Ty didn’t deserve what Dillon had done to him, and his mom sure didn’t deserve what Nikia had done to her. Both of these bastards deserved to spend the rest of their natural lives rotting away in an eight-by-ten concrete cell while waiting their turn to be executed.

  When we reached the office door, I didn’t bother knocking. I simply twisted the knob and pushed through to the inside. I had shoved my sunglasses on my face so I wouldn’t lose my inside vision, and I quickly whipped them off when I entered.

  Dillon, whose broad back was facing us, didn’t even turn around when the door opened. I caught sight of one of the stickers on the back of his helmet and grunted. It read: I love animals…over rice.

  “Dillon Watts,” I said in a firm voice, “you’re under arrest for the torture and murder of Ty Richardson. Get on your knees and place your hands behind your head.”

  I don’t know what I was expecting from the big man, but I certainly didn’t expect him to be so fast. Without making a sound or even taking a breath, his hand flashed to his belt and he whirled around, sweeping the blade of a large hunting knife directly toward my face.

  CHAPTER 54

  As a rule, law enforcement officers should never bring batons, TASERs, or other less-lethal weapons to a knife fight. A knife is a deadly weapon and the only effective tool for dealing with a knife-wielding assailant is a firearm, and an officer’s best chance for survival is distance. In my case, neither distance nor a firearm was an option.

  Dillon Watts had spun around with such blinding speed that I hadn’t had time to draw my gun and fire. Even if I did, the bullet would not have instantly incapacitated him and I would’ve been cut in the process. Thus, I did the only thing I could do in that situation—I stepped even closer and attacked the arm that held the knife.

  I brought both forearms up and chopped hard against his right shoulder and biceps. He started to draw his knife hand back for another swipe at me, but I slid my left arm over his right arm and jerked it downward. I then grabbed my left wrist with my right hand and hooked his arm in place. I was about to pivot and break his arm when he punched me upside the head with his left fist. Each knuckle felt like the head on a ball peen hammer. I instantly tasted blood and my knees buckled.

  Somehow, I managed to hold onto his right arm. Before he could bring his left fist to bear on my face again, Susan jumped into the fray. The instantaneous struggle had shifted our position, so she had been forced to kick a chair out of her way to gain access to the fight. Her next kick hit Dillon right across the left thigh. Susan had powerful kicks. She could break a leg if she tried—and it looked like that was exactly what she was attempting to do. Only, her shin bounced off the man’s thick leg like she’d kicked a tree trunk.

  The move by Susan had taken Dillon’s attention off of me. I steadied myself and slid my left arm down Dillon’s right arm until it rested behind his elbow. Twisting violently at the hip, I pivoted in a clockwise motion, trying to use my bodyweight to break the man’s arm. A grunt escaped his lips and a small cracking sound was heard, but that was all.

  Out of the corner of my eyes, I caught sight of the port captain as he leapt from his chair behind the desk and scurried around us and throu
gh the door, yelling at no one in particular to call for help, that the two cops inside would need backup.

  At that moment, Dillon reached out and tried to grab Susan with his left mitt, but she threw a straight right punch that crashed into the tips of his outstretched fingers, breaking at least a couple of them. The injury didn’t seem to deter Dillon. He growled like an angry bear and tried to fling me off of him, but I dropped my center of gravity and retained my balance.

  Susan threw a combination of punches—a left hook to the jaw, a right uppercut to the chin, and a straight right to the throat—that snapped the man’s head back and forth and knocked his hardhat to the floor. While he was distracted by the attack, I set my feet and pivoted violently again. This time, the man’s weakened arm snapped like a large tree branch and I heard the knife clank to the floor, joining the hardhat at our feet.

  Dillon didn’t let out so much as a grunt of pain when the arm broke, but the limb was now useless. I let go and was about to sweep his legs out from under him when Susan threw a thunderous kick directly to his groin. The large man froze in place and quivered. Susan reared back and kicked him again, and then again, each one more powerful than the last.

  Dillon cried out in pain and his eyes rolled back in his head. He dropped his left hand with the mangled fingers in a feeble attempt to cover his groin, but Susan kicked a fourth time, destroying what was left of the bones in that hand.

  The big man seemed to teeter on the balls of his feet for a split second before falling like a giant tree—slowly at first, and then picking up steam as he got closer to the ground. He landed with a thunderous thud that caused the small office building to shake like there’d been an earthquake.

  I glanced at Susan and then down at Dillon. The big man’s face was twisted in pain, a scream caught in his throat.

  “Damn, Sue,” I said, wiping sweat from my forehead and bending over to roll him onto his stomach. “I thought you were here to make sure I went easy on him.”