by Tom Lowe
“There’s a flip side?”
“Sure, Bill. If we didn’t have the Boyd Baxter’s around the state, we wouldn’t have jobs.”
“I retire in six years. I don’t think there will be a let up in crime, giving the county the option to offer me early retirement.”
“You can bet the farm on that. Speaking of the farm, we ought to be coming up on Baxter’s place. The last address I could read on one of those dented mailboxes was 1609 Dry Creek Road. A bullet hole was in the center of the zero.”
“Dry Creek Road. Wonder where they came up with that name? When we leave, we’re gonna have to take this car through the wash and detox it.”
“Baxter’s address is 1717 … meaning it’ll be on the left-hand side of the road.”
“That’s assuming he has a mailbox.” Lee grunted.
After another two hundred yards, Bradford slowed the car. “There it is, 1717 Dry Creek. Let’s go see if the man who uses a chainsaw for a living has any dismembered victims hidden around the property. I hate to sound so cynical, but he’s got the criminal history and the apparent temperament. Maybe he had nothing to do with the two murders. But I bet you in a few minutes, we’ll both have a hell of a lot better idea after we talk with him and do the scratch-and-sniff tests.”
Bradford stopped the car. The driveway was dirt and partial ruts, a much worse condition than the road. The front portion of the property was fenced with three strands of barbed wire, some of the wire rusted and sagging. One post leaned nearly to the ground as if it had rotted away at the base. There was a Keep Out sign nailed to a fence post closest to the driveway. Bradford pulled the car off the road and onto the private drive, dust billowing up and settling across the windshield. He turned the wipers on just to be able to see down the driveway.
“I can make out his house from here,” said Lee. “You have the warrant in your jacket?”
“Yeah. Let’s hope we can get close enough to this guy to show it to him. I’m betting this isn’t the first time a search warrant has been used to come on his property.”
Lee shook his head in agreement. “No doubt. He did jail and a little prison time. Mostly related to assault and battery. But this is probably the first time two detectives, like you and me, came down this long and dusty road to see if the guy living at the end of it is a murderer … who fits the profile of a potential serial killer.” He pulled his 9mm Beretta from his shoulder holster inside his sports coat, ratcheted a round into the chamber, and slid the pistol back into the holster.
Bradford said, “We’ve been in these kinds of places before in our careers chasing bad guys. Since he’s off work, he might have pulled the cork and already is deep into whisky-land.”
“I have a gut feeling there’s going to be some friction with this guy.”
“We’re about to find out.”
They drove fifty yards down the winding driveway, an old trailer coming into view. Next to it was a black pickup truck. A Confederate flag hung motionless from a pole mounted to the far right of the trailer. Two rust-colored chickens strutted in the sandy ground. Behind them six A-frame coops stood in the shadows to the left of the trailer. A large pit bull on a long chain was leashed near the truck, the dog already barking a warning to whoever was inside the home.
TWENTY-TWO
Boyd Baxter stood inside his trailer holding a bolt-action Winchester rifle. He walked next to a small window in the kitchen, parted the curtains with one dirty finger and looked outside into his yard. Baxter’s ruddy hair fell across his face, almost into his bloodshot, blue eyes—eyes that didn’t blink, seemingly to absorb the scene in one fixed gaze.
Rocky was barking and raising hell as two strangers kept their distance next to a car they’d parked on his property. Baxter could tell the men were cops. Their sports coats and haircuts could have given that away. But it was something more—it was as if he could smell the smug attitude all cops wore on their faces like the badge on their belts.
“Sign says keep the hell out,” Baxter muttered in a whisper. He left the kitchen, walking into a den with a TV on one wall, a twelve-point buck mounted and hung above the screen. A bobcat displayed on a wooden stand in the corner, the bobcat’s back arched, face twisted in a snarl, yellow glass eyes opened wide, sharp teeth bared. Baxter used the end of the rifle barrel to lift one blind slat on the window. The cops were trying to make peace with Rocky, the dog pacing.
• • •
Detective Lee watched the curtains on the windows in front of the trailer. He noticed one blind raise up for less than three seconds. He turned to Bradford and said, “He’s in there. Saw the blinds move. I’d bet he’s locked and loaded. What do you want to do?”
“What we came out here to do.” Bradford walked closer to the dog and said, “You can calm down big fella.” The dog stopped barking for a moment, tilting its square head, listening. “Atta boy,” Bradford continued. “We mean you no harm. I know you’re just doing what your DNA tells you to do.”
The dog uttered a low growl. Lee half smiled and said, “I’ve been your partner for almost three years. Didn’t know you were a dog whisperer.”
“It’s all about your body language. Dogs can sense and smell fear in people and other dogs. You just gotta act like the pack leader, and they need to believe it.” Bradford looked at the front of the house and shouted, “Boyd Baxter. I’m Detective Mike Bradford with the Forrest County Sheriff’s Department. My partner is Detective Bill Lee. We need to speak to you. Just need to ask a couple of questions. You might be able to clear some things up for us.”
They watched as the front door slowly opened, and Boyd Baxter stepped out onto the porch with a rifle in his hands. Both Bradford and Lee pulled their guns. “Put the rifle down!” Lee shouted. “Now!”
Baxter started a slow grin, his eyes shifting from Lee to Bradford. “You two fellas come on my property, land that’s posted with Keep Out and No Tresspassin’ signs, and you stand in the center of my land and have the gall to tell me to put my gun down? Best I recall, the Second Amendment to the Constitution gives its citizens the right to keep and bear arms. “I’m bearin’ my arm now ‘cause I’m standin’ my ground, and I don’t know who y’all are. You say your cops, but I need to see some sort of identification.”
“Put the rifle down,” Bradford said. “You do that, and we’ll holster our guns. We’ll walk up on the porch and show you our IDs. It’s just a little difficult with a large pit bull standing in the way.”
Baxter said nothing, keeping his eyes on the men. A breeze came from the north, the leaves of a large willow tree rustling. Baxter looked at his dog and said, “Rocky, stand down.” His dog snorted and sat on its haunches, the chain no longer tight and pulling at his wide, leather collar. Baxter used one hand to set the rifle within three feet of him, leaning the gun against the siding. “Okay, y’all walk around my truck, keep your distance from Rocky. Lemme see some ID.”
Bradford and Lee nodded. They walked to the right of the parked truck, the dog to the far left. A large rooster stood at the top of an A-frame coop and crowed. The detectives stepped up on the porch, not taking their eyes off the man standing so near to his rifle. Bradford said, “I’m reaching in my jacket to get my ID. After that, Detective Lee will do the same. And we hope that after that … we can have a civilized conversation where guns aren’t a factor.”
Baxter nodded. “We’ll see how things play out.”
Bradford held up his badge and identification picture and credentials. Baxter looked at it, nodded. He did the same with Lee’s ID and said, “Okay, y’all seem legit. What do you want?”
Bradford said, “We’re investigating the murders of Olivia Curtis and Brian Woods.”
“Names don’t ring a bell.”
Lee said, “Where were you the evening of September twenty-five. That was Monday, last week.”
“Right here in my house.”
“Can anybody corroborate that?”
“Are you askin’ me if somebody was h
ere with me?”
“Yes,” Bradford said.
“I live alone. Got me a lady friend, but she wasn’t here then.”
“What’s her name?” asked Lee.
“Donna Haynes.”
Lee wrote down the name on a small pad in his left hand. “Where’s your lady friend live?”
“Y’all sure askin’ me a lot of personal questions.”
“Murder is personal,” Bradford said.
“Not always,” Baxter said, grinning. “Regardless, I didn’t kill the two people you named. Murder is against my religious beliefs, unless it’s in self-defense, then it ain’t murder. It’s just a killin’ ‘cause it’d be you or the other person.”
Bradford half smiled. “What kind of religion do you practice?”
Baxter shifted his eyes from Lee to Bradford and said, “The only kind. God’s Word.” He took one small step to his left and motioned toward a plaque to the right of the door, two feet below a wooden cross mounted to weathered siding. One sentence was engraved across the center. Baxter looked the detectives in the eye and said, “It says … No one who practices deceit will dwell in my house. No one who speaks falsely will stand in my presence. That verse comes from Psalms … it pretty much sums up my philosophy about this life in one sentence.”
Lee looked at the words and asked, “How do you interpret that verse from the Bible?”
“It don’t need no interpretation. Speaks loud and clear. Like ol’ Popeye said … I yam what I yam. I don’t care who likes or dislikes it. I tell it the way it is, brother.”
Bradford looked up from the plaque, holding his stare into Baxter’s eyes and said, “You tell it more than the way it is with women. You made sexually suggestive remarks to a waitress at the Front Porch Café. Her manager told you to leave, and then you became belligerent with her. She threatened to call police—us, if you didn’t leave. She told us anyway.” He glanced down at the plaque and said, “Yeah, you may have a Bible verse plastered near your front door, but that doesn’t mean you practice what it says. You have quite an arrest and incarceration record that goes back to the time you were fourteen. You got a thing with fire, burnt a neighbor’s barn down and killed two horses in the process.”
“That was a long time ago.”
“The last incident was battery against your ex-wife.”
“Cast the first stone, Detective. Ever’ man has got his weakness. Devil’s always putting temptations of the flesh in his way. Maybe I should go back to that restaurant and apologize to Miss Donnelly.”
“How’d you know her last name?” Bradford asked. “Her name tag only says her first name … Wanda.”
“Must have come up in conversation. Ask her.”
“We did,” Lee said. “She never told you her last name.”
“I will not call the woman a liar, that’s for God to judge.”
“A vehicle was parked outside Mrs. Donnelly’s home. What were you doing there?”
“I wasn’t there. You fellas say you’re here to ask me if I killed two people and why I spoke out of character to a young lady. I don’t see the connection, if any. So, if y’all excuse me. I need to run some errands.”
“You’re not going anywhere until we’re done,” Bradford said. “Those are two of the reasons we’re here. There’s more.”
“What do you want?”
Bradford slowly reached in his coat pocket and pulled out the search warrant. “To look inside your place. This is a search warrant. Let’s leave the rifle on the porch.”
TWENTY-THREE
Elizabeth kept hearing the Latin words resurrect in her thoughts like a ghost wind, sending chills down her back. The language on the recording kept calling to her in a grisly, subliminal command. Et roborabitur fortitudo eius in hora mortis. She sat back in her chair, her desk lit from a single bulb in a goose-neck lamp, stacks of student papers all around her. She attempted to read and grade each one, but her subconscious wouldn’t let her do so. She whispered, “You shall be strengthened by His presence in the hour of your death.”
She stared at her computer screen and keyed in the words. She read, “Christ knew the day and hour of his death … but that is not for man to know … unless a person acts in a premediated way to cause the death of someone. It’s a misplaced conviction of infallibility … privilege … superiority … the God complex. First articulated by psychologist and neurologist Ernest Jones in 1945 after witnessing the horrors of Nazi Germany.”
Elizabeth rubbed her temples, trying to make and frame a mental picture of the killer. Could it fit the image of the man I briefly saw in the restaurant three days ago? Privilege? Infallibility? Maybe. She’d have to spend time interviewing him. She picked up her phone and placed a call to Detective Mike Bradford. After three rings, the call went to his voicemail. “Mike, it’s Elizabeth. When you get a moment, please give me a call. I’ve been thinking about something I want to run by you. Thanks.”
• • •
Father MacGrath didn’t want to make the call. Never in three decades as a Catholic priest has he ever had a similar reason to call the bishop. MacGrath sat in his small office at St. Patrick’s Catholic Church and considered his next move. He looked at his cell phone near the center of his desk and thought about the audio recording he’d made in the confessional. He thought about the disturbing conversation that prompted him to hit record, and the guilt he felt in doing it. The palms of his hands felt moist, a dryness and thirst in his throat that even water could not appease.
He pressed the play button on his phone and listened to a portion of the recording. He wanted to close his eyes and see if he could place the voice with any member of his congregation. “ … and you, Father, cannot break the holy seal of sacrament under the code of canon law. I feel a sense of redemption. I feel forgiven in His eyes. I feel born again!”
He thought about one member of the parish, a military veteran who had served tours of duty in Afghanistan, Syria, and Yemen. The man walked with a slight limp, the visible result of a shrapnel injury that tore through his Achilles and knee. What wasn’t so visible was the internal injuries to the man’s spirit. The PTSD—the anger. But was he the same man whose voice was on the recording? Army veteran Matthew Long. He didn’t speak in a whisper, but more of a speech pattern like someone who had nothing to prove. Nothing to gain. Not much reason to even speak anymore.
Father MacGrath picked up his phone and made the call he never anticipated he’d be forced to make. When a receptionist at the archdiocese in Jackson answered, Father MacGrath identified himself and asked to speak with Bishop Maurice Mann.
“I’ll see if he’s available, Father.”
After a few seconds, a deep voice answered. “Father Gregory MacGrath, to what do I owe the pleasure of your call? It’s been too long. You better not be retiring on me. The parishioners in Hattiesburg aren’t ready to give you up.” Bishop Mann sat in his office behind a large antique, mahogany wood desk. He’d found it in Rome twenty years earlier and shipped it back to the parish in New Orleans where he served. The walls in the office were lined top to bottom with books, most related to the Catholic religion.
Father MacGrath managed a smile. “I have been contemplating retirement, but not immediately, and that’s not why I’m calling you.”
“What is it then?”
“I need to drive up to Jackson and speak with you. And, it’s extremely urgent.”
“Absolutely. May I ask the nature of the matter?”
“I believe a member of my parish is a murderer. He told me so in confession. He asked for our Lord’s forgiveness while suggesting he would kill again if not stopped, boasting that his confessional secret will remain confidential.”
TWENTY-FOUR
Detective Bradford wasn’t about to let Boyd Baxter out of his sight. He and Detective Lee stood in the small living room, Baxter’s back to the kitchen area. Bradford looked at the seven mounted animal trophies in the one room alone. “You like to hunt?” he asked, holding his pho
ne and covertly pressing the record button.
Baxter folded his arms across his chest, his small mouth alternating between a grin and a frown—like he was not sure how to answer. Under the light, Bradford could see a shine on Baxter’s forehead. “I did at one time,” he said, voice changing, more of a heartfelt whisper. “These animals remind me never to go back to killin’ just for sport, like I done for so long. Too long, really. I found God and understand that all his creatures want to live just like us. Who am I to take that God-given right away from them?”
“How about people?” Bradford asked. “You think all races have the same rights? Black, white, red and yellow?”
“Just ‘cause I got me a Rebel flag hangin’ on my property, it don’t make me a white supremacist. That would be a subjective judgment on your part, Detective Bradford. All folks, under God’s eyes, are equal. I learn’t that while in prison. And confirmed it when I was released and attended a sanctified camp meeting, under a big tent way back in the Holy Springs National Forest, thirty miles north of Oxford, Mississippi. That’s where I heard the Prophet Elijah speak to the crowds. I was a changed man after that revelation.”
Lee said, “I’ll think about that and your philosophy bolted to your door as I have a look around your place.”
“Y’all mind me askin’ you what exactly you’re lookin’ for in my house?”
“Evidence,” Lee said.
“What kind of evidence.”
“I’ll know it when I see it.”
“How do I know y’all won’t plant some fake evidence in my house and slap the cuffs on me for murders I did not commit?”
“That’s not how we operate,” Bradford said, his voice firm. “If you did those murders, I promise you one thing … we will find out. So, why don’t you and I have a seat in here while Detective Lee has a look around? We can talk biblical principles and how they’ve meant nothing to you for more than two decades of run-ins with the law.”
“When a man confesses his sins, and does so with true conviction, Jesus reaches out to him.”