by BJ Bourg
“Jeez,” Amy muttered, “they really shredded him.”
I backed away while she took more pictures. The body was in a state of full rigor, which told me he had been dead for at least twelve hours, probably longer. His body was riddled with bullet holes. It had been easy to spot the individual entry holes in the fabric of the hammock, but it would be a challenge to accurately document the path of each bullet through the body.
“We’ll have to wait until the autopsy to accurately document the entry and exit wounds,” I said, visually examining every inch of what I could see of his body. “There are just too many secondary entries and exits.”
“Does it even matter?” Amy snapped another picture. “It looks like one shooter firing one rifle, so what does it matter if the second bullet or the fifteenth bullet was the one that killed him?”
I only nodded. I hadn’t noticed anything remarkable about his shirt, but I froze in place when my eyes caught sight of his right pocket. I pointed. “Look, it’s turned inside out!”
Amy trained her camera on the pocket and zoomed in. “The killer must’ve dug through it.”
“Are you done photographing the pants?” I asked.
She told me she was, so I leaned forward and eased my hand into the pocket. I wriggled my fingers around. It was empty.
“Whatever was in here, it’s gone,” I said. “I’m betting the killer was after the car keys, considering there were no vehicles in the parking area.”
“That makes sense.” Amy slung the camera over her shoulder. “We need to identify this man so we can find out what vehicles are registered to him. That might lead us to the suspect.”
She was right. I checked the other front pocket, but it was also empty. Tilting the body a little, I checked the left back pocket. Also empty. Amy grabbed him and tilted him in the opposite direction, and that was when I hit pay dirt. In the right rear pocket there was a wallet with a driver’s license inside.
“His name is Chad Pierce,” I said, holding the driver’s license so she could photograph it. “He’s from the northern part of the parish.”
“Want me to call it in?” Amy asked. “Run a check for family and vehicles?”
“Please do.” I secured the wallet in an evidence bag and then bundled up the bloody hammock for transport. The parachute material was thin and I was able to roll it into a tight little package.
CHAPTER 10
While Amy called our dispatcher to run a name inquiry on Chad Pierce, I studied the picnic table at the neighboring campsite. A Coleman stove was on one side of the metal table and a small propane bottle was about a foot away from the stove. A plastic box of snacks was resting on the bench on one side of the table and an ice chest was on the ground next to it. A Sprite bottle, a half full—or half empty, depending on how one viewed life—gallon of water, and two Solo cups were also on the table.
Two Solo cups.
Inside the sealed ice chest, there was a plastic bag filled with trash and I quickly rifled through it. There were a total of six paper plates, six forks, and six plastic cups in the trash bag, along with scraps of scrambled eggs, a half eaten hot dog, and a hamburger patty—breakfast, lunch, and dinner for two people.
Most of my attention had been on the hammock and the area around the tent. Up to that point it had been possible that the male victim was the only person out at the campsite, but it now became clear that there had definitely been someone else at this site.
“We’re looking for a second camper,” I called out, straightening and staring at Melvin, who had ventured off into the trees. He stopped and turned when he heard my voice “We don’t know if this person is the shooter or another victim, but there were at least two people out here.”
“What’s your hunch?” Melvin asked. “Was this another victim or a shooter?”
I pondered the question for a second. “I’d say it’s another victim. The shooter crept up on the camp and opened fire from across the trail. Had he already been in camp, there would’ve been no need to walk over there to launch the attack.”
He nodded. “Okay, then, I’ll widen my circle and look for sign.”
Amy had ended her call with the dispatcher and picked up her satellite phone. We were about to move our equipment nearer the tent to search for more evidence when Regan called out, “Susan’s here and she’s got pizza.”
It was only then that I realized how hungry I was. I hadn’t eaten since breakfast. What had begun as a quick walk in the swamps to be followed by a meal at M & P Grill had turned into this. I shook my head and grunted to myself. Such was the life of a detective. We never knew when we would be called away to investigate a crime, so we had to eat whenever and wherever we could.
I smiled when I saw my wife marching up the trail carrying three boxes of pizzas. There was a backpack slung over her shoulders.
“I’ve got drinks in the bag.” She set the boxes on a nearby log and shrugged out of the backpack. The smell hit me almost immediately and my stomach growled.
Amy and I wasted no time eating. I wolfed down three slices of pizza and chugged down a can of Coke in record time, while Amy ate two slices and drank a bottle of tea. Melvin forewent food and continued scouting the woods around the campsites.
When I tossed the empty Coke can in a bag Susan had brought along for the trash, I asked about Grace.
“I brought her to your mom’s house,” she said. “She can stay there until tomorrow—later if necessary.”
I nodded, thanked her for the food, and went back to work. As Amy and I headed for the tent, I heard Susan tell Melvin that she had asked Takecia to cover his shift. Takecia Gayle was one of her patrol officers who had previously worked the day shift, but was recently transferred to the night shift thanks to Amy being promoted to detective. Takecia worked opposite Melvin, so she was the natural choice to cover his shift.
“Stay out here as long as you’re needed,” Susan told Melvin, “and don’t worry about the town.”
“Got it,” he said. “And thanks, Chief.”
I glanced over my shoulder and watched as Melvin melded back into the shadows of the deep swamps. For a man his size, he was like a ghost in the forest. If the killer was still out there, he was now in grave danger.
After Amy photographed the exterior of the tent, we dropped to our knees and took turns crawling inside. I entered first. The main tent pole had been snapped by a bullet and I had to hold it up for Amy to follow me.
Holding it high, I leaned back so Amy could take pictures of the interior. When she was done, I began searching for anything that might give us an indication as to the identity of the second camper.
I found a rucksack that contained a pack of batteries, a bottle of Benadryl, and some other odds and ends. When I was done, I handed it to Amy and she placed it on the ground just outside of the flap.
A bottle of bug spray was on the floor of the tent and a flashlight was near the pillow. I lifted the pillow and examined it carefully. It was later in the afternoon now and the sun was going down, casting long shadows and making it darker inside the tent.
“Do you have your flashlight?” I asked Amy.
She did and pulled it out. When she aimed the beam of light at the pillow, I saw a long blonde hair dangling from the fabric. As I started to hand it to Amy, I caught a whiff of perfume.
“This belongs to a woman,” I said, handing it carefully to Amy. “No man would wash his hair with shampoo that smelled like this.”
She gave it a sniff and nodded. “You’re right, but this is no woman.”
I glanced up as she carefully tilted the pillow and indicated the print. My stomach turned and I felt the pizza I’d just eaten start to rise to the surface. If the pattern was any indication, then this was a young girl. But if she wasn’t here, then where was she? I hadn’t found any blood yet and that was a relief. It meant she was still alive and unhurt, but how was that possible? The logs that surrounded the tent had taken the brunt of the ballistic beating and that might’ve sa
ved her life, but had that been a good thing or a bad thing? If she had been kidnapped by a sadistic man, she might be suffering a fate much worse than a quick death.
And what of those logs? Who had placed them around the tent, and why? Had someone known they would be attacked? I shook my head, none of it making any sense. At this moment, all I knew for certain was that we had a man down and a tent shot full of holes. That we had a missing girl on our hands was a strong possibility. When investigating missing person cases, minutes mattered and a quick response could mean the difference between life and death.
With renewed urgency, I pulled back the sleeping bag, intent on searching every inch of this tent to see if the girl had left anything behind. The tiniest clue might help us determine who she was and what had happened to her, and the sooner we found those clues—
“Clint!” Amy said from where she knelt directly behind me, interrupting my thoughts. She was pointing over my shoulder and toward the ground. “What do you make of that?”
I lowered my eyes to the floor of the tent and sucked in a mouthful of air.
CHAPTER 11
I hurriedly crawled outside, bumping the side walls in my haste. The tent rocked violently, but I didn’t care at that moment. My heart raced with excitement. I stood to my feet and moved from one corner of the tent to the next, carefully inspecting the stakes. The trail ran east to west in this area, and the tent pad was positioned parallel to the trail. This tent had been positioned with the front flap facing the east, and I began my inspection at the southeastern corner. I worked in a clockwise manner and stopped cold when I reached the northwestern corner, my suspicions confirmed.
“No shit!” I said, dropping to a squat.
Amy had burst out of the tent behind me and followed my every move with a curious expression on her face. Her brow furrowed upon hearing my exclamation.
“Well?” she asked impatiently. “Are you going to tell me what you found, or am I going to have to beat it out of you?”
I simply pointed to the yellow stake on the ground near the corner of the tent. It had been dislodged and a clump of mud was stuck to the pointed end, leaving behind a jagged hole in the mixture of pea gravel and dirt.
“What about it?” she asked. “Someone declared war on this tent and shot it all to shit, so I would expect the corner stakes to come loose. What does that have to do with the—” She suddenly clamped her mouth shut and her eyes widened. “Oh, wait—I get it!”
I nodded and turned toward the ever-darkening forest. “Melvin!” I hollered, unable to see him anymore. “I’ve got something I need you to see!”
When Melvin reappeared from out of the trees, I ushered him into the tent and showed him the long slit in the floor.
“That was made with a knife,” I said, to which he nodded his agreement.
Next, I led him outside to the northwestern corner of the tent. First, I pointed to the dislodged stake and then my finger moved to the stack of logs that had been knocked over.
“Someone—we believe it to be a young girl—cut an escape hole through the floor of the tent and crawled under the tent to this corner,” I explained. “She knocked over this stack of logs as she escaped the massacre attempt. I think this would be a good place for you to start tracking her.”
Melvin’s face lit up. “This is gold, Clint!”
Amy and I stood back as Melvin inspected the area. He was forced to use his flashlight, but he was tracking the girl within seconds.
“She dragged herself across here,” he said, indicating the ground north of the tent. “She’s barefooted and, based on the distance between her fingers and her toes, I’d say she’s about five-seven.”
“That’s a tall girl,” I said, pulling my notepad from where I’d tucked it into my waistband. I made a note of Melvin’s findings. He continued tracking the girl away from the tent, dictating as he did so. “She crossed over this dead log. You can see where she clawed through the dry leaves and fallen moss.”
Amy and I were standing off to Melvin’s right, careful not to interfere with his work or disturb the ground in the area. The trail led directly to a large oak tree and then around it. From there, it continued into a thick stand of palmettos.
“This girl is smart,” Melvin commented, straightening to brush a bead of sweat from his forehead. “She took her time getting to this tree and then she used it to cover her backside. From here, she stood and started running. A blind man could follow her from here.”
I looked back toward the campsite, which was about fifty feet away now. There was still a lot of work to do and darkness was falling fast.
“Amy and I have to finish processing the scene and get the body out of here,” I said. “Want me to have Regan cover you?”
“No need for that.” Melvin waved his hand dismissively. “No one followed her. She got away clean. As for the suspect, I couldn’t find any signs of him leaving the trail. That means he either flew out of here in a jet or he stuck to the hard-packed earth. He’s definitely no fool.”
I shoved a thumb in my front pocket and scowled. “If the girl got away clean, then where is she? Why didn’t she go for help? Why didn’t she call out to us? If she’s still out there, she must’ve heard us by now.”
Melvin’s eyes drifted from me toward the dark swamps to the north. “You know as well as I do that there are a million ways to die in the swamps, Clint,” he said sadly. “I would be very surprised to find her alive at this point.”
That declaration turned my mood sour. I only grunted and turned back toward the camp. It would be a tragedy for this young girl to survive such a vicious barrage of gunfire only to succumb to an accidental death in the swamps.
I glanced over my shoulder at Amy, who was close behind me. “Can you get on the SAT phone and ask Beth if she found out anything about Chad Pierce yet?” I asked. “I want to know if he has a daughter.”
“Sure thing.”
Beth Gandy was our weekend dispatcher. Before becoming an employee with the Mechant Loup Police Department, she had been a victim of a horrific crime. My heart had immediately gone out to her and we later hired her as a dispatcher. She was a good woman and had proven to be an excellent employee. If anyone could find out everything there was to know about our victim, it would be Beth.
“Oh, damn,” Amy mumbled, “Beth tried calling me a couple of times. I switched the SAT phone to silent when we started processing the scene and never realized it.”
“You should’ve put it on vibrate,” Susan said, approaching us from the trail.
“Nah, it would’ve felt too much like a boyfriend.”
As the women laughed, I sauntered off to prepare a body bag to receive Chad Pierce’s body. Regan noticed what I was doing and walked over to help. She grounded my rifle and grabbed Chad’s feet while I hooked my wrists under his arms.
“Ready?” I asked.
She nodded and we lifted the man from the ground and placed him gently onto the bag. I had to push on him to break the rigor so he would fit inside the bag.
Once the bag was zipped up, I set about collecting our gear. I had decided to close up the tent and take the entire thing with us. I wanted the inside processed for DNA at the lab, just in case we’d need it to identify our victim later—if she was ever found.
Amy had been standing to the side talking quietly on the phone. She ended the call and walked over to help me fold up the tent.
“Beth ran Chad Pierce’s name through every database known to man. Other than his driver’s license info and a dark blue Jeep Grand Cherokee registered to him, he’s clean.” Amy handed me her corner of the tent and I matched it with the one I was holding. “She then scouted social media and found his Facebook page. According to his profile, he’s married to Wanda Pierce, who’s a redhead. Wanda’s tagged in his profile picture, and so is a young blonde-haired girl named Alice Pierce.”
“What does tagged mean?” I asked, pausing to stare blandly at her.
“It’s when you link a photo
that you post to someone—”
“I’m kidding,” I said with a smile. “I know what it means.”
She eyed me suspiciously as I finished bundling up the tent. “I’m not so sure…you are old enough to remember the end of the war.”
I cocked my head to the side. “The Gulf War?”
“No, the Revolutionary War.”
An involuntary burst of laughter ripped from my lips and this caused her great pleasure, but I quickly sobered up as I turned my attention back to the girl.
“So, we’re probably looking for Alice Pierce.” I carried the tent to the trail and grounded it near Chad Pierce’s body. “Do we have a picture of her?”
Amy nodded and handed me the phone. I pulled the screen close and studied the picture. There were two girls in the photo, a brunette on the left and a blonde on the right, and they were seated in front of a tent on a beach. The blonde had bright blue eyes and long hair. She wore jean shorts and a pink T-shirt, and there was a leather strap around her right wrist.
My heart sank as I studied the picture. She looked twelve. I handed the phone back to Amy. “I sure hope Melvin finds her alive.”
“If anyone can bring her back, it’s him.”
She was right and I knew it, but no one could predict what had happened in the hours since the attack. If she was already dead, there was nothing anyone could do for her.
“Beth also contacted the sheriff’s office and asked them to be on the lookout for the Grand Cherokee,” Amy said. “She asked about the death notification, but I told her to hold off until we knew more about the situation with the girl.”
“We also have to get a proper identification on the body,” I said. “His face is too damaged and bloodied to distinguish his features. For all we know, that driver’s license photo could’ve been planted on the man in the hammock.”