Hollow Bond (A Magnolia Parish Mystery Book 2) Read online

  HOLLOW BOND

  A Magnolia Parish Novel

  (Book 2)

  __________________

  BY

  BJ BOURG

  www.bjbourg.com

  HOLLOW BOND

  A Magnolia Parish Mystery Novel by BJ Bourg

  This book is a work of fiction.

  All names, characters, locations, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination, or have been used fictitiously.

  Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, locales, or events is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved.

  No portion of this book may be transmitted or

  reproduced in any form, or by any means, without permission in writing from the author, with the exception of brief

  excerpts used for the purposes of review.

  Copyright © 2016 by BJ Bourg

  ISBN-13: 978-1535103350

  ISBN-10: 1535103353

  Cover design by Christine Savoie of Bayou Cover Designs

  PUBLISHED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  Contents

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  CHAPTER 44

  CHAPTER 45

  CHAPTER 46

  CHAPTER 47

  CHAPTER 48

  CHAPTER 49

  CHAPTER 50

  CHAPTER 1

  10:37 PM, June 15

  Seasville, LA

  Getting beaten to death is bad enough—but to be left naked and dead on the side of the road? That was just cruel.

  Like it or not, I had to respond. It wasn’t exactly how I wanted to spend my Friday night, but dead bodies didn’t investigate themselves, so it looked like my plans were once again going to have to take a back seat to my job.

  I rushed into some jeans and a shirt, shoved my holster into my waistband, and snatched my Beretta 92FS 9 mm semi-automatic pistol off the nightstand. As was my habit, I pushed the slide back slightly to make sure there was a bullet in the chamber. As usual, there was and I pushed it into the holster until it clicked securely in place. I’d received three calls from my partner, Dawn Luke, since first being notified by the dispatcher, and my phone started screaming a fourth time as I made my way out the door. I answered on my way down the sidewalk to my unmarked Crown Victoria and said, “I’m coming!”

  “That’s what you said ten minutes ago.” She tried to disguise her impatience. “Just hurry. I’ll be waiting at the office.”

  I sped out of the apartment driveway and within minutes was swerving into the Magnolia Parish Sheriff’s Office substation parking lot. I smashed the brake pedal, didn’t even put the car in park. Dawn was already standing outside—a folder in one hand and her crime scene box in the other. Even in the dim light I could see her Glock tucked into the paddle holster on her snug-fitting jeans. At three inches north of five feet tall, she had a body that was in perfect proportion to her height. Since I could easily bench press 250 pounds—seventy-five more than my own bodyweight—I figured I could easily lift her 125 pounds over my head. That is, if she let me.

  Although she was small, Dawn packed one hell of a punch, as I’d learned when we were arresting a suspect a few years earlier. He was a big fisherman, loaded with dense muscles that came from hard work, not from pumping iron in the gym. For some unknown reason, he objected to being hauled off to jail for beating his wife. We’d struggled for a bit on the dock and I found myself backed up against a creosote piling, with his rough and cracked bear paws wrapped around my throat. His arms were at least three inches longer than mine and I couldn’t deck him in the face, so I was left trying to free myself from his death grip. I was struggling to get air into my constricted throat and beating on his arms when I saw Dawn’s fist flying through the air. Her knuckles glanced off the side of the man’s ear and headed straight for my face. I couldn’t move out the way fast enough and took the full force of her punch under the left eye. It cut me good and was swollen for a few days, but I didn’t mind—her second punch had landed to the back of the man’s spine and dropped him like a giant oak tree. It wasn’t the first time she’d saved my ass and I was sure it wouldn’t be the last.

  Dawn pulled the back door open and tossed the box onto the seat, then jumped in beside me. She pushed a tuft of brown hair out of her eyes and flashed a perfect smile. “’Bout damn time! Know where we’re going?”

  “Route Twenty-Three, on the other side of Jasper.”

  Jasper was a small town on the eastern end of Magnolia Parish. It marked the very edge of our jurisdiction to the east and an area that was often overlooked by patrol deputies because of the lack of activity. I shook my head, remembering the last time I’d visited Jasper. No one complained about a lack of activity on that night four years ago. I had been called to work the rape and murder of two teenage girls and, although I’d seen a lot in my years as a detective, I wasn’t prepared for what I’d found. It was the closest I’d come to vomiting on a crime scene. I couldn’t believe anyone could be so evil. I was even more shocked later when I arrested Cedric Dempster for the crime. He was a kind and decent-looking man—well, expect for his eyes—and one who would normally go unnoticed in a crowd. His actions brought the small town of Jasper to its knees and forever changed the way parents supervised their children in that area.

  “I called Jim Marshall,” Dawn said. “According to him, the only person who touched the dead guy was a medic. Marshall walked the medic to the body himself and they were careful not to step on anything. The victim had no heart rhythm, so they backed away and roped off the area.”

  Jim Marshall was a bulldog of a man and a good shift lieutenant. I didn’t mind getting called out when he was on shift, because I usually had less to do when I arrived. I turned left and raced north on Highway Three. It was a forty-minute drive to where Highway Three intersected with Route Twenty-Three, and another twenty minutes to Jasper. Dawn was right to be impatient, because we had to get there in a hurry. The longer it took for us to arrive, the greater the chances of the scene being disturbed or contaminated. It didn’t smell like rain outside, but it was summer in southeast Louisiana and a rain storm could form out of thin air and drop boatloads of water on any given day.

  I glanced at Dawn. Her brown eyes sparkled in the flashing dash lights as she leaned forward, focused on her phone—probably making notes about the initial call-out. Movement in front of us brought my attention back to the road and I sucked air when I saw that we were approaching a line of slow-moving cars at breakneck speed. I quickly swerved around them—acting like I meant to—and then eased back into
the right lane. Once my heart had slowed to its normal cadence, I asked Dawn if she knew how the victim had been killed.

  “I didn’t ask Marshall.” She went on to describe how some lady had been driving to New Orleans when she came upon a man’s nude body on the shoulder of the road. The lady had whipped her car around and headed back the way she had come, calling nine-one-one in the process.

  I ran my hand across the back of my close-cropped hair, sighed. “Why couldn’t she just keep driving like a normal person?”

  “What’s the matter? I remember not too long ago when you’d fight someone for a murder case, and now you’re complaining? You getting too old for this?”

  “It’s not that,” I said, my thoughts turning to my seven-year-old daughter. “Samantha’s coming over tomorrow night. I wanted to get some rest and then get the apartment cleaned up.”

  I saw Dawn smile in my peripheral vision. She always got excited when I talked about my little Princess. Samantha was Dawn’s partner in crime, as she called her, and Dawn had threatened on more than one occasion to adopt her right out from underneath Debbie and me.

  “Did you give her the bear?” Dawn asked.

  “Haven’t had a chance yet. I was hoping to do it tomorrow.”

  “She’ll love it. I still can’t believe you took vacation days for that.”

  “I’d do anything for her.”

  “I know you would.” Changing the subject, she asked hesitantly, “How’re things between you and Debbie?”

  “Not great. She won’t even talk to me unless it’s to yell about how I screwed up her life and how she wished she’d never met me.” I shook my head. “It’s usually the same crap every time I call to talk to Samantha...she screams and curses until she’s ready to stop, then she drops the phone to the table and tells Samantha it’s me.”

  “At least she isn’t stopping Sam from talking to you.”

  “She’d better never try to keep her from me. If she did, I’d...” I frowned. What would I do? What could I do? Take her to court? And say what? I sure couldn’t deny being away from home so much for work that it took several weeks for Samantha to realize me and her mom had separated. I couldn’t deny working the night Samantha was born. I couldn’t deny missing birthdays, school functions, and dance recitals. I couldn’t deny putting my work before my family. I wasn’t proud of it, but I couldn’t deny any of it. Maybe Debbie was right to be angry. Maybe I was to blame for the separation. “Sometimes I think I should just transfer out of detectives for good or just leave law enforcement altogether.”

  “Don’t even think that! First off, law enforcement is in your blood. You’d die without it. Second, you just got back to detectives and I’m not letting you leave again. Debbie’s wrong to punish you for doing what you love.”

  “She says I love my job more than I love her and Samantha.”

  “Don’t listen to her. She doesn’t know shit. They’re the reasons you work so hard to keep this parish safe. If she doesn’t realize it, then that’s her problem. When Samantha grows up, she’ll know how important you are to this community. She’ll understand and she’ll appreciate all you’ve done—I’ll make sure of it.”

  I stared into her eyes for a long moment and she stared back, unwavering. We then rode in silence, me with my hands gripping the steering wheel and Dawn with her arms folded across her chest. Why couldn’t Debbie be as understanding as Dawn? How had I picked so wrong when choosing a mate?

  CHAPTER 2

  Route Twenty-Three was a sixty-four mile, four-lane highway that ran east to west and cut through the center of Magnolia Parish. The portion of the highway that extended through Magnolia was forty-eight miles long. It was lined on either side by marshland and dense forests, with the exception of the four-mile strip that served as Main Street for the quaint town of Jasper.

  It was 11:45 PM when we passed the welcome sign. The lettering had long ago faded and the harsh Louisiana weather had taken large bites out of the wooden frame over the years. The sign itself was spooky, but combine it with the lack of traffic and deep shadows cast by weathered buildings and the place looked like something straight out of a Stephen King movie.

  A gas station that still accepted cash only, a tattoo parlor, and a Chinese restaurant were the key attractions along that portion of Route Twenty-Three. A smattering of mom-and-pop shops and houses filled in the rest of the roadside, but they blurred by. Before we knew it, Jasper was in the rearview mirror and we were once again plunging through the darkness of the eerie swamplands, where giant cypress trees stabbed the sky and ancient oak trees reached out and hovered menacingly over the highway.

  Within minutes, brilliant flashes of blue lashed out at the darkness about a mile ahead of us and I slowed as we made our approach to the scene. Two fully marked patrol cruisers were positioned in the middle of Route Twenty-Three, one east of the scene and one west, and they each blocked the entire lanes of traffic. A length of crime scene tape extended from the bumper of one of the cruisers to a tree on the east-side shoulder of the highway. Within the area secured by the tape, I caught sight of the bloodied corpse, positioned on its face a yard, or so, from the white line of the highway. I parked behind the nearest patrol cruiser and angled my car so the headlights would illuminate the crime scene. Leaving the lights on, I shut off the engine and grabbed my notebook from the center console.

  Dawn was already at the edge of the crime scene tape when I walked up. She began her duties by adjusting the focus on her camera and shooting several photographs of the area. While she did that, I walked over to Lieutenant Marshall.

  Jim Marshall hitched up his patrol belt. His breath was labored and beads of sweat raced down his forehead, but it was not unusual for the three-hundred-pound man. “This lady—Sally McGregor—was driving by and saw something on the highway,” Marshall began. “She wasn’t real sure what it was, so she pulled over and backed up. Well, I tell you, she ‘bout shit her pants when she saw that bloody mess. She whipped it around in the road and drove like hell out of there. She called nine-one-one and waited by Gretchen’s One Stop until I got there.”

  I swatted at a mosquito and scanned the area. “Were you the first one to get here?”

  Marshall nodded, mopped his forehead with his sleeve. “Andy got here a few minutes after me, and the ambulance got here right after him.”

  I glanced toward Dawn. She had moved closer to the body and was crouched beside the lifeless figure. “Did the medic move the body?” I asked.

  “Didn’t have to, or want to. He put the monitor leads on the poor bastard’s back. There was no sign of life, so he packed up and hit the road. I think he was happy he didn’t have to handle the body. I didn’t recognize him, so he had to be new. Must’ve been his first stabbing.”

  I looked back at Lieutenant Marshall. “You think it’s a stabbing?”

  Marshall shrugged. “Don’t know for sure, but he’s all bloodied up like a stab victim. I’ve never seen—”

  “Brandon, get over here,” Dawn called from where she was squatting near the body.

  I nodded to Jim, walked toward Dawn, and ducked under the crime scene tape. I picked my way across the blacktop, careful not to step on anything that might be evidence. I stopped near her, stared down at the body. The man was about five feet, ten inches and looked to be slightly overweight. Blood covered his back, legs, and arms. His hands extended straight above his head in the direction of the highway, as though he were reaching out for it. “Looks like he’s trying to hail a cab,” I muttered, leaning closer and squinting to see better. It was impossible to determine the victim’s hair color—everything was caked in dark red. I turned to Dawn. “What’d you find?”

  She pointed to the area of the pavement around the body. “There isn’t much blood on the road around him, and most of the blood on his back has dried.”

  I nodded. “You’re right. He wasn’t killed here.”

  “He also hasn’t been dead very long. I haven’t checked his temperature yet
, but he still feels warm.”

  “Check his jaw.”

  With a gloved hand, Dawn gently turned the man’s head and pulled on his jaw. It opened, made a grating sound. “No rigor mortis is present.”

  “What was that sound?”

  “It feels broken.” She carefully explored the side of his facial structure and head with her fingertips. As she applied pressure, the tissue seemed to give way under the gentle force. “The bones in his face and skull feel shattered.”

  “This could be a beating.”

  “Or a hit and run.”

  I glanced up and down the roadway. “If so, there’d be a bit of blood on the road. Also, he’d be wearing clothes.”

  “Maybe he was hit so hard it knocked him right out of his clothes,” Dawn said, continuing with her field examination of the body, photographing as she went. She paused after a few minutes, turned to me. “You know, even if we clean this guy up, we’ll never be able to get an idea of what he looked like.”

  “His face is that messed up?”

  “Structurally, it feels mushy, like it’s caved in.” Dawn pushed a finger into the man’s bloody cheek to demonstrate what she was talking about. It disappeared into the rubbery flesh. She tilted his head in the other direction. “Look at the swelling and gashes. There’s no way anyone would be able to recognize him. And if he’s never been arrested, we won’t get a hit on his prints.” She paused, placed the head gently on the ground. “If we can’t identify him, we’re screwed.”

  I nodded, knowing she was right. Our first priority was getting that body identified. Without an identity, the case would go nowhere fast, and it could very well become an unsolved murder...something that had never happened to me. “What about tattoos?”

  “Haven’t seen any so far.” Dawn lifted one of the arms and examined it carefully. She turned the hand over and whistled. “There’s dirt and grime on his hands and arms.”

  I looked from the man’s hand toward the darkness of the woodlands behind him. The headlights illuminated the body well enough, but the surrounding area was cloaked in the darkness of the Louisiana night. “You think he dragged himself here?” I asked Dawn.