But Not Fortuitous Read online

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “You do need a ride?”

  “Oh, no. I’ll call my wife.”

  Once he was sitting in the lobby waiting for his wife, Susan walked to the holding cells in the back of the police department and glanced inside. The man from New Orleans was lying on his back in a bunk. He had a towel pressed against his face and he was moaning in pain. Susan shook her head. Regan hadn’t made a sound when she’d head-butted the man, nor did she complain afterword.

  Susan opened the cell door. “Let’s go.”

  The man sat up and glared over the top of the towel. “Where are we going?”

  “I’ll take your statement and then—”

  “I ain’t saying shit to any of you backwater bitches!” The man spat the words. “I want my phone call. My lawyer will be down here so fast it’ll blow the siding right off of the shit houses in this stink town!”

  “If you hate this place so much, why are you here?”

  “I work in the Gulf, so I have to pass through here.” He grunted. “I just wish I would’ve never stopped.”

  “I understand.” Susan stepped into the cell and sat on the bunk opposite the man. “Look, I just need your statement for the record and then I’ll issue you a summons for disturbing the peace. I’ve already spoken to my officer, and she said she doesn’t want to press charges against you for battery on a police officer. She said you got the worst of the ordeal.”

  “I didn’t even know she was a cop,” he grumbled. “She was wearing blue jeans and a shirt. I thought she was the bartender grabbing on me and I didn’t appreciate it. I respect the law. I ain’t like those young punks running around hating on cops. I never would’ve touched her if I would’ve known she was a cop.”

  “Did you hear me yell police as we came through the door?”

  “I heard you say something, but there was so much confusion…”

  His voice trailed off and Susan nodded. “What’s your name?”

  “George.”

  “Okay, George, what happened in there?”

  “So, these two men come in from out of town and they started commenting about how beautiful the town is and how it’s right in the middle of the swamps. They’re just talking amongst themselves and this asshole—”

  “His name is Joseph.”

  “Okay, Joseph interjected himself into their conversation and started acting like he was the Crocodile Dundee of the swamps. He was telling them bullshit stories about how he wrestles alligators for a living and catches cottonmouths with his bare hands.” He shrugged. “It just got the best of me and I told them he was full of shit. Well, one of the men insulted me, so I might’ve shoved him a little.”

  “You pushed him?”

  “Yeah, kinda. He fell into the other man that was with him and one of them dropped their drink.” He shrugged again, as though it was no big deal. “That was it as far as I was concerned, but then they paid for their drinks and they gave Joseph”—he accentuated the name—“a $100 bill. I thought it was odd, but I couldn’t hear what they told him, so I ignored it. They left and, next thing I know, I’m on the ground. This Joseph knocked me right off of my barstool, and I believe he was paid to do it.”

  Susan cocked her head to the side. “You think they paid him to avenge them?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Wait here.” Susan stood and walked out of the cell, down the hall, and into the lobby, where Joseph was still waiting for his wife. Susan walked directly to him and stood over him looking down. He shifted nervously in his chair and avoided making eye contact with her.

  “What’s up, Chief?”

  “How much money did those strangers pay you to exact revenge on New Orleans?”

  Joseph squirmed and laughed nervously. “What’re you talking about?”

  “You know damn well what I’m talking about.” Susan held out her hand. “Fork it over.”

  Still refusing to look up at her, Joseph shoved a beefy hand into his pocket and pulled out a crisp $100 bill.

  “Follow me,” Susan said. “I’m adding a charge of simple battery to your summons. You can still pay it and avoid court, but don’t ever do that kind of shit in town again. Understand?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Joseph mumbled, shoulders drooping like a child who had been chewed out by his parents.

  CHAPTER 8

  It was noon before we started digging. Since we didn’t know who owned the property and there was no such thing as a murder exception to the Fourth Amendment, I had called a judge and obtained a warrant to search the property for Zeke’s body. While I didn’t want to think he was dead and I wasn’t about to share my thoughts with Red, I did have a horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach.

  After obtaining the verbal search warrant, we’d somehow convinced Red to take Paulie and leave with Baylor, so he could take care of his younger son. He had demanded to know what we’d found in the forest, but I’d only told him we were still looking and for him to keep praying. He had glared suspiciously at me, but Paulie had begged to be taken home and away from the area. The young boy was clearly spooked. Baylor and I had walked them through the woods to where Baylor’s cruiser was parked on our side of Westway Canal along a headland. Across the canal from the headland was a neighborhood that was situated just south of North Project Road.

  When I’d returned to the fresh dig site, Amy had just finished taking pictures and Melvin was still searching the woods for Zeke. He had returned thirty minutes later to say there was no way Zeke was anywhere but inside that hole.

  “The suspects—it looks like there were two of them—headed north. I followed the trail for a few hundred yards. They’re long gone. I left a marker so I can pick up the track later. I figured my time would be better spent helping you dig.”

  “Is it possible one of the people you tracked was Zeke?”

  Melvin frowned and shook his head. “Zeke’s trail ends right here, and I’m afraid so does his life.” He indicated the grave. “How’re we going to do this?”

  “Very carefully.” I indicated the camcorder hanging around Amy’s neck. “You ready to document it?”

  Amy nodded and set the camcorder up on a tripod and began filming. After stating the date, time, location, and our reason for being there, the three of us began carefully digging. We scraped at the ground and removed an inch of dirt at a time. Since the dig was fresh, it was easy to remove the dirt and, within an hour, we had cleared out eighteen inches of earth.

  My arms ached and my wet shirt clung to my body. Melvin had taken off his outer shirt and wrapped it around his head. Amy had stripped down to her tank top. We were all covered in mud, but the mud was a minor issue. The heat and humidity were such that it felt as though we were being waterboarded while we worked.

  We were still digging when my radio, which was resting against a tree several feet away from me, scratched to life and Susan’s voice came across the speaker.

  “Clint, I’m approaching your location from the east. I’ve got food and water.”

  Collectively, we all sank back on our haunches and sighed. My stomach had been growling for two hours, and I knew Amy and Melvin had to be hungry, too. Like an angel appearing from out of the clouds, Susan broke from the thicker woods to the east and picked her way across the thinner woodlands surrounding us. A woman was with her, and I figured it was the new officer, Regan Steed. I wiped my sweaty brow and indicated the white bandage above Regan’s eyebrow.

  “What happened to you?”

  She grinned, pointing to the bandage. “Twelve stitches. Apparently, Cajuns have hard heads.”

  “You should see the other guy,” Susan said, as she picked a clear spot on the ground several yards away. She began removing individually wrapped Po-boys from a larger bag while Regan removed bottles of water.

  I pulled myself to my feet and groaned when my knees popped loudly. I had just celebrated my thirty-sixth birthday last week, but I felt so much older than my actual age. “Damn, I’m getting ol
d.”

  “I’ll never get old,” Amy said, as she reached for a Po-boy and took a seat against a nearby tree. “I’ll die young.”

  I took a bite of my food and shook my head at her comment. After I swallowed, I said, “You don’t have permission to die young. I need you.”

  While Melvin, Amy, and I wolfed down our food, Susan and Regan took up shovels and began scraping away the next layer of dirt. We then began taking turns digging. We moved faster working in shifts, and the earth began to recede at an even and quicker pace. It was an hour later when Amy called out that she found something. Melvin and Susan were also in the grave at the time, and they both stopped what they were doing to watch. I moved the tripod with the camcorder closer, and Regan and I gathered around to watch.

  As sweat dripped from her tanned face, Amy blew a lock of blonde hair away from her eyes and dug gingerly with her fingers. Slowly, a bare torso started to come into view. I had been squatting beside the grave, but I sat down hard on my heels when Zeke McKenzie’s face was unearthed.

  “Poor kid,” I mumbled, scanning the ominous trees surrounding us. “Who in the hell did this?”

  Although I asked the question out loud, no one ventured an answer. We’d been asking ourselves that same question for our entire careers, but we’d never found the answer to why despicable humans would resort to murdering other humans. Sure, there were usually motives behind most killings—things like jealousy, greed, revenge, hatred—but none of it ever made any sense. There were other ways to resolve those types of problems, but the murderers among us always opted for the easy way out.

  Melvin moved out of the grave while Susan helped Amy scoop handfuls of dirt away from Zeke’s body. Within another hour, they had removed all of the dirt that surrounded Zeke and his body was resting peacefully atop the damp earth. His last minutes in this world had been anything but peaceful. Blood had gathered on the ground beneath his head and neck, and his face was swollen and bruised. He had been beaten something awful. Due to the lack of mud under his fingernails and the positions of his arms at his sides, I figured he was either already dead or unconscious when he was placed in the grave. At least there was that—he hadn’t been buried alive.

  “Want me to do the in-person notification?” Susan asked. “I can take Regan with me in case Red gets out of hand.”

  I glanced at Regan’s bandage. “Hasn’t she been through enough for her first day?”

  Regan immediately shook her head. “I’m not done yet.”

  I liked her attitude, but didn’t feel like smiling, so I only thanked Susan and set out to process the crime scene with Melvin. Amy made her way to the windthrown tree and recovered the shovel. She also searched the area for more evidence, but there were only the partial boot impressions that Melvin had located.

  Melvin and I had finished measuring and photographing the scene by the time she returned. I asked if she could help Melvin turn Zeke over so I could photograph the back of Zeke’s head. She did so and I took a close-up of his bloody and matted hair. With a gloved hand, I pushed against the back of his skull and shook my head. It was mushy. He had been hit behind the head with a blunt object.

  “I think they used the shovel,” Amy offered. “When I recovered it, I noticed some hair stuck to the step part of the blade. The shadows were thick in that area, but it looked to match his hair color.”

  I stood and stepped away from the grave. I surveyed the area, frowning deeply. “We know what Zeke and Paulie were doing out here, but what were the killers doing?”

  “That’s a good question,” Melvin said. “Zeke obviously interrupted something.”

  Amy nodded her agreement. “Imagine if Brennan Boudreaux hadn’t seen their boat or if Zeke’s friend hadn’t said they had come back here in search of giant catfish. We would’ve never known to look in this area.”

  I rubbed my chin. I hadn’t shaved this morning and it was obvious. “The killers had no clue Paulie was out there, or they would’ve tracked him down and killed him, too.”

  While that might be true, it still didn’t tell us why the killers were out there. Knowing we wouldn’t solve the mystery by standing around, I walked with Melvin to the boat to retrieve a body bag. Amy stayed behind with Zeke.

  Once I had the bag, I asked Melvin if he wanted to tow Zeke’s pirogue and boat back to the dock.

  “Yeah,” he said, “but it might take a while to navigate the shallow water, so don’t wait up for me.”

  I waved and trudged back through the woods to where Amy was waiting patiently. I saw her before she saw me, and I noticed she was staring intently at Zeke, as though she expected him to say something to her. When my boot scraped against a root and made some noise, she looked up and blinked.

  “It doesn’t make sense that they would bury the kid,” she blurted. “No one would ever find his body, so why take the time to dig a six-foot grave and plant him here?”

  “That’s a good question, but, like all of our questions right now, we don’t have answers to them.”

  “And where did they get the shovel?” Amy whirled around and walked to the evidence package containing the shovel that she’d placed on the ground near our crime scene kit. “Why would they have a shovel in their possession out in the middle of nowhere—unless they were already digging for something?”

  I liked where she was going with this theory. “So, you think they were out here digging for something when Zeke happened upon them? You think they killed him because he saw what they were digging up?”

  She nodded, but I saw a cloud of doubt wash over her face. “But, other than Zeke’s grave, we found no evidence of another dig site, so what the hell?”

  “Yeah, if they would’ve been out here digging, Melvin would’ve found it.”

  “Unless they were getting set to dig and Zeke saw the location.” She nodded, her confidence growing. “Maybe they had learned of the location of some buried treasure, found the spot, and were about to dig it up when Zeke appeared. They couldn’t very well leave the area and let this kid escape with the knowledge of where the treasure was buried. They killed him to keep the secret safe, and they hid the shovel for when they would return later to retrieve the treasure—”

  “Or they didn’t want to be caught with a murder weapon,” I interjected.

  Amy paused, then nodded. “Or that.”

  Her theory was as good as any, but I asked, “If they were digging for treasure, why not retrieve the gold before leaving the area? Surely, they would know that a missing person report would be filed and we would be swarming the area.”

  “You do have a point.” Amy ambled over to the hole and indicated it with a nod of her head. “What if the treasure was in this hole? What if they removed the treasure and replaced it with Zeke’s body?”

  That was an even better theory, and I said so. “Let’s get Zeke out of the hole and see if they left anything behind.”

  As we began carefully removing Zeke’s body from the hole, Amy paused at one point and asked, “What if they were looking for the treasure from the Death Shadow Massacre?”

  My head jerked around when she said the words, instinctively searching for anyone who might’ve overheard her. “I don’t even want to think about the Death Shadow Massacre,” I said in a low voice. “Too much blood has already been spilt searching for that treasure.”

  Sensing I didn’t want to discuss the issue, Amy only nodded and lifted Zeke’s legs while I lifted his upper torso. We were both on our bellies, which was awkward. With a lot of straining and some grunting—and a point when I thought I might spill headfirst into the hole—we finally managed to lift him to the top of the hole and shove him onto high ground.

  We scrambled to our feet and I spread the body bag on the ground beside Zeke’s body. Once it was unzipped and the flap opened, Amy and I gingerly lifted his body and lowered it into the bag. I had to tuck his arms in so I could zip the bag. After closing it, I sat on the ground and leaned back against a tree, hot and tired. I took a dee
p breath and closed my eyes for a moment. I slowly exhaled. The air had barely left my lungs when Amy cut loose with a string of obscenities. When she was done cursing, she declared, “There’s another body down here!”

  CHAPTER 9

  “I bet Zeke caught the suspect burying this body and that’s why he was murdered,” Amy surmised. “It had nothing to do with gold treasures after all.”

  I was almost afraid to look down the hole. As though having one teenage boy murdered in the woods wasn’t bad enough, having two killed would surely throw the entire town into a panic. They might be able to rationalize one killing as an isolated incident that wouldn’t affect their children. Maybe the kid was up to no good. He was probably involved in the drug trade or some other illegal activity or he was hanging around with the wrong people. Their kids would never do things like that because they were brought up right.

  But if they found out that two teens were murdered? Hell, small children would be forced to stay inside, teens wouldn’t be allowed in the woods, and parents would arm themselves with every type of weapon imaginable to defend their families against some mysterious and invisible evil stalking the town of Mechant Loup. I grunted to myself. If they ever realized that the majority of murder victims were killed by an acquaintance, they might never go home again.

  I rocked forward and crawled to the grave, where I dropped onto my stomach and glanced inside the hole. It was a little after four o’clock and still bright outside, but we were cloaked in the shadows of the surrounding trees and it was dark in the hole. I pushed myself to my knees and was about to head for the crime scene kit to retrieve a flashlight when Amy produced one from her back pocket.

  She aimed the beam of light into the hole and we both stared down at the body that had been unearthed by whoever had buried Zeke in this same grave. I cocked my head to the side. The body appeared to be that of a man, based on the discolored long-sleeved shirt—it could have been white or tan at some point—the blue trousers, and the black leather boots, all of which were only partially visible at the bottom of the grave. Most of the body was still covered by mud and I couldn’t see the face, but it was obvious that it hadn’t been planted here last night.