Hollow Bond (A Magnolia Parish Mystery Book 2) Page 5

  I told her I’d be right there, hung up, and smashed the gas pedal. Before long, I pulled into the substation parking lot and stopped just long enough for her to climb in.

  I sped out of the parking lot and continued south along Highway Three. I didn’t feel like talking, so I drove in silence, absently watching mosquitoes and other night bugs stain my windshield as we plowed through them. Within minutes, my windshield wiper looked as though it had a severe case of acne. I turned on the wipers and sprayer and watched them turn the specks of mosquitoes into slimy streaks. After a few more sprays and some vigorous swishing of the wiper blades, the windshield finally cleared and I could see the dark road ahead of us.

  I think Dawn recognized something was amiss, because she kept glancing sideways at me. After a while, she asked, “How’d Debbie take the news about you getting called out on your weekend with Samantha?”

  I sat quiet for a minute, told her what happened—all of it. When I was done, I could hear her swallow hard.

  “She slapped you?” Her voice was incredulous.

  I nodded and voiced my concerns about her possibly lashing out at Samantha at some point. “We see it all the time...people who beat their spouses eventually hit their kids. What if it’s the same with her? What if she gets angry one day and there’s no one around to hit except Samantha? What if she takes her anger out of Sam?” Saying it out loud made my blood boil again.

  It was Dawn’s turn to sit quiet. I turned my head toward her and recognized the expression on her face. When her bottom lip jutted that far out and her eyes turned to slits, she usually wanted to kill something. “If she ever laid a finger on Samantha, I’d kill her,” she said.

  I knew she would.

  CHAPTER 7

  Neither of us said anything more as I drove and it wasn’t long before we saw the red lights from the fire engines glowing bright against the night sky over Lakeview Court. I couldn’t help but wonder what kind of monster would burn a baby alive, but then I remembered Cedric Dempster. He’d definitely do something like that. Had he not been in prison, he’d be my first suspect—and the last. I couldn’t think of another person who would think of harming a baby in such a heinous manner. Whoever did it was definitely begging for the death penalty, and I was hoping we could oblige them.

  When we arrived at the house, we found a tangled mess of water hoses, fire department vehicles, and cop cars. We had to park several blocks away and walk to the noisy scene. There were first responders bustling all around. The smell of burnt plastic, wood, and roofing shingles clung to the night air and made breathing difficult. Two fire fighters were breathing through oxygen masks in the back of an ambulance that was parked across the street from the burnt house.

  We stopped momentarily to check on them, asked if they were okay.

  One of them, his face covered in soot and his wet hair clinging to his scalp, nodded his head. He looked too exhausted to speak. The other lay on a stretcher, his breath coming in labored gasps. He didn’t even acknowledge our presence and a medic with a concerned look on her face was shoving a needle in his arm. I wondered how serious his injuries were. If he died, I was tacking that charge onto the baby killer, too.

  I turned to survey the damage to the two-story vinyl-siding house. It was yellow with burgundy shutters...well, what was left of it. Four white columns supported the roof of the covered porch and a row of five brick steps led to the floor of the porch. It looked like it had been painted gray, but it was now covered in ash and sooth. The entire northern portion of the roof was gone, with nothing left but a few charred and lonely ceiling joists. Several large banks of floodlights were posted at strategic points throughout the yard and helped to light up the entire scene. The roof was completely gone in places and we could see the sheer blackness of the night sky through the front wall over the porch.

  To the left of it was an old outbuilding that had sustained fire damage, as well. Smoke still billowed from it and I thought about pointing it out to the fire fighters, but they were busy enough.

  I walked closer to the house, searching for Lieutenant Jim Marshall. I finally found the patrol supervisor barking orders to a group of deputies and fire fighters. His face was red and his sleeves rolled up to expose beefy, hairy arms.

  “Tell me the bad news, Lieu,” I called from behind Marshall.

  He turned, rubbed his wet forehead. “This is crazy, Brandon. Somebody lit a fire right under that baby crib, but the baby’s gone and the parents are nowhere to be found.”

  Dawn exhaled in relief. “Thank God,” she murmured.

  “Are we sure it isn’t in that rubble?” I asked, not wanting to get too excited too fast.

  “Positive. The fire department sifted through every inch of it.”

  I breathed my own sigh of relief and spoke briefly with Marshall about what they’d done so far, and Dawn asked if they had identified the family who lived there.

  “The address is listed to Bill and Janice Prince. We found a burgundy Suburban and a white Lexus in the garage. They were both damaged by the fire, but the license plates are still intact. They’re registered to the owners of the house.” Marshall looked from Dawn to me and then back at Dawn. “I’m thinking this might be connected to those bodies we found on Route Twenty-Three last night.”

  I pondered that, noting the coincidence. “Do we know anything about these Prince people yet?”

  “We ran histories on both of them, but they’re clean,” Marshall said. “Not even a speeding ticket between the both of them.”

  “What about the neighbors?” Dawn asked. “Did they see or hear anything? Do they know anything about the couple? Maybe the name of a family member we can contact?”

  Marshall waved his hand around. “There aren’t many residents left to talk to, thanks to the oil accident.”

  He was correct, I knew. Most of the families who had lived along Lake Bentley had packed up and left the area a few months earlier when the oil first made its way into the lake. With the housing market plummeting and home values not what they used to be, those residents recognized a golden opportunity to turn a handsome profit on their investment. They filed claims with Bailey Oil, Inc.—the company responsible for the disaster—and most of them got settlements large enough to retire on and moved far away.

  “How many families are still here?” I asked.

  “Three...that we could tell. The lady that lives four houses down and across the street is the one who called it in. Out of the people who stayed, she lives the closest to the Princes. She said she walked out to the trash and saw a bright orange glow in the sky. She could smell smoke, but thought they might be burning some trash. She said she went back inside her house and called the Princes, but nobody answered. She figured it was nothing and she thought about ignoring it, but decided to take another look. When she walked back to the street and saw fire coming from the rooftop, she called nine-one-one immediately and waited for the fire department to show up.” Marshall paused, took a deep breath, and continued. “When I asked what she knew about them, she said they moved here about three years ago and Bill Prince works as an executive for Bailey Oil.”

  “I guess that would explain why they didn’t move from this area,” I said.

  Marshall agreed and told us an investigator with the State Fire Marshal’s Office had arrived, gathered some samples to send to the lab, took some pictures, and left. The investigator pointed out the area under the baby’s bed as the point of origin. “I could’ve saved him the time,” Marshall said. “Even I could smell the gasoline, it was that strong.”

  “Why didn’t he stick around?” I asked. “I want to talk to him. I need to know what he found.”

  Marshall shook his head. “As soon as he realized a baby had possibly been murdered, he said it was a detective matter and he split. Said he didn’t investigate homicides.”

  I shook my head and then pointed to what was left of the house. “Care to do the honors?”

  Marshall led the way up the steps a
nd through the splintered door. As soon as we entered, we found ourselves in the living room. The floodlights from outside lit up the interior of the house like it was daytime. We moved deeper into the house and, with each step we took, water squished up from the saturated carpet. Marshall led us toward a flight of hardwood stairs, but stopped at the foot of it and slapped his belly. “I ain’t taking my fat ass up those steps again. The firemen said it’s pretty solid because most of the damage was to the upstairs walls and roof, but I felt it give when I walked around and I ain’t taken no more chances. I got just a few years left to retirement and I’d like to still be able to walk to the fridge to get my own beer when I’m done working.”

  I laughed and slapped his back. “We’ve got it from here, Lieu.” I picked my way up the stairs, taking one step at a time. Dawn followed at a safe distance, matching my pace, but not getting too close in case our weight was too much for the weakened frame to handle. The air became increasingly heavy with the smell of burnt material and gasoline. As I neared the last step and placed my weight on it, the board creaked sharply. I paused, held my breath.

  “You think it’s safe?” Dawn asked from several steps behind me. “Maybe Jim cracked something when he lumbered around up here.”

  “I’m not real sure.” I looked back to where she stood and then glanced over the edge. It seemed a long way to the ground floor. “You want to hang out right there, just in case it collapses?”

  “I’m coming with you,” she said in a dogged tone.

  I knew I couldn’t convince her to stay back. Instead of trying, I took the final step onto the landing and tested it by bouncing up and down on the balls of my feet. It seemed solid. I nodded to Dawn and she continued her ascent. Once she was beside me, we turned and surveyed the upstairs damage. Most of the walls separating the bedrooms from the hallway had been burned away, with only a few fingers of wood holding on by dark slivers. Directly across from the stairway was a large room. A king-sized bed—now a charred mess of melted plastic and exposed springs—and large piles of severely damaged furniture littered what had once been the master bedroom.

  Dawn moved beside me, her boots scrunching the debris underfoot. “I heard one of the firemen tell Marshall the baby’s room was to the right.”

  I looked, nodded. The remnants of a metal crib stood alone in the middle of the room. It made for an eerie image. The mattress and sheets had been reduced to ash and had trickled through the mattress springs onto the floor beneath it. A plastic toy was attached to the headboard and was suspended in mid-drip. I shuddered as I thought back to when Samantha was just a baby, but quickly pushed the thought from my mind.

  I approached the crib, testing the uncertain floor with each step I took. Dawn remained glued to my hip, nearly brushing against me as we walked. When we reached the crib, we stopped and stared down into it.

  “If our Mr. and Mrs. Doe are Bill and Janice Prince, where in the hell is Baby Prince?”

  “I have no idea,” Dawn said, “but I’m afraid to find out.”

  After checking under the crib to be certain the firemen hadn’t missed anything, we began processing what we could of the ruins. We worked well into the morning, sifting through the rubble and documenting what we found. It wasn’t much. We located a fireproof safe in the master bedroom closet. We recovered a charred photo album from a glass coffee table in the living room. All of the pictures on the wall in the living room had been curled and damaged beyond recognition, so they were of no use to us. The main bathroom was located in a corner of the downstairs that hadn’t been damaged much. Inside it, and working under the bright glow from two light stands powered by the fire department’s generators, Dawn found a few sources of potential DNA evidence.

  With gloved hands, she packaged two toothbrushes in separate bags and then called out when she located another. “The baby’s a girl and she’s at least six months old.”

  “How do you know?” I asked, looking over her shoulder.

  She held up a Dora the Explorer vibrating toothbrush. “A little boy wouldn’t let anyone brush his teeth with this.”

  “How do you know she’s at least six months?”

  “Because that’s when a baby’s teeth start coming in.”

  “Hmm...” I rubbed the stubble on my chin. “Debbie started brushing Samantha’s teeth when she was like a few weeks old.”

  “Yeah, some parents start brushing early,” Dawn conceded. “I read somewhere that pediatricians recommend you start brushing at birth.”

  “How, exactly? One nurse catches the baby and another shoves a toothbrush in its mouth? Does this happen before or after they cut the cord?”

  Dawn elbowed my arm. “You know what I mean.”

  I moved back upstairs and took additional photographs, had a last look around. I stopped for a long moment and just stared at the crib, as though a clue would rise up out of the ash and reveal itself to me. When it didn’t, I sighed and picked my way back down the stairs.

  I rejoined Dawn in the bathroom and found her packing up her gear and gathering the evidence she’d collected.

  “I found a woman’s brush, for sure, and an electric shaver for a man.” She glanced at my face. “You could use one, yourself.”

  I ignored her, thought ahead. We needed to get DNA samples from our Mr. and Mrs. Doe to compare to the items we’d recovered in the Princes’ house. There was no way those two cases—that close together—were not connected. But where was the baby? I asked the question again and Dawn thought about it for a bit before answering.

  “Maybe she was kidnapped.”

  “Someone would have to be pretty pissed at them to beat them that severely and leave them to die...and then come back the next night and set fire to their house. That doesn’t sound like a kidnapping. It sounds more like a crime of passion.”

  Dawn was thoughtful. “What could make someone that angry? I mean, what would you have to do to trigger that sort of animosity?”

  “Who the hell knows? I don’t think the motive was robbery, because they left that safe behind and it doesn’t look like anyone rummaged through the house.”

  “Jealousy’s always a strong motivator.”

  “Who would be jealous of them? And why? Because they have a house next to the lake? A lake that’s now polluted and dead?”

  “It’s not entirely out of the question. Of course...” Dawn’s voice trailed off.

  I waited, but she just stared into space, lost in thought. “What is it?”

  Dawn started to nod. “What if it’s not them? Or, at least, what if it’s not both of them?”

  “What’re you thinking?”

  “What if the husband found out the wife was having an affair?” Dawn’s voice was becoming increasingly excited. “What if he beats the wife until he thinks she’s dead?”

  “Sounds great, but how does he get beat up? Do you think he paid someone to beat him up to make it look good? That they went too far and accidentally killed him? Not likely. And what about their baby?”

  “No, that’s not where I’m going. What if he catches the boyfriend here with his wife because he got home early and he beats them both? What if our Mr. Doe is not her husband? What if he’s her boyfriend? What if the husband dumps the bodies thinking they’ll never be found and disappears with his baby? After all, had Mr. Doe not crawled his way to the shoulder of the road, they’d still be out there rotting. Once the alligators and the elements would’ve gotten to them, there wouldn’t have been much left for us to sift through.”

  My eyes widened. “Ah, now you’ve got my attention.”

  “With those two out the way, he has the house to himself. He could be here trying to figure out what to do next, when he hears on the news that two bodies were found east of Jasper. He then panics and sets the house on fire to destroy any evidence he might’ve left behind.”

  “That’s just as good a story as any at this point.” I looked around. “Let’s search outside the house to see if we can turn up any more evidence,
like a murder weapon. And we need to send someone out to Route Twenty-Three to see if we missed a baby.”

  CHAPTER 8

  The sun was coming up when Dawn—who was on the phone with Captain Michael Theriot—and I made our way around the residential wreckage and headed down the long dirt path that led through a patch of trees to the lake behind the house. Weeds covered what had once been a well-trodden path and grew thick and tall on either side of the trail.

  Dawn finally hung up after twenty minutes of explaining herself, turned to me as we walked. “The captain sent Karla and Dudley”—two detectives who mostly worked the central part of the parish—“out to the scene. They hiked up and down Route Twenty-Three but found no signs of a baby. Captain Theriot put out a press release saying we’re looking for a missing baby, approximately six months old and white.”

  I frowned. That was all we had, and it wasn’t enough for an Amber Alert...wasn’t enough for anything. If we couldn’t find someone who knew something, and if we couldn’t find them soon, the case would grow cold in a hurry.

  We walked in silence, each left to our own theories. The path was solid where we walked. There were no signs of anyone having been through the area in a long while. I was still focused on the ground as we rounded a curve in the trail and came upon the beginning of a wide boardwalk. It began where we stood on solid ground and extended about seventy-five feet to the door of a large wooden structure that was suspended over the water of the lake. I paused to remove a latex glove from my pocket and pulled it on. We then strode across the weathered planks and covered the distance quickly. When we reached the door, I placed one hand on my holstered pistol and tested the knob with the other. It was unlocked. I eased the door open and leaned back, straining to penetrate the shadowy darkness. It was too dark, so I gave the door a soft kick with my foot. When it was completely open and the morning sunlight had splashed into the boatshed, I could finally see that most of the area looked clear of any suspects and the baby was nowhere in sight. The only thing of interest was the Boston Whaler that was docked inside. “Well, it certainly wasn’t robbery,” I said, “because that would be one hell of a steal.”