But Not Fortuitous Read online

“You okay, Love?” I asked, amused.

  “I swear, if an alligator comes by me, I’m blasting his ass straight to hell.”

  I laughed and ducked under the crime scene tape. I could see the mound of dirt we’d created by digging out the grave. It was now a mess of wet mud and it helped to orient me to the large hole that was hidden somewhere under the surface of the water. The tent poles would have helped to pinpoint the grave, but most of them had been snapped and were now tangled in the trees about ten feet to the south. The canopy had been shredded into several pieces, one of which was still attached to some of the broken tent poles.

  As I splashed through the water, I caught movement several feet away from me. I glanced in that direction and saw a large cottonmouth swimming on the surface of the water. It was heading in Susan’s direction, so I pointed it out to her.

  Susan kept her pistol lowered. “As long as it isn’t a frog. If I see a frog, you’d better take cover, because I can’t guarantee where my bullets will go.”

  I laughed and watched the snake, but it changed directions and headed toward the southwest, where the lake was hidden from view by the trees. I strolled through the water, encircling the gravesite, searching—for what, I wasn’t sure. I was hoping the water might have forced something up from the ground. I had also hoped the killer or killers had returned to the scene and we’d catch them here, but that apparently hadn’t happened.

  The rain continued to find its way through the trees and pepper the earth. After about ten minutes, Susan asked, “What’re we looking for?”

  She had gotten down from the tree and was warily approaching my location.

  “I don’t know.” A stream of water had found an opening under my collar and leaked all the way down my back. I shivered. Was it only in Louisiana that I could suffer a heat stroke one day and be left shivering the next day? I finally decided it was no use. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Neither of us spoke on the walk back to my Tahoe. Once we were inside the dry vehicle, I checked my cell phone. I had seven missed calls. One from Amy, one from Lindsey, and five from Red McKenzie.

  I called Lindsey first. “What’s up?”

  “Where are you, Clint? Red McKenzie called a dozen times looking for you. He’s really mad.”

  “I know. He called my cell five times. Is that all?”

  “No, two reporters called back to say they can’t find a record of a missing cop—who’s missing, by the way?”

  “It’s about that body we found. Anything else?”

  “Yeah, you received a fax from the ATF.”

  “It’s the firearms trace report. Can you read what it says?”

  “It says the firearm you made the request on was purchased at a dealer who’s no longer in business.” There was a pause, and I imagined she was scanning the report, but I’d heard enough.

  “So, basically, there’s no record of the purchase.”

  “That’s what it seems.”

  “Okay, thanks.”

  “Call Red McKenzie,” she said hurriedly as I was ending the call. “He won’t stop calling.”

  Before calling Red, I called Amy. “Please tell me you were calling with good news.”

  “The good news is we got a match on the bullet.”

  I groaned inwardly. “And the bad news is he was shot with his own gun, wasn’t he?”

  “You win.”

  “Damn it.”

  Susan arched an eyebrow. I told her what Amy had just told me and then turned back to the call.

  “Anything else?” I asked.

  “They swabbed it for DNA before test-firing it,” she said. “Considering it’s been secured in the holster for years, they think the chances are high that they’ll be able to recover DNA evidence.”

  At least there was that. I thanked her and fired up my Tahoe. I called Red as I drove up North Project Road, and he answered the phone cursing.

  Once there was a break in the onslaught of profanity, I assured him we were doing everything we could to find Zeke’s killer. “I’ll be perfectly honest with you Red, this case will probably take some time—”

  “I don’t want to hear that shit!” he bellowed. “I want you to find the man who killed my son!”

  Based on what I already knew of the case, I was afraid to make any promises, so I simply said, “I’ll do everything I can.”

  “Damn it, Clint,” Red hollered in a threatening manner, “you’d better get off your ass and solve this case or I’m going to start taking the law into my own hands.”

  I could’ve said a lot of things in response. I could’ve told him I wanted his son’s murder solved almost as much as he did, or that I was doing my best to catch his son’s killer, or that I’d been where he was and I understood. However, none of those things would’ve mattered to the poor man, and I certainly was not offended by his words. He had every right to feel the way he felt.

  “Yes, sir, I understand,” was all I said.

  There was a long pause on the other end. Finally, he took a deep breath and exhaled forcefully. When he spoke again, his voice was as soft as he could muster. “Do you have any leads? Anything at all?”

  “We’ve learned that the body in the grave has been there for at least thirty years,” I explained. “It was a male subject and he died by a single gunshot wound to the head. We also think he might’ve been a cop or some kind of security guard, considering his clothes appeared to be some type of uniform and he wore a gun belt with a loaded gun in the holster.”

  “But…what does this have to do with Zeke? What was he doing near this grave?”

  “I think he stumbled onto something and he was killed because of what he saw.” Susan and I had reached the police department and I parked under the building, where the harsh pounding on the roof of my Tahoe suddenly ceased and things grew quieter inside. “I really believe the key to solving this case is to identify the man in the grave. We’ve got forensic anthropologists working—”

  “Forensic what?”

  “They’re doctors who specialize in identifying human remains. We’ve got a good one working the case.”

  “How long will it take to identify the man?”

  I sighed. “It might take a while, but I’m not waiting on them to identify him. We’ve got someone researching the property records in hopes of identifying the land owners. That might open some doors. I find it hard to believe a body would’ve been buried on the land without someone in the family knowing something about it.”

  “How long will that take?”

  I glanced around the parking area under the police department and noticed Amy’s Dodge Charger parked in the corner. “I’m about to meet with the detective who was doing that research and I should have an answer for you by the morning.”

  When he didn’t say anything for a while, I said, “But I don’t think I’ll be sharing that information with you.”

  “And why is that?” he demanded to know.

  “I don’t want you tracking them down and trying to beat the information out of them.”

  CHAPTER 16

  “Mark and Tami Boudreaux,” Amy said when I asked her if she’d found out who owned the property behind North Project Road. “They used to live in a house about two hundred yards north of the gravesite. The house sits on an acre of cleared land with a long driveway that stretches to the highway. The driveway is private and it’s located about a mile north of North Project Road.”

  “Do you have a map of the area?” I asked.

  It was a little after six o’clock in the evening and we were sitting in Susan’s office. Susan was behind her desk, I was in a chair across from her, and Amy sat beside me. When I asked about the map, Amy stood and walked around to Susan’s side of the desk. I joined them.

  “I’m not sure how long ago this satellite image was captured,” she said, pointing to a cleared area amidst a large tract of woodlands, “but you can see the clearing right here. Their property lies beyond the end of North Project Road and it encompasse
s the private lake or pond where Zeke and Paulie were searching for giant catfish.”

  “How old are they—this Mark and Tami Boudreaux?”

  “Mark died a few years ago, when he was ninety-three,” Amy explained. “His wife is in a nursing home. She’s eighty-four.”

  I leaned my back against the wall behind Susan’s desk. “Do they have any children?”

  “Just one son—Albert, fifty-six—but he doesn’t live around here.” Amy pulled her notebook from the waistband of her jeans and thumbed through it. “I ran his name and found an address for him in a small county in Colorado. I’ve got his number, but I figured I’d talk to you before calling him.”

  I folded my arms across my chest and pondered this new information. “How long has the son lived in this county?”

  “It appears he left home thirty-eight years ago and he’s moved around a lot as a young man, but he’s been in Sage County for about twenty years now.” Amy shrugged. “Give or take a year.”

  Susan leaned back in her swivel chair. “I guess he wasn’t around when the body was buried.”

  “Unless he was down here visiting at the time,” Amy suggested. “What if he came down here to visit and got in trouble with the law? What if he killed a deputy or a police officer, buried said officer or deputy, and then went back out West, never to be heard from again?”

  “But that kind of thing wouldn’t just die out,” I said. “When a cop is killed, that’s big news—and rightly so. If criminals are so lawless that they’d kill a cop, there’s nothing they wouldn’t do. Those kinds of cases definitely make local news—sometimes get the attention of the national news—but interest usually dies out after the funeral, picks up again during the suspect’s trial, and then dies out after the conviction.”

  Susan glanced up at me as though to say, “What’s your point?”

  “Now, imagine that we have a missing cop, who disappears into thin air, never to be heard from again,” I suggested. “How intriguing do you think that would be? It would be a true-to-life mystery. It would excite the curiosity of every news organization in the nation. The story would never die, because the disappearance was never solved—there was never any closure. A trial, a funeral—those things provide levels of closure. A missing cop case would’ve been huge. Hell, it would’ve probably even been featured on Unsolved Mysteries, which was running back then.”

  “What if it was featured on Unsolved Mysteries?” Susan asked.

  I thought back to when I used to watch Unsolved Mysteries as a young boy. It was my favorite show on television at the time. Robert Stack’s legendary and mysterious voice set the tone for the show, and I never watched any of the episodes after he was gone. I’d heard that there were a few episodes before he started hosting the show, but I never watched any of those either.

  I couldn’t remember seeing an episode that involved a missing cop, but then again, I couldn’t remember the details of every case. Besides, I grew up around La Mort and I hadn’t even heard of Mechant Loup back then, so the story might not have resonated with me, or it could’ve aired after I’d quit watching.

  I glanced over at Amy. “Did you run a background check on Mark and Tami Boudreaux?”

  “Yeah, they’ve been clean their entire lives—as far as I can tell.” The corner of her mouth curled into a grin. “I don’t know if they gave out tickets to people on horse buggies or if they kept records before the ink pen was invented, but their modern-day driving record seems to be clean.”

  “What about the local papers?” Susan asked. “Anything there?”

  I shook my head. “I put in calls to them earlier in the day, but they left messages with Lindsey saying they had nothing.”

  “This case is scary,” Amy said.

  “How’s that?” I asked.

  “We’ve got absolutely nothing to go on—not one shred of evidence that might identify the killer. What if we never solve it?” She tucked a lock of blonde hair behind her ear. “What if we never find the person who killed the old cop or Zeke? We’re up against a wall, with nowhere to go.”

  “Every interview, every document, every piece of evidence should lead somewhere else.” I pointed to the map on the computer screen. “What you found is important. It leads us to Tami Boudreaux and her son, Albert.”

  “What if the husband planted that body in the woods?” Amy challenged. “He’s dead now, so he won’t be talking.”

  “He might’ve planted that body years ago, but he certainly didn’t dig it up or kill Zeke, unless he came out of the grave himself to do it. Our suspect is out there somewhere and we’re gonna find him—one way or another.” I stood straight and stretched. “I’m heading home, Sue. Amy, let’s meet here first thing in the morning. We’ll call Albert Boudreaux and see what he knows, and then we’ll pay a visit to the nursing home.”

  So saying, I walked out and drove home. When Susan arrived an hour later, I was sitting on the sofa watching reruns of Unsolved Mysteries and doing research on my laptop. Achilles was stretched out on my left side and Coco on the right, each of them with their snout shoved up close to me.

  “And where am I supposed to sit?” Susan wanted to know as she unzipped her uniform shirt.

  I leaned forward, rested the laptop on the coffee table, and then slapped my thighs. Without hesitating, she covered the distance between us and threw herself in my lap. The weight of her body stretching out over mine felt good, and I wrapped my arms around her. Achilles had scooted closer and was now resting his head across Susan’s legs. Not to be outdone, Coco had also moved closer and nestled against Achilles.

  I had sped through six episodes of Unsolved Mysteries and searched the internet for missing cops. While there had been quite a few reports of missing officers over the years, most of them had already been located—some dead, some not—and none of the cases was remotely close to what was happening here.

  “Any luck?” Susan asked, indicating my laptop on the coffee table.

  “Nothing so far.”

  We had the fixings for leftover tacos and burritos, and I was about to suggest a quick bite before going upstairs for a conversation, when Susan’s cell phone made that strange sound it made when someone was doing a FaceTime call. I had never learned how to do it, and I didn’t care to learn, but I was very excited to see Grace’s face pop up on the screen. Her cheeks were red like her hair and it appeared a few new freckles had formed on her forehead. She looked like she’d grown an inch since last weekend.

  “Hey, Gracie,” I said, as Susan and I rested our heads against each other to see the screen on her phone. “How are you?”

  “Daddy!” she squealed.

  I reached up and gave Susan’s right hip a squeeze. “I told you she misses me.”

  CHAPTER 17

  I arrived at the police department at seven-thirty the next morning. The rain had stopped during the night. The meteorologist from New Orleans had come on this morning to warn that the smothering heat would be returning by this afternoon. I was happy to see the rain stop, but I wasn’t sure how I felt about the “swamp booty” returning.

  Amy showed up ten minutes after I did and met me in my office. I had already spoken with Red McKenzie—he had called before I even left my house—and I told Amy about the call. All in all, he was a lot calmer than the day before, but he was still threatening to take matters into his own hands if we didn’t solve the case soon.

  When Amy was seated across from me, I grabbed a notebook, set up my recorder, and pressed the speaker button on my desk phone. I glanced up at her. “Ready?”

  She gave a nod and I dialed the number for Albert Boudreaux.

  Boudreaux was a common family name in Louisiana and there might be a dozen Alberts running around Chateau Parish, but I was pretty positive there could be only one Albert Boudreaux in Sage County, Colorado.

  “Hey, Mom, is that you?” asked a man with a flat voice. I was proud to hear he hadn’t lost his Cajun accent.

  “No, sir, this is Clint Wol
f,” I said, leaning close to the phone. “I work for the Mechant Loup Police Department. Is this Albert?”

  “Um, yeah.” There was a hint of hesitation in the man’s voice. “Is…is this about my mom?”

  “Oh, no, this is about a case I’m working,” I said quickly.

  I heard a deep sigh on the other end. It sounded like he was on speaker phone, too, and I could hear some movements in the background.

  “The only calls I get with that area code are from my mom,” he explained. “You scared me half to death.”

  “I’m sorry about that.” After a brief pause, I made small talk with him, asking him mostly about life in Colorado versus life in Louisiana, and then I asked how often he came to visit.

  “I come down at least once a year, around Christmas, to see my mom, and I try to make a trip during the summer, although I’m not always able to get away from work. I made five trips to Louisiana three years ago, when my dad died.” He took a breath and exhaled. “I went down there when he was sick and stayed a week. I went back for the funeral a month later, but had to go back to look in on my mom the following week. It was obvious she wouldn’t be able to care for herself, so I had to put her in an assisted living home. There are people to look after her, but she’s got her own apartment and has complete freedom to come and go as she pleases. I visited her for Christmas and she seems to be enjoying it. I promised to visit her every Christmas, so we’ll be heading there in December.”

  “Are you married?” I asked. “Do you have any kids?”

  “I’m married,” he said easily enough, but he seemed to be growing suspicious. “We’ve got three kids—a boy and two girls. Why do you ask?”

  “About the kids? Oh, I was just making small talk. I’ve got one of my own—a fiery little redhead.” I decided to shift gears. “When was the last time you came to Louisiana? More specifically, to the family home in Mechant Loup?”

  “About seven months ago, for Christmas. Why?”

  “Look, what I’m about to tell you is part of an active criminal investigation and I need you to keep this information to yourself.” I paused to give him time to process what I’d just said. “Can I count on you to keep this quiet?”