Bayou Pirates Read online

  “I don’t think so,” she said. “Though I don’t remember much after the bar, as I said.”

  “Was he the one driving the car?” I asked. “You said it was his car.”

  “Yeah, he was driving,” she confirmed. “He looked kind of panicked. Kept muttering that he didn’t sign up to kill someone.”

  I raised my eyebrows at this. He didn’t sign up to kill someone but raping and maiming, no problem. I clenched and unclenched my fists over my knees. I couldn’t help it. I really wanted to get my hands on this guy.

  “And then he just dropped you off?” Holm asked, continuing my line of questioning when I didn’t. “In front of the hospital?”

  “Yeah, but not before he told me not to say a word,” she said simply.

  “So why talk now?” Barrett asked.

  “Why not?” she asked, giving a pained little sound that I thought was supposed to be a laugh. “Why give him that kind of power over me, especially now?”

  I had to respect her for that.

  “You’re very brave for talking to us, Addison,” I said, reaching out and giving her shoulder another light squeeze. “Thank you for taking the time. We’ll let you get some rest now.”

  “Thank you,” she murmured. “And Ethan?”

  “Yeah?” I asked her.

  “When you find him, break his nose for me, okay?” she said.

  “You can count on it,” I chuckled and then followed Holm and Barrett back out into the hall where the nurse and the doctor were both waiting for us.

  “Got everything you need?” the doctor asked us.

  Barrett nodded.

  “Give her whatever you need to give her,” he said. Both medical professionals hurried back into the room, and Holm, Barrett, and I gathered alone in the plain white hallway.

  “She was… surprisingly lucid,” Holm mused. “And stable. Usually, after going through something like that, you have a lot harder time talking about it.”

  “Everyone responds differently,” Barrett said, shaking his head. “It’s strange. Some people just react differently from others. And she doesn’t remember the assault itself.”

  “Thank God for small miracles, I guess,” I muttered.

  The detective nodded.

  “My thoughts, as well,” he said. “But I’m thinking there’s something more going on with this hotel than meets the eye. It’s shown up twice now. You two talked to the manager before I showed up with my officers, right?”

  “Yeah, he was a real piece of work,” Holm groaned, shaking his head. “Way more concerned about his business than catching the bad guys. But he didn’t seem like he knew anything.”

  “Or he’s just a really good actor,” I suggested. “Either way, it’s worth checking back in with him. You said the same people own the bar?”

  Barrett nodded again.

  “The two are actually connected, physically, though they’re separate businesses,” he said. “Both are connected to the whole mythos around Lafitte here in New Orleans. It’s great for tourism, too. We can head down there now if you like before it gets too busy.”

  “You said yesterday your officers had a list of vehicles like the one caught dropping Addison off here on the security cameras,” I reminded the detective. “Have they found anything?”

  “They’ve rounded up a few suspects,” Barrett said. “We could go down to the station first and take a look at what they got, see if any of them match her description. If one of them does, we can send an officer back down here with a lineup of pictures and see if she can identify him if she’s still lucid.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Holm said. “We should update Agent Gosse first, though.”

  “On it,” I said, pulling out my phone, which had Nina’s number in its contact list.

  I zipped a message over to her, detailing what Addison had told us and what our plan for the day was. She responded almost immediately, telling me that she would try to figure out more about the hotel or this guy Addison described for us.

  “Alright,” I said, pocketing my phone again. “We’ll meet you back at the station.”

  CHAPTER 19

  Holm and I followed Barrett back to the station in our rental car. It wasn’t far from the hospital. When we arrived, two officers and another detective met us in the main area by Barrett’s office.

  “Alright, boys, what’ve we got?” Barrett asked them without missing a beat.

  “We’ve got three guys, all with records for assault and sexual assault, all with a gold car of a similar make and model to the one caught on the security camera at the hospital,” the detective, a dapper young man with closely cropped blonde hair and blue eyes to match, said. “We’ve been interviewing them, and they all deny any involvement, of course.”

  “Of course,” Barrett said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “Well, one of them better be lying.”

  “Could be that the real perp wasn’t in the system already, though,” Holm put out there with a shrug. “They all have to start somewhere.”

  “Yeah, but this didn’t seem like an amateur job,” I said, my breakfast sloshing in my stomach as I thought back to Addison’s gruesome injuries. “He’s done this before, though I suppose he may never have been caught or charged.”

  “It’s possible,” Barrett relented, pulling his notebook back out of his jacket and flipping to a page in the middle before handing it to the other detective to look over. “Any of them fit this description?”

  “A couple of them could, I guess,” the guy said, scratching his head as he squinted at Barrett’s messy handwriting. “Not the first one we brought in, though. He’s a redhead.”

  “Set him loose and then come join me to question one of the others,” Barrett instructed him and the officers. “And thanks for all your work.”

  “Will do, boss,” the guy said, giving Barrett a nod and handing him two files in manila folders. “They’re in rooms three and four, by the way.”

  “I take three, and you two take four?” Barrett asked, turning back to Holm and me.

  “Sounds like a plan,” I said, nodding to him. “Hopefully, one of them’s our guy.”

  Barrett looked through the folders and handed one of them to me. It was our suspect’s file.

  “I’ve got a good feeling about this one,” Holm said as he followed me to interrogation room four. “I think he’s the one.”

  “You haven’t even seen him yet,” I chuckled, but as I opened the door to bring our suspect into view, I had to admit that I had a similar gut reaction.

  This guy did fit Addison’s description pretty well, with medium-length well-combed brown hair, brown eyes, and a slender but fit build. He was sitting, but by the length of his legs, I gathered that he was medium height as well, probably around five-foot-eight or five-foot-nine.

  But it wasn’t his appearance that jarred me. It was something in his body language, the way he looked up at us nervously and wrung his hands like he was worried we would find out something about him that he wanted to keep secret. And there was something in his eyes, something off. Not quite normal, though I couldn’t place what it was exactly.

  I looked down at the file Barrett had given me.

  “Jay Woods?” I asked the guy as I took a seat opposite him at the interrogation room table. “I’m Agent Ethan Marston with MBLIS, and this is my partner, Robbie Holm. We’re here to ask you a few questions.”

  “Embl-what?” the guy asked, resting his forehead in his hand and tapping his foot on the concrete floor nervously.

  “M-B-L-I-S,” I spelled out for him. “It’s an acronym for the Military Border Liaison Investigative Services.”

  “Y-you’re with the military?” he stammered, blinking up at us as Holm took his seat beside me.

  “We are,” Holm confirmed with a curt nod in the man’s direction.

  “So, Jay, how about you tell us a bit about yourself,” I said, flipping through the rest of his file. “What was this business you dealt with back in college?” />
  “That… that was all a misunderstanding,” he spat out, though his foot tapped even harder now, the sound echoing throughout the small room.

  “A misunderstanding?” I repeated, raising my eyebrows at him. “It says here that you spiked a young woman’s drink and forced yourself on her.”

  “As I said, it was just a misunderstanding,” he said, and though he still sounded nervous, there was a sneer in his tone, like he’d used this explanation many times before. “She just regretted it, is all.”

  “You know, I might just buy that,” I said, continuing to look over the file. “But it says here that she was covered in bruises and even had some internal bleeding. You served a year and went on the registry. Got expelled from your college.”

  I peered over the file at him, but he just continued to rest his head in his hand, fiddling with his bangs as he stared down at the table. His fingers started to tap atop it to match the beat of his foot on the floor. He didn’t say anything.

  “You know,” Holm said, narrowing his eyes at the man. “Once someone starts down this kind of path, they almost never stop. One of the first things you learn in our kind of work.”

  The tapping grew louder and more frequent now.

  “Come on, Jay, you know why we’re here,” I said, leaning forward across the table and practically hissing the words at him. “You drugged that girl, beat her, and God knows what else, and then you realized that you did worse than you were expecting. That whatever you gave her had more of an effect than you thought, and you went too far, isn’t that right?”

  His eyes darted up at me nervously and then down again. He was clearly listening, so I went on.

  “And then you put her in your car—the bronze Honda Accord,” I continued, scanning the file again to make sure I got the right make and model for the registered vehicle that gave Jay here away as a suspect. “And then you drove her to the hospital and dumped her just far enough from the security cameras that you knew they weren’t going to catch your plates. Am I getting all of this right?”

  I stayed in the same position as I said all this, leaning across the table and ducking down so that I was at eye level with the crumpled, nervous man. As I spoke, he bit his lip over and over again, continuing to stare down at the table and tap his fingers and toes on the steel and concrete, respectively.

  “I don’t know anything about any of this,” he said, his voice wobbling about as hard as I’d ever heard before, and he didn’t look at Holm or me as he spoke. When he finished, he bit his lip again, hard, and I was almost surprised that he didn’t draw blood.

  “Of course not, you’re a good guy,” I said with a shrug, leaning back in my chair again and peering down at him. “You just wanted to have a little fun. You didn’t want to hurt anybody, not permanently, anyway. They told you it would be safe, just like a roofie, but even more effective. She might not even remember anything at all, even.”

  His eyes flicked up to meet mine for a second when I said this last part about the roofie, and I knew that I was on to something.

  “That’s what they told you, isn’t it, Jay?” I asked, leaning down to be eye level with him again, though not reaching across the table this time in order to maintain some physical distance between us. “That it was totally safe and would make sure you never got caught. You probably paid a premium when you heard back, isn’t that right?”

  He looked up and blinked at me and then looked away just as quickly.

  Holm picked up his file and started perusing through it now.

  “Looks like you could pay a premium, huh?” he asked, raising his eyebrows at one of the pages. “That’s a hefty trust fund you have there, Jay. With that kind of money, I’d bet you expect more from the people whose services you enroll.”

  A flash of anger crossed the guy’s face, and he narrowed his eyes at the table. We were definitely getting somewhere now. We almost had him. I could feel it.

  “Bet they’ll have to answer to you, won’t they?” I asked, giving him a sly smile. “They’ll get what they have coming to them when you’re through with them. After all, you’re really just as much a victim in all this as she is, aren’t you?”

  That did it.

  “Damn right, I am,” the guy spat, lifting his head up and looking at both of us for the first time since we came inside the interrogation room. “They’ll never work again, the lot of them. If I testify against them, will they get what’s coming to them?”

  “They sure will,” Holm confirmed, exchanging a knowing look with me. We both knew that the DA would probably offer this guy a deal to take down the gangbangers, but hopefully, they wouldn’t need him to make their case.

  “They’ll get exactly what’s coming to them,” I added with a nod, crossing my arms. “And so will you, at the end of the day.”

  “Come on, you just said I’m the victim in all this, too!” the guy cried, looking like he might actually burst into tears any second now.

  “You’re not too bright, are you?” I asked him with a wink. Then, turning to my partner, “Agent Holm, how about we get a sample of Jay here’s DNA?”

  “Right on it,” Holm said, grinning at our suspect and closing the file and handing it to me before getting up and heading back out into the main portion of the police station to retrieve a swab and a forensics specialist.

  “This is a setup!” the man cried, banging his fist against the table. “How could you even know it was me? The cameras didn’t catch my plates!”

  “The cameras didn’t need to catch your plates,” I said quietly. “You see, you drive a pretty uncommon vehicle—probably because you like the attention. And there’s never a way to escape your past. That little incident in college is going to follow you until the day you die.”

  “And how is that fair?” he asked, his lower lip quivering.

  “Fair?” I asked, raising my eyebrows at him. “How about you ask that poor girl you put in the ICU about what’s fair.”

  I narrowed my eyes at him, and I wanted nothing more than to punch him in the face. He was clearly only out for himself. He didn’t care that he hurt anybody. He only cared that he got caught. We wouldn’t be getting any remorse from this one, at least not of the genuine variety.

  True to form, he just scoffed in response and looked away from me again.

  “Alright, Jay,” I said, leaning forward on the table again. “How about we go over exactly where you got this drug and who you got it from?”

  CHAPTER 20

  Jay Woods sang like a bird, and then he spat into a cup, and his DNA sang like a bird, too.

  I was grinning from ear to ear when Holm and I met Barrett back out in the main office area of the police station.

  “Is it true that you got the guy?” the detective asked impatiently when we approached him at what I assumed was his desk, but in reality looked like about a hundred thousand papers all stacked on top of each other. We could barely see the top of his head over it all.

  “We got him,” Holm confirmed with a grin to match mine and a low whistle. “Wasn’t hard to crack, either.”

  My partner and I sat down at a nearby desk, back in the left-hand corner of the room.

  “Yeah, he wasn’t the brightest bulb,” I agreed. “Ruthless and cruel, yes, intelligent, not so much. He was so concerned about himself that we got him to squeal by trashing on the people who sold him the drug.”

  “And who were they?” Barrett asked, still as eager as he was when we first showed up.

  “Just some random gangbangers,” I said with a shrug. “He didn’t know their names and didn’t pick any of them out of a lineup of the guys we already have in custody. But that’s not important. It’s where that matters.”

  “Alright, then, where was it?” Barrett asked, leaning forward on his desk.

  “In an apartment above the bar,” I said, waggling my eyebrows at him. “It seems all roads lead back to Lafitte.”

  “Strange,” Barrett said, nodding slowly as he considered this. “But
it makes sense. After all, Williams was hiding out in the hotel, and Adelaide met this loser in the bar. It seems to be a hub of activity.”

  “And who usually lives in the apartment above a business? The people running it,” Holm added with a trademark gleam in his eye.

  “Looks like our friend, the manager, wasn’t as innocent as he made himself out to be,” I said slowly. “Though I suppose someone else could own the bar.”

  “It’s the same group that runs both businesses,” Barrett confirmed. “Though I’m not sure how involved the manager is in the higher-up stuff.”

  “Well, it’s time to find out,” I said, pulling out my phone to message Nina. “We should confirm with Agent Gosse and then see where we’re at.”

  “It would be good to have her with us,” Barrett agreed with a nod, pulling his suit jacket off the back of his chair. “She seems to know what she’s doing. Man, am I glad you got something out of your guy. Mine was such a dud that I was afraid we would end up back at square one.”

  “That bad, huh?” Holm asked with a chuckle.

  “Worse,” Barrett confirmed, shaking his head. “The second I started asking him questions, he just started blubbering and crying about how he was working at the pizza shop that night and everyone there could confirm it. He seemed pretty soft. I doubt he could pull anything like this.”

  “Not our guy,” Holm said darkly. “There was something about him. I don’t know…”

  “It’s like you knew he did it when you looked at him before he even said anything?” Barrett finished for him. Holm nodded. “Yeah, I know the type. You don’t come across them often, but when you do… Well, let’s just say I’m glad you caught him.”

  “Just don’t let them give him too good a deal to testify, okay?” I asked, raising my gaze from my phone, where I was still waiting for Nina to respond. “He was a real piece of work, that one, and he’ll say anything to get a reduced sentence.”

  “Oh, by the time we’re through with this case, they won’t even need him to testify. We'll have so much evidence,” Barrett said confidently. “I’ll make sure of it.”