Seven Girls Gone

Book 4: Quinn & Costa Thriller

by Allison Brennan

Genres: Police Procedurals; Crime Fiction; Suspense

Synopsis

“Set among Louisiana’s swamps and brooding atmosphere, 'Seven Girls Gone' is a complex mystery whose characters are as intriguing as the storyline.” —The Denver Post

When nobody will talk and corruption runs deep, turning to outsiders is the only way to make sure women stop disappearing…

For three years, women have been going missing—and eventually turning up dead in the small bayou town of St. Augustine, Louisiana. Police detective Beau Hebert is the only one who seems to care, but with every witness quickly silenced and a corrupt police department set on keeping the cases unsolved, Beau’s investigation stalls at every turn.

With nobody else to trust, Beau calls in a favor from his friend on the FBI’s Mobile Response Team. While LAPD detective Kara Quinn works undercover to dig into the women’s murders and team leader Matt Costa officially investigates the in-custody death of a witness, Beau might finally have a chance at solving the case.

But in a town where everyone knows everyone, talking gets you killed and secrets stay buried, it’s going to take the entire team working around the clock to unravel the truth. Especially when they discover that the deep-seated corruption and the deadly drug-trafficking ring at the center of it all extends far beyond the small-town borders.

A Quinn & Costa Thriller

Book 1: The Third to Die
Book 2: Tell No Lies
Book 3: The Wrong Victim
Book 4: Seven Girls Gone

Release date: April 25, 2023

Publisher: MIRA Books

Print pages: 400

Sample

1

Friday started at 12:57 a.m. for St. Augustine detective Beau Hebert. Two hours’ sleep was going to have to be enough.

A homicide at the Magnolia Inn wasn’t a surprise. Not the first time he’d been called to a crime scene at the brothel that fronted as a bar—wouldn’t be his last. The Magnolia Inn had been the hub for drugs, prostitution and violence longer than Beau had lived in Broussard Parish, the heart of the Louisiana bayou.

Untended fields overgrown with weeds and prickly blackberry bushes surrounded the tired, rambling Inn. A small house owned by the Inn’s manager, Jasper “Dog” Steele, was the only other structure on the gravel road. The Inn was more for local use than travelers—unless the purpose of the travel was sex and drugs.

The original building was more than two hundred years old and had once been a grand Southern-style home—wide veranda, stately pillars, carved double-doors. Beau’s grandmother said when she was a little girl, the family had moved out in the middle of the night and no one knew what happened to them. The house was vacant for a time, then seized by the parish for unpaid taxes and sold at auction. It went through a series of business ventures including an antique warehouse and a stint as a bed-and-breakfast in the seventies whose claim to fame was a double murder-suicide when a woman walked in on her husband in bed with the owner.

Beau supposed sex and violence were built into the foundation.

Over the years, ill-fitting additions had been built onto the main house and now the place was owned by an LLC whose sole signatory was Jasper Steele. Jasper was no saint. Twice arrested for felonies, but charges were never filed and he walked.

That was St. Augustine in a nutshell, even before corrupt Chief of Police Richard Dubois took the helm three years ago. Regular folk turning a blind eye to crime. Might as well put those three so-called “wise” monkeys up on the town sign because no one saw, no one heard, no one said a damn thing to put criminals like Jasper behind bars for good.

Beau walked up the stairs to the main house, which pretended to be a hotel. If an unsuspecting traveler ventured off the interstate and needed a place, the Inn could accommodate them with one of four marginally maintained rooms upstairs, holdovers from the ill-fated bed-and-breakfast. But rooms generally rented by the hour allowing prostitutes to trade sex for money or drugs or both.

The main floor of the house was a bar and lounge that served food when they had something in stock and the chef wasn’t on a bender. Beau didn’t know if the health department even knew the place existed or if they cared. He’d never seen anyone eating anything but po’boys and fried oysters.

As soon as he stepped inside, the smell of marijuana assaulted him. Pot wasn’t legal in Louisiana, but no one did much about it unless someone was caught dealing. And then? It just depended on who was arrested and who they knew whether they did a day in jail or faced arraignment.

Most weren’t arraigned.

“Didn’t know you were coming in, Beau,” Officer Joey Kinder said when he saw Beau walk in.

“Got the call.”

Beau was one of three detectives in the town of 9,500 people. Perry Hebert (no relation), was fifty-nine and waiting for retirement and his pension. Perry rubber-stamped anything an officer said or did, simply marking the days until he could claim his pension—literally, with a big red X on his desk calendar.

Andre Armand was the other detective. Came in a year after Dubois was appointed, but Beau didn’t have an angle on him. Originally from NOLA, Armand was thirty, quiet, lived alone. He was competent but didn’t put in extra hours. Beau had seniority, so kept most homicides on his desk, passing along property crimes and vandalism to the younger detective.

He glanced at Joey Kinder. Mostly a good cop, but Beau still didn’t know if he could trust him. He’d transferred from Baton Rouge nine months ago and didn’t have longtime allegiances, but Kinder might not want to take on Beau’s cause. Beau had been accused of tilting at windmills—when he wasn’t outright threatened to drop an investigation.

“What happened?” Beau asked Kinder.

“Witnesses state Jean

Paul LeBlanc shot Jake West. Jake is dead.”

Beau knew the bartender. Jake was edgy, always seemed to be circling around illegal activity, but nothing stuck to him.

“Dead on scene,” Kinder continued. “Paramedics confirmed, already left. Coroner on his way.” Kinder glanced at his watch and cleared his throat. Doc Brown or his assistant would get here when they damn well felt like it.

“Show me,” he said to the uniformed officer.

All eyes were on them as they walked toward the bar counter. A jukebox played country twang, turned low.

Crystal Landry, cousin to Broussard Sheriff Bobby Landry, was sitting with Gray Cormier. Crystal ran the bar—probably managed the girls, though Beau didn’t have evidence of it. She rarely worked nights. Gray worked for his half brother Preston. The two lowlifes were St. Augustine’s resident drug dealers, but Preston was the brains of the operation. Beau would love to see him in prison, but nothing had stuck.

Then he saw Ernestine.

Well, crud.

Ernestine was sitting alone in the far corner biting her thumbnail. When she caught his eye, she looked down, her dark face etched with worry.

Beau had told the young woman to steer clear of the Magnolia Inn, especially since she had been talking to him. He didn’t want her to get hurt. Or worse. Yet here she was, possibly a witness to murder, at the number one hub for violence in St. Augustine.

“Brown give you an ETA?” Beau asked Kinder.

Kinder shook his head. “He was called more than an hour ago.”

Dr. Judson Brown was the coroner of Broussard Parish. He had been elected eight times, now serving more than thirty-two years. He was in his seventies and Beau didn’t think he was corrupt, just incompetent.

He could be wrong. Brown could be corrupt and incompetent.

But when your family lived in the parish for more than two hundred years, people voted for you, no matter how ill-qualified you were or how many mistakes you made.

Beau didn’t step behind the bar, though it was clear others had—the paramedics had left gauze and other supplies, bottles that should have been on the bottom shelf had been pushed to the back and sides, as if someone had squatted to inspect the corpse. Jake West had a hole in his chest, half his head shot off. His one remaining eye open and glazed. Why the paramedics went to check the pulse of a guy with half a head, Beau couldn’t fathom.

But even if the evidence was compromised, at least there were two eyewitnesses, according to Kinder.

“Witnesses?” Beau asked.

“Gray and Crystal.”

Drug dealer and cousin to a cop. Bobby Landry was probably as corrupt as Chief Dubois, but nicer about it. Everyone loved Bobby, which was why he’d been elected three times—twice unopposed—and would h

ave the job as long as he wanted it.

Beau walked over to the two. “Cormier. Crystal.”

“Sit down, Detective,” Crystal said. All charm. “Can I get you a beer? Something stronger?”

“Working,” he said. “Officer Kinder said you both witnessed the shooting.”

He’d made plenty of waves of late investigating a string of murders, so he wasn’t going to add fuel to the fire antagonizing the sheriff’s cousin by asking that he interview Crystal separate from Cormier.

“I didn’t think you worked nights, Crystal,” Beau said.

“It’s Danny’s poker night.” Crystal lived with her brother Danny, whose raucous Friday night poker parties were well-known.

“You witnessed the shooting?”

“Jean Paul. He’d been drinking half the night. Jake cut him off, they had words, Jean Paul pulled out a gun and shot him. Twice.”

Though he knew the answer, he clarified, “Jean Paul LeBlanc?”

“Yep.”

“He shot Jake because Jake cut him off?” That seemed odd for a multitude of reasons. First, that Jake would cut anyone off seemed farcical, and second, that Jean Paul would shoot him over it. “Was Jean Paul tweaking?” If he was drugged out—a distinct possibility—that might make sense.

She shrugged. “Don’t know. I thought Nellie kicked him out again, that’s why he was here so late.”

“What time did the shooting occur?”

“Eleven twenty? Eleven thirty? Thereabouts.”

Over an hour before Beau was called. He turned to Cormier, concealed his hatred of the man. Barely.

“You saw the shooting?”

“Yep, what Crystal said.”

“Did you hear what words were exchanged?”

“Nope.”

Beau didn’t believe him.

“Neither of you heard what Jean Paul said before he shot Jake?” Beau repeated.

“Just—nothing. Nothing that made sense,” Crystal said.

“But he said something.”

Crystal hesitated as if she was debating telling him the truth, then said, “I didn’t hear most of it, except right before Jean Paul pulled his gun, he said, ‘Fuck you.’”

“Yep,” Cormier said.

Beau didn’t believe either of them.

The murder was likely drug related—most of the murders in St. Augustine were—but the boldness of shooting a man in cold blood with witnesses just didn’t feel right.

“How far away was Jean Paul from Jake?” he asked.

Crystal got up, walk

d over to the bar—stood right in the middle, five stools to the right, five to the left. “Jake was there, pouring a draft,” she said, gesturing behind the bar to where two taps—both now decorated with blood—came out of the counter. “And Jean Paul stood...” she walked four, five, six steps from the stools “...about here.”

Eight to ten feet. Even if someone was high, they probably wouldn’t miss at ten feet.

“Did anyone else witness the shooting?”

“Nope,” Cormier said.

That was unlikely with a half dozen people still here.

“Crystal,” Beau said, “did anyone leave?”

“Excuse me?”

“You know what I mean.”

She was going to lie to him. He could tell because she hesitated again, then she said, “I shouldn’t say.”

“Say.”

“Well, Tex was here, he didn’t see anything, but his wife doesn’t like it when he comes down.”

Really, Beau thought, Tex’s wife didn’t like when he visited a brothel? Wonder why.

“Don’t go causing trouble for him. Mags is a ball-breaker, you know that, and Tex is my kin.”

Tex Landry was Crystal’s cousin. There were a lot of Landrys in St. Augustine. Beau suspected that 10 percent of the parish had Landry blood going back a dozen generations or more.

So Tex Landry was screwing one of the prostitutes when Jean Paul shot Jake West. Slipped out so his wife wouldn’t find out.

“Anyone else?”

“No,” she said.

Fifty-fifty she was telling the truth.

Beau got up and walked over to the larger group of men and women sitting in the corner. He asked if anyone had witnessed the shooting; no one admitted they had. He asked if anyone heard what the argument between Jake and Jean Paul was about; no one had heard a word.

“Where was Jean Paul drinking?” Beau asked.

They looked at each other, shrugged.

He turned to Crystal and called across the room, “Where was Jean Paul sitting?”

She pointed to the end of the bar.

That’s when Beau noticed the entire bar was cleaned off. No glasses or ashtrays. Completely wiped down.

“Did you clean the bar after the shooting?” he asked.

“I put the glasses in the sink.”

“Well, dang it, Crystal, it’s a crime scene.”

“I’m sorry, Beau, I didn’t think about that,” she snapped without remorse. “Force of habit.”

“And the gun? Did you clean up the gun, too?”

“Gun?” She shook her head. “He took it with him. Shot poor Jake and walked away.”

“What time did Jean Paul arrive tonight?”

“Nine or ten.”

“He sat at the end of the bar for more than two hours?”

“Yep.”

“Visit next door?” Meaning, did he get laid.

“No, sir.”

“How much did he drink?”

“Couple double

shots of bourbon, a couple drafts. I wasn’t bartending. I was catching up on paperwork in the back most of the night. And he could have been high when he came in here, I don’t know. You know Jean Paul.”

Beau had arrested Jean Paul twice for drug possession and neither arrest stuck. Released within twenty-four hours. Nice guy to chat with when he was sober, and generally a “happy” drunk. Not known to be violent, but could get moody when he was high.

Beau talked to two guys in the corner who were part of Cormier’s crew (they had nothing to add), then he approached Ernestine. She was chain-smoking, a half dozen cigarettes stubbed out in the small ashtray in front of her. He had to talk to her, otherwise it would appear suspicious, and he didn’t want to do or say anything that would put Ernestine on Cormier’s radar.

“Did you see the shooting, Ernestine?”

“No, Mr. Beau. I was just sitting here talking to people.”

“Who’d you talk to?”

She shrugged, bit her bottom lip. “Whoever wanted to talk.”

He spoke quietly, mindful of who might overhear. “You shouldn’t be here, Ernestine. You know that, right? Remember?”

Remember what we talked about? Remember what I told you when you came to me in April and said you wanted to help find out what happened to Lily?

He couldn’t say any of that, and he wasn’t certain Ernestine would put two and two together. She was a sweet girl, but developmentally disabled. She didn’t have a mean bone in her body, and people used her because of it. He hadn’t wanted her help, but she kept tracking him down, wanting to talk to him about Lily, who she called her “best friend.” He’d finally relented, talked to her in private when her no-good father was at work one day. Listened, then told her to call him if she heard anything. And every single time she called him, whether the information was valuable or not, he reminded her not to tell anyone she had talked to him.

He already had one dead girl on his conscious—one girl who wanted to do the right thing and ended up strangled and half-naked in the bayou. He didn’t want Ernestine dead, too.

“Yeah, okay, Mr. Beau. If I saw anything, I’d tell you.”

He walked away before she said anything that Cormier or his goons might overhear.

He said to Kinder, “Wait for the coroner. I’m gonna go find Jean Paul.”

“Need backup?”

“Nope. If he’s where I think he is, he’ll come in without incident.”

On the surface, Jake West’s murder appeared cut and dried. But like most everything in St. Augustine, nothing appeared as it seemed.

Which was why he had five unsolved murders on his hands. And each dead girl had a connection to the Magnolia Inn.

2

Beau headed east, to the edge of town where the swamp began, where Jean Paul lived with his girlfriend Nellie and her kid in a trailer that had seen better days.

Not surprised to find Jean Paul sitting on the sagging steps smoking a cigarette, Beau got out of his car. Though it was after two in the morning, the thick air weighed on him. Least it was a mite cooler, but as soon as the sun came up it would feel like a sauna.

Beau walked over to the man, stood ten feet away. He didn’t consider Jean Paul a threat, but you never knew. Crystal said he had kept the gun. Beau put his hand on his holstered weapon, just in case.

Five foot eight, skinny—if he weighed a buck fifty, Beau would eat his hat. Not even thirty, the years of hard living made him look closer to fifty.

Jean Paul took a long drag on his hand-rolled cigarette.

“Beau.”

“Jean Paul. Where’s Nellie and the kid?”

“Sleepin’.”

“Keep your hands where I can see them.”

Jean Paul nodded.

“There was some trouble at the Magnolia,” Beau said. “I need to bring you in for questioning.”

“Yep.”

“You know what it’s about?”

“I might.”

“Do you have a weapon on you?”

“Nope.”

“I’m gonna have to search you.”

“If you must.” He didn’t make a move to get up. “I hear you’re the last good cop in the bayou?”

He said it like a question. As soon as Beau read him his rights, Jean Paul wasn’t going to talk. This wasn’t his first rodeo.

“I might have some information,” Jean Paul said when Beau remained silent. “If you walk away.”

“Can’t do that.”

Jean Paul knew the St. Augustine drug trade. He had once been tight with the Cormiers, though Beau heard through the grapevine that Jean Paul may have been cut out. Was that the reason he killed Jake West?

If Jean Paul had evidence that Beau could take to the state police, something big enough that it couldn’t be ignored, maybe they could deal...but he couldn’t just let the man go. That would make him no better than the cops he was fighting.

“Shit, Beau, I should be given a fucking medal for whacking Jake West.”

“Why?”

“You don’t know?”

“Rumors that no one has been able to prove.”

“Which is why he deserved a gut full of lead.” Jean Paul half smiled.

Rumors that Jake liked underage girls were likely true. But someone had to file charges. Someone had to come forward. A parent, a teacher, anyone. Without evidence, rumors were just rumors. Word was he liked them fourteen to eighteen. Underage, but fourteen was the special circumstances cutoff. Didn’t make it right, but that was the law, and not much Beau could do about it unless one of the parents wanted Jake on statutory rape or a girl came forward claiming he raped her.

As it was, Beau suspected Jake sweet-talked himself into their pants. Didn’t make it right, didn’t mean he didn’t deserve a good beating—and Beau could have walked away from that—but not cold-blooded murder.

“Can’t say I disagree with you, but you can’t take the law into your own hands.”

“What I know, it’s worth something.”

“Don’t even try to offer me a bribe.”

“Not money, information. It’s big, Beau. Real big.” He inhaled his cigarette until it damn near vanished. Jean Paul pinched the end between his thumb and forefinger and flicked the stub away.

“Multiple witnesses saw you shoot Jake West in cold blood. I can’t let you take a pass

on this one.”

If he had information about the chief...

“But,” Beau continued, “you give me something I can follow up on, I’ll go outside the parish, get you relocated.”

Jean Paul shrugged. “You didn’t fall off the turnip truck yesterday, Beau. I’m a dead man unless I run.”

“We have to do this by the book.”

“Suit yourself.”

Beau needed someone to talk. For far too long he’d been up against corruption. Witnesses recanted, evidence went missing, people who talked turned up dead.

He’d considered leaving St. Augustine, but he couldn’t just up and leave his grandmother after his granddad died, and she refused to move with him to Baton Rouge where her son—Beau’s dad—lived. So Beau stayed. There was a lot to love about the small bayou town. And a lot to hate.

No matter what Jean Paul knew, it wasn’t worth letting a killer walk. That was crossing a line Beau wasn’t ready to cross.

“Get up, turn around,” he said. If he didn’t stand for something, he stood for nothing.

Beau read Jean Paul his rights, searched him—he wasn’t carrying, didn’t have drugs on him—and called in the arrest. A patrol would be out in ten to fifteen minutes.

“Where’s the gun, Jean Paul?”

“Tossed it.”

“Where?”

“Out my truck window when I turned onto Oak Mill.”

They might be able to find it. He’d send a team out to look—Beau wouldn’t want a kid to find it. But if it was in the river, it was buried in the muddy bottom.

“Why’d you kill Jake?”

He shrugged. “Didn’t like him.”

It just didn’t ring true.

“Now’s the time, Jean Paul,” he said. “Tell me what you know.”

“Everyone knows you’re trying to nail Cormier. You never will. Dubois protects him.”

Knowing the chief was corrupt and proving it? Two different things.

“If you have proof, I’ll get him. Make a statement, I can work with you—”

Jean Paul laughed again. “Lordy, Beau, you’re a funny dude. Nuttin’ going anywhere.”

“Give me something I can prove.”

Again, silence. “I saw Tanya Ewing getting into a patrol car with Jerry Guidry the night she was last seen.”

Beau didn’t expect that. He was expecting intel on Cormier’s drug trade, not information about a murder.

Tanya was the third of six dead or missing prostitutes over the last three years. If Beau could get Guidry on murder? That was...well, he wouldn’t let Jean Paul go, but he would walk over hot coals to get him trans

ferred to another jail.

“She didn’t seem to be in no distress or nuttin’, so I didn’t think twice,” Jean Paul continued. “I’d seen her with Guidry before. And a couple of your other guys.”

Beau had long suspected that some of the cops took advantage of the prostitutes in town. One of the perks of being an officer in St. Augustine were the free blow jobs, he’d once heard Guidry boast.

Made him sick to his stomach.

“You’re sure it was April 2nd, last year?” Beau asked.

“I don’t know about the date, just that it was the last night anyone saw her.”

“Where did you see Tanya get into Guidry’s car?”

“Outside the Inn. I’m pretty sure I wasn’t the only one who’d seen her.”

During Beau’s investigation into Tanya’s disappearance and subsequent murder, Jake West said that Tanya left the Inn at 10:55 p.m. the night she disappeared. Allegedly, her brother’s friend drove her home, but later, she left on foot after she and her brother argued. After that, no one claimed to have seen her.

The tidbit about Guidry was something he could follow up on, but it wasn’t enough, and he told Jean Paul that. “What time did you see her? Before or after eleven?”

“Couldn’t say,” he said. “I also knows something about Lily Baker.”

The bright lights of a patrol car could be seen as it turned down the long, narrow gravel road that led to the trailer park.

Beau held his breath, at first not expecting Jean Paul to speak. Lily Baker had been missing for four months. The other five girls had all been found dead within days of their disappearance.

“She was pregnant.”

That was news. “Are you certain?”

He shrugged. “Yep.”

“How?”

He didn’t say.

“Did she know who the father was?”

Jean Paul cleared his throat. “Don’t know. But you know who might’ve known? Crystal.”

Great, Beau thought. Just what he needed: the sheriff’s cousin as a potential witness.

Or potential suspect.

Hell, everyone’s a suspect in this town, guilty of something.

Jean Paul said one more thing, though his eyes were on the approaching police car.

“Someone dumped her out in the bayou, just south of Lantern Gate.”

“How do you know that?” Beau snapped. “Were you there? Did you witness it?”

Jean Paul didn’t answer the question. “Don’t know if she’s still there, but she might be. I don’t think it’s right, her mama not having a body to bury. I hope you find her.” He paused as the patrol car stopped next to Beau’s truck. “But don’t say it came from me.”

3

Beau hadn’t slept more than an hour on Friday after booking Jean Paul into the St. Augustine jail. When his alarm went off at five thirty, he showered, didn’t shave, and headed to meet Addie Benoit for breakfast forty minutes away in Lake Charles. They always met in Lake Charles, not just because it was a larger city, but because it was two parishes away.

He arrived first and sat in the corner with a good view of the door, flipping his mug over to signal he would like coffee. The waitress brought over a carafe, filled his cup and put the carafe on the table. He liked that. He could keep the caffeine flowing until he felt marginally human.

The diner was a chain, generic, nondescript. Could have been located anywhere in the US from Washington to Florida, and the only telltale sign that they were in the South was that grits was a standard menu option. Catered to tourists and old people, and the chances that anyone from his life in Broussard Parish would walk in were slim.

But never none.

It would put both him and Addie at risk to be seen with their heads together, but mostly Addie. Beau thought it was ridiculous that a cop and a prosecutor had to be careful when meeting, but that’s where they were.

Addie walked in not five minutes after him. He laid eyes on her, a petite and rounded Southern belle, only seconds before she saw him.

She still took his breath away.

Addie had no hard edges. Light brown hair, tawny skin, warm hazel eyes that sparkled when she laughed. The extra pounds she carried just made her more huggable. She always dressed professional—pencil skirt that hugged her wide hips, a blouse or a modest camisole to go with whatever blazer she wore on any given day. Low-heeled, comfortable shoes. Simple but classy jewelry. She was in her midthirties, never married. He didn’t know her whole story, but he wanted to.

They hadn’t known each other long, other than in passing at the courthouse, but she’d been assigned to one of Beau’s cases last year—a drug dealer who ended up having the charges dropped by the DA against Addie’s advice—and they realized that they were kindred spirits, stuck in a corrupt jurisdiction.

It was with Addie that he’d put together more information about the five dead prostitutes, and the missing Lily Baker. When they began to make connections between law enforcement, the district attorney and the drug trade—all centered around the Magnolia Inn—they realized they needed to be extra careful.

Especially when they layered in the dead. It went beyond five prostitutes, and beyond the borders of St. Augustine, oozing out into all corners of Broussard Parish. Beau didn’t know how he was going to stop the corruption.

But he couldn’t live with himself if he didn’t try. Especially since the most recent victim was dead because of him.

Addie walked over, sat down across from Beau and touched the back of his hand. “You okay?”

“Yeah, why?”

“You look tired. Sounded worried when we spoke.”

“I’m always tired and worried these days.”

They ordered because they both had to be at work before nine. She feared for her job—the DA was watching her closely, and she didn’t want to give him any excuse to fire her. Beau feared for her life. He’d been subtly threatened, but he took precautions. Being a cop as well as former military gave him the skills and instincts to be careful. As long as no one knew Addie was working with him, she should be safe.

As soon as their food was delivered and the waitress was out of earshot, Addie said, “Tell me.”

“Jean Paul LeBlanc killed Jake West last night. In front of witnesses at the Magnolia.”

Addie crossed herself. She was one of the few young people he knew who went to church and meant it. “So he did it? Good witnesses?”

In St. Augustine, being arrested didn’t always mean you were guilty. And being released didn’t always mean you were innocent.

He shrugged, told Addie what he knew, who the witnesses were.

“Cormier,” Addie said with distaste. He was the reason Beau and Addie had gotten to

 know each other in the first place—Gray Cormier was the drug-dealing dirtbag who had been let go for “lack of evidence” when the evidence went missing. But Gray’s half brother was worse. Preston Cormier could charm the wings off an angel, but he was the brains of the brothers’ drug enterprise.

“When I went to Jean Paul’s place to arrest him, he didn’t deny it. Didn’t even argue with me.”

“Why did he do it?”

“Hell if I know. Could have had a reason, could have been having a crap day. Jean Paul said he didn’t like him, that he should get a medal because Jake seduced underage girls.”

“Maybe Jake slept with the wrong girl.”

Beau hadn’t thought about that. “And a father didn’t beat Jake into a pulp, yet convinced Jean Paul to kill him? I don’t know. Maybe—it’s worth looking into. But then why wouldn’t Jean Paul tell me that? It wouldn’t get him off from murder, but if it was for hire, he would shave off some years. Hell, in this place, with Jake’s reputation? You never know what will happen if he goes to jury trial.”

“You believe Crystal?” Addie asked.

While Beau didn’t trust Crystal, especially since she ran prostitutes and likely drugs, she’d mostly been straight with him over the years.

“I don’t think she’s lying about this,” he said.

“I hear a but.”

“It’s Crystal. I think the facts she told are accurate, but she’s leaving out details. Do they matter? Don’t know. I asked specifically if anyone left after Jean Paul shot Jake. She hesitated just a few seconds too long, then said her cousin Tex.”

“Well, anyone who knows Mags knows that she would hit him upside the head with a hot frying pan if she found out he was at the Magnolia.”

“I think someone else was there, but no one said a peep.”

“They wouldn’t, not around Cormier.”

“Maybe if I heard different from Jean Paul, I wouldn’t be getting that itch that this is bigger than a struggling addict shooting a pervert bartender he’s known for most of his life just because the addict was cut off from his bourbon. And I’ve never heard the Magnolia cutting anyone off from anything.”

There’s a line from an old movie that Beau always watched if it came on television. Perhaps you have already observed that in Casablanca, human life is cheap.

Damn movie could have been written about St. Augustine. But instead of World War II and Nazis and politicians swaying whichever way the wind blew, you had the drug war, prostitutes and cops that looked the other way. Or worse.

Beau glanced around, then leaned forward just a bit. He didn’t recognize anyone in the diner, but he didn’t want anyone to overhear. He quietly told Addie everything Jean Paul told him, including Tanya Ewing

 last seen getting into Jerry Guidry’s police vehicle.

Her eyes widened. “No hint of it before?”

He shook his head. Jerry Guidry had been hired by the chief when Dubois was appointed three years ago by the new mayor, and was the only cop that Beau was positive was dirty, other than the chief. Beau suspected the other cops simply turned a blind eye to the corruption, but he couldn’t be sure. Once you made a conscious decision to not see bad, it was only a hop, skip and jump to doing bad.

“Will he go on record?” Addie asked.

“You know as well as I that a drug addict like Jean Paul isn’t going to have any fuc—damn credibility. That was our biggest problem in the Cormier case, every witness was unreliable. Just because I believed them doesn’t mean a jury would believe them, and unless we can get the case sent to another jurisdiction, we’re screwed.”

“You don’t have to tell me that,” Addie said, slightly defensive.

“I’m sorry.” He breathed deep, forcing himself to calm down. Addie had to deal with this bullshit every day as a prosecutor. Her boss Alston Gary was tight with both Sheriff Landry and Chief Dubois, and if a case wasn’t airtight with a priest and a cop as witnesses, they only got prosecuted if Alston didn’t like them.

“Anyway, Jean Paul said that Lily Baker is just as dead as the others and he implied it wasn’t because she was a prostitute.” He paused. “He wouldn’t tell me how he knew, but he claimed that Lily was pregnant. Implied Crystal knew who the father was, and gave me a location as to where her body was dumped.”

Beau loved being a cop—but he hated his job at the same time. He knew how it was in towns like St. Augustine. Many of the young women didn’t have many options. If they didn’t start using drugs, they generally did okay—married, had a couple kids young, worked at the five-and-dime or one of the interstate restaurants that catered to travelers. And some got out of the cycle—Beau had helped one young woman enlist in the Navy when she graduated high school. ...