The only positive was that the last shot was farther away than the one before so we were making up ground on him. The question was would it be enough ground to get across the open space to the boat and get away. I could return fire but it wasn’t going to look good for the home team—shooting a guy on his own property. And the last thing I wanted to do was give Silas a reason to request any form of leniency.
We hit the end of the tree line and burst out into the open. Wyatt and Jeb were waving and yelling for us to hurry. I turned on the afterburners and sprinted past Ida Belle and Gertie, in case I needed to provide them cover. When I got to the dock, I hit it with one step then leaped a good ten feet and landed in the bottom of the boat, crouching for stabilization as soon as my feet touched metal.
I whirled around, ready to do whatever necessary to protect Ida Belle and Gertie, and saw they were about twenty yards behind me. Unfortunately, Silas had just exited the tree line and spotted them. I was still holding the femur in my left hand so I pulled out my pistol with my right and took aim.
“Wait!” Jeb yelled and brought up an old Coca-Cola bottle full of fireworks.
He lit up all the fuses, pointed the bottle in Silas’s direction, and a second later, they began to fire off. It was probably only ten or so that he’d managed to shove in the bottle, but it seemed like a hundred as they sizzled and flew. And his aim was great.
The fireworks began to explode all around Silas but one was a direct hit on his chest that dropped into his overalls. He threw the shotgun and grabbed at the straps on the overalls, but it was too late. The bottle rocket exploded and we heard Silas scream. Ida Belle and Gertie had reached the dock and Ida Belle made the jump into the boat as I yelled for Wyatt to prepare to launch.
Gertie took one last step on the dock to jump and tripped, sending her tumbling off the side of the dock and into the water. I looked up and saw Silas bent over, retrieving his shotgun. We had to leave now or get caught in the blast. The boat was floating away from Gertie and she swam toward us. I looked for a rope but couldn’t see anything, then I extended the only thing I had available—the femur.
Gertie didn’t even blink as she grabbed hold of the bone and I told Wyatt to start going. I tugged her close to the boat and Ida Belle grabbed her shoulders. As Wyatt took off, we pulled her over the side of the boat and she dropped into the bottom. She sat up, sputtering and clutching the bone.
“Is this what I think it is?” she asked.
I nodded. “Johnny Broussard.”
Jeb and Wyatt looked at the femur, dumbstruck.
“Well, I’ll be danged,” Jeb said.
Gertie grinned. “Me first.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
It only took a favor call-in to the state police from Carter—and a picture of the femur—to get them out to Silas’s house with handcuffs, a warrant, and a forensics crew. Silas, predictably, threatened to shoot anyone who came on his land, but the state police just tagged him with a rubber bullet and that show was over. I made a mental note to add some rubber bullets to my office supplies. It was the perfect solution for disabling someone from a distance without killing them.
And fireworks, of course.
Gertie had hooked Jeb up with a supply at the convenience store and he raved about her, me, Ida Belle, and the entire mission to the state police, the forensics team, and Carter, and even called the local preacher. Wyatt, the older of the two brothers and apparently the one that usually kept things in check, didn’t even bother to try to contain Jeb. He was probably too busy grinning. He hadn’t stopped since Gertie had held up that bone.
The police and forensics team allowed us to stay on-site long enough to see Silas handcuffed and put into the back of a police cruiser. His overalls were completely blown apart at the crotch and he was covered with the remnants from the outhouse explosion. That cop was probably going to burn the car when he was out of it. Silas was leaning to one side in the back seat, so I figured at least he was suffering before the real suffering began. The arrest process took long enough for us to hear someone from the forensics team call out that they’d found the body. Like that was a shock. I’d been toting that femur for an hour before they’d shown up. Shortly after that, we were hurried off-site to await questioning.
We had to call for a tow for Ida Belle’s SUV. The vehicle didn’t hold a spare and the temporary wouldn’t be safe to get us all the way back to Sinful. A flatbed picked it up and it was off to Hot Rod’s shop to await a new tire. Ida Belle, Gertie, and I piled into Carter’s truck and we headed out. Our friends Wyatt and Jeb were already in position in front of the convenience store, and Carter pulled in so we could wait on the state police to take our statements.
Jeb ran inside for more beer as we climbed out of Carter’s truck and Wyatt practically jumped out of his chair, still smiling. They hauled out more lawn chairs and we all took a seat, everyone talking at once about the adventure.
“So can you please tell me now how you put this all together?” Ida Belle asked.
“It was the hangover, I think,” I said.
Jeb nodded. “This sounds like the start of a really good story.”
“I had far too many of those gelatin shots,” I said. “When I woke up, I’d been having this strange dream. I was back in the sandbox on a mission. I had to swim across a river full of alligators, then traverse a shack with a rotted floor and the smell of decaying fish permeating the air. I locked on my target but it wasn’t my target. He was wearing something that belonged to my target and I was about to eliminate the wrong guy. Then I woke up and things rushed into my head—Silas making his kids swim the channel with him every day, that woman who fell through the slats on the chair at the bachelorette party last night, Gertie slapping the wrong person on the butt last night because they were wearing the stripper’s cape.”
The guys all exchanged lifted eyebrows and Gertie smiled.
“That really was a good time,” she said.
“And all of that made sense to you somehow?” Wyatt asked.
“I think I get part of it,” Ida Belle said. “You realized Silas killed Johnny at his house, then drove to the marina and got onto his boat wearing his rain slicker. They were both large men and in the dim light of the oncoming storm, the witness couldn’t see his face and just assumed it was Johnny.”
“What about the phone call to the tax assessor?” Wyatt asked.
“He made that call right before he left,” I said. “That way, he’d have proof he was at home and since no one saw his truck on the highway or at the dock, there’s no way he could have followed Johnny or waited for him on the boat beforehand.”
“So he set up his alibi then left for the dock,” Jeb said.
“Exactly!” I said. “Then Silas took the boat into the lake and jumped onto shore, walked across that thin stretch that separated the bayou in front of his property from the lake, then swam across.”
“But what about his back and knees?” Gertie asked. “How could he swim that channel in a storm after doing all that walking?”
“Because his injury gets worse with walking or standing but swimming doesn’t put any pressure on his spine,” I said. “I’ve seen it a million times, especially with compression injuries from parachuting. He parked close to the dock so he could manage the short walk to the boat without limping. It didn’t matter if he limped after that.”