Broken (The Raiford Chronicles #3 Book 1) Read online

  Broken

  The Raiford Chronicles #3

  Janet Taylor-Perry

  Finalist, 2014, NIP, Pirate's Alley Faulkner Wisdom Competition

  Other books by Janet Taylor-Perry:

  Lucky Thirteen

  http://amzn.to/1ld8grm

  Heartless

  http://amzn.to/1iWuYmP

  Copyright © 2015 Janet Taylor-Perry

  ISBN-13: 978-1505841428

  ISBN-10: 1505841429

  Disclaimer

  All people, places, and events in the following story are fictitious. Any resemblance to any entity, living or dead, is coincidence.

  Dedication

  For Polly Harrington, Shake DeLozier, Sherry Whitten, Jeana Smith, and Nan Crosby, my wonderful, supportive friends at the Ridgeland branch of the Madison County Library System. While my electronic world was broken, they pulled me through. I promise to visit even when all is working correctly.

  Acknowledgements

  A great many thanks to the readers of Lucky Thirteen and Heartless who have clamored for the third book.

  I owe much appreciation to my family and my sweetheart for putting up with me when my eyes are glued to a computer screen and my fingers are stuck on a keyboard. I really am not ignoring you, but when the Muse strikes, I must write.

  I give kudos to my beta readers this go round—Norm d'Plume, author of Into the Mind of God, a work in progress; Margie Redmond, aka Maggie Banks, author of Seige of Jericho, retitled Twisted to the Right and The Children of Nineveh, both available from Margie at [email protected]; and my sweetheart, Rob Finney, an avid non-reader who is fast converting thanks to The Raiford Chronicles. And for reading this in its very first draft, thanks to my dear friend, Nidia Hernandez, and my daughter, Mary Catherine Perry. These are the two people who have read every word I've written, no matter how good or bad.

  I can never thank my editor/mentor/friend, Lottie Brent Boggan enough. Her wonderful historical fiction saga, Redemption Ridge, is now available, on Amazon at http://goo.gl/S0G02W, as well as her many anthologies at http://goo.gl/CXJEk6, along with her life's journey in Streams of Mercy. If interested in the latter, contact Lemuria Books in Jackson, Mississippi, http://www.lemuriabooks.com/index.php?show=author&id=2725.

  A few groups must get a shout-out. Red Dog Writers (Lottie, Judy, Peggy, Lydia, Tammy), thank you for all the encouragement and support, my small group from Mississippi Writers Guild (Dorian, Neal, Chris, Noel, Cindy, Elizabeth, Diane, Trevor, Charlotte), Mississippi Writers Guild and Mississippi Poetry Society, (especially Wynne Huddleston), Gulf Coast Writers Association, and to my TheNextBigWriter.com buds (for this particular piece—R. M. Keegan, Janet Reid, and Rebecca Vaughn) thanks for keeping me honest and on my toes.

  Once again, great appreciation and recognition go to Christopher Chambers for another awesome cover design. Interested in his work? Contact him at [email protected].

  By the way, if you find any typos or mistakes that were not caught by my editor or proofreaders, blame them and not me.☺☺

  The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.

  Psalm 51:17

  Table of Contents

  Disclaimer

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  1 A Shot in the Dark

  2 The Rose Tattoo

  3 Misty Water-colored Memories

  4 Left for Dead

  5 Fallen Angels

  6 Detective Reynolds

  7 Open for Business

  8 The Year from Hell

  9 Rambling Man

  10 To Live Again

  11 Sniper

  12 An Artist

  13 I Do

  14 Knight Moves

  15 A Mistake

  16 Revenge

  17 Protective Custody

  18 Civilian Targets

  19 Cowardice

  20 One of Their Own

  21 Not the Same Mistake Twice

  22 Never Look Back

  23 Excuses Are Like Asses

  24 God with Skin

  25 A King and his Court

  26 A Gold Mine

  27 Chief Baker

  28 Living a Lie

  29 Surprise Doesn't Cover It

  30 A Miracle

  31 The Miracle Worker

  32 A Time to Celebrate

  33 Headstands

  34 Ring around the Rosy

  35 Witness

  36 Verdict

  37 Closure

  38 A Broken and Contrite Spirit

  39 A Year Off

  40 Collision Course

  41 An Off Year

  42 Detectives Reynolds

  About the Author

  1

  A Shot in the Dark

  Eau Boueuse, Louisiana

  June 3, 2028

  Laughing, Christine Gautier and her daughter, Trista, walked out of the strip mall, loaded with shopping bags. The sun hovered just on the horizon, casting darkening shadows across the parking lot. When they got to the brand new, small Honda SUV, Chris fumbled in her purse. "Here!" She tossed the car keys to her daughter who had just received her learner's permit that afternoon.

  Running to the driver's side, Trista squealed and jumped up and down, accidentally hitting the panic button.

  For a moment wreathed in a huge smile, Chris's face took on a shocked expression as she mumbled, "Raif."

  The blaring horn muffled a loud pop. Chris slumped forward. Her face struck the passenger-side mirror, leaving a streak of blood.

  Trista jumped backward as she watched her mother slide to the ground beside the passenger-side door.

  For several seconds those around ducked and Trista stared straight ahead. Then, the girl's screams drowned out any other sound. She did not hear shouts of warning.

  An older man near Trista ran to her and pulled her to the ground. "Get down, honey. Somebody is shooting."

  "Mom!" she wailed. The man pulled out a phone and dialed for emergency assistance.

  Mere minutes passed before police and paramedics arrived, but the entire parking area was shrouded in darkness. Detective Brian Baker got out of his unmarked car.

  Seeing someone she knew, Trista jerked away from the stranger who had protected her and flew to the detective. "Mr. Baker! Help my mom! Help my mom!" Her hands fluttered in front of her.

  "What?" He knitted his eyebrows together. "I'm calling her now. What are you doing here?"

  Dialing his partner to meet him, he jerked his head to the side hearing the familiar ringtone of Chris Gautier's phone—"Oh, What a Beautiful Morning."

  Brian looked down to see his partner in a pool of blood. "Oh, my God!" He rushed to her side, knelt, and felt for a pulse. "Oh, hell no!"

  Trista dogged his steps. Baker dragged the girl away. He pulled Trista to him and called his boss, Chief Raiford Reynolds, who was also Christine Gautier's brother-in-law.

  Raiford Reynolds held his sobbing niece in his arms as the parish coroner drove away with Chris's body. "Uncle Ray, she can't be dead," Trista cried.

  "She is." He closed vivid blue eyes against his own stream of tears. "Oh, God! She is."

  A young uniformed officer came over. Matching eyes looked into Ray's. "Daddy, we need to leave the scene. We're too close to investigate this. Baker will do fine. He's already called for backup."

  "Yeah," Ray murmured. "I should take Trista home. I have to be the one to tell Raif." As he spoke, his cell rang. "Oh, God," he groaned looking at it. "It's him. How do I tell my twin his wife is dead?"

  Parker held his visibly shaking hand out for the phone, but Ray shook his head. He answered, "
Raif."

  "What's wrong? I can feel something tearing your heart out. Mine is about to explode from my chest, so I know it's really bad. Has Parker been hurt?"

  Ray looked toward his son. "No. Oh, Raif. It's Chris."

  "She's not even on duty. She's shopping with Trista to celebrate her getting her driver's permit."

  "I know."

  A long poignant pause led Raif to bellow, "How bad? Was it a wreck? What about Trista?" Agitation swelled across the connection.

  "Dad!" Trista wailed.

  "Ray, talk to me!" Raif''s panicked voice rose an octave.

  "She's gone. Shot." A sob caught in his throat. "Meet me at the morgue. Parker is taking Trista home. Is Patrick there?"

  "Yeah." Raif's voice sounded a million miles away.

  Ray nodded toward his son.

  "I'll stay with them until Uncle Raif gets home." Parker Reynolds took his cousin's arm. "Come on. You get to ride on the back of my motorcycle. You always like that."

  In a daze, the teenage girl followed.

  Ray motioned Baker to him. "Are you too close to head this case?"

  "No!" Baker barked.

  "She was your partner." Ray bit his lip.

  Baker nodded. "All the more reason for me to make sure whoever did this rots in hell." He jutted his chin toward Ray's car. "Go take care of your brother."

  Ray nodded mechanically, still in shock, and left Brian Baker in charge.

  Baker called the only other four detectives on the Eau Boueuse Police Force to the site of the murder of one of their own within half an hour. After several tests—laser trajectory, measuring the angle at which Chris's head struck the mirror, notes on exactly where the bullet entered her skull—he determined that the shot must have come from the office building across the parking lot. "Baines," he bellowed.

  "Yeah, Brian?" Detective Delta Baines said.

  He pointed. "Take Pennington and scour the office complex rooftop. We have the bullet. It was buried in the car in front of Chris's Honda." He furrowed his brow. "Nobody else was targeted. Who did Chris piss off enough to want her dead?"

  "No clue, but I'm on the building." She walked way, snagging her partner as she went.

  Baker and the other two detectives, Tynes and Colbert, continued to question the few mall patrons that had been in the area when the shot was fired. The one person who seemed to understand exactly what had occurred was the old man that had pulled Trista to the ground. He talked openly to the detective.

  "The lady fell that way." He pointed. "So, I bet someone shot from the office building."

  "What makes you think that, Mister?"

  "Claude St. Cyr."

  "Please, tell me why you think that, Mr. St. Cyr."

  "Detective, I served two tours to Vietnam. I was a sniper. I've targeted single individuals before." He scratched solid white hair. "I pushed the little girl down because, at first, I thought we had a crazy on our hands. I guess we still do, but nobody else was his target." He pointed to the bloody pavement. "She was a cop, right?"

  "Yes, my partner."

  "Could be somebody out for revenge. You might be next."

  "Thanks for the comforting thought."

  "Wish I could say something different. I watched you get the slug out and send it off. "Didn't look like a .308."

  Baker arched an eyebrow. "Maybe a .223."

  The old man shrugged. "Maybe. Shot wasn't as loud and damage doesn't look as great. Didn't do much urban sniping where I had to worry about anyone besides my target, so I used a .308. If it is a .223, your guy is not a random sniper, for sure. He was only after the lady."

  Looking past the old man's shoulder, Baker groaned. "Great. The press has arrived. Thanks, Mr. St. Cyr."

  "Wish I could be more help."

  Baker made his way to the news crew. Nip this in the bud, he thought.

  Raiford Gautier met his twin brother at the county coroner's office. Ray caught Raif in his arms. "Tell me this isn't happening," Raif said.

  "I wish I could."

  The two men walked into the coldest room Raif had ever felt. He trembled—whether from cold, rage, fear, he could not tell. Behind a glass window, lay a shrouded form in darkness. The coroner, in scrubs, appeared on the other side and pressed a button at the same time turning on the light. "Are you ready?" he asked.

  "Why can't I go in there?" Raif asked.

  "He has to do an autopsy," Ray explained. "Can't take a chance on evidence being contaminated."

  "She was shot in the head. Why do they need to cut her open?"

  "Mainly, the doc will be helping to identify the kind of bullet, caliber and such. He won't be checking her other organs."

  Raif took a deep breath and nodded.

  Ray pressed a button on their side of the viewing room. "Go ahead."

  The sheet fluttered back. Raif stumbled against the wall behind him. "Oh, God!" He crumpled to the floor, heaving great sobs. "It's Chris! What will I do without her?"

  A voice only Raif heard whispered, "Shh. You will survive, my love."

  He struggled to his feet and leaned his head against the glass, left hand splayed. "I'm not so sure," he muttered.

  Cutting his twin a strange look, Ray pressed the button. "Yes, Dr. Perot, that's Christine Gautier. How long until we can claim the body?"

  "She's our top priority, Chief. Three days."

  Eyes on a blonde reporter who held out a microphone, Baker held up a hand in a halt motion when he arrived at the crime scene tape. "Stop right there."

  The perfectly made-up face twisted in annoyance. Then she bombarded him with questions.

  Detective Baker, face impassive during the questions, waited for her to finish. "We had a deadly shooting. An Eau Boueuse detective has been killed. We'll have more for the press in the morning. That's all for now." He turned to leave.

  "Name?" the woman shouted at his back.

  Without turning around he mumbled, "Christine Gautier." He walked on.

  2

  The Rose Tattoo

  June 4, 2028

  New Orleans, Louisiana

  Like giggling school girls, Neely Rivers and her best friend, Esther Combs, met for beignets at Café du Monde in New Orleans. They hugged each other giddily. Neely exclaimed, "My, you look great! Six months of marriage agrees with you."

  "Yes, marriage agrees with me." Esther laughed. "When are you gonna join me? You did catch the damning bouquet and you were my maid of honor."

  "I'm happy you drove in for a visit from San Antonio; so, don't start." She waved her hand in dismissal. "The right man never asked me."

  "Maybe you should stop being so picky. Exactly what does the right man look like?"

  "If I told you, you'd just laugh and chide me."

  Their server came and the women ordered before Esther continued to pry into Neely's love life. "Seriously, Neely, what are you looking for in a man? I mean, you're thirty. That biological time clock is ticking, honey." She waved her index finger back and forth like a metronome.

  Neely cackled. "Are you pregnant?"

  "No, we wanted to wait a year."

  "Well, honey, you're thirty-two. Your clock is ticking faster than mine."

  "Oh, hush!" She playfully popped her friend's hand. "At least I have my man." Esther dunked a beignet in her coffee the second the platter was set in front of them. After swallowing a bite she asked, "Neely, what do you want in a man?"

  "Well, I'd like for him to look good."

  "How superficial!"

  "Hey! Wylie looks good."

  "Yeah, he does. Go on."

  "Well, I'd like for him to be well-grounded, but have a sense of humor. He must be intelligent. I couldn't tolerate a dimwit." She ate a bite of her pastry as a group of loud women walked by them to leave. After the chattering subsided, she finished her thought. "He has to have faith, but not be judgmental. And he has to know how to love."

  "Do you mean make love?"

  "That's pretty important, too, but I mean love from
the depths of his soul."

  "That's a tall order, honey."

  Neely laughed and looked into space. She said reticently, "I actually met the perfect man once."

  "Oh, really?" Esther tucked her chin to her chest and stretched her eyes wide. "Do tell."

  "It doesn't matter." Holding a pastry, she waved her hand as if erasing a blackboard. The white powdered sugar dusted the air like loose chalk. "He belongs to someone else. He's married and very much in love with his wife."

  "Wow! He must have been something else to make you look misty-eyed. When did you meet him? Tell me more."

  Neely sighed. "It's been five, six years."

  "And the thought of him still affects you like this?" Esther gulped her coffee. "I have to know about this man."

  "He's just a fantasy."

  "Still, I'd like to hear about the man who could stir you so. You've never said a word about him until today."

  Neely smiled. "He came in to get a tattoo."

  "What kind? He's not a biker, is he?" her friend asked with some concern. "Or—worse, a skin-head, neo-Nazi?"

  "No, he's an architect, a very successful architect. He came in with his twin brother. He wanted to get the Chinese symbols for older brother and younger brother over their hearts." She tapped her chest. "It was so sweet. His brother had a Celtic guardian that my father did, but he had never had a tattoo, and he didn't like needles." She laughed slightly at the memory. "He was doing this to show his brother how much he loved him because an old friend of the brother's had just been murdered—the late Senator Robert (Row-Bear) LaFontaine.

  Esther's mouth dropped open at the revelation that her friend's ideal man ran in circles that included a United States Senator. Neely nodded at her unasked question and went on.

  "They were identical with their shirts on, but it was easy to tell them apart. It was something in their bearing and the personality that came through." Her voice took on an air of dreaminess. "His brother was a cop and a smartass—very likeable, but you could tell that he had a mischievous streak and probably a temper. The cop had at least half a dozen scars when he took off his shirt. He had been shot and stabbed in the line of duty. His spleen had been removed, along with one kidney and part of his intestines."