Chapter 18 #2
When I walked through the kitchen and out the door behind the counter, I could see Trevor standing there, his pistol leveled at Whiskey, but I was partially blocked by the beams holding up the porch.
I needed to get closer. I had to make one kill shot or Trevor would have time to fire at Whiskey.
I could hear their voices as I inched across the bar.
“We’re going to go inside,” Trevor said, “and you’re going to give me that proof you claim you have.”
“I was lying,” Whiskey said. “I don’t have anything. I just wanted to get rid of Buck.”
“You offered to take him to see the deputy,” Trevor said. “If you don’t have proof, that’s a hell of a bluff, and I just don’t buy you being that smart. So turn around and head inside.”
I edged up to the window and peered outside.
Whiskey had turned around and was slowly walking toward the bar, but now he was blocking me from this angle and I didn’t think Ida Belle could make a shot without coming out from the side of the building, completely exposing herself. I hoped she didn’t take the chance.
I scanned the other windows in the bar, trying to figure out which one would give me a clear shot without having to traverse the open doorway, when I heard a whirring sound outside. I peered out again just in time to see the drone launch out of the tree and straight at Trevor.
“What the hell?” Trevor yelled as he whirled around, but it was too late.
The drone caught him right in the side of his face and arm, causing him to drop the pistol and stagger back a step.
Whiskey, who had turned around when he heard the noise, lunged for Buck’s pistol, which was lying on the ground only a couple feet away.
Trevor jumped forward and scooped up his gun and I put my pistol in the window, ready to take the shot.
Finger on the trigger, I aimed and started to squeeze.
And then a shot rang out. Trevor’s eyes widened and a hole appeared in the middle of his shirt.
He stared at Whiskey in disbelief, and for good reason.
Whiskey had just grabbed Buck’s gun but hadn’t lifted it yet.
I ducked as low as possible but was still able to scan the area.
No way Ida Belle had made that shot. It came from the other side of the bar.
Who the hell was out there shooting now? How many poachers were there?
“You can come out now!” Carter’s voice boomed from outside.
I stood up and looked out the window as he walked up from the direction of the bayou.
He leaned over and took a look at Trevor before moving over to extend a hand to Whiskey.
The bar owner hesitated for a bit, clearly in shock, but finally took Carter’s hand and allowed himself to be half pulled to a standing position.
“I said you can come out now,” Carter repeated. “I know you’re here. I saw the airboat behind that clump of trees.”
Ida Belle and Gertie came around the corner. Gertie was still clutching the cell phone, but Ida Belle had put her pistol back into hiding. I slipped my nine into my waistband and headed out the front door. The gig was up. At least this time we hadn’t killed anyone.
Whiskey looked back and forth from Ida Belle and Gertie to me, clearly confused. “What are you doing here?” he finally asked.
“We wanted your barbecue alligator recipe,” Ida Belle said. “We heard it was the best but your bar isn’t exactly the kind of place we frequent.”
“We were flying the drone ahead of us and saw Buck pull a gun on you,” I said.
“We got closer to see if we could help and there was all this yelling,” Gertie said. “Then everything got very confusing.”
“No shit,” Whiskey said.
Carter raised an eyebrow, and we knew he wasn’t fooled for a minute. Fortunately, Whiskey was still in shock so he didn’t even ask why I’d walked out of the bar instead of around the side with Ida Belle and Gertie.
A groan sounded beside me and Whiskey’s eyes widened. I dropped down beside Buck and pushed him over. The wound in his side was seeping blood, but when I ripped his shirt open, I could tell it had probably missed major organs.
“He’s losing blood fast,” I said.
“I thought he was dead,” Whiskey said.
I nodded. Buck hadn’t moved a quarter of an inch since buckling over onto the ground. I figured he’d passed out, then bled out. I was happy to be wrong.
“Trevor forced you to buy the alligator meat, didn’t he?” Carter asked.
Whiskey nodded. “He caught me poaching a gator. Not for bar sales. Just one for me and Pops. He said he’d make me an offer I couldn’t refuse—he’d provide the gator, I’d sell it and give him eighty percent of the profit, and he wouldn’t arrest me for poaching.”
“How long has it been going on?” Carter asked.
“A couple months,” Whiskey said. “He said he was leaving the state soon, so I thought it was almost over. I swear, I didn’t know nothing about him doing that to Petey. Not until last night.”
“You said you had proof?” Carter asked.
“I don’t know how good it will be, but I marked the bills I paid him with. Put my initials on all of them. It’s not much but I figured he didn’t have any reason to have a stack of hundreds with my initials on it, so maybe somebody would look into it.”
“You can bet on it, although I think you’ve got plenty of witnesses.”
“Not just witnesses,” Gertie said. “We have it on film. The drone got lodged in a tree behind us but the camera was directed right at Trevor. It was recording the entire time.”
Gertie handed Carter Ida Belle’s cell phone, then pulled her own out of her shirt pocket. “And if you need audio, I got a good bit of it here.”
Whiskey looked over at Carter. “It’s a good thing you showed up when you did or these ladies would have been turning it all over to you to work up murder charges. He was going to kill me.”
Carter glanced over at me. “Something tells me you would have pulled through even if I’d been a little late to the party.”
Whiskey may have missed my coming out of the bar, but Carter knew exactly why I’d been inside and what I’d been about to do.
Carter was right—Whiskey would have made it out alive, but all of us would have been put through the wringer with the state.
It was one thing for one law enforcement officer to shoot another in the line of duty.
It was completely another thing for a civilian to do so.
I frowned. And now that Whiskey had mentioned Carter showing up to save the day, I wondered why Carter was there.
Was he following up on the boat theft and just happened to show up at the right time, or was he working another angle of the poacher investigation as we were?
I was just about to ask when I heard the siren in the distance.
“You guys can go ahead and get out of here,” Carter said to me. “You’ll just be in the way and I can get your statements later. I’ll just take the phones, if you don’t mind.”
And that’s when it hit me. My name would be in a report.
Carter would be investigated for shooting a state employee, especially another law enforcement officer.
I’d be asked to give my story and the name Sandy-Sue Morrow would all be part of a homicide record.
CIA Director Morrow would officially have a hemorrhage.
Then a thought occurred to me and I looked over at Whiskey.
“Say, given that you have the video, audio, and a cop and two women to vouch for you, do you think maybe you could forget I was ever here? I sorta have ongoing issues with cops, present company included.”
Carter covered his mouth and coughed, and I could tell he was trying not to smile.
Whiskey frowned, then nodded. “You sure don’t look like you’d be a lot of trouble, but I guess you never know. Far be it from me to put you on radar. Like you said, I got enough to cover me already and I don’t know you from Adam anyway. As far as I’m concerned, I ain’t never seen you before.”
“Awesome,” I said. “I owe you one.”
“Let’s get out of here,” Ida Belle said, then looked at Carter. “You’ll be letting Quincy and Petey out of jail, right?”
Carter nodded. “I’ll call Deputy Breaux and tell him to do it right now.”
Gertie handed Carter her phone, and we took off from the bar before Carter or Whiskey changed their minds or Buck got lucid and saw us all standing there.
We made a quick hike back to the airboat, all talking over one another as we tried to make sense of everything that had gone down.
So many answers, and yet, still so many questions, and with Trevor dead, we might not ever get an explanation for everything.
“I don’t know that I’m cut out for this,” I said as we climbed in the boat. “We had the wrong guy, and would have played right into Trevor’s hands by pointing the finger at Whiskey.”
Ida Belle frowned. “Don’t be so hard on yourself.
No one said this would be easy, and besides, even if we’d told Carter what we suspected, he wouldn’t have taken our word for it.
He would have collected more evidence before making an arrest. We were moving in the right direction.
We just missed a jog in the road is all. ”
“I guess. But I still don’t feel like we accomplished much.”
“We did have a boat and car chase,” Gertie said. “We didn’t get to shoot anyone, but at least those have to count for something.”
I smiled. “You know, I’m okay with not having to shoot anyone.”
Ida Belle clapped me on the back. “Progress.”