Seven Girls Gone

SEVEN GIRLS GONE Allison Brennan To the woman behind the curtain, Kimberley Howe. An author, a leader and a friend. Contents CHAPTER 1 CHAPTER 2 CHAPTER 3 CHAPTER 4 SUNDAY CHAPTER 5 CHAPTER 6 CHAPTER 7 CHAPTER 8 CHAPTER 9 CHAPTER 10 CHAPTER 11 CHAPTER 12 MONDAY CHAPTER 13 CHAPTER 14 CHAPTER 15 CHAPTER 16 CHAPTER 17 CHAPTER 18 CHAPTER 19 CHAPTER 20 CHAPTER 21 CHAPTER 22 TUESDAY CHAPTER 23 CHAPTER 24 CHAPTER 25 CHAPTER 26 CHAPTER 27 CHAPTER 28 CHAPTER 29 CHAPTER 30 CHAPTER 31 CHAPTER 32 CHAPTER 33 WEDNESDAY CHAPTER 34 CHAPTER 35 CHAPTER 36 CHAPTER 37 CHAPTER 38 CHAPTER 39 THURSDAY CHAPTER 40 CHAPTER 41 CHAPTER 42 FRIDAY CHAPTER 43 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 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,