But Not For Lust by BJ Bourg (comprehension books .txt) 📕

My words got under his skin like I knew they would. He sneered and let out a wicked laugh.

“It’s simple—I give her what Dillon can’t.”

“And what’s that?”

“She likes it rough.”

“Come again?” I asked.

“She likes to be slapped around and have her clothes ripped off of her.” He shrugged. “Some girls like it rough, and she’s one of them.”

“And I’m guessing you were thrilled to oblige her.” I fixed him with a stern expression. “So, if I’m hearing you correctly, you’re saying Dillon isn’t a wife-beater like you. Isn’t that right?”

He squirmed in his seat. “Look, she asked me to do it. I didn’t do nothing wrong. She liked being slapped and having her hair pulled. She wanted me rip off her shirt and bra. Who am I to deny a lady in need?”

He said the last part with a smirk that I ignored. I needed to stay focused on the real issue and not be sidetracked by my disgust for this idiot.

“Look, Nikia, I need you to think really hard,” I said after a while. “Why did Dillon do this to Ty?”

“I already told you,” he said, not even lifting his head. “I don’t know!”

“There has to be a reason.”

He only shook his head.

I glanced at Susan. “Can you think of anything else we need from this prick?”

Susan nodded and began asking some follow-up questions. When she was done and I had made notes of the information, she turned to me and shrugged.

“That’s all I’ve got,” she said.

Nikia finally lifted his head. He looked from Susan to me, his eyes hopeful.

“So, is that it?” he asked. “Can I go home now? I mean, since I cooperated and all? Can you use me as a witness?”

“You can’t be serious.” I pulled an arrest report from one of the desk drawers and placed it on the table between us. “You’re under arrest for principal to first degree murder.”

  CHAPTER 53

Two hours later…

Susan and I greeted the young secretary and told her our reason for being there. The woman smiled warmly and asked us to have a seat in the lobby. She said her boss would be out shortly to meet with us, and that he was expecting us.

After booking Nikia Billiot and calling for a transport van to take him to the parish jail, I had figured out which oilfield company employed Dillon Watts. I called, spoke with the owner, and let him know I was in possession of an arrest warrant for his employee. When I told him the charge was First Degree Murder, he had gone deathly silent on the other end of the line.

“Are you sure you’ve got the right Dillon Watts?” asked the man, who went by the name Tex. “He’s the best derrickhand I’ve got. The man’s as tough as the pipe he fits and he ain’t scared of shit, but a killer? That doesn’t sound like the Dillon I know.”

“Well, I don’t know what his motivation was,” I said, suddenly going over all of the facts in my mind and searching for a hole in our case, “but a judge signed a warrant, so we’ve got probable cause to believe it was him.”

“Okay, then,” he said with resignation in his voice. “How do you want to play this one?”

We tossed a few ideas back and forth and came up with a plan. We both agreed it would be better to have Dillon brought to us, rather than Susan and I flying out to the rig, so he had promptly put a helicopter in the sky to retrieve Dillon from the platform on which he worked. It was located sixty miles away in the Gulf of Mexico, so Tex told me to take my time getting there.

“It’ll be a couple of hours before we get him to the office,” he had said. “But I promise you this; he won’t have a clue what it’s about and you’ll be able to get the drop on him. This happens all the time. We fly our roughnecks in for all sorts of reasons. I told the rig manager to tell Dillon we had another land job for him. We pulled him off the rig last weekend for the same reason, so he won’t suspect a thing.”

That news was golden, because it helped us verify that Dillon had made an unexpected trip home for the weekend, and this removed any potential alibi defense his lawyers might try to raise later. As it was, Tex’s words were starting to haunt me and I began to wonder if we had the right guy. After all, what evidence did we have—other than Nikia’s word—that Dillon had committed this atrocious crime? And what motive could he possibly have for doing what he did to Ty?

Upon my request, Tex had gotten his secretary to fax a copy of Dillon’s hitch schedule to our office and I’d secured it with my investigative file. Afterward, Susan and I had headed south on Old Blackbird Highway, stopped for a milkshake at a restaurant called Fantasy Slip, and were just now taking our seats in the lobby when the door swung open.

A short man—whose voice was louder than he was tall—stood there dressed in tight jeans, a tighter shirt, and an oversized cowboy hat. Had anyone asked me, I would’ve said he was trying way too hard to live up to his name, which, I suspected, he’d probably given to himself.

“Come on in,” he said, sweeping his hat from his head and bowing slightly in Susan’s direction. I saw her grimace, but Tex didn’t seem to notice as he continued talking. “I just got word that they’ve touched down at the helipad. They’ll be here momentarily.”

When we stepped into his plush office, I glanced around. “Is it customary for