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

the day. She wasn’t stomping as confidently as she used to, but it would only be a matter of time.

Smiling, I said to her, “It’s good to see you back in the saddle.”

“I already told you—I’m not actually back in the saddle yet,” she grumbled. “I’m up on the wagon seat riding shotgun right now. But, I’ll be back up on that horse in no time. Things are not moving along as fast as I’d like them to move, but they’re at least heading in the right direction.”

Susan approached us and smiled warmly when she saw Amy. “It’s good to see you out and about.”

“It’s good to be out and about.” Amy indicated Baylor’s marked police car. “I can’t wait to get behind the wheel again, because his driving scares me.”

“Ouch!” Baylor grabbed his chest playfully. “That hurt.”

We all turned when we heard the medics talking. Dillon wasn’t putting up a fuss as the medics loaded him into the back of the ambulance. We had cuffed his hands in the front for transport and I planned on riding in the ambulance until we reached the hospital, where a team of sheriff’s deputies would meet with us and provide security until he was cleared for release. At that point, they would transport him to the detention center and book him into jail on my warrant.

I turned to Susan when one of the medics waved for me to join them. “See you at the hospital?”

She nodded and headed for my Tahoe.

Dillon was quiet on the drive to the hospital. Once, when we were about ten minutes away, he glanced over at me and asked, “What’ll happen to Betty?”

“She’s going to jail,” I said. “She will not get away with this.”

He pursed his lips and nodded, as though pleased. He didn’t say another word in the ambulance.

Once Dillon was in a room at the hospital and under the watchful eyes of several Chateau Parish deputies, I turned to leave.

“Detective Wolf,” Dillon called from his bed.

I stopped and faced the man.

“Please tell Ty Richardson’s family I’m sorry,” he said. “I…I wish I could take it all back.”

I frowned, nodded, and left the room.

I met Susan in the parking lot and we hurried back to the police department, where I typed up an arrest warrant for Betty Watts and a search warrant for her house and property. While I did that, Susan called Mallory Tuttle from the sheriff’s office and asked that she have her crime scene detectives process Dillon’s truck for us and forward all evidence to the crime lab in La Mort.

Once Susan ended the call, she turned to me. “They’ll take care of the truck for us.”

I nodded absently, caught up in the narrative I was writing. It was already growing dark outside and I wanted to submit the affidavits to the on-duty judge before it got too late. One thing was certain—I was not going to bed until that conniving woman was behind bars. What she had done was diabolical, and it was disrespectful to every victim of sexual assault. It was worse than what Dillon had done. At least Dillon had acted under the belief that he was avenging his wife.

Betty had selfishly turned Dillon loose on Ty in an attempt to cover up her affair with his best friend. And after her husband told her what had happened to Ty, she had all but rejoiced in that knowledge. It made me sick to my stomach.

“Done,” I declared when I’d finished the probable cause narrative for the search warrant. I printed both documents, signed them, scanned them into my computer, and then emailed them to the judge. “Now we wait.”

It didn’t take long for the judge to return the arrest and search warrants to me. He had signed both, so we were now ready to go. I glanced at the clock on my computer. It was almost seven in the evening.

“I doubt Betty will talk,” I said to Susan, who sat quietly at the other end of my desk working on a pile of paperwork. The parade was approaching fast, and I knew she was feeling the pressure to finalize the details. “We should have this wrapped up before nine.”

She nodded idly. “Okay.”

“Do you want me to ask Melvin to come instead?” I offered. “So you can finish your work.”

Her head shot up like a snake about to strike. “Hell, no! I wouldn’t miss this for anything.”

I stood and nodded. “Well, let’s go get her.”

It only took a few minutes to mount up in my Tahoe and drive across town. We weren’t expecting any trouble out of her. As far as I knew, she didn’t even know about the arrest of her husband and she hadn’t been the one who committed the murder, so the arrest should go off without incident. Still, we weren’t taking any chances.

I stopped my Tahoe at a neighboring house and Susan and I eased out of the vehicle. Susan indicated she would go to the back door and I headed for the front.

There was a cold breeze blowing and I shivered a little. Our local meteorologist had forecasted a cold week ahead. She said this was just the beginning, and that things would go downhill from here. She was never wrong, so I accepted my fate like a man waiting for the gallows.

I knocked on the front door and waited for Betty to answer. I couldn’t wait for warmer weather. Were it not for mosquitoes, summers in Louisiana would be absolutely perfect. While the state birds were definitely a nuisance, I would take them over the cold any day. I was only grateful our winters were mild. I didn’t know if I would like living up north where—

Suddenly, the still night air erupted in violent gunfire and I heard a woman scream.

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