Butcher's Dozen

By Anne Baines

Screwed up runaway teen lying to cover her tracks? Or victim of an unthinkable crime?

When a police officer comes to private investigator Sam Arbichaut asking for help with her teenage cousin, he can hardly refuse to at least listen. Everyone says the girl is a runaway, a liar, and a messed up kid.

Except the girl herself, who claims she was kidnapped.
And she says she wasn't alone.

Caught between multiple families, the police, and a powerful local church, Sam doesn't know who to believe.

But if the girl isn't lying... there might be twelve more just like her, trapped somewhere with an evil killer waiting to strike again...

This is the thrilling second book in the Sam Arbichaut mystery series!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bryant Street Publishing
• Release date: Jun 22, 2021
• ISBN: 9781094418766

Anne Baines

Ex-professional poker player and thriller writer Anne Baines spends her non-writing time learning languages, lifting weights, and traveling around the world. She lives in the Netherlands with her husband. She is the author of the Sam Arbichaut mystery series and the Delilah Thrillers.

Book preview

Butcher’s Dozen

A Sam Arbichaut Mystery

Book Two

Anne Baines

BRYANT STREET PUBLISHING

Copyright 2018, Anne Baines (AnneMarie Buhl)

All rights reserved. Published by Doomed Muse Press.

This novel is a work of fiction. All characters, places, and incidents described in this publication are used fictitiously, or are entirely fictional.

No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, except by an authorized retailer, or with written permission of the publisher.

Chapter 1

Sam Arbichaut groaned and dropped his head onto his crossed arms. He had faced many challenges in his life, but this particular one seemed insurmountable.

You know you’re going to have to do it eventually, Laura told him. She raised her eyebrows at him over a steaming mug of coffee, and then returned to perusing the paper. Bright-eyed and—in Sam’s opinion—disgustingly chipper, she had her freshly washed hair pulled back in a neat bun, and clean scrubs on in anticipation of her shift.

So far this morning, Laura had gone for a run, stretched, made a breakfast and a lunch for herself, and had at least one cup of coffee.

Sam, who had been dragged along on said run, was meanwhile summoning the courage to stand up. He made another tortured noise.

It’s not nearly as bad as you’re making it out to be. Laura kept her voice tart and didn’t look up from her paper, but a smile was tugging at the corners of her mouth. You just don’t want to go into the office this morning.

I… Sam considered offering a strident denial, but gave up halfway through formulating the first sentence.

She was absolutely right, unfortunately. While a certain amount of his groaning was related to the run, a large part had to do with the fact that once he showered and breakfasted, he would have nothing to do other than head into the office and tackle the mountain of work on his desk.

It turned out that being embroiled in a high-profile murder case led to a lot of business—at least if one was working as a private investigator. While Sam would have been glad of that up until recently, it was surprisingly jarring to go from a private murder investigation back to tailing people’s spouses and employees.

He didn’t have anything against low-stakes, nonviolent cases—at least in theory. Logically speaking, those were better in every way than suddenly having a murder investigation on his hands. He could happily go the rest of his life without having to untangle the secrets behind another murder. That wasn’t in question.

It was just that after the Nancy Straid case showed how high the stakes could get, suddenly investigating rivals and following wayward spouses didn’t seem to matter very much in the grand scheme of things. Sam had far, far more work than he could ever hope to complete, and a small business owner’s appreciation for the security that brought him.

He just also wanted something… more.

You should go shower, Laura told him. You’ll feel better once you have.

From across the room, Sam’s dog, Jackson, got up from his post-run nap to come lay his head on Sam’s knee. His brown eyes looked up at Sam appealingly.

Ball? Throw ball?

Sam ruffled Jackson’s ears. I have to go into the office, buddy. I’ll come home at lunch to play. Sound good?

Jackson looked at him mournfully and padded away to flop down on his bed again, and Sam stood up with a sigh.

Right. Shower. Work. Maybe we could go to dinner tonight. When did you say you were done today?

Not until eight. Laura shook her head. And I said I’d go watch my niece’s dance practice after. She considered. Tomorrow is another long shift. Maybe I’ll see you Wednesday? Why are you smiling?

Sam grinned. Having my girlfriend stay over, talking about dinner dates. I feel like a teenager again.

I don’t, Laura said. And thank God. What a miserable few years that was. She grinned at him. Anyway, I thought you were feeling old and creaky this morning.

With a laugh, Sam leaned down to kiss her. Well, maybe not a teenager. And I suppose I never enjoyed dating then. But I’m enjoying this.

On that point, I’ll agree with you. She smiled up at him. Now go shower and I’ll make some more coffee before I go—and brainstorm places for dinner on Wednesday.

Deal. Sam kissed her again and headed upstairs.

He really had nothing to complain about, he told himself firmly. He was glad he wasn’t on the police force any longer. No local politicians breathing down his neck, no piles of paperwork, no snide comments if he left the office early. If he went on a date with Laura, the details weren’t expected as a matter of course, to be followed up by mostly good-natured ribbing about how Sam had escaped marriage once, and why would he throw himself into the pit again?

No, Sam’s friendship with Leo McCullough, lead homicide detective for the wealthiest precinct in Portland, was enough for him. It was as close as he wanted to get to being in a police department again.

On the other hand, when they saw one another now, McCullough was always talking about serious cases, the kind that brought killers to justice and protected citizens. He had a strong sense of responsibility, McCullough. He was driven by his personal code of honor, but also by events from his past that he had not yet confided to Sam about. Sam wasn’t sure he would ever know. McCullough was a very private man, as well as a very driven one.

And when Sam talked to him, he was reminded that his own work was hardly as important. McCullough never said as much. He never even insinuated it, and as far as Sam could tell, he might not even have thought it.

But it was the truth.

Sam stood under the hot water—skin-meltingly hot, Laura liked to say about his showers—and considered. If he wanted to do something meaningful with his life, it hardly had to be a new career. He could volunteer somewhere. Or…

That was the problem. He had no idea where to do from here. He’d moved away from Florida, made the terrifying fresh start, started his own business, and begun lifting weights. He was forty-eight, in the best shape of his life, with a house mostly paid off and vacations whenever he wanted them. He hadn’t bothered to come up with more of a plan than that, mostly because it had never occurred to him that he’d really managed to achieve it all.

So now he had to come up with a new set of goals, and he didn’t have the first idea where to start.

He heard the doorbell ring and a storm of barking from downstairs. With a frown, Sam stuck his head around the edge of the shower door and listened. He heard Laura, and the very faint sounds of someone replying. A woman? He was fairly sure it was a woman. Jackson had stopped barking and was now whining for attention.

Sam, his palm filled with soap, rubbed it absent-mindedly into his hair before remembering that it had been body wash, not shampoo. When Laura appeared in the doorway, he was still washing the last traces of it out.

There’s a woman here to see you. Laura slid the door back and handed him a cup of coffee. She says her name is Kellogg.

Kellogg. Kellogg. Kellogg? Sam stuck his head around the shower door. Very pale, youngish?

That’s the one. Laura raised her eyebrows. You know her, then?

She’s on McCullough’s team. Smart as a whip. She’ll be as good as he is one day, and Lord help the murderers around here when there’s two of them. Did she say what it was about?

I asked. Laura looked troubled. She just said, ‘My cousin—he may know what it’s about.’ She looked…

A memory surfaced: Kellogg even paler and gaunter than usual, striding through the precinct office without seeming to see anything.

Her cousin went missing a while back, Sam said. He turned the shower off abruptly and stepped out. I thought she’d been found, but… Never mind. Tell her I’ll be right there.

If Kellogg was here, it could not mean anything good for that case.

Chapter 2

Kellogg was sitting in the kitchen when Sam came down. She must be on a day off, as she was wearing jeans and a sweatshirt. She still carried herself ramrod straight, however, and was scanning the kitchen as if attempting to memorize every facet of it.

Or distract herself. She looked at Sam as he arrived, and there were purple shadows under her eyes, almost bruised-looking.

I took a sick day, she said, somewhat defensively.

Sam, with his job history, recognized the signs of someone who couldn’t quite bear to open the subject they were here to discuss. He poured her a cup of coffee and busied himself getting cream and sugar, speaking of the weather and his latest outing with Jackson, and only trailed away into silence as Kellogg stirred both milk and sugar into her coffee. He sensed she was more looking for something to do than preparing herself a beverage.

As he had expected, the distraction of pouring and mixing gave her enough mental distance to start talking.

McCullough said he told you about my cousin, she said finally. She had wrapped her hands around the mug as if the house were freezing, and she looked up at Sam now with startlingly clear grey eyes. Now that she had decided to speak, nothing would stop her.

Not very much, Sam admitted. I know she went missing, and I know she came back a few months ago.

Kellogg considered this. Yes, she said finally. Yes, I saw her right after she got back. Her parents had called around to tell us she was home. They made sure to call me because they knew I had reported her as missing. They told me… She rubbed at one eye with her fingers. They said I’d been wrong.

Sam waited for a moment. and at least prompted, Wrong about what?

Oh. With the tiny, distracted head shake of the deeply weary, Kellogg focused briefly on him. I reported her as missing. They said she wasn’t… missing. They said she’d run away.

That counts as—

I know. Her voice had an ugly hitch in it. I told them that. I told them, if we at least reported that she was gone, we’d have a chance to find her. They hadn’t told any of the rest of us for weeks. Her fingers had gone white around the mug, and she visibly forced herself to let go. I knew we were too late. I was so angry…

Sam swallowed hard. He could not imagine learning that a young family member had gone missing, and their parents had done nothing. The early days of a disappearance were crucial. The recollections of bystanders faded quickly, CCTV feeds were written over, and, worst of all, the chances of finding an abducted child alive dwindled sharply over time.

Why wouldn’t they report her missing? He found his voice, and was surprised that it sounded calm. He didn’t feel calm.

They were always fighting, Kellogg said. She looked away tiredly, and a sloppily made ponytail brushed over her sweatshirt. I know Sophie was… trying.

Problem child? Sam kept his voice neutral.

Not until recently. Kellogg’s gaze was faraway, as if she were pretending to speak about someone she hardly knew. Thinking about it that way, Sam guessed, was the way she had stayed sane. Sophie was a perfect kid until recently—or at least, I thought she was. Straight A’s, at church every week. I knew they expected a lot of her, but she never seemed to mind it.

He knew that Sophie would hardly be the first perfect child to crack under pressure of overbearing parents. And if her parents had been so angry, or so afraid of social judgment, that they had not even reported her missing, they must indeed have been difficult to live with at times. For teenagers, who made important life decisions in split seconds, at times would be enough.

Was she an only child?

No. Kellogg shook her head. It’s her and Nadia. Sophie is the older one.

How old is Nadia?

Eleven, I think? Twelve? She frowned. I can’t remember. I should know, but all my focus has been on Sophie.

Sam was willing to bet that everyone’s focus have been on Sophie. If he had to guess, he was guessing that Nadia was going to go through at least a phase where she tried to outdo Sophie as the problem child.

That, however, was not the topic of discussion right now, and it wasn’t his place to suggest it.

So they told you that you have been wrong, Sam said.

Kellogg’s jaw clenched. She nodded. They make sure to call and tell me that they had been right all along. They said she had run away. We asked her she was doing, and they told her she wasn’t doing well, but I know they were taking her to church, and… To Sam’s surprise, she squeezed her eyes shut, and he saw tears glittering between her lashes. And I believed them, she whispered.

His hand clenched on the table. Oh no, he whispered, before he could stop himself.

She had pressed her hands over her face, and he heard her make a choked-off sort of sound, the sound of a child trying desperately not to cry. She took a deep breath, her lower lip trembling as she opened her mouth to speak several times but closed it each time.

He waited until her shoulders dropped and she looked up, clearly back in control of her emotions. Her gaze was fixed on the far wall, and right now she looked like someone he wouldn’t want to cross.

We saw them two days ago, she said. It was the first time they have allowed her out in public—well, with the rest of the family. We were at my grandparents’ house. She looked… normal, I guess. I was so happy to see her, I hugged her so tightly and just kept saying I was so glad she’d come back… She rubbed at her forehead. And about five minutes later, we heard her screaming at her parents about how none of them believed her, about how it was real and she wasn’t lying.

Sam was trying very hard to ignore the sinking feeling in his stomach, but he wasn’t having much luck. He waited, wishing he had the courage to ask her to stop, and knowing he couldn’t, in good conscience, do so. He met Kellogg’s eyes.

It was very quiet. Laura had made herself scarce, and Jackson was, with uncharacteristic tact, sitting this interaction out.

They took her home, Kellogg said. "You should have seen their faces. They looked furious. Not even sad, not guilty—they were angry. She sat up a bit straighter. But I knew they would. So I got the story out of Nadia first."

Sam raised his eyebrows.

She was abducted, Kellogg said flatly. It was someone who knew her; that’s all she knows. They knew things about her, but she never heard their voice or saw them.

Sam frowned. He hadn’t quite made it to the inevitable conclusion when Kellogg explained it with brutal simplicity.

He kept her blindfolded. All the time. It was a hood she said she couldn’t get off, and her hands were chained. She was alone in a room for hours at a time, and sometimes there would be food and water—he’d feed her, make her choke on it, and then… She swallowed hard and lifted her chin. I don’t think you need any more details.

Sam shook his head. He neither needed nor wanted to know more what Sophie’s captor had done to her, except: Why did he let her go?

He didn’t. Kellogg took a deep breath to steady herself. She got free—he got sloppy–-and managed to get somewhere that she could call her parents. Her face darkened. After everything, they were the ones she went to, and they betrayed her.

Sam considered how to ask a delicate question, and settled for being blunt. Do you think they don’t believe her, or do you think they have some other reason for not wanting her story told?

For a moment, Kellogg seemed thrown by the question. As in, do they think she deserved it, or…?

Sam shook his head. He wasn’t entirely sure what question he was asking; he just knew that it disturbed him that the parents had persisted in not reporting Sophie missing or even searching for her for months—and that they had then ignored her story of where she had been.

He was making assumptions, he realized. He believed Kellogg’s story, mostly because she clearly believed it.

But what if she was wrong?

She had seen his moment of introspection. Her lips tightened briefly. You think I’m crazy to believe her, she said. Her parents do, too, and they convinced the chief. Apparently.

Sam got the idea from the way she said it that she had stormed into the police chief’s office and been summarily turned away. He tried not to wince in pity. He knew she would want none, but the truth was that every officer, at some point or other, found themselves passionately arguing a point that they were forbidden from pursuing.

You think it’s worth it to pursue this, he said, as neutrally as he could.

Yes. Her chin came up in a stubborn gesture. I do. Because she has injuries that are consistent with what she says happened. Because she’s always been cautious. She might have run away, but she would have been back in a day, tops—or she would have come to me. She isn’t reckless. When you know Sophie, none of this makes sense unless her story is true.

Her parents—

Her parents only see that she stopped being a little drone! Kellogg’s voice rose sharply and she clenched her fists. For them, there’s no difference between not wanting to go to church and being a drug dealer. They’d tell you Sophie was being wild, but she wasn’t. She just wanted to have a say in her own life once in a while. She leaned back and crossed her arms. "And if Sophie

Reviews for Butcher's Dozen

[SHARON mcelroy · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Good book- with a good plot- I would read again- love the characters-

[Sis Wood · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Great murder mystery. A quick and satisfying read. Would recommend.

[Simon Hopkins · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

The main character (Sam) is always going beyond his principles, even though we’re expected to believe that he scrupulously never does! What’s the point of introducing a love interest, whose only function appears to be, expressing concern about the potential dangerous situations Sam may find himself in. Just all too cliche and story by rote for me.

[Leena Aluru · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is interesting. I liked the plot, loved the characters and their easy camaraderie, but it just didn't hit that 5 star. Nevertheless, definitely worth giving this a try.

Recommended ?