Sharp Shootin', BJ Bourg's law enforcement column in Web Mystery Magazine, Fall 2005

Sharp-Shootin'

Howdy.

This issue I'd like to talk about coincidences. I read somewhere that one shouldn't use coincidences to solve a mystery in fiction writing, because that is somehow not playing fair with the reader. Well, that might be true for fiction, but in reality, a coincidence is a funny thing. This event happened many years back and it involves my former detective partner and good friend, Aaron.

A deadly storm that produced at least two tornados had ripped through the lower part of our parish. Many people had evacuated their residences and members of the Sheriff's Office were out in force, working day and night, trying to ensure that no looting occurred while the citizens were separated from their homes.

Aaron and I were scheduled to work the morning shift. I arrived at the staging area and met with Aaron. There were a few other detectives around and someone mentioned looting. Aaron said, "Bro, I pulled two safe burglaries last night. Got all kinds of money." Everything was a joke with us. We all laughed and then forgot about it.

About an hour later, our captain calls out, "Aaron and Billy, I need y'all to go work a safe burglary on West Tenth Street."

My jaw dropped like a bomb and exploded on the cement

Aaron lived on West Tenth Street!

I stared wide-eyed at him on the drive to the scene. At the time, I had known him for about eight years and he was the most honest cop I knew. I would've bet my life he'd never pull a burglary, and I was sure he hadn't –

"Look," I said, jokingly, but not knowing if it was a joke, "you'd better split half the loot with me."

He just laughed and said what a coincidence it was. We drove by his house and found the crime scene about two blocks down the street. We interviewed the victim and she said she had evacuated on the previous evening and when she returned in the morning she found that her door had been forced open and her safe destroyed. Some money had been stolen from the safe and some coins had been stolen from a large, glass Kentwood bottle.

Aaron began processing the point of entry and I processed the room where the safe had been located. I recovered a fingerprint on the Kentwood bottle. I walked up to Aaron and asked if I could see his fingers for comparison. He laughed it off and continued his work on the door, where he had recovered a shoe print.

After we finished processing the crime scene, we began to canvas the neighborhood. We went to the house that was cater corner to the victim's house and spoke to the owner, an elderly female. The female said she went to bed early the previous night, but her nephew (who was visiting from up north) had stayed up drinking beer outside. She said he might have seen something and she invited us in.

We found the guy sleeping on the sofa. When we got him up, the first – and only – thing we said was, "Did you see anything suspicious last night while you were outside drinking beer?"

The guy said, "No, I was looking the other way."

Any of you ever seen Blue's Clues? If you have, you'll know what I'm talking about when I say a giant paw print appeared on the guy's forehead. We asked him to step outside and we sat him in our car. After reading him his rights, we questioned him for a bit and then we compared the fingerprint I'd recovered from the Kentwood bottle to his fingers. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't relieved that the print matched the guy's right index finger.

Minutes later the guy confessed to committing the burglary and he led us to the loot, which was in the woods behind his aunt's house. He also led us to a pair of shoes that he had stuffed in a culvert. The soles matched the shoe print that Aaron had recovered from the door.

My faith in Aaron renewed, I was able to laugh about what a coincidence it was.