Blood Trail, page 2
part #18 of John Jordan Mystery Series
“Did he tell them anything else, anything about what was happening or who was—”
“Don’t think so, but we need to talk to the dispatcher and interview them as soon as we can.”
I nod.
“The anonymous caller said a guy is sitting at a picnic table beneath a pavilion at the old state park with a hood tied around his head and a knife sticking out of his heart.”
I look over toward the pavilion to see what she’s describing.
The pavilion is a pole barn kit constructed on a cement slab—green tin roof on a black metal frame held up by eight enormous posts. Three large wooden picnic tables sit beneath it.
Chris appears to be seated at the center picnic table, his head propped in his right hand, the elbow of which is leaning on the table. His back is to us so I can’t see the knife, but even from this distance I can make out dirt and mud and blood on his clothes and on the hood around his head.
The hood, which is cinched around his neck with a narrow piece of white cotton cord, looks like the homemade execution hood of someone about to be hanged.
“Have you confirmed it’s Chris and that he’s dead?” I ask.
She nods. “I had Jessica video herself lifting the hood just enough to do both then return it to its original position as best she could.”
Jessica Young is our crime scene tech. She’s here taking pictures and preserving evidence and will assist and liaison with the FDLE crime scene unit and eventually their lab.
The Florida Department of Law Enforcement is a state agency with investigators, crime scene units, forensic labs, and other resources to assist smaller departments in rural counties like ours.
Ours is the very kind of department and this is the very kind of investigation FDLE was designed to assist.
“And he’s got a knife still stuck in his heart?” I say.
“A Swiss Army knife, yes,” she says. “And he’s taken one hell of a beating.”
I think about that. “Beaten and stabbed,” I say. “Was he shot and hanged too?”
Over near where Jessica is taking pictures of the body in situ, the yawning deputy in charge of the crime scene log is holding a pen and the binder containing the log. His sole responsibility is to keep a written record of everyone who enters the crime scene. I am reasonably certain I have stayed far enough away not to be entered into his log—and I will have to keep it that way.
“Caller wouldn’t give his name and wouldn’t answer any questions,” she continues. “Says he didn’t get too close and didn’t touch anything, but it was obvious the man was dead.”
I look over at the crime scene again.
It is odd and jarring to see Chris just sitting there like he’s napping—especially now that the deputies and investigators have stepped away and it’s just him, a lone figure, lit as if on a movie set by a bank of portable LED lights the deputies set up, the dark, empty park expanding away behind him.
“Dispatch sent EMS and a deputy out,” she is saying. “Deputy was Cody Faircloth.”
Cody Faircloth is a young deputy Reggie has received numerous complaints about. So far she’s found no evidence of anything criminal or that even rises to the level of a written reprimand, but in addition to being sexist and racist, he’s cocky and lazy and does sloppy police work.
“He actually did what he was supposed to do. Secured the area, kept EMS out of the crime scene because it was obvious the victim was dead, called Darlene—she was the investigator on duty—then he called me. Of course, so did she when she got here and saw what it was.”
Darlene Weatherly is a short, solid, muscular young woman who I had worked with in Marianna while up there with Dad investigating the Janet Leigh Lester case. She was a frustrated deputy who, because she was a young woman and a lesbian, got the worst assignments and had no hope of advancement. When an investigator’s position came open in our department I recommended her to Reggie. She had only been with us a few months.
“You trace the call yet?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “Not yet. Arnie’s working on it.”
Arnie Ward is the other sheriff’s investigator. There are only three in our small department. Me, Arnie, and now Darlene. He’s back at the substation working with the cellphone carrier on tracking the phone that was used to report the crime and notifying the provider to protect and save all the data associated with the phone because a court order for it will be forthcoming.
Across the smallish pond I can see people beginning to look out of their campers, gazing at the swirling blue lights of the deputies’ cars and the seated man with the hood on his head beneath the picnic pavilion.
“We’ve got to keep them away,” she says. “Let me show you something.”
I follow her over toward the pavilion where the body is. Stopping well short of the area where Chris is sitting, she snaps on her flashlight and trains the beam on tracks along the ground. I study them.
They are drag marks from where the killer dragged Chris’s body across the damp earth. Though most clearly visible in the dirt they can also be seen in the grass where pine straw, leaves, twigs, and limbs have been raked away by the heels of Chris’s shoes.
“Explains the mud and debris on his clothes,” I say.
She nods.
“It starts on a small trail way over there,” she says, pointing her light to the woods on the other side of the dirt road.
Beyond the narrow dirt road, white from a dusting of lime rock, is a small field where I had participated in three-legged and croaker sack races as a kid. A thick pine woods with dense undergrowth borders the far side of the field. A lone camper sits in the field close to the woods, the drag marks running beside it. Unlike the other campers on the opposite side of the park, this one is not hooked up—there is no hookup here. It’s empty and has clearly been parked here temporarily for storage.
Amazingly enough, the first deputy on the scene spotted the drag marks and blood on the road and was able to protect them. To my astonishment no vehicles have driven over the evidence.
“There’s blood on the trail and broken branches,” she says. “Divots in the dirt, signs of a struggle. Looks like he was executed over there then dragged over here and propped up at the table.”
I think about it. “Why put him on display?” I ask. “Why not leave him hidden where he was killed?”
Obviously, the killer wanted him found far more quickly than if he had left him in the woods, but why? Was he also the one who called to report the crime? Is it an act of mocking Chris, taunting us, or something else entirely?
“Exactly,” she says. “Why the hood around his head? Why the knife left in his heart? Why up here instead of his house or somewhere in town? What was he doing up here?”
There’s that word again. Did Anna know he was up here or was it just an innocent turn of phrase?
“Lots of questions,” she adds. “I hope forensics can be of some benefit. Soon as FDLE gets here and we get the scene processed, we’ll start canvasing the campers and the homes in the area and search the rest of the park.”
I nod. “Need to track down whoever made the call that came in,” I say. “Talk to him. Could be the killer. At the very least an important witness. What was he doing up here at three in the morning?”
“I’m glad you were in Atlanta,” she says. “It’s gonna be bad enough to have your friends and family as suspects, but it’ll help to not have you on the list.”
“It’ll depend on time of death,” I say. “And you know how questionable and unreliable that can be.”
“Why?”
“I didn’t go straight home when I got back in town,” I say.
“Shit. Where’d you go?”
“Rode by Chris’s place,” I say.
“And?”
“Got out and—”
“You know what—don’t tell me. I don’t want to know. I’ll come back to you once we have a better idea of time of death. Between now and then get your story straight. Think long and hard about what you’re going to say. And don’t just think about its veracity but how it’s going to sound. That’s even more important. That’s something we’ve all got to consider.”
I think about what she’s said, but don’t respond. I’m somewhat surprised by her comments. She seems more concerned about how things look than how they are.
Now that Jessica is finished with the crime scene photographs, two deputies are hanging tarps on the sides of the pavilion to shield the body from view and to preserve evidence until the FDLE crime scene unit can get here.
“Wonder if it’s someone close to us?” she says. “Has to be, right? Someone who has seen all the harassment, knows about the attempted murder, knows he broke into your home and held your family at gunpoint.”
I think about Dad being just outside the door of the room Chris had us in, about him hearing Chris’s threats and seeing him pointing a gun at his son and granddaughter. It would be extremely difficult for a man like him to witness such things and do nothing about them. Of course the same is true of Merrill, Daniel, Merrick, Anna, Sam, Jake, and even Reggie herself. And there are others. Randa Raffield not only threatened to kill Chris, she had actually broken into his home to make good on her promise just before we arrested her. She’d be the prime suspect if she hadn’t been in custody at the time he was killed—and even with that we’d still have to investigate her, still have to attempt to rule her out. We had witnessed firsthand feats she had performed that would make killing a man while appearing to be or actually being in custody a modest achievement by comparison.
Reggie starts to say something else, but stops as the FDLE crime scene techs pull up.
“Guess for now all we can do is follow the evidence and see where it leads,” she says instead. “And try to figure out what to do about it once we see where that is.”
5
As the first glow of false dawn intensifies and gives way to the breaking day, the burst of bright orange along the eastern rim of the park brings the peaceful perfection of this sacred place into full relief.
The tops of the tall pines framing the small pond, picnic pavilions, playground area, and campsites are rust-burnished and sun-kissed. The dew-damp pine needles both on the ground and on the trees glisten in the early morning radiance like a trillion tiny twinkling party lights.
Not even the emergency vehicles, their lights still flashing, the crime scene tape rippling in the breeze, the white-suited forensic techs, nor the bizarrely hooded dead body can take away from the serenity and splendor of this place that has been holy to me since childhood.
What is now known as the Dead Lakes Recreational Area, and used to be the Dead Lakes State Park, is over eighty acres of longleaf pine, magnolia, and bald cypress trees—with a few white tupelos along the wet banks of the Dead Lakes. The quiet, pristine area is comprised of river sways to the east, swamp forest to the north, and pine flatwoods to the west and south.
When I was a kid, and back when it was still a state park, I came here for Boy Scout events. When I was a teenager and dating a girl from Wewa, I used to come here and walk the hiking trails, and on one particularly memorable weekend, I spent most of a dark night of the soul alone in this natural sanctuary.
I’m currently standing in the small field the body had been dragged through. When I was a kid, it had been an empty field used for many fun scouting activities. As a young adult, the field was no longer a field but a planted slash pine forest. Now it is a field again. In my lifetime I had seen an entire crop of trees be planted, grow to maturity, and be harvested, and seen the field come full circle again.
Across the way, where once had been a forest with my favorite section of trail in it, is now a grass-covered slope with a few scattered pine trees forming part of the bowl that contains the lake.
All around me everything is changing as the relentless ticks of time countdown to the time when I, like the forest or the planted pines in the field, am no longer a part of this ebb and flow of birth and life and death, and it will carry on as if I had never been here at all.
How many people who are no longer alive had stood in this same field or visited this same sacred space? How many native or indigenous people had found this same picturesque plot of land just as breathtaking and spiritual as I do? How many witnessed change during their own brief lifetimes and were both saddened and comforted that it would go on changing without them once they were gone?
My phone vibrates in my pocket and I pull it out to see that Anna is calling.
“Morning,” I say.
“Morning.”
“I’m gonna miss being alive when I’m gone,” I say.
“Actually, you probably won’t,” she says.
“True.”
She’s right. Either I won’t exist at all and therefore have no consciousness to miss consciousness with or I’ll still be here in some way, or I’ll be on a different plane entirely and so chances are the only grieving and missing I’ll do is in the here and now, which is a complete waste of time.
“How’s it going there?” she asks.
“Slowly. FDLE is processing the scene. ME investigator is processing the body. Reggie and Darlene and the others are beginning to break down tasks and assignments. I’m mostly in the background watching.”
In addition to everything else, deputies and investigators and even Reggie are beginning the canvas—going from camper to camper, interviewing those present, getting their information, taking their statements, asking if they saw or heard anything suspicious the preceding night.
In this instance we’re dealing with a fluid and dynamic situation. The campers can load up their RVs and leave at any time. We have no legal reason to detain them. The best we can hope to do is get their contact information and statements before they do.
“I can’t believe the girls and I were right there yesterday,” she says. “Sat at that very table.”
“You were?” I ask. “I didn’t know that.”
“Thought I told you,” she says. “Must have been when you were meeting with Trace.”
I had been in Atlanta attempting to close a case—the murder of Mariah Evers, the daughter of the rapper and TV star Trace “Evidence” Evers. Anna and I had spoken several times throughout the day and she had never mentioned bringing the girls here to play.
“I thought we were completely safe there,” she is saying. “Thought apart from Bigfoot it was one of the safest places in the world—especially with Merrill watching us.”
“Merrill was with you?”
“I wouldn’t’ve gone alone. How tired are you?”
“Delirious.”
“Anything I can do?” she asks.
“Spoon with me while I sleep.”
“I stand ready to do just that. Whenever you can.”
“Then I hope to see you sooner rather than later,” I say.
“In a world that no longer includes Chris,” she says. “A much better world now. Hurry home. Love you.”
“Oh, speaking of . . . Didn’t you tell me Chris’s mother was dead and that he didn’t speak to his father?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“Dispatch seems to think they’re both alive and that he spoke to both of them last night.”
“Really?”
“Called them for help.”
“I keep finding out new things he lied to me about,” she says. “Could’ve lied about his parents, too. But if he did, he did so over a long period of time and very convincingly. Nothing should surprise me from such a sick sociopath, but . . . stuff still does.”
When we end the call, Reggie is walking toward me.
“It’s more complicated than it looks,” she says. “FDLE and the ME are about to walk us through it. You ready?”
6
“There was nothing quick about this,” the ME investigator says.
His name is Hanlon. He is a tall, thin man with too-skinny arms, bony fingers, and the grayish pallor of a corpse—except for his beard stubble, which is so dark it looks blue.
“That’s true of his time here at the park as well as his murder,” Nina, the lead FDLE crime scene investigator, adds.
She is a thickish, thirty-something woman with silky black hair and a dark complexion, her features hinting at some combination of native, Mexican, and/or Eskimo.
At Reggie’s request, Nina and Hanlon are walking us through the crime scene now that it has been processed. Reggie, Darlene, Jessica, and I are gathered around them. Arnie will join us when he returns—as will the FDLE agent when he arrives.
When Reggie had called FDLE, they had asked her the same question they always do—Do you want an agent or just the crime scene unit? Because of our department’s conflicts and dealings with Chris, she had requested an agent so no one will be able to say we purposefully botched the investigation or concealed evidence or set up someone to take the fall for something one of us had done.
Of course, they can still say it—and probably will—but with FDLE actively involved investigating the case alongside us, it won’t have credibility.
“So,” Reggie says, “he was here at the park for an extended period of time and his death wasn’t quick, is that right?”
“Well, I’m not saying his actual death wasn’t relatively quick,” Hanlon says. “I’m saying he was beaten and tortured for an extended period of time, probably in and out of consciousness and in severe pain for hours before he actually died.”
“Do we have a time of death?” Darlene asks.
Hanlon shrugs and frowns. “We have a range, but . . . it’ll be helpful if we can narrow it down in other ways. My best estimate is between ten o’clock PM and three o’clock AM.”
As he speaks, she feverishly jots down notes onto a narrow flip-style notepad she had withdrawn from her pocket.
“How about cause of death?” she says.
“We’ll have to wait for the autopsy to tell us that,” he says. “The victim was beaten, strangled, and stabbed. We won’t know for certain which of these actually killed him until we perform the autopsy.”
Darlene glances at Reggie then me. “Somebody wanted to make sure he was good and dead,” she says. “And that he suffered.”
