Blood Reckoning, page 7
I nod. “I will. Thanks.”
“Okay, so tell me what we’ve got,” he says.
I do.
“Well, hopefully the arson investigator and the FDLE crime scene techs will be able to tell us more this morning.”
I nod.
“Strange that her car is gone,” he says. “Hopefully, she just wanted to get away and will turn up this morning like you said. Don’t want you feelin’ like a fool if she does.”
“I won’t,” I say. “I’d do it all over again.”
“Good.”
We are quiet for a moment.
“Will’s a good man and a great dentist. I hope his little shit of a son didn’t do anything . . . stupid. Let’s see what the VSA says about what he’s saying.”
“I’ve already caught him in one big lie,” I say.
“What’s that?”
I tell him.
“Wonder why he’d lie about who he was out there with before Carla? Shouldn’t have any bearing on what happened later with her.”
“It could mean that it does,” I say. “Or he could be embarrassed or . . . I plan to confront him with it and the results of the VSA this morning.”
He nods. “You get any sleep yet?”
“Not yet,” I say.
“Well, go get some. We’ve got plenty of good people working on this now.”
“I will,” I lie.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-ONE
“You lied to me,” I say to Mason.
I have him back in the interview room, recording what he says.
He frowns and nods.
“Why?”
He shrugs.
I don’t say what he lied to me about. I want him to tell me that. According to the VSA, he lied about a lot.
“Why lie?” I ask.
He shakes his head slowly, seemingly in shame.
“Guilty people lie,” I say.
He nods.
“Mostly to cover up their crimes.”
“I ain’t committed no crimes,” he says. “Already told you that.”
“Then why lie?”
He shrugs again. “I don’t know. It was stupid. I was . . . embarrassed. Thought it’d look bad.”
“Thought what would look bad?”
“Who I was out there with that afternoon,” he says.
“Which wasn’t Cindy.”
“No, it wasn’t. I just said CDC ’cause I thought . . .”
“You thought you could call her before I talked to her and pay her to lie for you, but why? Why do you need an alibi for yesterday afternoon?”
“I don’t. Not an alibi. I just . . . didn’t want to say who I was with.”
“Why?”
“Why do I even have to say? The afternoon has nothing to do with Carla, right? So . . . I think . . . I’m not gonna answer any more questions, and I want a lawyer.”
I nod. “Okay.”
I pull out my phone, call his dad, place the phone on the table between us, and put it on speaker.
“John,” Will says. “Have you found her? Please tell me she turned up on her own and is all good.”
“No, not yet,” I say.
“Damn it. I was hoping . . .”
“Will, I’ve got you on speaker,” I say. “I’m here with Mason. He’s been lying to me and now he’s refusing to answer any more questions and is asking for an attorney.”
“Dad,” Mason says, “I didn’t have anything to do with Carla goin’ missin’. I ain’t lyin’ about that. I swear.”
“Why are you lyin’ about anything?” Will says. “Where did I go wrong with you, boy?”
“I’m just . . . I haven’t committed any crimes. I ain’t done nothin’ wrong . . . as far as the law is concerned.”
“Then tell John what it is.”
“It’s personal,” he says. “Private.”
“Nothing is right now,” I say. “Not until we find Carla.”
“John,” Will says. “I believe him. I don’t think he has broken any laws or hurt Carla, but I do think he needs a lawyer. If it was just you . . . but I don’t trust everybody in the sheriff’s department like I do you.”
“I understand,” I say.
“But, Mason . . .” Will says, “if you didn’t do anything illegal and having nothing to do with Carla’s disappearance . . . I want you to cooperate fully with John. Answer his questions truthfully right now or I’m cutting you off, taking back your house and truck and boat, and you can go get a real job.”
“Okay, okay. I will. It’s just . . . I . . . I was . . . I took Lily to the cabin yesterday afternoon.”
“Who?” I ask.
Will says, “His married ex-girlfriend. Lilian Battle. Well, Lillian Mosely now. When did you start seein’ her again?”
“I . . . ain’t really seein’ her.”
“Just having sex with her in my cabin,” Will says.
“I . . . We . . . It just happened.”
“It didn’t just happen,” Will says. “And I bet that wasn’t the first time it happened, was it?”
“It was stupid, and I’m sorry, daddy. I am, but . . . it has nothin’ to do with Carla bein’ missin’. I had nothing to do with that.”
“If you called her and asked her to lie for you, we’ll have a record of it,” I say. “And if you did it from in here we’ll have a recording.”
“I haven’t called her. I didn’t ask her to lie for me. I swear.”
Will says, “I thought by loving you and giving you every advantage and opportunity you’d grow up to be a good man, do something with your life, but you’re just a . . .”
Mason opens his mouth to say something, but nothing comes out. Will continues.
“John, I’m sorry about all this. I am. I feel like a lot of it is my fault. I don’t think he had anything to do with Carla disappearing—besides leaving her out there—but I find all his other actions abhorrent.”
“I was stupid,” Mason says. “And I’m sorry, but I didn’t do anything to Carla. I was home in bed. Ask Mom.”
Will says, “John, you don’t have to take Beth’s word for it, though I would hope you would. We have a security system at our place. It will show when he left and when he came home.”
CHAPTER
TWENTY-TWO
Lilian Mosely is a sweet, vivacious, fresh-faced kindergarten teacher whose students and their parents adore her. She’s a late twenties white woman with thick brown hair pulled up in a ponytail and big, bright brown eyes. Not quite five and half feet tall, she has a certain softness bordering on fluffiness to her that gives her the hint of matronliness, though in the most positive sense of that word.
Her classroom is cluttered with a variety of art projects in various stages of completion and smells of popcorn, glue, and sweaty children.
Each tiny desk has the alphabet, the student’s name, a bottle of water, and a plastic token holder held in place by velcro.
The letter for today is E, which is written on the chalkboard with several words that begin with it and an accompanying drawing, and on the desks are construction paper elephant hats with ribbon trunks hanging down in the front.
The classroom is empty apart from me and Lily. We have a few uninterrupted, private minutes before her students return from PE.
She acts nervous and fidgety and is beginning to perspire.
“Is everything okay?” she asks. “Did something happen to Joel?”
Joel Mosely, who works for the electrical co-op, is her husband.
“No, he’s fine,” I say. “Carla Pearson is missing.”
“Carla? Really? Wow. I’m sorry to—”
I can see her make the connection between Carla and Mason and Mason and her.
“I’m trying to find her,” I say. “She went on the river with Mason Hayes yesterday evening. It’s the last anyone has seen of her.”
“Is Mason missing too?”
“No.”
“Okay, well, I haven’t seen her. I don’t really know Carla all that well, but if I see or a hear anything I’ll—”
“Mason said you and he went to his family’s cabin yesterday afternoon,” I say.
Her body seems to collapse in on itself a little, and she closes her eyes and frowns.
When she opens her eyes, there are tears in them.
“I . . . What does that have to do with—”
“Did you go to the cabin with him?”
She swallows hard and then slowly nods. “I regretted doing it before I did it. I’ve been eaten up with guilt. It was . . . the worst most stupid thing I have ever done. Joel is a good guy. He is. He doesn’t deserve to be . . . to have me . . . I’ve never . . . I don’t have an excuse. Can’t even tell you why I did it. God, if this gets out . . .”
“Have you been seeing Mason?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “No. He’s an old boyfriend. I’ve been . . . I’ve been feeling . . . fat and just sort of . . . lost . . . and when he showed me some attention . . . He broke up with me back when we were . . . and I guess I always felt . . . I don’t know, kind of rejected and . . . hurt, so when he showed interest in me now with how I’m lookin’ and feelin’ . . . I fell into a . . . I can’t believe how stupid and pathetic it was. And now this. Oh my God. My life is over.”
I shake my head. “It’s not. I’m not here to do you any harm. I’m just trying to get the truth out of Mason.”
“Well, he’s tellin’ the truth if he said the stupidest girl in the world went to his cabin with him.”
“What time did y’all go?” I ask. “How long did you stay? What time did you get back?”
“Mid-afternoon,” she says. “Maybe three. I . . . We weren’t there long. Just long enough for me to make the biggest mistake of my life. Back before four. We went our separate ways, and I haven’t seen or spoken to him since.”
“How’d he seem?”
“Fine. His usual self. Not . . . He didn’t seem like he’d . . . that he could hurt anyone or anything like that.”
“Did you see Carla or anyone else on the river or at the camp or the landing?”
She shakes her head. “I had a big floppy hat, big sunshades, and a big raincoat. I didn’t want to be seen, and I was looking down mostly, trying to hide my face.”
“Did Mason say or do anything off, odd, or suspicious?”
“Not at all. We didn’t talk much. But he was his normal self. I feel so ashamed. Who else knows?”
“Only his dad as far as I know.”
“Oh my God, Dr. Hayes knows. I . . . can’t . . . I’m gonna have to get a new dentist. I can never face him again. I know I don’t deserve it, but can you please, please not tell anyone else? It’s not even for me as much as Joel. It would destroy him.”
“Any chance Joel knows or followed you or Mason or—”
“No. He was playing golf in Dothan with his buddies.”
“Did you follow Mason or Carla or go back out to the cabin last night?”
“No,” she says. “Of course not. I . . . Why would you even ask me something like—”
“I have to ask,” I say. “And I’m wondering why with the rain and other people walking up and down the path later why your footprints would still be out there.”
CHAPTER
TWENTY-THREE
“This wasn’t the result of a lighting strike,” Vic Roberts is saying.
I am back out at the McDaniel’s camp with our district’s lead arson investigator.
He’s a short African-American man with a receding hairline that makes a kind of half-moon on the front part of his head. His glasses always seem so smudged and smeared I wonder how he sees out of them.
“What we have here is a deliberately set fire.”
He points down at the spot where the fire had been.
Everything has been removed except for the wooden tabletop.
“We’ve bagged all the materials in the fire and will take them to the lab,”
“Look at that burn pattern,” he says, pointing at the charred spot on the tabletop. “See that characteristic crocodile skin look?”
I nod.
“That’s where your deepest char is,” he says. “Your point of origin. And we’ve detected the use of an accelerant. We’re gonna cut out this section of the table and transport it to the lab. The center here where the fire was hottest will have consumed all the accelerant used, but here on the edges we should be able to recover some and hopefully identify it. I’d say the fire got away from the arsonist. See the burn marks shooting up the walls.”
I glance around. There are no gas cans or lighter fluid containers about. “Any accelerants been discovered?”
He shakes his head and pushes his glasses back up on his nose.
“So whoever started it took whatever he or she used,” I say. “And probably brought it to begin with. What was in the fire?”
“A lot of limbs and wood, leaves and trash from dry spots inside the cabin,” he says, “but the interesting items are what looks to be newer clothes—not like the old and faded and weathered materials from inside here.”
Though I was expecting this, my stomach drops at the possibility of Carla’s clothes being burned to hide evidence, and I feel dizzy and lightheaded.
“Most of it was destroyed,” he says, “but we’ll recover and identify what we can in the lab. Thing is . . . there were plenty more old dry materials to provide fuel for the fire. There was no need to destroy new clothes. If the fire was for warmth or to keep out animals or to cook over, we’d expect only the older materials used, but because there is new clothing . . . It was most likely set for the purpose of destroying evidence.”
I nod and take several deep breaths.
“The chair is . . . odd,” he says, his forehead furrowing just beneath the half-moon of his head. “What we have to ask is . . . is there any natural means of heat transfer from the closet to the fire on the chair? Or are there any natural means of heat transfer from the fire on the chair to the closet?”
“Which is it?” I ask.
“Neither,” he says. “Appears to be the third option. Two different fires. We can find no means of communication between the two fires.”
“Find any remnants of anything that was burned on the chair?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “We’ll run tests at the lab, but there’s nothing visible.”
“Any theories?” I ask.
“Most household materials like the padding on the chair are made with flame retardant chemicals these days. They could’ve tried to burn something on the chair but couldn’t get a good enough fire going, so they dragged the table over partially into the closet and started over. They got it going good in there. Got away from them. But that’s just a theory. No way to know for certain, but hopefully we’ll know more once we get everything back to the lab and run some tests. I’ll let you know.”
CHAPTER
TWENTY-FOUR
Search and Rescue boats are trolling up and down the river. Deputies, wildlife officers, and volunteers are scouring the swamps. FDLE’s crime scene unit is processing the Hayes and McDaniel cabins.
Michelle, who is coordinating with FDLE, meets me at the Hayes’s dock.
She hands me a clear plastic evidence bag with a padlock in it. The lock is a medium-sized Master Magnum Heavy-Duty padlock with a black body and silver shackle. It’s locked and there’s no key with it.
“CSI found this on the north side of the cabin in the swamp,” she says. “Just like this—locked with no key. It looks pretty new, doesn’t it? Definitely in good condition. Don’t think it’s been out there long. There’s a storage box with the hasp partially ripped off of it on the porch. Figure it goes to it. Looks like it was just thrown into the swamp—probably from the porch.”
I nod.
“Have you slept yet?”
I shake my head.
“You need to. Have you eaten?”
As she asks that, I realize I haven’t been drinking anything either.
I’m exhausted, hungry, and dehydrated, and all I want to do is get into the swamp and search for Carla.
“Go home,” she says. “Get some sleep. Eat something. Get a shower. Then come back.”
“I can’t.”
A new boatload of volunteers arrives and ties up at the dock. Among them is Charlene Childs, a civic-minded woman in her early forties who is somehow related to Lawton Childs, the former Florida Governor who served two terms from 1990-1998.
As the others are led to the back of the cabin to join the search teams, Charlene walks over to me and Michelle.
“Are you okay?” she asks. “You don’t look so good.”
“Just a little tired.”
She says, “Go get some rest. We have some great volunteers. We’ll find her. And for the record, I’ve known Mason since he was a little boy. He’s a very sweet boy. No way he had anything to do with Carla’s disappearance. He should’ve never left her out here, but . . .”
I nod. “Thank you for helping.”
She nods toward her boat. “There’s cold water and some food in there. And the benches are covered. Why don’t you eat and drink something and lay down for a few minutes. Join us when you get to feeling better?”
Michelle says, “That’s exactly what you’re going to do.”
As Charlene walks toward the back of the cabin and Michelle rejoins FDLE, I climb down into the boat, drink two bottles of water, and lie down on one of the padded benches in the shade.
I’m asleep in seconds.
And then the dreams come.
The last of the setting sun streaks the blue horizon with neon pink and splatters the emerald green waters of the Gulf with giant orange splotches like scoops of sherbet in an Art Deco bowl.
A fitting finale for a perfect Florida day.
My son, who looks to be around four—though it’s hard to tell since in dreams we all seem ageless—runs up from the water’s edge, his face red with sun and heat, his hands sticky with wet sand, and asks me to join him for one last swim.
