“I’m a foolish old man,” Dad says.
I glance over at him. I’ve never heard him say anything quite like that before.
“I’m throwing effort after foolishness in some vain attempt at redemption or . . . And I’ve pulled you into it.”
“I’m happy to be here,” I say. “I think what we’re doing is worthwhile.”
“Ken’s right. Glenn’s right. They’re all right. It’s too late. I’m trying to . . . fix something before I die that—”
“There’s nothing wrong with that.”
We enter the historic downtown district and in many ways it’s like driving back in time—a small Southern town with a vibrant main street of restored old buildings, a quaint quality exuding rural charm.
“I had my chance. I failed to do it when I might actually have been able to. Now I’m just wasting everybody’s time. Just . . .”
I’m sure Dad has been critical of himself before. He may have even expressed it to someone, but not to me, not like this. I’ve never heard him be as open and vulnerable and emotionally honest as he is in this moment.
We continue past the old St. Luke’s Episcopal Church and cemetery that played such a pivotal role in the Civil War battle here in 1864, and a series of big, beautiful and beautifully restored antebellum homes.
“The time to close the case was when I had the chance, when there were still leads and witnesses who remembered what happened and . . . Not when it’s gone cold. Hell, that’s the understatement of the day. It’s four decades cold. Hard to imagine a case any colder.”
“Then you’re not trying,” I say. “Zodiac. Jack the Ripper. Cain and Able.”
“I’m serious.”
“I am too. ’Cept for the Cain and Able bit. Figured a little levity might not hurt.”
Driving through Marianna, I’m reminded just how much beauty and charm is present here, and I wonder again how so many truly terrible and tragic events could’ve happened here—the torture and lynching of Claude Neal, the horrors that happened at Dozier School for Boys, the savage murder of Janet Leigh Lester.
“Look at the shape all these people are in,” he says. “The condition of their lives. All of them. Not just Ken, but Ben and Verna and Ronnie and Kathy. And it’s at least partly because I didn’t do my job. I . . . I not only didn’t finish the task I was assigned, I . . . left and never looked back. All these years I kept telling myself I’d come back and solve it one day, but even when I was lying to myself about that, I never once thought about these poor people, never imagined for one moment they could be suffering to the extent they are because I fucked up. Because I failed them.”
“I appreciate how you’re feeling,” I say. “I do. And I get it. I’d probably feel the same way. But you took the case as far as it would go and that’s all you could do.”
“But I didn’t.”
“Whatta you mean? I thought you did.”
“I left before it was done. I . . . It doesn’t matter. Take me back to the hotel. I’m done.”
“But—”
“Go be with your family. Don’t waste any more time on this. Enjoy your vacation. I should’ve never asked you to help clean up my mess. I’m sorry I did.”
“You’re just feeling—”
“I’m done talkin’ about it,” he says.
And he is.
I continue to try to get him to talk for a while, but it’s futile.
If we had a different type of relationship, if we were closer, if we were less like distant father and son and more like adult friends, more like intimate peers, I could have insisted that he talk to me, that he let me help process what he’s dealing with and going through.
As it is, we are family but we are not close, intimate, peer-like friends. I don’t doubt Dad’s love, respect, and support. In fact, I know he’d do anything for me—anything but let me help him on any kind of emotional or psychological level. He’ll let me help him work the case but not with his inner life of thoughts and feelings. Our dynamic, the one he established when I was a child and continues to insist on to this day, is one that avoids the true intimacy that comes from shared vulnerability.
82
After dropping Dad off, I search for a quiet place to go through the folder of pictures Kathy had given us.
I feel bad for Dad, and wanted to stay to talk to him, but he insisted that he needed to be alone and wanted to sleep. I reluctantly acquiesced but told him I’d check on him a little later and that Anna and I would bring him some supper.
I drive down Caverns Road to Citizens Lodge Park and sit in a gazebo by a lake and spread the pictures out before me.
The disparate images range from poorly lit and poorly shot and poorly developed pictures from the night of the party, to the artistic photography of Janet Lester.
The snapshots from the party are dim and blurry, but show much of what the witnesses have described. Kids in late-seventies attire hanging out, drinking, dancing, makin’ out, mackin’ and mean muggin’ for the camera.
Janet is not in a single picture from inside the farmhouse, though Ben is in several—as are Kathy and Charles Fountain and Valarie Weston and Gary Blaylock.
There are no shots of Sabrina Henry, which I find strange.
The only image that appears to have Janet in it makes her look like an apparition accidentally imprisoned on film as the photographer attempted to capture something else.
Turning toward her car, seen in profile, a twirl of light. Cream crinkled-texture blouse, lace yoke. Camel, tan, and rust floral-print skirt, deep flounce at the bottom.
Eerie. Ethereal. Evanescent.
The picture was taken from inside the farmhouse, a glare from the glass window creating a frame in the foreground and adding an odd light to the entire image.
Behind the swirl of floral print and light, her red Mercury Monarch appears possessed like a chariot from hell.
Later, Anna picks me up and we head to Tallahassee to see Sam Michaels.
We are in her Mustang GT on I-10, taking the same route as Bundy had the night of Janet’s death, only in reverse. She is driving while I look at Kathy’s photographs and murder book.
Anna has spent the day caring for her mother, helping around her house, and is as happy as I am to be able to get away together for the evening.
It is doing little things like this together, these seemingly inconsequential, average, mundane activities, that makes life so much sweeter, richer, and fuller. Just being together, being partners in all things.
Ordinary life in the company of an extraordinary woman is anything but.
“How’s your mom?” I ask. “How are things up their way?”
“She’s okay. Not as incapacitated as we were led to believe. I really think it just came down to Dad wasn’t babying her quite the way she wanted and she was disappointed about missing our vacation and wanted to see us. But she’s doing well enough I had no problem leaving Taylor with them tonight. How’s your dad?” she asks. “The case.”
I tell her.
“So is that it?” she asks. “Y’all stopping the investigation? The fact that you’re looking at those pictures and the murder book suggests otherwise.”
I smile. “I’m not stopping. I don’t think he really is either. I bet by morning he’ll be back on the scent and we’ll pick up right where we left off.”
She shakes her head and frowns. “It’s gotta be so hard for him. To see just how wounded all these people are and to feel responsible in some way.”
“Yeah.”
“And I hate to think of him alone in that hotel room. You told him we’d love to have him at the ’rents place in Dothan?”
I nod. “He really wants to be alone, but I’ll keep tryin’.”
She glances at the photographs in my lap.
“Anything helpful?” she asks.
“Maybe. It’s definitely good to have a context and some visuals. Certainly feel like I know and understand Janet even more. She had an amazing eye—particularly
for portraits.”
“Any evidence she was at the party?” she says.
“Yeah. Look at this.”
I hand her the picture. She holds it up above the steering wheel and glances back and forth between it and the road.
“Wow. Haunting.”
“When I called Kathy to talk to her about it she said it had always spooked her, said maybe Janet wasn’t at the party that night after all, only her ghost after she was killed.”
“It is uncanny,” she says, handing the picture back to me without taking her eyes off the road. “Especially given what happened to her that night.”
83
Sam Michaels and Daniel Davis live in an old two-story wooden home on a small hill in a heavily wooded lot in Tallahassee.
Daniel was once a religion professor and ritualistic crimes consultant. Sam was a special agent with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. Now Daniel is a full-time caregiver; Sam, the one he’s giving care to.
Sam, who I had worked with on a serial case back in the spring, suffered a brain injury as the result of being shot at point-blank range. For a while, her doctors believed she wouldn’t wake up from the coma she was in, but not only did she do that, she’s undergoing mental and physical rehabilitation and making progress—none of which came as any surprise to anyone who knows Sam.
The high-ceilinged, hardwood-floored living room of their home has been converted into a recovery room. Couch and coffee table removed, a hospital bed has been placed in front of the empty charred fireplace. Beside it, a single chair for Daniel is the only other piece of furniture in the room.
The hardwood floors creek as Daniel leads us into the room, and Sam opens her eyes, turns her head slightly, and looks up at us.
“She’s having a good day,” Daniel says.
Sam’s eyes widen and flicker with recognition as a smile plays on her lips.
“Hey, partner,” I say. “How’s it going?”
“You look so good,” Anna says.
Sam smiles wider and nods her head ever so slightly.
Every time we see her she’s getting better and doing more.
“You’re doing so well,” I say. “You’ll be trackin’ down bad guys again in no time at all.”
She tries to nod again.
“I heard the FDLE case clearance rate has plummeted since you’ve been sidelined,” Anna says. “They need you back as soon as possible.”
Daniel, who is out of Sam’s sightline, has tears in his eyes, and I can’t tell if they’re tears of sadness or happiness, but can’t imagine they’re not both.
He looks pale and exhausted, the ends of him frayed like an old rug.
“So here’s what we’re gonna do,” Anna says. “I’m gonna sit down here beside Sam for some girl talk. Daniel, you’re going to give John a list of everything you need. I mean everything—from toilet paper to tea bags—and while John is shopping and picking up a delicious dinner from Ted’s for us, you’re going upstairs and taking a nap.”
And that’s exactly what we do—except while I am out, in between picking up household items for Daniel and Sam and grabbing dinner at Ted’s Montana Grill, I drive around the area where Ted Bundy lived and took lives while he was here—including Chez Pierre, Chi Omega, and where his rooming house, The Oak, had once been.
Jack Jordan reenters his hotel room after going out for some food and a walk. Though he had rested and napped earlier when John had dropped him off, he’s still drained and depressed. Maybe even more so now.
The room is dark and cool. The drapes are drawn and the only light is a narrow strip coming from the slightly ajar bathroom door.
Kicking off his boots, tossing his hat on the chair in the corner, and emptying his pockets on the bedside table, he collapses on top of the covers with all his clothes still on.
The room smells the way most hotels do—of commercial cleaners and air fresheners, of emptiness and stillness and staleness, of a running window unit, and of previous guests, some of whom had broken both federal and state laws and had smoked in here. And not just cigarettes.
Given his fatigue and depression, given the multilayered smells in the room, given his advanced years and compromised health, it’s little wonder he neither sensed nor smelled that there was somebody already present when he had entered the room.
He wants to sleep, to succumb to the safety of unconscious oblivion, but all he can think about is Verna and Ken and Kathy and Ben and how damn depressing their lives are, about Janet and how her death and disappearance go unavenged all these years later.
Guilt. Failure. Regret. Pain.
He feels his own pain, of course, but it’s their pain that he finds overwhelming.
Did Bundy really do it? How can he prove it if he did? Where is her body? How can he find it now?
The pasture and pond where her car had been found and the woods surrounding them had been thoroughly searched back then, but the only thing they discovered was the bag with the kill kit.
Where could she be?
If he took her with him, her remains could be scattered over several counties west of here or—that’s it. Wow. Why hasn’t he thought of that before? That’s got to be it. That’s where she is.
On his way from Tallahassee to Pensacola, Bundy had gotten the stolen VW he was in stuck in a restricted area of Eglin Air Force Base—and had only gotten it out with the help of a service station attendant. It has always been believed that Bundy was there hiding out, but what if he was there to bury Janet’s body? He often took his victims to secluded places in the woods to do all kinds of disturbing things to them—including necrophilia. What if that’s what he was there for? What if wasn’t hiding out, but defiling and discarding Janet’s body? That’s it—or could be. Certainly makes more sense than any other theory he’s ever come up with. They already know that Bundy used the area to throw away several personal items and the VW’s passenger seat. What if he threw out the seat and other things because they had Janet’s blood on them?
Jack has a jolt of energy and excitement he hasn’t had in a very long time.
He starts to sit up to call John, but just as he’s about to someone is there on top of him, pinning him down, pressing a gun into his forehead.
Where is my gun?
If have to ask that question it’s time to hang it up.
I came in. Dropped everything on the bedside table. Is that where it is?
He can’t remember placing the gun on the table.
I am in bad shape.
The truth is he’s old and sick and retired, but even before that, he hadn’t had to pull his gun many times over his decades in law enforcement. Still, he always knew where it was.
The guy on top of him now is in all black—including gloves and a ski mask.
“Listen up and you won’t get hurt,” he says.
Jack makes a small nodding gesture.
“Good people in this town. Don’t need you digging up bad memories for them. Understand?”
The man’s voice comes out in a low, harsh, growling whisper. Utterly unrecognizable. “Let sleepin’ dogs lie. Leave the ghosts alone. No good’ll come from stirring all this horrible shit back up.”
Jack still doesn’t respond.
“Nod if you understand me.”
Jack doesn’t nod.
“Something you need to know. I won’t let you keep bothering people I care about. I’ll take you off the board first. I will. What’s another? You act like you’re already knockin’ on death’s door. Keep doin’ what you’re doin’ and I’ll open her up for you.”
The man climbs off Jack to stand beside the bed.
As he does, Jack reaches for his gun on the nightstand—only to find it’s not there.
“Way ahead of you, old man,” he says. “It’s my gun now.”
He presses the barrel of the gun back into his forehead.
“I can see you learn as slow as you move,” he says. “Should shoot right here and now. But I’m gonna give you one mor
e chance. But that’s it. One more. Stop what you’re doin’ and go home or . . . there won’t be any other warnings, no other chances. This is it. Do what I tell you or you won’t even know there’ll be a next visit. You’ll just be breathing, and then you won’t.”
84
“Are you really okay?” Anna asks Dad.
“I’m fine. Only thing he hurt was my pride.”
We are in Dad’s room, having gotten a call from him about what happened on our drive back from Tallahassee.
He is sitting up, leaning back against the headboard. I am standing at the end of the bed. Anna is sitting on the edge of the bed between us.
“No idea who it was?” I ask.
He shakes his head.
“Of the people we’ve talked to,” I say, “who’d be the closest in size, shape, weight?”
He shrugs. “Really have no idea.”
I nod. “I called Merrill and Jake on the way here,” I say.
“Why?”
“For a little backup. Reinforcements.”
“Jake?”
“When Merrill said he just couldn’t get away from what he was working on.”
“Oh.”
“But he didn’t answer.”
“Don’t need backup,” he says.
“I’m assuming we’re stickin’ with it,” I say.
“I won’t be scared off anything,” he says, and I knew he meant it, but it sounded a little like hollow bravado.
“I meant because of what you were saying when I dropped you off this afternoon.”
“Oh. Yeah, well . . . Sorry about that. I was already over that when the little punk jumped on top of me, but I was twice as over it by the time he left. I was already back working on the case. I’d had this idea about where Bundy may have hidden Janet’s body when the little cat burglar–looking bastard came in and ripped it all to shreds.”
“Why ripped it to shreds?” Anna says.
“Because,” I say, “if Bundy did it why would someone—anyone—come in here and threaten Dad off the case.”
True Crime Fiction Page 34
