“If you can. If not, just when you can.”
“I’ll do it now and text you any pictures I can find.”
“Thank you. Love you.”
“Love you more,” she says, and is gone.
I walk along Windmark’s narrow paved road, under the decorative water tower, past the empty storefronts on the right and community buildings on the left, to the wooden bridge leading down to the beach.
Had Randa made this same walk? I could see her doing it, being drawn to the water.
I pause on the wooden bridge over the dunes and look back at the houses to my right. How many were here? Was anyone living in them at the time? Did anyone see her? Did her killer live in one?
When I reach the end of the wooden walkway, I’m reminded again of how narrow the beach is here. The thin strip of sugary sand is boarded by sea oat–covered dunes on one side and the bay on the other, its dark water expanding out toward the point of Cape San Blas and the greater Gulf beyond.
It’s quiet and peaceful here—and would be even if it weren’t early morning. The nearly four miles of beach lining this part of the bay is nearly always empty, appearing abandoned just like the resort community encroaching on it.
Looking out across the bay toward the Cape beyond, I wonder if Randa made the difficult but doable, for her, swim and wound up over there. Had all the searches during all this time been looking for her in the wrong place?
My phone vibrates and I pull it out of my pocket. It’s a text from Anna.
Wasn’t much there at the time. Here are a few pics.
Thank you. Love you.
LYM.
In another moment, three images of this area around early 2005 come through.
The thing that strikes me most about all of them is how raw and unfinished much of the property appears and how much construction was taking place.
Two nearby houses were in various stages of completion in early 2005. I walk over to them.
The structures are enormous, the architecture impressive, the lot the homes are on and the land surrounding them appearing natural and native, North Florida rustic.
I knock on the front door of the first home.
A trim middle-aged man with closely cropped, coarse salt-and-pepper hair, a deeply tanned face, bright white teeth, and light gray eyes opens the door and invites me in before he even knows who I am.
Declining his invitation to enter, I show him my badge and tell him why I’m here.
He shakes my hand enthusiastically, as if he’s happy to meet me, his hand hard, his grip firm, and tells me his name is Bert Stewart.
“Were you living here at the time?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “House wasn’t quite finished, not in January of 2005. I’d come down occasionally and crash when I was working on it—or, more accurately, overseeing the work being done on it, but we didn’t move in until March or April of that year.”
“Were you here the night of January twentieth?”
He shakes his head and shrugs. “I’m . . . just not sure. And I really don’t know how I could go back and find out. It’s so long ago.”
“It was the day of George W. Bush’s second inauguration.”
“Oh. Well . . . Oh, yeah, I remember that. I was here, but didn’t get in until late. The reason I came was . . . they poured my neighbor’s foundation and my driveway the next day. I got a great deal on the concrete since they were coming anyway.”
I turn to look at his driveway.
“Actually, it wasn’t . . . my driveway was already here. It was . . . see that little pad on the side where I park my boat? It was mostly just that.”
I nod. “Which neighbor? Right next door?”
“No that house was already up—was just a little behind mine. No, it was the one on the other side of that. Same architect and contractor did all three.”
“What time did you get here that night? Did you see anyone else around? Do you remember seeing a young woman? Auburn hair. Pale white skin. Green eyes.”
He seems to think about it. “It was pretty late. Not sure exactly. Maybe eleven. I . . . I didn’t see anyone else . . . but . . . one of the . . . I saw a contractor’s van parked a little ways down. It stood out because I didn’t see anyone working and I didn’t recognize the name of the company. Next morning when I got up . . . van was gone. Wow. Haven’t thought of that . . . since back then. Not sure why I did.”
“You ever see that van again?”
He shakes his head. “I guess I just figured our contractor had subbed something out to him, but . . . only subconsciously. I never really thought about it again.”
“Your neighbor next door home?” I ask.
“She’s not, but . . . she’s new. Only bought the place and moved in about a year ago.”
“And you didn’t see a young woman that night, the night of the twentieth?”
He shakes his head. “Wish I had. Wish I could be more helpful. Sorry.”
“What about the house one over, the one that poured the foundation at the same time you poured the pad for your boat? They home?”
He nods. “That’s British Bob,” he says. “What everybody calls him ’cause he’s Kentish. He also goes by English Bob and Bob’s Your Uncle. He’s been here the whole time too. Got a great place. People have tried to buy it, but . . . he won’t sell.”
“Was he here that night?” I ask.
“I don’t think so. If he was I didn’t see him. Don’t know why he would be. Didn’t even have so much as a foundation at that point. But who knows? Bob’s odd. That’s what they should call him—Odd Bob.”
“How so?”
He hesitates a moment.
“How’s he odd?” I say.
“More . . . eccentric . . . I guess I mean. Maybe it’s because he’s British. Maybe it’s because he’s a lifelong bachelor. I don’t know.”
I thank him, give him my card, and walk two doors down.
Bert had been right and wrong.
British Bob or Odd Bob or Bachelor Bob has an awe-inspiring place—even when compared to the other big, breathtaking homes surrounding it—but he isn’t home.
So I pull out another one of my cards, scribble a note on it, leave it on his door, and—Bob’s your uncle—maybe he’ll call me back.
125
“Randa was not suicidal,” Ashley Gaines is saying. “I keep hearing people say that—that she was out there to commit suicide. It’s just not true. I keep hearing people say all kinds of shit. None of it’s true. I knew Randa—and not just in general, but at the time she disappeared.”
It’s the following afternoon and I’m listening to more episodes of the In Search of Randa Raffield podcast as I drive in to Panama City.
“That’s right,” Daniel says. “There’s a big difference in knowing or thinking you know someone way back versus when they went missing.”
“People change,” Merrick says. “Circumstances change. Situations change. How a person is feeling or what they’re thinking changes. What do you think, Nancy?”
“Ashley is making a good point,” Nancy Drury says. “Random people theorizing about Randa’s state of mind in the abstract is worth exactly nothing. Ashley, what else can you tell us about Randa?”
“I’m not saying everything was seashells and balloons in her life,” Ashley says. “She had problems to deal with like everybody else. She had her own issues too. But she wasn’t suicidal. She didn’t drive off to go kill herself.”
“Why do you think she left?” Nancy asks. “Why do you think she was where she was instead of the protest in Atlanta?”
“I honestly don’t know,” she says. “And unlike other people who didn’t even know her, I’m not gonna make shit up. I really don’t get why she was where she was. I can’t explain it—can’t even . . . I have a hard time believing it. It’s truly a mystery to me. I keep thinkin’ maybe someone forced her to go there.”
“You mean . . .” Merrick says. “You think someone could’ve been in the car with her, perhaps
with a gun or something, making her do what she did?”
“I don’t know. I have no proof of anything like that. And I realize after I said it that I’m doing what I just said I wouldn’t do, but . . . All I’m saying is . . . it’s so . . . out of character . . . I’m just trying to figure out how it’s even possible. Randa was very responsible. She was a leader. In class. On the swim team. At work. She didn’t do flaky shit. She just didn’t.”
Nancy says, “Some have suggested she was going to meet someone. What do you think of that explanation?”
“I . . . could see that. I guess. It’d be . . . Either she was going to help someone—she did that a lot. Maybe someone she knew needed her help. If so, I wish they’d come forward and say so. But I could see that. The other thing . . . I could see is . . . her . . . maybe . . . meeting . . . a . . . you know . . . guy. If Randa was going to do something a little crazy or . . . you know . . . flaky, it would be for a guy.”
“But she had a boyfriend,” Daniel says. “Just got engaged. She had a fiancé. She’d just said yes a few weeks before.”
“Well . . . the truth is . . . she said yes in front of everyone . . . didn’t want to embarrass him—or herself—but later told him she didn’t want to marry him.”
“Really?” Daniel says.
“I’m pretty sure this is the first time anyone ever said anything like this,” Merrick says. “I don’t think anyone knew this before.”
“I did,” Ashley says.
“No, I mean law enforcement. Even people like us investigating the case. The media. The general public. This is huge. And . . . the implications are . . .”
“If investigators had known this,” Daniel says, “they would’ve taken a much closer look at Josh Douglas, the guy everyone thought was her fiancé, and his alibi.”
“No wonder he won’t talk to anyone about Randa or her disappearance,” Merrick says.
“Ashley, did Randa’s other friends know?” Nancy asks. “Do you know of anyone else she told or who knew about it?”
“Yeah, I mean . . . I’d have to think about it, but . . . I wasn’t the only one she told.”
“Did she give the ring back?” Nancy asks.
“That’s a good . . . I’m not sure. I don’t know.”
After they thank Ashley and she disconnects the call, there’s a moment of silence.
“Did we just . . .” Daniel begins. “Did we just uncover something big? Something law enforcement didn’t know?”
“I think we did,” Merrick says.
“Oh my God,” Daniel says.
You can hear the genuine thrill in both men’s voices.
“That’s something to savor,” Merrick says. “Don’t get many of those moments. I can tell you that.”
“Nancy?” Daniel asks. “You still with us? Isn’t it . . . incredible?”
“That’s what we have to find out,” she says. “How credible is it? Did Randa tell others about it? Did she give the ring back? We certainly need more corroboration. I have no reason to doubt that Ashley knows what she’s talking about, but we’ve got to doubt or at least question everything. If it’s true, others will know about it. And . . . on the other . . . the truth is we don’t know what law enforcement knows. They may have known this and still cleared Josh as a suspect. We just don’t know.”
“You’re right,” Daniel says. “We’ve got to . . . verify everything—everything we can. It was just so . . . such a surprising and . . . potentially huge . . . piece of information or evidence . . . I got excited and jumped ahead and—”
“I’m not trying to be a downer,” she says. “I think it’s potentially . . . huge. Like you say. But we just don’t know for sure if it’s even true and if it is what it means.”
“No, you’re exactly right,” Merrick says. “And we’re so glad you’re here.”
“Even if I am a negative Nancy?”
“You’re not,” Daniel says. “Not at all.”
“You’re doing what we should have,” Merrick says. “We lost ourselves for a minute. But if we don’t question and doubt and most of all verify and corroborate, we’ll be just like all the other assholes online with baseless speculation and ignorant, worthless opinions.”
“Thank you, Nancy,” Daniel says.
“No, thank you guys,” she says. “I appreciate just how . . . open and . . . You guys really want to get at the truth and you put your egos aside to do it. It’s very, very rare. I’m honored to be a part of your show.”
126
“What do you teach?” I ask.
“Political science mostly,” Josh Douglas says.
He is standing at the front of his classroom unpacking his briefcase, placing books, papers, folders, a computer, and a bottle of water on his table and lectern, arranging them carefully as if following an exact plan long since committed to memory.
“I’ve always been drawn to politics. Randa and I both were . . . though . . .”
After repeated calls to Randa’s fiancé going unreturned, I decided to show up at his classroom at Gulf Coast State College in Panama City to confront him in person.
The main campus of GCSC is crammed in the junction between Panama City and Panama City Beach where Highway 98 and 23rd Street intersect near the Hathaway Bridge and not far from Thomas Drive.
“Though what?”
He shrugs. “I don’t know.”
He stops what he’s doing and we sit in two of the students’ chairs at the table closest to the one holding his lectern, briefcase, and papers.
The classroom is plain—white walls, blue commercial carpet, two rows of tables with chairs beneath them, two dry-erase boards in the front, and a single bulletin board in the back, a few political news clippings tacked to it.
“I’ve thought so many things since she went missing, looked at everything a thousand different ways. There was so much I didn’t know. Anyway . . . I’ve wondered for a while now if she . . . was ever really into politics or . . . just doing it because I did.”
On my way into his classroom, I had asked a student out in the hallway to keep everyone out until I finished talking to him. Now, students periodically look at us through the narrow strip of glass in the closed door.
“You think she was faking?”
“Didn’t at the time. Now . . . I don’t know. And that’s . . . the kind of thing that’ll drive you crazy. Eventually, I figured out I had to just stop thinking about it. So I did. Mostly.”
I nod and think about it.
“Just hope you never have to second-guess an entire relationship,” he adds.
I know what he means, but think how often and for how many different reasons relationships get second-guessed—divorce, death, disappearance, breakups, even some that don’t end. I’ve performed relationship autopsies on nearly every one I’ve ever been in.
He seems perfectly willing to talk to me and I wonder why he hasn’t returned my calls.
“There’s so much information out there,” he says. “Sometimes . . . I have no idea who they’re talking about. I just know it’s not Randa. Others . . . I think I’m the biggest fool who ever lived and that I never knew her at all.”
Josh Douglas is now thirty-three years old and bears little resemblance to the recently-old-enough-to-drink boy in the fading photographs with Randa. He’s heavier, his body and face filled out, his blond hair darker and already beginning to thin, and he has a full, neatly trimmed beard.
I notice a wedding ring on his finger and realize that how I’ve been thinking about him, as Randa’s fiancé, is wrong. He hasn’t been that for a very long time—and maybe never really was.
“How long have you been married?” I ask.
“Six, almost seven years,” he says. “Two kids. Alison, my wife, is . . . well, let’s just say I needed a very special, stable, secure woman after what I went through with . . . Randa. She’s great.”
“What did you go through with Randa?” I ask.
He looks at me like I just asked him how
to breathe and if it was really necessary.
“I don’t mean her going missing or all that you’ve questioned since then,” I say. “I mean before.”
“Oh,” he says, and gives me a nervous little smile as he lets out a sigh. “Randa was so beautiful, fun and funny, smart, and really caring. But she was . . . damaged too. Had . . . I don’t know . . . I guess . . . some . . . childhood trauma. She required a lot—a lot of reassurance, attention, care . . . handling.”
“She was needy?” I ask.
He nods. “Not always, just sometimes, but when she was, she really was—we’re talking . . . a lot.”
“Was she ever unfaithful?”
His eyes widen and he swallows hard. He then frowns and nods slowly. “I didn’t realize just how much until later. Much later. But I knew she had . . . sexual issues. Knew that’s how she got most of her reassurance and sense of worthiness.”
“How did you handle that?”
“Like the classic helper-healer-savior I was trying to be,” he says. “It wasn’t easy, but . . . I’d always worked through it and doubled down on my commitment to her. She was always so scared I was going to abandon her.”
“Were you ever unfaithful to her?” I ask.
“Never. Not once. Even thought of only her when I’d masturbate. It was crazy. Extreme. Tried so hard to prove my love to her, to prove to her she was worthy of it. You ever tried to convince an extremely insecure person you love them and won’t leave them? It’s impossible. But like Sisyphus, I woke up every morning to push that boulder up that hill.”
“Did she sleep with any of your friends or people you knew?”
He nods. “She slept with everyone. And not just the guys. Girls too.”
“What made you propose when you did?”
“Thought the Pelican Drop would be memorable as hell and—going back to my earlier answer—to try to reassure her, to try to make it work. Pushing that boulder.”
“She said yes?”
“She said yes in the moment, but didn’t mean it. Or . . . hell . . . she may have meant it at the time. But not long after she told me she didn’t want to marry me, that she couldn’t. Said I was too weak. Said she needed to be with a stronger, more powerful and dominant man to keep her ass in line.”
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