“I’m . . . it was so different this time. And she made sure I didn’t feel any . . . I’m good. We’re good.”
“Good,” she says, pausing before adding, “I’m so proud of you. So honored to be sharing this life with you. I love the way your mind works, love watching you work, the way you piece things together, make connections no one does.”
“You and Merrill did as much as I did,” I say. “More. And if either of you had had all the various pieces you could’ve put it together.”
“No, that’s not true. We couldn’t. But that’s beside the point. The point is . . . I’m in awe of you and I will never, ever take you—the gift of you—for granted.”
“Thank you.”
“I think I like your mind second only to your kindness,” she says. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s your kindness, your spirit or essence, then your mind. I’ll have to think about it.”
I smile. “You’re trying to cheer me up,” I say. “You’re the best wife in the whole wide world. But I really am fine.”
“I may or may not be trying to cheer you up, but I meant every word I said.”
When we pull into our driveway, Chris Taunton is there in our yard. Dad is near him, gun drawn.
“I want you to go straight inside and check on Taylor, Sam, and Verna, okay?” I say.
“Okay.”
“Don’t even look at him.”
“Don’t worry.”
I pull onto the grass close to the door, placing the car so that it blocks Anna completely as she gets out and walks in.
“Let me get out first,” I say. “Give me five seconds, then you go. Take the keys in case Dad locked the door. He probably did.”
I slip the little .38 out of my ankle holster, pat Anna’s hand, tell her I love her, and get out of the car, gun drawn.
“Dad,” I say. “You okay?”
“Damn, what’s with all the guns?” Chris says. “This how you rednecks greet every newcomer to town?”
“I’m good,” Dad says. “Was just trying to explain to Chris here how it’s not a good idea to just drop by.”
I look at Chris. “Don’t just not drop by, don’t ever come here again. Not ever.”
“John, my family lives here. My flesh and blood. She’s my daughter, not yours. You think you’re gonna keep me from my daughter? You really think that?”
“You’re wrong, Chris. Your family doesn’t live here. Mine does. If the court grants you supervised visitation we’ll deal with that, but it won’t be here. Don’t ever come here.”
“No one’s gonna keep me from my family,” he says. “No one. Not you, not the courts. No one. I will be visiting my daughter. And I will be doing it any goddamn time I feel like it.”
“You know,” I say, “until this moment I thought the Stand Your Ground law was mostly a joke—used by the paranoid and mentally ill to shoot people in movie theaters and gas stations—but now . . . I’m seeing other more legitimate and necessary applications.”
“What’re you saying Chaplain John?” he says in an exaggerated, mocking manner.
“I’ll speak slowly,” I say, “and not use any figurative language or subtlety. You are trespassing. I’ve told you to leave and not to ever come back. You tried to kill us. Not just me and Anna, but your own child.”
He shakes his head. “I was only tryin’ to kill you.”
“You represent a very real threat to my family. If you come back on my property again, I will shoot you.”
Dad shakes his head. “No you won’t, Son. And he knows it. You won’t get the chance, ’cause I’ll shoot his sorry ass first.”
“I’ll say goodnight now,” Chris says, his voice and demeanor calm, casual, “but I’ll see y’all again real soon. Y’all might not see me, but I’ll see you. I’ll see you.”
“We know you’re a coward and a back shooter,” I say, “someone who hires others to do his dirty deeds, but know this—if you do anything or have anything done to any of us, we have friends who will square it.”
“And be damn happy to do so,” Dad says.
“Anything happens to any of us, they’re coming after you,” I say. “So you better pray nothing happens. Nothing at all.”
He turns and walks away. “Night,” he says, lifting a hand back toward us. “See you soon.”
He slowly, nonchalantly, walks down our driveway and then our street, and disappears into the night in front of the old Wewa Hardware building.
Dad turns to me and says, “He’s gonna be a problem until he’s put down.”
I nod. “I know,” I say. “I know.”
Later that night, as I lie awake thinking about what to do about Chris, my weapon on the bedside table next to me, my phone begins to vibrate.
“Congratulations,” Randa says. “I really thought it was the other ex. But like you said . . . I was guessing. Tryin’ to get ahead of you on it. But . . . anyway . . . Good work.”
“When can we expect Daniel?” I ask. “Can I come get him now?”
“You won, John,” she says. “You did. Mr. Big Brain. But the truth is all that really does is tie us up. It’s even now—one-one. But I’m not one to not settle a score.”
“Oh, I know this about you,” I say.
She actually laughs. “Sorry about the mess I left you in Eastpoint, but no, I meant I pay my debts . . . I understand that murdering piece of shit ex-husband of Anna’s is getting out of prison, that the charges against him are being dropped. So here’s what I’m gonna do . . . I’m gonna take him off the board for you. Punch his ticket. Cancel him to cancel my debt and then we’ll play again someday soon for Daniel. How’s that?”
But before I can tell her that’s not okay, not to do anything to Chris, she is gone and I’m left alone again with my thoughts and possibilities and options—which all just got a lot more complicated.
Start Blood Shot Now!
Blood Shot Chapter 1
Then
Evening.
Fall. North Florida.
Bruised sky above rusted rim of earth.
Black forest backlit by plum-colored clouds. Receding glow. Expanding dark.
Deep in the cold woods of the Apalachicola River Basin, Remington James slowly makes his way beneath a canopy of pine and oak and cypress trees along a forest floor of fallen pine straw, wishing he’d worn a better jacket, his Chippewa snake boots slipping occasionally, unable to find footing on the slick surface.
Above him, a brisk breeze whistles through the branches, swaying the treetops in an ancient dance, raining down dead leaves and pine needles.
It’s his favorite time of day in his favorite time of year, his family’s hunting lease his favorite place to hide from the claustrophobia of small-town life increasingly closing in on him.
Screams.
He hears what sounds like human screams from a great distance away, but can’t imagine anyone else is out here and decides it must be an animal or the type of aural illusion that occurs so often when he’s alone this deep in the disorienting woods.
Still, it unnerves him. Especially when . . . There it is again.
Doesn’t sound like any animal he’s ever heard, and he finds it far more disquieting than any sound he’s ever encountered out here.
It’s not a person, he tells himself. It’s not. Can’t be. But even if it were, you’d never be able to find anyone out here.
The sound stops . . . and he continues.
One good shot.
Even closing the shop early—something his dad never did, particularly during hunting season—he has only the narrowest of margins, like the small strip of light from a slightly open door, in which there will be enough illumination for exposure.
The drive out to the edge of his family’s land; the ATV ride into the river swamp; the walk through acres of browning, but still thick, foliage—all close the door even more, but all he wants is to check his camera traps and get one good shot with his new camera.
He’ll trudge as far as he can, search
as long as he can—capturing the image at the last possible moment, stumbling back in full dark if he has to. Given the circumstances of his current condition and the lack of choices he has, there’s nothing he’d rather be doing, no way he’d rather spend his few short evening hours than in pursuit of the perfect picture.
Loss.
Emptiness. Numbness.
His dad dying so young has filled the facade of Remington’s life with tiny fissures, a fine spider’s web of hairline fractures threatening collapse and crumble.
Facade or foundation? Maybe it’s not just the surface of his life, but the core that’s cracking. He isn’t sure and he doesn’t want to think about it, though part of him believes he comes alone to the woods so he’ll be forced to do just that.
He’s wanted to be an adventure photographer for over a decade, but pulling the trigger now, making the investment, obsessively spending every free moment in its pursuit, in the wake of his dad’s death, the wake that still rocks the little lifeboat of his existence, is a fearful man’s frenzied attempt at mitigating mortality—and he knows it. He just doesn’t know what else to do.
Heather could tell him.
Blood Shot Chapter 2
Now
Some unsolved cases are like unanswered questions.
Not casual curiosities, but obsessive, relentlessly repeated questions nagging mercilessly at the edges of everything else.
Others are like open wounds.
Seeping, susceptible-to-infection lacerations incapable of healing without intense treatment.
Who killed Robin Wilson, the previous sheriff of Gulf County, and four of his men-- with their own guns-- has always been the unanswered question type of unsolved case, but why Remington James was hunted down like an animal in the woods and who killed him in cold blood has always been more of the open wound kind of unsolved case.
Both haunt me. But in different ways.
One is incessant questions.
Who’s the killer? Why’d he do it? How’d he do it? How’d he get away with it? Did he have help? Was there a cover-up?
For those of us charged with answering questions, with bearing witness, with giving some sort of narrative cohesiveness to the seemingly arbitrary and accidental elements of an unfinished story, the unanswered questions of an unsolved crime stalk us, mock us, gnaw at us.
The other is an open, unhealed wound.
Since I joined the Gulf County Sheriff’s department, I have been obsessed with one unsolved case more than any other. What exactly happened out in the unforgiving swamp during Remington James’ long, dark night of the soul troubles me in a way that few mysteries have.
Who killed Remington James? Not who pulled the trigger. Who was behind it? And why?
One possible answer—and one that only adds to the enigma—is that he witnessed the murder of a young woman out in the swamps where he had his camera traps set up—something he claimed to have happened in a message he left behind—but no evidence of such a crime has ever been found.
Did Remington make up the story about the murdered woman? If not, why hasn’t she been found? Or was she? If she was, who found her and what’d they do with her body?
Everything changes with a single phone call.
For nearly a year I have been pleading with Heather James, Remington's widow, to talk to me, to help me find out what really happened to Remington and who was really behind it.
She declined each and every request I made—politely at first, but later with forceful rudeness, and eventually with complete silence.
And then after ignoring me for months, she calls me.
“I’m in town,” she says. “I’d like to talk.”
“Okay. When? Where?”
“I’m emailing you a manuscript. I’ve been working with a local writer to tell the truth about what really happened to Remington. Take a look at it and we’ll talk. How’s tomorrow?”
“Fine,” I say. “Why now? What changed?”
“I’ll explain when we meet.”
“Okay.”
“The manuscript is based on everything I’ve been able to piece together from the evidence, the original investigation, and what Remington left behind. We don’t have an ending yet. Not really. Not one that explains things in any satisfactory kind of way. I’m hoping you can help with that. I know you’ve been working on the case.”
“I have, but the original investigation was . . .”
“A fuckin’ joke,” she says. “You figured out whether it was ineptitude or cover-up?”
“I have some ideas.”
“I look forward to hearing them,” she says. “Talk to you tomorrow.”
Without saying goodbye or anything else she hangs up.
Blood Shot Chapter 3
Then
Heather.
Like longing for home while being lost in the woods, all his thoughts these days lead back to her.
She had called when he was driving the ATV off the trailer, preparing to venture farther in the forest than his dad’s truck could take him. Like the truck and trailer and the life he’s now living, the ATV belongs to his father. Had belonged. Now it’s his.
He was surprised by the vibrating of the phone in his pocket, certain he was too far in for signal. Another few feet, another moment later, and he would’ve been.
When he sees her name displayed on the small screen—Heather—he feels, as he always does lately, the conflicting emotions of joy and dread.
—Hello.
Light, photography’s most essential element, is bleeding out; the day will soon be dead. Time is light, and he has little of either to spare. Still, he has no thought of not answering the phone.
—You okay?
—Yeah. Why?
—For some reason, I just started worrying about you.
With those few words, the day grows colder, the forest darker. Heather gets feelings—the kind that in an earlier age would get her staked to the ground and set afire—and they’re almost always right.
—You there? she asks.
—I’m here.
In his mind, she is wearing lavender, and it highlights her delicate features in the way it rests on the soft petals of the flower she’s named after. She smells of flowers, too, and it’s intoxicating—even within the confines of his imagination.
—Where are you? I can barely hear you.
—Woods. We’re hanging by a single small bar of signal, he says, thinking it an apt metaphor for their tenuous connection.
He pictures her in the small gallery just down from the Rollins College campus in Winter Park, the sounds of the Amtrak train clacking down the track in the background, the desultory sounds of lazy evening traffic easing by her open door, and it reminds him just how far away she is.
—I’m sure you think that’s some kind of metaphor.
—You don’t?
—I don’t think like you. Never have.
—Never said you should.
—You’re okay?
—I’m fine. Just here to check my traps and try out my new camera.
—Well, be careful.
—Always am.
—Good.
—Got one of your feelings?
—I’m not sure.
—Either you do or you don’t.
—Not always. Sometimes they have to . . . how can I put this . . . develop.
—Funny.
—Just trying to speak a language you understand.
He needs to go, but doesn’t want to.
—Be extra careful, she says, and I’ll call you if anything develops.
—I won’t have signal.
—’Til when?
—’Til I get back. Hour or so after dark.
—Maybe you shouldn’t go.
—You tell me. I don’t have a feeling one way or the other.
—I’m so glad you’re lensing again. Don’t want to stop you.
She had always been encouraging of his photography, including letting him take nudes of h
er starting when they met in college and continuing into their lives together. Even when he wasn’t taking pictures of anything else, he was taking pictures of her.
They are quiet a beat, and he misses her so much, the day grows even colder, the vast expanse of river swamp lonelier.
—We gonna make it? she asks, her voice small, airy, tentative.
—You don’t have a feeling about that?
—I’m not ready to let go. I can’t.
—Then don’t.
—But . . .
—What?
—I don’t know. We’re not gonna figure it out right now, and you’re losing light. Call me when you get home.
As is her custom, she hangs up without saying goodbye.
He smiles. Glad. Grateful. Goodbye is something he never wants to hear from her. Back when they first started dating, he’d asked her why she never said it. Because, she’d explained, we’re in the midst of one long, ongoing conversation. I don’t want that to end.
She didn’t say amen after her prayers either.
Copyright © 2017 by Michael Lister
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Print ISBNs:
ISBN-10:1-947606-02-6
ISBN-13:978-1-947606-02-9
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In the early morning hours of July 4th 2017, an unimaginable murder took place in a rented Gulf-front mansion in a gated subdivision of Cape San Blas in Gulf County, Florida.
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