“I don’t know anyone who wouldn’t understand the temptation,” I say.
“But I never, not for one moment, ever considered doing anything that would betray my vows to my Sam or dishonor her in anyway. And it certainly never crossed my mind to leave her. Not even for a nanosecond during one of those random crazy thoughts that come out of nowhere and mean nothing.”
I nod and smile, and before I know what I’m doing I’m standing up and moving to his side of the table and wrapping him up in a hug.
As I do, he breaks down and begins to sob.
Unable to be quiet any longer, he sobs so loudly it wakes Sam up, and I release him and he rushes over to her, leaning down on her bed so she can hold him as he cries.
As I ease out of the room to give them the privacy this moment demands, I can see that she’s sobbing too—probably the most therapeutic experience either of them have had since their long nightmare began on a dirt road down near Crystal River a little over two years ago.
209
I crawl into bed next to Anna physically exhausted and emotionally drained.
She rolls on her side and backs up toward me and I fall asleep in my favorite position—spooning the woman I love.
Dreams come immediately.
Vivid, lifelike, disturbing dreams of JonBenét Ramsey dance across the stage of my subconscious in colorful, feathery, sequined pageant dresses.
Other girls and mothers waiting in the wings.
As a hooded-eyed child molester in the audience licks his lips, the tip of his too-small tongue dryly darting out of his misshapen mouth.
Jump cut to December 25, 1996 in a rambling remodeled sprawling house on 15th Street in Boulder, Colorado. A lit Christmas tree in every room. The remnants of Santa’s visit still strewn about the house. Quiet. Peaceful.
Silent Night. Holy Night. Moments before a vicious assault, a violent brutalization, sexual savagery, the death of beauty and innocence. And there’s nothing I can do about it.
I can feel myself trying to wake up, but I’m unable to escape the noxious nightmare.
Scream of a child.
Helpless.
She is helpless.
I am helpless to help her.
I wake in a cold sweat, racing pulse in my throat, feeling frustrated and embarrassingly powerless.
Sliding my arm out from beneath Anna, I slowly and quietly roll out of the bed, slip on my shorts and t-shirt on the floor and steal out of the room.
The first thing I do is look in on the girls, lingering a few moments to listen to the sweet sound of their breathing.
Then, padding down the dark hallway, I ease into the kitchen, glancing over to see Daniel and Sam sleeping in the living room.
Slipping over to the cabinet and removing a glass, I fill it with water from the tap and stand at the sink sipping it while attempting to slow my breathing and heart rate.
Through the wide window I can see the wet world, puddles on the driveway, standing pools in the front yard, oak leaves glistening, the window itself dotted with raindrops.
Up beyond the old Wewa Hardware building, across Highway 22, the lights of the laundromat shine extremely bright in the dark night.
The building was once and for many, many years a convenience store. Now it holds a fishing tackle and bait store called The Fishing Shack on one side and a no name 24 hour laundromat on the other.
When the owner remodeled the building into two store fronts and rented them out to the two new businesses, he had installed the brightest lights in town beneath the cement covering of the small front porch—lights that actually partially illuminate our front yard nearly a block away.
As I’m wondering what the electric bill must run, I see him.
Sitting there inside the building, a scope in his hand, is Anna’s ex-husband Chris Taunton.
I take a step back from the window, duck down and attempt to watch him without him seeing me.
Holding a magazine as if he’s just waiting for his clothes to finish drying, he occasionally lowers it and brings up a rifle scope out of his jacket pocket and glasses our home with it.
Stepping into the mud room and slipping my shoes on, I walk out through the garage and run across my neighbors’ backyard.
The grass of my neighbor’s mostly neglected yard is high and wet. I run along the still and dark Lake Julia, random raindrops fall from limbs and leaves.
In a few moments, I reach Highway 22 down near the Dixie Dandy—the small grocery store, gas station, and deli in the old, converted, dilapidated patchwork building on the same lake as our home.
I’m far enough down so he can’t see me.
I cross the empty highway. American flags adorning the light poles lining both sides of the street hang damp and motionless above me.
The small, sodden town appears abandoned, stores closed, streets empty. The July night is hot and humid. There is no wind, no movement. Only the red and yellow flash of the traffic signal at the intersection of 22 and Main.
Running along the small unpaved alleyway, I come up on the side of the building, around the ice machines humming in the quiet night, and along the front porch.
Standing behind a Coke machine situated between the two storefronts, I am able to observe Chris without him seeing me.
He’s the only person in the laundromat. For all I can tell from here, he could be the only person on the planet.
He’s seated on a black plastic chair in front of a bank of dryers. Beneath him the flecked and speckled tile floor is the same one the convenience store had forty years ago.
I step over and snatch open the door, the fresh, clean smell of detergent and fabric softener wafting over me.
He jumps up.
“Sit down,” I say.
He holds his hands out in a placating gesture. “Okay, okay,” he says. “Don’t shoot.”
He’s always making statements like that. It’s just more ironic tonight since I’m in shorts and a t-shirt without a weapon of any kind—or even a cellphone.
Overhead white ceiling fans turn slowly, out of sync with the spinning dryers behind him.
“I can’t even do my laundry anymore without being harassed?” he says.
“This isn’t harassment and you know it. Hand me the scope.”
His eyes flash wide for a split second, but then he recovers and shrugs and shakes his head. “I use Tide to wash my clothes. If you need mouthwash to hide the liquor on your breath before you go home to my wife and child, ’fraid I can’t help you.”
“You know I wasn’t talkin’ about mouthwash,” I say.
I extend my hand toward him.
“Give me the rifle scope you’ve been using to watch our home with now,” I say.
He shakes his head. “I don’t have a—”
“Why’re you wearing a jacket in July?” I ask. “It’s hard to imagine a more hot or humid night.”
He shrugs again. “I’m cold natured. That a crime now too?”
“Do you have a weapon to go along with that scope or just the scope?” I ask.
“I’m unarmed,” he says. “You think I’d be stupid enough to walk around your town with a gun? Not that it matters much. Y’all can just plant one on me after you shoot me, can’t you?”
“Tell you what,” I say. “All I want to do is sit down beside you and have a little talk. That’s it. But before I do, you’re going to take off your jacket and hang it on that rack over there. Okay? That’s not too much to ask. Besides, think about how much more comfortable you’ll be.”
He studies me.
I hold out my hands and turn around. “Look,” I say. “I’m unarmed. Don’t even have my phone on me. I just want to talk.”
He frowns and nods, then stands, shrugs out of his coat, and hangs it on the galvanized rack a few feet away.
When he sits down again, I sit beside him.
“I’ve worked with a lot of criminals over the years,” I say. “A lot. Both inside and out of prison.”
“That’s nothing t
o brag about.”
“The ones who never learn, never change, are the ones who justify and rationalize everything they do and truly believe themselves to be victims while they are victimizing others.”
“You should write a book,” he says. “A murdering drunk home wrecker gives advice to criminals.”
“Thing is,” I say, “you got away with murder.”
“I’ve never gotten away with anything in my entire goddamn life,” he says. “And now I’ve lost everything. Check that. I had everything taken from me—most of it by you, the motherfucker dispensing advice in the laundromat in the middle of the night.”
“You could turn your life around,” I say. “It’s not too late. You could take the opportunities you’ve been given and make a new start.”
“Opportunities?” he says, his voice rising. “I never realized just how fuckin’ funny you are, John. When you lose your current job, you should consider standup.”
“Everything you’re doing is self-destructive,” I say. “I know you wish me ill. And I’m sure there are others you’re hoping to harm, but the end of the road is your own destruction—no matter who else you injure or kill along the way.”
“Please look at me with a straight face and tell me you care about me,” he says.
“I care about my wife—the woman you tried to kill,” I say.
“I never tried to—”
“I care about her.”
“She was my wife at the time,” he says.
“I care about your child—evidently more than you do.”
“Why do you think I’m here?” he says, his voice rising again. “It’s because I love them both that I’m sitting here watching your stupid house. That’s my family over there in that house. Mine. Not yours.”
“I was trying to appeal to your own sense of self-preservation,” I say. “Trying to get you to see that no matter who else you harm, you’re going to inflict the most pain upon yourself. Call it care—for you or for those in your wake.”
“My family. Mine. I sit here all alone in the middle of the night in this piece of shit Podunk town and spy on my fuckin’ family because you stole them away from me.”
“Okay,” I say. “But ask yourself this. When I got shot a little while back . . . if that had been fatal . . . if I had died and was out of the way . . . you and Anna would be back together, you, her, and Taylor would be one big happy family?”
210
“I know everyone blames me, “Andy is saying, “but I don’t know what else I could’ve done.”
Andy Finch is a large, soft man with thinning blondish hair and flat blue eyes. He was the on-call deputy on Cape San Blas when the call came in and was the first to respond to the scene.
Because Cape San Blas is relatively small, only one deputy is assigned there during the season. During the offseason, Cape San Blas shares a deputy assigned to other parts of the area.
“I did everything by the book for what it looked like it was,” he says, “and every one of these damn Monday morning quarterbacks blaming me for what happened would’ve done the same things. No, that’s not true. Most of ’em wouldn’t’ve done half of what I did.”
I nod. “I’m not here to blame you. I know how fluid and difficult these situations can be. I had something similar happen when I was a patrol officer in Stone Mountain.”
Wanting Andy as relaxed and unguarded as possible, I’m meeting with him on his day off away from the department. We’re standing beneath an enormous oak tree in the front yard of the Methodist church on Main Street where Andy has been mowing the grass. In fact, he’s still sitting on the large yellow zero turn mower at the moment, the motor ticking and clicking as it cools.
“You did?” he says.
I nod. “So I understand, but it’s not my job to evaluate what you did or why. I’m not here to second guess or criticize you. And nothing you say will jam you up.”
Beneath his large frame, the mower looks smaller than it actually is, and when he shifts his weight the seat groans and the metal structure below it moans.
“The sheriff has asked me to look at everything we have so far,” I say. “Run a fresh pair of eyes over every aspect and element. That’s all I’m after.”
He nods and seems to relax a little more.
The morning traffic on Main is slow and intermittent—and about the only thing stirring any of the thick, humid air around.
We’re in the midst of the wettest North Florida summer I can ever remember, and though it’s not raining at the moment, the sky is giving every indication that it will be again soon.
“Will you take me through everything step by step?” I ask.
He nods. “If that’s what the sheriff wants.”
“Thank you.”
Even beneath the shade of the giant oak limbs on an overcast morning the heat is stifling, and I can feel the sweat trickling down my brow and back.
“The call came in,” he says. “Dispatch said some parents vacationing at Stars Haven woke up to find their daughter missing and a note that said she had run away. So I was responding to a runaway situation. And I did it by the book. Took me a few minutes to get in. I called up from the gate but no one answered for several minutes. At the time I didn’t see that as suspicious. Just figured they were looking for her or upset, out of sorts, or something.”
Stars Haven is a small Gulf-front gated community with the largest and most luxurious mansions on the Cape.
“We’re talking about people with a lot of money,” he says. “Staying in probably the safest place there is. I had no reason to suspect that this was anything other than what I was told it was. And it wasn’t just that I was told what it was. Everything I saw confirmed what I had been told.”
From the black shingled roof of the tall redbrick church building, chimes began to play—the first chimes of the day, announcing it was ten in the morning. We waited for a moment for the loud gongs to finish so we could hear each other again.
I glance around at the tall grass and feel bad for keeping Andy from his second job. With as much rain as we’ve been getting there’s no way he’s been able to keep up with his regular accounts.
“I’ll be honest,” Andy says, “I was surprised by how young the couple was and how they looked.”
“Whatta you mean?”
“They looked too young and too . . . I don’t know exactly . . . to have enough money to stay in a mansion like the one they were in.”
“Tell me more about how they looked.”
“He’s black. She’s white. I learned later he’s some sort of rapper. And that’s what he looks like. Also didn’t know at the time that he’s an ex-con, but I could tell. He has the eyes. And the woman . . . well . . . between you and me . . . she looks sort of low rent. I don’t know. I’m just telling you my honest observations.”
“That’s all I want. Don’t edit or clean it up. Just give me your unvarnished impressions and observations and tell me exactly what happened. I’m not recording this or even taking notes. This is just between us.”
He nods. “The dad and the . . . woman. They’re not married and she’s not the girl’s mother. Not sure what to call her. Anyway, they meet me at the door. The woman, Ashley something, is holding the note. Soon as she sees me she hands it to me.”
I had read the note this morning. A copy of it is in the murder book. It is written in a child’s hand that was matched to Mariah’s writing and reads: Dear Daddy, Ashley and Brett or to mean to me. I love them but cannot stay. I sorry for leaving you like this. Yall all will be happy with out me. Please do not look for me. I will be fine. I will miss. Love you, Mariah.
“Told me they found it in her bedroom when they went in to wake her up,” he says. “Said she had put pillows under her covers the way kids do to make it look like they’re still in bed. I ask them to show me where they found it and told them I needed to do a full search of the house. They said they had already done that, but I told them I had to do it. I’m sure you know the stati
stics. Something like half of all kids who run away do so because of conflict with their parents, because the parents encouraged them to, or some sort of abuse—sexual, physical, verbal. I didn’t take their word for anything and I maintained a healthy suspicion about everything throughout. They asked me to hurry, said every moment counted and we had to get out there and find her. I told them I understood, but there was a certain way these things had to be done, a way they work best, that we did them for a reason, and I was going to do everything just by the book. So they took me to the girl’s bedroom—which took a while. I’ve never been in a house that big before. It was huge. I then searched it, which took a long time, room by room—every closet, every bathroom, every nook and cranny. They were impatient and rushing me the whole time, telling me I needed to call for more help and get officers on the streets searching for her. I followed procedure. I searched the entire house. You tell me, given what I knew at the time, did I do anything wrong?”
I shake my head—something I would’ve done even if I thought he had done something wrong.
“They kept saying, ‘we’re just here for the holiday. We’re renting this place. Mariah doesn’t know anyone. Doesn’t know her way around. We’ve got to get out there and find her.’ I then asked them for a picture. Have you seen her?”
I nod.
“She’s a very, very pretty little girl. Or was. ’Course mixed girls are always some of the most beautiful.”
Many of the people around here—and I guess other places too—used the term mixed for biracial children, and though it’s extremely common and I truly believe most of them don’t mean it as a pejorative, I’ve never liked it. It’s probably just me, but the term seems to carry a negative connotation—almost like halfbreed—and I just don’t like it.
But Andy’s right. Mariah Evers was a truly beautiful little girl. Flawless features. Mocha skin. Mesmerizing green eyes. Long, dark, thick wavy hair.
“Now that I’ve finished a search of the house and have a picture of her, I go outside and began to look around the exterior of the house, through the neighborhood, and along the beach,” Andy says. “Since it’s a gated community, I figure she could easily still be inside it. Either way, I don’t think she could’ve gotten very far. ’Course I don’t know how long ago she left. Was it the night before or that morning? So . . . here’s what I was thinking. You tell me if I’m wrong. I do a search of the area—with the parents, the nanny, and the manager, who were also there. Maybe we find her and that’s the end of it. If we don’t, I have to figure out if we think she’s still in the area. If she is, I’ll get the K-9 unit out here and search for her, as well as get robocalls going in the neighborhood and surrounding area. If none of that works, then we escalate it and activate an Amber alert.”
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