True Crime Fiction

by Michael Lister

  “I’m bein’ serious,” Hunter says. “Tryin’ to protect you and find out who did what was done . . .”

  “You’re right. Like I said, look into him. I’m all for it. Just hate to see another brother get accused of something he’s innocent of.”

  “John won’t do that,” Merrill says.

  They are his first and last words of the entire conversation.

  “I’m assuming Little Swag isn’t the name his mama gave him,” I say. “What’s his legal handle?”

  “Rondarius,” Trace says. “Rondarius Swaggart.”

  226

  Filicide is the act of killing one’s own child.

  And though it shouldn’t be a thing we need a name for, it’s far more common than we’d like to think.

  In the U.S. alone each year, between 450 and 500 children are intentionally murdered by a parent. Of those, over seventy percent are kids six years old and under. In well over half of all cases, the father is the killer.

  Though he seems to be cooperating, and said all the right things, I leave Trace Evers’ rented home on the river wondering if he’s one of those fathers.

  And as I drive toward the home Ashley Howard grew up in, I wonder if Trace didn’t do it, if she did.

  Somewhere in America a mother murders her child every three days.

  Though not Mariah’s mother or even stepmother, Ashley certainly seems to be filling that role.

  I don’t know a lot about Ashley Howard yet, but what I know, I find interesting and instructive.

  She grew up poor in Wewa.

  Her parents, who were both alcoholics, bought a lakeside lodge with cabins for rent and a boat launch called Dead Lakes Roadside Inn and through mismanagement and neglect let the property go to wreck and ruin, and the business died a slow, ugly death.

  Growing up, Ashley, as if familiar with the AA slogan Fake it ’til you make it, always acted like the rich, popular girl she wanted to be.

  And she was pretty and poised enough to get away with it.

  She shoplifted the clothes and shoes and jewelry she couldn’t afford and became an adroit social climber.

  At twenty-seven she still has what I’ve heard described as a bikini body—nice, natural curves, tone, tight, and muscular, with only the slightest hint of a mom tummy, something I think makes her more not less attractive.

  It’s July and it’s hot, but she’s not dressed like it. Unlike in nearly every other picture I’ve seen her in, she’s wearing long pants and long sleeves—old blue jeans and a Wewa Gators sweatshirt.

  In addition to showing off her body, Ashley normally wears clothes cut to show off the various ink she has on that body.

  Everything else is the same—the perfect blond hair, the carefully applied makeup, the exquisite jewelry—which makes the clothes standout all the more.

  We’re sitting on the back porch of one of the dilapidated old cabins with a truly magnificent view of the Dead Lakes.

  It’s not raining yet, but dark thunderheads can be seen in the distance.

  “I’m still in shock,” she says. “You know what I mean? Not as in surprised or like shocked that it happened, but like in shock because it did happen.”

  “You’re not surprised that it happened?” I ask.

  “Not particularly, no,” she says. “I told Trace putting her in that video and have her come up on stage all the time and posting so many pictures with her was a bad idea. It’s like an invitation to deranged and damaged people. You can’t advertise something and think people won’t want it.”

  A slight breeze ripples the surface of the water and sways the Spanish moss in the cypress trees.

  “Even if some sick kiddie diddler hadn’t come for her,” she says, “it was just bad for a child that small to get that kind of attention and . . . all. But he was always trying to make up for her mama dying and him being sent away.”

  I nod.

  Before us the flooded cypress trees of the Dead Lakes stand jagged and craggy, their bases hidden beneath the tannic waters.

  “It’s funny, he’s got this tough guy image, but he’s not very street smart at all. Not at all. I’m more . . . than he is. If it were up to me I wouldn’t be talkin’ to you right now, but he’s convinced if we cooperate you’ll clear us and get on with finding out who really did it. He’s too trusting. He wouldn’t even have a lawyer if it wasn’t for me.”

  “So why are you talkin’ to me?” I ask.

  “’Cause Trace wants me to,” she says. “I have nothin’ to hide, but I know enough to know that doesn’t mean shit if y’all decide we did it and decide to build a case against us.”

  “I’m truly trying to find out what happened,” I say, “to gather information and follow the facts of the case no matter where they lead. This isn’t about clearing or closing a case for me. Never is. If you don’t want to talk to me, you don’t have to, but if you’re willing . . . tell me about the night of the Fourth.”

  She does, and it’s almost identical to what Trace and Irvin Hunter said.

  “You didn’t get up during the night?” I ask.

  She shakes her head.

  “Didn’t hear anything?”

  “Didn’t wake up until Nadine banged on our door with Mariah’s note saying she had run away.”

  “How about the elevator?” I ask. “Did you hear it that night?”

  “Just told you I didn’t even stir.”

  “Tell me about Mariah,” I say.

  I’m interested in her feelings about and relationship with Mariah.

  I have the Cinderella effect in mind—the evolutionary psychology theory for why there is a higher rate of mistreatment and abuse by stepparents than biological ones.

  Interestingly, though mistreatment and abuse by stepparents seems to be higher, murder by them is much, much lower. Only ten percent of the children killed by parents in the US each year are killed by stepparents.

  And yet two lines from Mariah’s runaway note keep echoing through my mind. Ashley and Brett or to mean to me. I love them but cannot take it.

  “She was a good girl—especially given everything she had been through,” she says. “Lost her mom forever. Lost her dad for a few years. Don’t get me wrong, she had issues, but . . . given her . . . situation.”

  “What kinds of issues?” I ask.

  “The usual kid stuff—attitude, stubbornness, lying, disobedience, that sort of thing. And she was spoiled. Trace always felt so much guilt about . . . well, everything, that he spoiled the shit out of that child. It’s a miracle she wasn’t worse than what she was. To her credit, she didn’t take advantage of it too much. That says a lot for a child that young. ’Course she got nearly all of her daddy’s attention and everything she wanted, so . . .”

  She sounds jealous, and I wonder if it’s a factor in what happened.

  “Did she have a phone?” I ask. “We didn’t find one among her things.”

  She shakes her head. “Only two things he didn’t let her get . . . a phone and her ears pierced. She wanted both bad, but he told her she had to wait and he stuck with it. Don’t know why exactly. But he did. His way of keeping control or tellin’ himself he was you know like parenting. Bet he regrets it now. And the thing is . . . he let her have an iPod. She couldn’t make calls, but hell, who calls anymore? She could text anybody with an iPhone. And actually, Brett said she had an app that let her text anybody period.”

  I didn’t remember seeing an iPod on the evidence inventory, but I need to double check. Reading her texts could be extremely helpful or a complete waste of time—either way we’d need to do it if we can locate her device.

  “What was your relationship with her like? I ask.

  “Trace and I decided a long time ago that I would parent my kid and he’d parent his,” she says. “We aren’t married or anything yet, so it’s not like we’re their stepparents or anything yet, so . . . it just worked better. We’re different and we’re different with our kids.”

  “So y’all
weren’t close?”

  She shrugs. “We were close enough. She was closer to Nadine. She was the closest thing to a mother the poor child ever had. Don’t get me wrong, we got along fine. I just didn’t try to pretend to be her mother.”

  “Who handled the discipline?”

  “What discipline?” she says. “There was none. Trace didn’t do it and certainly wouldn’t let anyone else do it. Not even Nadine—though I think she and the little princess had an understanding.”

  I nod.

  She looks at me, her eyes locking onto mine. “I know what her little runaway note said, but . . . I wasn’t mean to her. Neither was Brett. I was great to her. Treated her better than her own mother ever did, and besides the normal sibling scuffles . . . she and Brett got along just fine.”

  “And she got no discipline?” I ask.

  “But there again . . .” she says. “It shows what a good kid she was that with very little discipline and having her daddy wrapped around her little finger that she was as good as she was.”

  “Can you think of anyone who might have killed her?” I ask.

  She shakes her head. “Absolutely not. She was a small child for God’s sakes. Who kills a child? I mean, really. Who? The mentally deranged, right? I have no idea who it could be. I don’t think I know anyone capable of something like that.”

  When the rain comes, the wind comes with it, blowing the cold raindrops in at an angle on us under the porch.

  Since I need to talk to Brett next anyway, we make a dash for her mom’s sad little house.

  And that’s when I see it.

  As she’s running and as we dry off inside her mom’s mudroom, the ends of her sleeves and pant cuffs shift enough for me to see what’s beneath them.

  They are light and they are subtle, but they are there.

  In addition to all her other tattoos, Ashley Howard has images of ropes around her wrists and ankles not unlike the ones around the dead body of Mariah when she was found.

  227

  “You’d think with all the money they have, she’d buy her mom a decent place to live, wouldn’t you?”

  The question comes from Arlene LaFontaine, Ashley’s mom, as we are drying off.

  She yells it from the recliner in the living room, surrounded by stacks of newspapers and cats.

  “I keep telling her it’s Trace’s money, not mine,” Ashley says to me, “but it doesn’t matter.”

  From the small, dim kitchen that smells of poorly ventilated propane, Ashley’s brother says, “I told you we don’t need any of that . . . man’s money, Ma. Not that he’d share it with us anyway. Hell, I don’t think he gives much to Ashley. Besides, I’ve got some things that are about to come through. We’re gonna be fine.”

  Ashley rolls her eyes. “He’s had some things about to come through for a decade now. He’s just like them.”

  The small, dingy house is cluttered and unclean, and has the sour smell of stale sweat, cigarette smoke, and cat urine.

  “Brett,” Ashley calls, raising her voice. “Honey, come here.”

  To me she says, “We can talk in the dining room.”

  She leads me into the living room where her overweight and whiskey-old mom in ill-fitting Dollar Store clothes is watching a rerun of Murder, She Wrote a little too loudly.

  “I always say . . . I like this town just fine,” Arlene says, “but if Jessica Fletcher ever moves here, I’m gone. Everywhere she goes there’s a murder.”

  “It’s because she’s a serial killer,” I say. “That’s her thing. She frames other people for her kills.”

  “Huh?” she says, squinting up at me beneath a tangle of too early graying hair.

  “Nothin’, Ma,” Hank says from the kitchen. “He was pulling your leg.”

  Hank Howard, Jr. comes to the doorway of the kitchen in sweatpants and a wife beater, a frying pan in one hand, a spatula in the other. A few years Ashley’s junior, he looks to be about twenty years older.

  “You guys want some eggs?” he says. “I’m making some eggs.”

  “I’m good, thanks,” I say.

  Ashley shakes her head. “No, thanks.”

  “Don’t know what you’re missin’. I put some cheese and cayenne in them. Ask little Brett if he wants some.”

  “He’s allergic to dairy and doesn’t like spicy food,” Ashley says.

  “Oh. Okay. More for me and Ma.”

  “Where is he?” Ashley says. “Brett. Come in here, honey.”

  A skinny, young, blond boy appears at the opening to the hallway.

  “Where were you, baby?”

  “In my room.”

  “Oh, it’s your room now, is it?” Hank yells from the kitchen.

  “Come in the dining room, honey,” Ashley says. “This policeman has some questions to ask you about Mariah.”

  She leads the two of us into the small dining room and the three of us sit at the far end of the table—as far away from the living room and Arlene, Hank, and Jessica Fletcher as we can get—which is not nearly far enough.

  “I’m very sorry about what happened to Mariah,” I say. “I’m trying to find out exactly what that was and why. Do you mind answering some questions for me?”

  He shrugs.

  “It’s okay, baby,” Ashley says. “Just like we talked about. Answer the questions for Mommy, okay?”

  “Did you like Mariah?” I ask.

  He shrugs.

  “Was she fun to play with?”

  He shrugs again but then nods too.

  “She . . . didn’t like . . . video games,” he says.

  “Brett loves video games,” Ashley says. “They’re his favorite thing to do.”

  “You do?” I say.

  He nods. “Yes, sir.”

  “What’s your favorite?”

  “Right now . . . ah . . . Minecraft.”

  “Cool.”

  “You ever played it?” he asks.

  I shake my head. “Not yet, but I hear everybody talking about it. Should I try it?”

  He nods. “Uh huh. It’s the best.”

  “You build things with it, right?” Ashley says.

  He nods.

  “Can we talk about Mariah?” I say. “Are you sad about what happened to her?”

  He hesitates, looks at his mom, then nods.

  “Do you know what happened to her or who might have done it?”

  He shakes his head, glances at his mom, then shakes it more vigorously.

  “Did you enjoy the party the night before the Fourth?” I ask.

  He shrugs.

  “What did y’all do when you went upstairs?”

  “Played.”

  “Who played what?”

  He shrugs and twists his lips and raises his eyebrows. “Not sure . . . what all. I played Minecraft.”

  “I’m tellin’ you he’s obsessed with that game,” Ashley says.

  “Anybody play it with you?”

  “Caden for a little while then he left.”

  “Where’d he go?”

  Again the shrug. “Play with Mariah I think. She and Miss Nadine were playin’ Connect Four or somethin’. Said he didn’t just want to sit and watch me play Minecraft.”

  “You didn’t let him have a turn?” Ashley asks.

  “Wasn’t his turn yet.”

  “We always let the guest go first, okay?” she says. “From now on.”

  He nods. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Did you enjoy the fireworks in town the next night?”

  He shrugs again, and I wonder why he doesn’t have more developed shoulder and neck muscles.

  “Did you hear anything after y’all came in from launching fireworks on the beach?” I ask.

  He shrugs.

  “You either do or you don’t, baby,” Ashley says. “Tell the detective everything you can remember.”

  “Miss Nadine said you were still up when she went to bed,” I say.

  “She’s not supposed to do that,” Ashley says. “Go to bed while
they’re still awake.”

  “She said you were playing video games in your room,” I say. “How late did you stay up?”

  He shrugs again. “Not sure. Not too late. I was tired, but wanted to play some Minecraft before I went to sleep.”

  “Did anything happen?” I ask. “Did you leave your room for any reason?”

  He shakes his head.

  “Did you see anyone? Hear anything?”

  He shakes his head. “Not while I was playing, but . . . after I laid down.”

  “What’d you hear?”

  “I thought I heard—something woke me up. I thought it was Mariah. Sometimes we’d get up and sneak downstairs for snacks or to go play on the beach.”

  “While we were asleep?” Ashley says. “Did the nanny go with you?”

  He nods at her first questions and shakes his head at the second.

  “Was it Mariah?” I ask.

  He shakes his head. “No one was there. I then heard a noise like maybe she was on the stairs. Figured she tried to wake me then went down without me. I don’t know.”

  “Was anyone else ever around when y’all went out and played at night?” I ask.

  He shakes his head. “Sometimes Caden or Beau would meet us.”

  “Caden Stevens the boy staying next door?” I ask.

  He nods. “He and Mariah liked each other.”

  “They did?”

  “More than they liked me.”

  “They just liked playing different games,” Ashley says. “It’s not you. They like you.”

  “Who is Beau?”

  “His family was staying on the other side of our place, but they left before the Fourth,” Ashley says. “I’m not even sure of his last name.”

  “Did you get up to go see if it was Mariah on the stairs?” I ask.

  He shakes his head.

  “Did you hear the elevator being used that night?”

  He shakes his head.

  “Did you hear or see anything else that night?” I ask. “Anything at all?”

  He shrugs. “No, sir.”

  “Nothing?” Ashley asks. “You sure?”

  He nods. “I thought I saw a man pass by out in the hallway,” he says, “but it was just a dream. Nobody was there.”

  “When?” she asks before I can. “What’d he look like? Why didn’t you tell Mommy?”