“That’s great,” I say. “And Anna and I will help in any way we can.”
And then it hits me.
“You know . . .” I add. “Ida Williams would be a great help. I bet she’d be happy to help you.”
He nods. “Probably be good for her too.”
I smile. “Yes, it would. No doubt about it.”
“At least tell me Hank Howard is going to get more time than Deidra. At least tell me that.”
I nod. “Looks like it. The fact that he broke in with a weapon. Doesn’t look like he’s going to be able to make bail either, so it looks like he’ll sit in jail while awaiting trial.”
“Good. That’s where he needs to be.”
We are quiet a moment, and I notice just how much better—healthier and more vibrant—Frank looks than before he started helping out here at Myra House.
“Does Trace know?” he asks.
I nod.
While giving Deidra some time to tell her parents what had happened and what was about to happen and to get a few things in order, I had driven over to Trace’s.
I found Trace all alone in his crumbling kingdom. No family. No posse. No bodyguards.
Nadine had resigned and moved out.
He and Ashley had broken up and she and Brett had moved out.
He is hemorrhaging money and losing all his income and can no longer afford to employ friends and bodyguards.
But he didn’t seem to care.
He is broken and grief-stricken and seems to prefer to be alone.
“You know why we broke up?” he had asked me when we were talking about Ashley.
I shook my head, though I could probably have guessed.
“Neither of us could be completely certain that the other one didn’t do it,” he said. “You can’t be with someone who thinks you could’ve murdered your child any more than you could be with someone you think could have murdered your child. And it turns out I was right about her racist piece of shit brother. Can’t believe she let that sorry motherfucker know how much cash I carry. Hell, maybe she was in on it. See? I can’t be sure she wasn’t.”
“We asked him,” I said. “He says it was just him.”
“Well . . .”
I didn’t say anything, just waited.
“Can’t believe that bitter bitch was gonna take my kid away from me in the middle of the night,” he says, “but . . . I’m so glad she wasn’t . . . that . . . it was an accident and she wasn’t raped and didn’t suffer.”
I nod. “Me too. So glad.”
“My life’s still over,” he said. “And not just because part of the world will always think I did it or had something to do with it, but because . . . biggest part of me died when she did. Don’t . . want . . . no life now.”
“What’d he say?” Frank asks now.
I tell him.
“Well,” he says, “I guess I better get back in there and reassure all these ladies about their futures and the fate of Myra House.”
261
I’m near Columbus on my way home when my phone rings.
I’m in the middle of contemplating what I do, how I approach justice, how I apply the law and how I justify it to myself.
It bothers me that Deidra will serve two years in prison for an accident while Sylvia won’t serve a single second for several coldblooded homicides.
That reminds me that I still haven’t had to interact with Sylvia Summers, Reggie’s mom, since telling Reggie I would keep her secret. It will happen eventually, but it’s fine with me that it hasn’t happened yet.
I wonder if my involvement in each case, even though in very different capacities, makes me a hypocrite. I conclude that it does—especially when I factor in what I did in regards to Verna and her role in the Janet Leigh Lester case.
It occurs to me that I apply the law and justice just as arbitrarily and inconsistently as our justice system, and it makes me equally parts ashamed and determined to do something about it.
It’s late—one-thirty or so in the morning—and I don’t recognize the number the call is coming from, but I answer it.
“Why didn’t you come tell me?” Nadine says. “You were up here. You told everybody else, but I had to hear it on the TV. I was her mother—the closest thing that poor child had to one. Why wouldn’t you tell me?”
When I didn’t find Nadine at Trace’s, I made no attempt to track her down to tell her about Mariah in person like I should have. I was tired and drained and all I wanted to do was rush back to be with Anna and the girls—especially given everything that had happened—but I was wrong not to tell her face to face.
“I should have,” I say. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I thought I’d be able to talk to you at Trace’s and when you weren’t there . . . I just . . . I’m very sorry.”
“Well . . .”
“I’m truly sorry. I know she was like your own daughter. It was . . . I should have.”
“Well, you can tell me now,” she says. “Tell me what really happened, not that TV news crap.”
I tell her everything I can.
“So my baby didn’t suffer,” she says. “Wasn’t . . . messed with . . . That’s . . . Thank you, Jesus. Oh, Lord, I’m so relieved to hear that. Thank you, Jesus. And John. Thank you, John.”
It doesn’t feel right for me to say thank you, so I don’t say anything. But I am very glad to give her the somewhat comforting news that it was an accident.
“Now that I know for sure that boy ain’t done this terrible thing,” she says. “I may go back to work for him. He’s got no one else right now. No daughter. No girlfriend. No stepson. No manager—even ol’ Irvin left him. I know Trace doesn’t have a child for me to take care of, but . . . right now he’s the one needin’ takin’ care of. He can be my child.”
“He’d be lucky to have a mom like you,” I say.
“He’s basically a good man,” she says. “He really is. Sometimes he’s a lost little boy, but . . . mostly he’s a decent human being. Can you believe all the stuff the media has been saying about him? Easier for everyone to believe about a young black man like him.”
“Maybe,” I say. “Probably. But . . . don’t forget what was reported, perceived, and believed about John Ramsey—a rich middle-aged white man.”
“Guess you’re right.”
“But you’re right about what Trace needs,” I say. “You’re exactly what he needs right now.”
“I may not even wait until the mornin’,” she says. “I may go back over there right now. He’s a night owl so I’ll know he’ll be up. I could cook him some middle-of-the-night breakfast. That’s his favorite.”
“I think you should,” I say.
“I think I will,” she says, then thanks me again and ends the call.
262
“So she confessed?” Anna whispers.
It’s the middle of the night. We’re in bed. The baby monitor is off. Our girls are asleep in the room with us, their beds at angles around ours.
I nod. “Seemed to need to.”
The room is night-light dim and breezy because of the box fan and window unit.
“Think it was a real unburdening,” I add.
“I bet.”
Johanna turns in her bed, tossing her covers about, and I lean up to check on her.
When I lie back down, Anna asks, “How long you think they’ll sleep in here?”
“Is twenty-eight too old?”
She laughs and says, “I adore you, John Jordan.”
“Adore you more, Mrs. Jordan.”
I reach up and touch her face, tracing her features with my finger.
“I was thinking at least until Chris is sentenced,” I say. “If that’s okay with you.”
“That’s absolutely okay with me, but I don’t think Chris is going to be a problem anymore—even before he’s sentenced.”
“Hope you’re right,” I say. “But I can’t say I share your optimism.”
“Do you really think Randa was going to ki
ll him?” she asks.
I nod.
“Why?” she asks.
“I think maybe we’ve become her woes,” I say.
“Huh?”
“I think she cares about us—our family, Merrill, Daniel, Merrick, Sam. Think she thinks under different circumstances she might be in our friend group.”
“Really?”
I shrug. “I don’t know. It’s just an impression.”
“She’d make an interesting addition to the Scooby Gang,” she says.
“That she would.”
“Have I told you how glad I am you’re home?” she says.
“Have I told you how glad I am to be home?” I ask.
“I’m a little surprised Susan didn’t insist on getting Johanna after what happened,” she says.
“She wanted to,” I say. “But Johanna told her she wanted to stay, that she felt safe. Susan felt reassured by the twenty-four-hour armed protection too. She knows Dad, Daniel, Merrill, you, Reggie—nobody would let anything happen to her, that it’s not just me.”
“I still can’t believe he did that,” she says. “Still can’t believe I was ever married to him.”
“You weren’t married to him,” I say. “Not that person. Even if the seeds of self-destruction were in him back then, they were just seeds. Took a lot of nurturing and watering and weeding of them for him to become what he has.”
“It’s . . . just so humiliating—all of it, the affairs, the deceit, the deterioration. It’s really done a number on my self-esteem,” she says.
“I’m so sorry,” I say. “I hate that it has. Want to do anything I can to help with that.”
“You do,” she says. “Every second of every day.”
“He is no reflection on you,” I say.
“Like I say, I don’t think he’s going to be an issue anymore.”
Before I can say anything else, my phone vibrates and lights up on the nightstand. It’s Reggie, which at three-thirty-seven in the morning can’t be good.
“Hey,” I say.
“You back?” she asks.
“I am.”
“How long you been?”
“Twenty minutes maybe. Why? What’s up?”
“Randa is still in custody,” she says. “I just checked. Has been since you arrested her three nights ago. So it can’t have been her.”
“What can’t?”
“We’ve just found Chris,” she says. “He’s been murdered.”
Start Blood Stone now!
Blood Stone Chapter 1
I was sitting on a barstool in Scarlett’s trying to act less drunk than I was when Frank Morgan walked in.
It was 1988, the one hundredth anniversary of the Jack the Ripper case, and my third year in Atlanta.
A small crowd of regulars were spread around the bar. George Michael’s Father Figure was on the jukebox, but I seemed to be the only one listening. A chilly October wind whistled outside and found cracks and crevices to enter Scarlett’s and make her cold and drafty.
Behind me on a small table in the back corner were textbooks I was supposed to be studying, but I was finding it difficult to focus.
I had stepped over to the bar to ask Susan for a kiss and another vodka cranberry, which she was busy making because she didn’t know about the two I had before I arrived, or the one her Aunt Margaret slipped me when she wasn’t looking.
Margaret, like me, was a functioning alcoholic—though I wasn’t sure how well either of us was actually functioning. Of course, functioning is a relative term, and addicts like us love few things as much as equivocation.
Margaret used not to drink as much as she does now. At least that’s what I’d been told. But that was back before—before she’d lost the reasons not to. Before Laney Mitchell, the love of her life, died and left her alone with the Gone with the Wind-themed bar they had started together during happier times.
Like Margaret herself, Scarlett’s had fallen on hard times, the faded and dust-covered book-and-movie memorabilia more sad than anything else.
Susan handed me my drink and before taking so much as the first sip I knew it would be heavy on the cranberry and light on the vodka.
“Thanks,” I said, adding, “Wait” when she turned away to open a bottle of Bud for the old gray regular across the way.
“What?”
“You forgot my kiss.”
“Oh. Sorry.”
She bounced back over, and placing both palms on the bar, pushed herself up and kissed me.
When I tried to respond with a similar energy and enthusiasm I turned my glass over, splashing its contents all over the wooden bar top.
“Man down,” I said. “Damn it, man.”
A flush of embarrassment and self-consciousness joined the vodka blush I already had going.
I never felt as weak or pathetic as when I was drinking—and never practiced as much self-loathing—neither in volume nor vitriol.
“I’ll get it,” she said. “Just go sit down and I’ll bring you and Frank a drink.”
I turned toward Frank who was walking up.
“What’re you drinkin’, Frank?” I said. “Let me buy you a drink.”
He held his hands up, palms out. “I’m good. Thanks though.”
“Come on, man. Don’t make me—don’t be like that.”
He nodded and gave a little frown of resignation. “A beer. I’ll have a beer.”
“Any particular kind?” I asked.
“Ah,” he said, looking around, his eyes coming to rest on the Budweiser pendants hanging above the bar. “I’ll have a Budweiser.”
“The king of beers,” I said. “Excellent choice. Draft or bottle? Margaret runs a full service drinkery here. She’s no slouch.”
Frank looked at Susan, who had drifted back over in our direction after passing out a few bottles and collecting the cash payments from guys who would become belligerent about their bills later.
There were no tabs at Scarlett’s.
“Surprise me,” he said. “No, you know what. I’ll take a draft.”
“You got it. How are you, Frank?”
“I’ve been better, but it’s good to see y’all.”
“You too,” she said. “Always.”
“Mind if I borrow your young man for a few minutes?” he asked.
“He’s all yours. I’ll be over in a minute with your drinks.”
“Step into my office,” I said, and stumbled back over toward what had come to be known as my table.
“How are you?” he asked as he sat down.
I nodded emphatically. “Really good. Things are great. You?”
I sounded like I was trying to convince myself as much or more than him, but neither of us was.
“Not so good.”
“What’s—”
“What’re you—”
“You first,” I said.
He looked down at my books. “What’re you taking this semester?”
“Hebrew. Hebrew Prophets. And Biblical Interpretation. Have an exam on the prophets tomorrow.”
He nodded. “That’s good. Glad you got back in school and are doing so well. I’m proud of you.”
“Why are things not so good for you?” I asked. “You working the three missing girls?”
He nodded again. “It’s four now. Another went missing last night. But how’d you know they were connected? Nothing in the papers to suggest we think they’re—”
“Just read the accounts and connected the dots,” I said.
“What dots? There were no dots.”
Susan arrived with our drinks. A Bud draft for Frank. A cup of coffee for me.
“Ah, Miss, this isn’t what I ordered,” I said.
“It’s the only drink we have for underage drinkers,” she said and moved away before I could argue with her about it. Glancing over her shoulder she added, “Especially when our favorite GBI agent is on the premises.”
“Cheers,” Frank said and held out his glass.
“Chee
rs,” I said, white porcelain clinking shaker glass.
I took a sip of the strong, black, unsweetened liquid and had the urge to spit it back into the cup, but swallowed it instead. “That is truly horrific,” I said and turned up the cup and quickly downed the rest of the tepid drink as if it were a shot, trying not to taste it as I did.
“How’d you know the three women were connected?” he asked.
“They were all runners or—”
He shook his head. “Reports didn’t say that and they’re—”
“Paper said the first one was a runner,” I said. “The subtexts of the other stories along with the pictures included indicated the other two were athletic, in shape. I assume all three either ran or walked and were abducted while they were out doing it. All three are of similar age, body type, backgrounds. All have a similar look. Is the same true of the fourth?”
He nodded and sighed. “Yeah. And you’re right. They’re runners. Went missing while out for a run. The doer’s got to be in great shape. We’re talkin’ seriously athletic women.”
“That’s probably part of what does it for him,” I said. “The challenge. The risk. Hunting what he considers a worthy prey. Plus he likes hard bodies. He has a type. Definitely got a serial on your hands.”
“But a serial what?” he said. “What’s he doing with them? Raping? Collecting? Killing? If he’s killing ’em where’re the bodies? If he’s collecting them . . . where’s he keepin’ them?”
“He’s got his own place,” I said. “With plenty of room to work and or cage them. Or you just haven’t found his dumping ground yet.”
“How would you like to help us find them—and him?”
Frank had always been supportive of my interest in investigative technique. He had facilitated my work on the Atlanta Child Murders, even though to him and the other members of the task force the case was closed. He had helped me more than I could even calculate on the LaMarcus Williams and Cedric Porter cases. He had allowed me to work on a few of his cases with him and had even made it so I could take the training and get certified in law enforcement. Perhaps best of all, he had made it possible for me to attend some of the special FBI training at a few of their road school programs at various agencies in the area.
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