Blood Cries; Blood Oath; Blood Work

by Michael Lister

  The day was cold and clear, a bright but impotent sun high in the sky.

  “Whatch y’all think?” he said. “It gonna snow?”

  He had big, bright eyes and a bushy beard that looked shiny in the morning light. Young, thick, and muscular, he still wore a back brace designed for lifting and I wondered if it was company policy.

  “I hope so,” I said.

  “Not gonna happen,” Mickey said.

  The plum-colored smudges beneath Mickey’s small eyes and his pale, drawn skin evidenced his exhaustion. Which when added to his scraggly, untrimmed reddish beard and longish, unkempt strawberry-blond hair made him look a little maniacal, and I could tell the case was getting to him far more than he had let on.

  “I don’t know,” he said, “I’m kinda thinkin’ it will.”

  “We shall soon see,” Mickey said.

  “So, y’all want to talk to me about Jaquez? I pray for that little man every day.”

  He held his work gloves down by his side, bringing them up occasionally when using his hands to talk, the worn-smooth fingers flapping in the breeze as he did.

  “We do,” I said. “Is that okay?”

  “Every day,” he repeated. “Without fail. I don’t mind talkin’ to you, but I don’t know anything.”

  “Any idea where he might be or what might have happened to him?” I said.

  He shook his head. “No idea. First thought I had was his mama got herself into some trouble and the boy paid the price, like maybe she owed somebody somethin’ for some drugs and they took him just to get her to pay up, but . . . after just a few minutes with her I knew that wasn’t the case. So I ain’t gonna be no help.”

  “Did the police look at you?”

  “Sure. Good and hard for a few minutes, but I didn’t have nothin’ to do with it, and they moved on.”

  “Did Jaquez ever mention a man in the area who the kids called Creepy?”

  He shook his head. “That who took my boy?”

  “We honestly don’t know,” I said. “Just trying to find out.”

  “I wish I knew somethin’ that would help,” he said. “I’d do anything to get my boy back, but . . . his moms and I wasn’t together so I . . . . just don’t know anything.”

  “Do you recall if some of Jaquez’s clothes or toys were planted in your house or car during that time?”

  His eyes grew wide and he stopped moving for a moment. “Those were his? Never could figure out where those came from or how they got in my place. Why were they—who put them there?”

  “That’s what we’re trying to find out,” I said.

  “I don’t get it. What would that . . .”

  “Maybe try to make the cops think you had him,” I said.

  “Oh.”

  We were quiet a moment as he thought about it.

  “How’d you even know to ask?” he said.

  “It happened in some other cases of missing children,” I said. “Our theory is someone planted them to put suspicion on the fathers.”

  “What other cases?”

  I told him.

  “Any of those names sound familiar?”

  He nodded. “Vaughn.”

  “Vaughn Smith?” I said, my pulse rising.

  “Yeah.”

  “He lived up off Wesley Chapel,” I said. “How’d you know him?”

  “He get taken too?” he asked.

  I nodded.

  “Oh my God. Was it Wayne Williams?”

  “We don’t think so,” I said. “We really don’t. How’d you know Vaughn?”

  “Used to take Jaquez out for the day sometimes,” he said. “Grab a burger, go for a walk, climb Stone Mountain, go to the mall, shit like that. Sometimes we’d go to a movie right there on Memorial Drive not far from where he lived with his mother. Cordelia Smith worked at the theater. Vaughn, her kid, was always with her. Single mom. No help with him. He’d hang out, watch movies all day. We got to know them. He’d sit with us sometimes.”

  I nodded.

  He looked at the plastic watch strapped to his left wrist.

  “I gotta get back to work,” he said. “Let me know if you find out anything, will you?”

  “We will,” I said, and he rushed back inside the building.

  “So,” I said, “Vaughn Smith lived outside of our geographic pattern, but his mom worked right in the middle of it, and brought him to work with her—a lot from the sounds of it.”

  “Now the only anomaly on our list is Cedric’s dad not having any clothes planted in his place or car,” Mickey said.

  “Maybe he did,” I said.

  “He told us he didn’t.”

  “What he told us was that he wasn’t Cedric’s dad,” I said.

  “Oh shit, that’s right.”

  We were quiet a moment, thinking about it.

  “Whatta we do now?” Mickey said.

  “Would still like to talk to the other mothers.”

  “Can’t believe they’re so hard to find,” he said.

  “Unless Ida’s theory is right—is she still helping you look?” He nodded. “It’s pretty simple really,” I said. “Their names have changed—or were never the same as those of their sons to begin with. They’re poor so move around more. Different name in a different location—hell, that’s what people trying not to be found do.”

  “Oh my God this is gonna make such a good story,” he said. “If this doesn’t wind up being connected to the original case, I’ve got two books—one on the Atlanta Child Murders and one on this one.”

  That reminded me of what Frank had said about Mickey and his motives, and made me want to get away from him.

  “I’m gonna keep looking for the mothers and I’ve got a couple of other things to check out,” he said. “Can I drop you somewhere? Don’t you have class today?”

  43

  Regretting not going to class or lunch with Pastor Don, feeling like a self-sabotaging loser, worried about and experiencing guilt over Frank, I threw myself into my work.

  Quietly, because my roommate was asleep on the other side of the thin wall, I dove into the trace evidence in the Atlanta Child Murders case like never before.

  With my phone off the hook, I sat in the middle of my floor surrounded by massive amounts of data.

  Most violent crimes involve physical contact between perpetrators and their victims. When this occurs, there is often an inadvertent transfer of microscopic debris—a person-to-person cross transfer. This transfer constitutes evidence and most often consists of hairs and fibers. This transfer of hairs and fibers, their discovery, collection, examination, and identification as trace evidence can be critical in linking a suspect to a victim or a crime scene.

  This was certainly true of the Atlanta Child Murders case.

  Textile fibers can be exchanged between two individuals, between an individual and an object, and between two objects. When fibers are matched with a specific source—a fabric from the victim, suspect, or crime scene—a value is placed on the association. This value is dependent on the type of fibers found, their color, variation of color, the quantity found, the location of fibers at the crime scene or on the victim, and the number of different fibers at the crime scene or on the victim that match the clothing of the suspect.

  Whether a fiber is transferred and detected is dependent on the nature and duration of contact between the suspect and the victim or crime scene, the persistence of fibers after the transfer, and the type of fabric involved in contact.

  A fiber is the smallest unit of a textile material that has a length many times greater than its diameter. Fibers can occur naturally as plant and animal fibers, but they can also be manufactured.

  When two people come in contact or when contact occurs with an item from the crime scene, there’s a possibility that fiber transfer will take place. The transfer is not automatic and will not always take place. Some fibers don’t shed or don’t shed much. A big factor in the transfer of trace evidence is the length of time between th
e actual physical contact and the collection of clothing items from the suspect or victim. If the victim remains immobile, very little fiber loss will occur, whereas the suspect’s clothing will often lose transferred fibers quickly. The longer the passage of time between the crime and the processing of the suspect, the greater the likelihood of finding transferred fibers on the clothing of the suspect decreases.

  Fibers are gathered at a crime scene with tweezers, tape, or a vacuum. Typically, they come from clothing, drapery, wigs, carpeting, furniture, and blankets. They are first determined to be natural, manufactured, or a mix of both. Natural fibers come from plants and animals. Synthetic fibers such as rayon, acetate, and polyester are made from long chains of molecules called polymers. Determining the shape and color of fibers from any of these fabrics is done by examining them beneath a microscopic.

  In the Atlanta Child Murders case the only clue being found with any consistency, a clue that would only be valuable if a suspect was uncovered, was the presence of trace evidence on several of the bodies and their clothing.

  The fibers were sent to the Georgia State Crime Lab for analysis, where Larry Peterson was able to isolate two distinct types—a violet-colored acetate fiber and a coarse yellow-green nylon fiber with a distinctive trilobed quality found in few carpets.

  When the discovery of the fibers began to be reported in the newspaper, the killer began stripping the bodies and throwing them into the river, most likely in an attempt to wash away the trace evidence.

  Once he became a suspect, Wayne Williams’s home and car were searched and provided numerous fibers and human and canine hairs similar to those authorities had been collecting from the victims’ bodies—beginning with a tuft of carpet fibers in the tennis shoe of Eric Middlebrooks. The floors of the home where Williams lived with his parents were covered with yellow-green carpeting, and he had a dog. When comparisons from the samples removed from the victims were compared to those of the Williamses’ home, they showed good consistency.

  FBI experts analyzed samples from the Williamses’ rugs with special equipment and the help of DuPont, and were able to ascertain that the fibers came from a Boston-based textile company. The fiber, which is known as Wellman 181B, had been sold to numerous carpet companies, each of which used its own dye. This led to the discovery that the most likely source was the West Point Pepperell Corporation in Georgia. The company’s Luxaire English Olive color matched that found in the Williamses’ home.

  The company had only made that type of carpet for about one year, distributing about sixteen thousand yards of it throughout the South—a very small amount adding up to about only eighty homes in Georgia or 1 in 7792 homes in Atlanta.

  With the help of Chevrolet, investigators determined that there was a 1 in 3,828 chance that a victim acquired the fiber from a random contact with a car that had this carpeting installed.

  Then both the odds from the home and the car were calculated—a figure that came to nearly 1 in 30,000,000.

  Of course, Williams’s defense team attempted to discredit the fiber evidence with the argument that a particular fiber might be in the home or vehicle of any number of people.

  But when I considered the probability of a person having a particular carpet with a very unique type of fiber, the same person a particular bedspread with a particular set of light green cotton fibers blended with violet acetate fibers, and that same person also driving a 1970 Chevrolet station wagon and owning a dog who shed the type of hairs found on the victims, the evidence was overwhelming.

  When I read that Larry Peterson’s fiber analysis work in the case had been reviewed favorably by the world-famous microanalyst Walter McCrone—someone I was familiar with because of his work on the Shroud of Turin—I was even more convinced.

  Another expert called in to consult on the fiber evidence had a connection to me, Florida, my dad, and even Susan’s dad. Lynn Henson, a quiet young woman and an expert on fibers and threats who worked in the Florida State Crime lab in Tallahassee, had been called in to analyze the evidence and help provide a decisive evaluation.

  Henson—whose testimony the year before figured prominently in the Florida trial of Ted Bundy that both Dad and Susan’s dad, Tom Daniels, had worked on—testified in Williams’s trial that synthetic fibers found on one of the victim’s bodies showed no significant differences from the samples taken from Williams’s home and station wagon.

  Suddenly, I was homesick for Florida—for my town, my family and friends, for Anna and Merrill, and a million other things I couldn’t even name.

  I was overwhelmed with the urge to pack up everything, jump in the car, and head home.

  Maybe I should.

  I had promised Frank I’d go home next week for Thanksgiving, and though until this moment I hadn’t really planned on going, what if I went home and didn’t come back?

  The longing for home, for any kind of comfort I could find there pulled me like never before in my entire life. But I wasn’t running, wasn’t hiding, wasn’t going home until I had done everything I could do for both cases I was working on. I couldn’t.

  I couldn’t leave, but what I could do was call home. I could at least do that.

  But the moment I placed the receiver back on the cradle to make the call, my phone began ringing.

  Snatching it up before it could wake Rick, I whispered my hello into it.

  “Who the hell you been on the phone with?” Margaret asked.

  “No one. What’s wrong?”

  “Camille’s little boy Kenny,” she said. “He’s missing.”

  44

  A single squad car was outside Second Chances. It was the only indication at all that anything was going on.

  Margaret, Susan, Rand, and Lonnie were standing at the corner of the building near Scarlett’s when I ran up.

  “He never made it to his mama’s shop from the bus stop,” Susan said.

  “Is anyone in there with her?” I asked.

  “Her other boy,” Lonnie said. “She ain’t about to let him out of her sight.”

  My heart sank even more as I smelled the alcohol on Lonnie’s breath.

  “Is this related to Cedric and the other boys from a few years back?” Margaret asked.

  “It’s gotta be, doesn’t it?” Lonnie said. “But . . . why wait so long in between? Why now? What does it mean for Cedric? Why would he––”

  “I’m gonna go see if I can help,” I said.

  “Want me to go with you?” Lonnie asked.

  “Are you okay to?” I asked.

  His eyes locked on to mine and he nodded.

  “Sure then. Thanks.”

  My legs felt weak as we walked the two short store fronts to her shop.

  “You okay?” Lonnie asked.

  I shook my head.

  “Me either.”

  “When’d you start drinkin’ again?”

  “Little while back,” he said. “Been hidin’ it. Couldn’t today.”

  The little bell jingled as we walked in the door, and Camille looked up, her red, impossibly tired eyes moist, her thin, light skin drawn.

  “Get him the fuck out of here,” she said when she saw me. “Get the fuck out of here. This is your fault. You did this. Stirring all this up again, making my little boy a mark. Get him out of here now.”

  “Come on,” Lonnie said, grabbing me by the arm and helping me as my knees began to buckle. “Let’s go. She’s just upset.”

  He got me turned around and headed out the door.

  “We’re out here if you need us,” he said over his shoulder.

  “Find Mickey,” she said. “Get Mickey here now.”

  “Okay,” he said. “You got it. Anything else, we’re right outside.”

  When Margaret and Susan saw Lonnie helping me, they ran to meet us.

  “What’s wrong?” Margaret said. “What happened?”

  “Are you okay?” Susan asked.

  “He’ll be fine,” Lonnie said. “Camille’s just upset. Looking
for someone to blame.”

  “She’s blaming you?” Susan said.

  “Come on,” Margaret said. “Come in here and sit down.”

  Margaret held the door and Lonnie and Susan helped me in.

  “I’m okay,” I said. “I can walk. I was just . . . I’m okay. Can I use your phone?”

  “Sure honey,” Margaret said. “Help yourself.”

  I walked over on steadier legs, picked up the phone and paged Mickey.

  While I waited for him to call back, Susan brought me a cup of coffee.

  “Thanks.”

  “What’s going on, John?” she said.

  “I don’t know.”

  “You’ve got to,” she said. “You know more about all of this than everyone else put together. Why now? Why so long after Cedric and the others were taken?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I wish I did.”

  “I bet you do,” she said. “If you just let yourself think about everything. I bet you know.”

  “I don’t.”

  “You have to,” she said. “We’ve got a little boy missing and a snowstorm on the way.”

  Thankfully, the phone rang.

  I snatched it up.

  It wasn’t Mickey, but a supplier looking for Margaret. I quickly got a number and told him she’d call him back later.

  All around us the bar was chaos and confusion. Everyone was talking over each other in emotion-strained voices.

  “There are too many interruptions here,” Susan said. “Too much noise. Go back to your apartment and work on it there. I’ll talk to Mickey when he calls. I’ll have him call you at your place.”

  “I need to call Remy Boss too.”

  “Are you kidding? I heard the way that prick spoke to you yesterday. He’s not gonna do shit. You know that.”

  “Bobby Battle then,” I said. “Since I can’t call Frank. Some detective needs to know. This can’t be handled like just another missing kid case.”

  “So call him,” she said. “From your place.”

  I nodded. “Okay,” I said. “I’m not sure I can come up with anything, but I know I can’t here. Thank you.”