Blood Cries; Blood Oath; Blood Work

by Michael Lister

  I am tired and sleepy and all I want to do is be with Anna and the girls, but I feel like I need to check in with Ralph and the search and rescue workers and volunteers since I hadn’t been able to at all the previous day.

  There are far fewer workers and volunteers this evening. The ones who are still around appear to be living here. Camping. Cooking. Socializing.

  “Still nothing,” Ralph says as I walk up. “But we’re just getting started and we’re not going anywhere.”

  I nod, looking around the landing.

  “How’s everyone holding up?” I ask.

  “Good,” he says. “We’re used to this. We set up camp and make it as pleasant as possible for everyone as we can.”

  “Seems like far fewer people around,” I say.

  He nods. “Attrition. Always happens. But it’s good for us. Our core group gets a lot more done when it’s just us. Helps when the family’s not around too. We don’t have to do so much for show and we don’t have to worry about something they might see upsetting them.”

  “Tommy here?”

  “Was earlier. Left just a little while ago. Meeting with someone from the army about Shane’s affairs, then had something at the church I think. Said he’d be back but I think it’ll be awhile. Maybe even tomorrow.”

  “Doesn’t matter. I was just going to check on him while I was here.”

  “Gotcha.”

  “Have you found anything out of the ordinary?” I ask.

  “Whatta you mean?”

  “Anything that shouldn’t be down there,” I say. “I don’t mean a sunken boat or old rusted car part, but anything recent that doesn’t make sense or you can’t explain?”

  “No, not really,” he says. “But we’ll let you know if we do.”

  I’m driving away from the landing when Sam calls.

  “Where are you?” she asks.

  I tell her.

  “Got the pictures of the cross for you,” she says. “Buy me a drink and I’ll show you ’em.”

  “Pick a place,” I say. “You’ve got two options. Tucks only has beer and wine, but they have good food. Twenty-two has a full bar.”

  “Wewa is a two-bar town?” she asks. “Don’t think I’ve heard of either one of those places.”

  “Tucks is actually Tukedawayz Tavern and Twenty-two is the old Highway 22 Package and Lounge out on Highway 22. I’ll see if we can find a sitter and get Anna to join us.”

  “Then let’s do Tucks and eat too.”

  Which is how the three of us are at a table at Tucks thirty minutes later.

  It took half an hour to get here because I went by our house to see the girls and pick Anna up.

  In the dim bar, from a distance I wonder if people looking in our direction believe Anna and I have a child with us.

  This calls to mind the line that Reggie sometimes quotes from Sweet Home Alabama. “You have a baby—in a bar.”

  “So Johanna, the perfect combination of your two names, is not your daughter?” Sam is saying.

  “She’s ours,” Anna says. “They both are ours, but no, I didn’t give birth to her and her mother certainly didn’t intend to combine our names. She chose it as a namesake for John, but I think it’s . . . kinda magic that it’s our names joined.”

  “Yes, it is,” I say without looking up.

  I’m looking at lab photos of the cross while the ladies drink beer and talk.

  “What is that?” I say. “I feel like I should know.”

  “Let’s see,” Anna says.

  I glance at Sam. “I can show her now in front of you or later at home behind your back,” I say.

  She smiles and nods. And I hand a couple of the photos to Anna.

  It’s early and there are very few people in Tucks—a handful around the bar, four or five around the two pool tables, and the three of us at one of the three small tables near the door.

  Like all the other places where people gather in town, the two most prevalent topics of conversation are Shane being missing and the crucified girl they pulled out of the water.

  The jukebox continues to play classic country songs because a huge white man in a wife beater and straw cowboy hat fed a twenty into the machine and stood there for fifteen minutes making his selections. At the moment it’s Patsy Cline’s “Walkin’ After Midnight.”

  The FDLE lab photos are labeled and numbered and show the cross in a variety of positions—first with Amber’s body still attached, then after it had been removed, then each section from several angles including extreme close-ups.

  The lengths of metal are about four inches in diameter and four feet long. Hollow and rectangular, they have traces of white paint and rust on them. Two of them have a few small holes but only on one side.

  “They do look familiar,” Anna says, “but . . .”

  “We won’t know just how significant they are to the killer until we find another victim and see if he used them on her,” Sam says.

  “He did,” I say. “Everything he did and used and took is significant to him.”

  She nods. “Daniel says the same thing.”

  “And he would know,” I say.

  “Wonder how many other crucified victims there are out there waiting to be found?” Sam says.

  “Wonder if they’re all in bodies of water?” Anna says.

  “My guess is they are,” I say. “He’s combining crucifixion and baptism, death and rebirth.”

  “Walkin’ After Midnight” ends and Tammy Wynette’s “Stand by Your Man” comes on.

  “Wonder how big a radius he’s using?” she says. “And if he’s dumping them only in the Apalachicola River or only in rivers, or in lakes and bays too?”

  “Great questions,” Sam says. “Wish we had more to go on. Guess we will soon enough.”

  Peach, one of the owners, brings our food over and catches sight of the photos. “Oh hell, John,” she says, shuddering all over and covering her eyes.

  She is small and short and wears jeans, a camo three-quarter sleeve T-shirt with a hunting logo on it, and round-toed cowgirl boots like Reggie. Unlike Reggie, she has a snuff can in her back pocket and a dip inside her bottom lip.

  “Sorry.”

  “You tryin’ to scar me for life or run off my customers?” she says. “Nah, I’m just kiddin’. Do what y’all got to do to find that bastard and string him up by his balls. Or call me and I’ll help you take him in the swamp and feed him to some gators.”

  As Peach walks away, Sam says, “That’s a call you’d never make, is it?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Trying to find your own justice.”

  “What makes you think I haven’t before?” I say.

  “The way you are about the Stripling girl,” she says. “She could be a killer but you want her treated with—what?”

  “Civility. Humanity. Compassion. And maybe the reason I am the way I am is because I have made that call before.”

  She shakes her head and smiles. “Nope. No way. Good try there, Slim, but I don’t buy it.”

  “The bullying’s gettin’ worse,” Anna says. “I can’t get over what people—her classmates and their parents—post on Facebook.”

  “Social media’s a little window right into people’s hearts and minds and black souls. It’s like suspects. Let them talk long enough and they’ll reveal exactly who they are.”

  “Well, who we are is sad and sick and scary,” Anna says.

  “Some more than others,” Sam says, as we put the pictures away and begin to pull open the food containers. “Some more than others.”

  The food is hot and spicy and so good I wish we had ordered more, but we don’t even get to finish it.

  We’re less than halfway through our meal when the first call comes in.

  43

  Shit never comes in when you’re in the middle of something you don’t want to be doing,” Sam says as she stands and steps away to take the call.

  While she’s away my phone vibrates.

>   A few minutes later, when she returns to the table, Sam says, “We’ve got another body.”

  “Actually,” I say, holding up my phone. “We have two.”

  “Now that we know for sure we’re dealing with a serial,” Sam says, “I’d like us to talk about exactly what that means and how we approach this case.”

  Two more victims with striking similarities to Amber had been discovered—one in the Apalachicola Bay, the other in Tampa Bay.

  Sam, Reggie, and I are driving to the scene in Apalachicola.

  I’m driving. Sam is in the passenger seat. Reggie is in the back.

  “Now that we have at least two other victims spread way out,” Reggie says, “it’s really, really doubtful that whatever happened to Shane is related to what happened to Amber, right?”

  “I’d say so,” Sam says, then looks over at me.

  I nod. “Don’t think we can rule it out until we can, but, yes, very, very doubtful.”

  “I’ve had Daniel working on a profile,” she says, “but he was uncomfortable doing it when by definition we didn’t have a serial killer yet.”

  “By definition,” Reggie says. “What is the definition? I don’t have any experience in this area.”

  “Not many people do,” I say. “Only about one percent of all murders is committed by a compulsive killer. But what about the case you worked last year with the cops being killed with their own guns?”

  “That was different,” she says dismissively. “Nothing at all like this. I wonder how much I know or think I do is wrong? Most of it has come from documentaries and movies.”

  Sam says, “A serial killer is someone, usually a white male acting alone, who murders three or more people—usually with what seems like no motive, but is actually an internal motive, the gratification of a deep abnormal psychological obsession—over more than a month with a significant break or cooling off period between them.”

  “They often appear to lead very normal lives,” I say. “Wear a mask of sanity, but usually do menial work, manual labor—something they’re overqualified for. Everything comes down to fantasy for them—everything. Their fantasies are what motivate them, what cause them to do what they do, the reason they take trophies—so they can relive the event and fantasize about it over and over. They can be in a relationship, but like their job it’s a source of frustration for them. They usually abuse alcohol and or drugs, have money problems. They’re usually of average intelligence. Usually average in most every way.”

  Sam says, “They almost always have unresolved, fucked-up issues with their mothers.”

  “Suffer psychological, sexual, and physical trauma in childhood—usually from a family member,” I say.

  “Often have head injuries because of it,” Sam adds. “Repeated head injuries are common.”

  “Their childhoods and adolescences were spent in isolation.”

  “Their fantasy lives start then,” Sam says. “One theory is that as children they are powerless against the torment they are suffering, so the only way to escape is into fantasy. They can control everything in the self-centered world of fantasy and in there they are the only ones who matter. There’s no empathy, no compassion, no mercy, no remorse. Eventually the worlds of their fantasies begin to spill over into their waking worlds. They wet the bed way past the age they should. They set fires. Act out their fantasies on animals. Their voyeurism usually begins back then too.”

  “As do certain fetishes and paraphilia,” I say.

  “Paraphilia?” Reggie asks.

  Sam says, “Sexual arousal to shit that shouldn’t sexually arouse you.”

  “Dangerous sexual deviance,” I say. “Being sexually aroused by atypical objects and fantasies and fetishes and situations.”

  “Both of you have worked serial cases before?” Reggie asks.

  Sam nods. “A few.”

  They both look at me.

  I nod. “Couple of cases in Atlanta,” I say. “The Atlanta Child Murders are what put me on this path in the first place. I worked it and a few cases connected to it and the Stone Cold Killer case. As a kid I watched as my dad worked the Bundy case. And I’ve also worked with several incarcerated serial murderers inside as a prison chaplain.”

  “So we have some experience on our team,” Reggie says.

  “Our team . . . is about to get a whole lot bigger,” Sam says. “With a body as far down as Tampa Bay and us now having three . . . they’ll form a multiagency task force and most likely the FBI will get involved. We solve it fast or we don’t solve it at all.”

  “Then let’s solve it fast,” Reggie says.

  “With a body as far away as Tampa Bay, the killer moves around,” I say, “and is most likely long gone from our little town.”

  “Which is a good thing,” she says, “but I sure would like for us to be the ones to take him off the board.”

  Apalachicola is a small former fishing town that is now a tourist destination, and is where the Apalachicola River flows into the bay—a freshwater flow that forms one of the most diverse estuaries and best oysters in the world.

  The crucified victim was discovered when she became entangled in the giant nets of a shrimp boat.

  It’s dark by the time we arrive, and the dock, shrimp boat, body, and the edge of the river are all lit by huge banks of halogen lights.

  The boat is moored at a dock in downtown, the area taped off and surrounded by emergency vehicles, their flashing red and blue lights causing the locale to look more like a rave than a crime scene.

  Within moments of being there we have the information we came for—confirmation it’s the same killer.

  The manner and method of death, the materials used, the victim herself—all so incredibly similar they could be the same.

  “She could be Amber’s sister,” Sam says.

  I nod.

  “Means he’s got a very definite type. Should help us figure out how and where he’s finding them.”

  “Everything about her and what’s he’s done to her will lead us directly to him,” I say. “We just have to figure out how.”

  44

  I climb into bed beside Anna bone-weary and brain-dead.

  She stirs and I pull her to me, wrapping her up in my arms and spooning her.

  “There’s nothing that can happen in a day so bad that this can’t remedy,” I say. “You are my sanctuary.”

  “You are mine,” she says.

  “How were the girls when you got back? How was the rest of the evening?”

  “All good with the exception of one important thing,” she says. “You weren’t here.”

  I hug her even more tightly.

  “Susan called,” she says. “Wasn’t happy you weren’t here.”

  “What happened?”

  “I handled it,” she says. “You’re not the only one who can talk a bitch down off a ledge.”

  I laugh, squeeze her, then we lie in silence for a few moments.

  Evidently I drift off because she is saying something when I wake back up.

  “Huh?” I say.

  “Sorry. I didn’t realize you had fallen asleep. We’ll talk in the morning.”

  “No. What? I didn’t mean to fall asleep yet.”

  “I was just saying all small towns are alike when it comes to gossip,” she says. “It’s unbelievable how quickly rumors run through a place like this.”

  “Even faster now because of cell phones and Facebook,” I say.

  “Don’t even get me started on Facebook,” she says.

  “What’s the town talk today?”

  “A lot of it is still about Megan. That she killed him. That’s she’s pregnant and crazy with hormones and being scorned. That the baby is really Cody’s and they did it together to protect their drug empire. That she’s in a polyamorous relationship with Matt and Cody and they all run a drug empire together like the Oliver Stone movie that came out a few years back. Some people are saying that Shane’s death is related to what he did for the mil
itary, that he was taken out in some sort of covert operation. But the one that’s most hurtful to Tommy and Michelle is that he faked his own drowning and death because he’s a coward who wanted out of the military.”

  “What’s wrong with people?” I say.

  “That’s your department,” she says. “I just live here.”

  “We need to check on Tommy and Michelle tomorrow,” I say. “Megan too.”

  In another bed a few miles away, another couple is holding and talking.

  Reggie says, “Are you awake?”

  “Yeah,” Merrick says. “Why? Did I jump?”

  “John Jordan asked me about the cop killings today,” she says.

  “What’d you say?”

  “Not much, but he could tell I was uncomfortable talking about it. I didn’t handle it well at all. Thing is . . . it’s not the first time he’s asked me about it.”

  “You think he suspects something?” Merrick asks.

  “I think he’s a dangerous man to have around,” she says. “And eventually he’s gonna ask to take a look at the case, reopen it.”

  “I think you’re overreacting,” he says. “Worrying about something that will never happen. Hell, I think he’d understand, but . . . if you’re that concerned . . . you could fire him before he gets a chance to.”

  45

  John,” Anna says. “John, wake up. You’ve got to see this.”

  I rouse from a very deep sleep.

  I have no idea what time it is, but sunlight streams in the edges around the blinds on our windows.

  “Huh? What is it?”

  She’s holding her iPad in front of me.

  “Look.”

  I blink and try to focus on what she’s showing me.

  With real effort I push myself up off the pillow and take the device from her.

  The Facebook app fills the screen. A live video is streaming in the center of her newsfeed.