Blood Cries; Blood Oath; Blood Work

by Michael Lister

A selfie of a young blonde girl fills the screen.

  “Is that Leslie Marie?” I say.

  She nods. “Could be Amber’s sister, couldn’t she?” She looks at something else, then adds, “Or his. Look at this.”

  I again glance at the phone in her outstretched hand.

  The scanned picture is much older but the similarities to the other girls is striking.

  “Who’s that?”

  “Bobby Lee’s little sister. Died years ago in a horrible freak accident while being baptized in a lake at church camp.”

  I shake my head as I wonder how many other of the young girls who had died since then were directly related to what happened to her.

  The blue lights behind the grill of my Impala are flashing, refracting off the wet pavement. In the far, dark distance—both through my windshield and in my rearview mirror—I see similar lights atop patrol cars flashing against the blackness.

  Sam’s phone rings—something it’s been doing nearly nonstop.

  “It’s Daniel,” she says. “I called him earlier and missed him. I can call him back after we—”

  “No,” I say. “Take it. Talk to him.”

  “Thanks,” she says, and pats my arm gently.

  I glance over and smile at her.

  “Hello, husband,” she says, her voice playful and loving. “It’s okay. I was just calling to check in and tell you I love you, but we’re in the middle of a . . . thing right now. Can I call you back later? . . . Love you too. . . . I will. . . . Uh huh. . . . Be back just as soon as I can.”

  She hangs up and I say, “Aren’t you glad you took his call?”

  “Yes. Thanks. He’s . . . such a good husband. I’m very lucky.”

  “You both are.”

  “So are you and Anna. Marital bliss isn’t as rare as people make out, is it?”

  “No,” I say, “but rare enough to hold on to and be grateful for when you find it.”

  She nods. “No doubt. Stay on this road another half mile or so . . . then take River Camp Road on your right. It’s a dirt road. If Bobby Lee’s been staking this place out, he’s likely to go to the landing somewhere around here.”

  In less than a minute, we veer off the paved highway onto River Camp Road.

  “Should dead end into it,” she says.

  “How far?”

  “No idea. Can’t be too far. We’re already close to the river.”

  “Search down every side road, path, and pig trail we pass,” I say. “He may—”

  I slam on the breaks as we come to a single bar gate chained and locked, undisturbed.

  “Doesn’t look like anyone’s been through here in a while,” Sam says.

  I’m already backing up.

  Finding a place to turn around, I race back to the road, pull back onto it, and head in the same direction.

  The road is empty.

  No oncoming cars or emergency lights to fight against the night.

  Only our white headlights and blue flashers in the front, our red driving lights in the back against the damp darkness of the desolate rural road.

  “Should be another one a little ways up,” Sam says, then adds with an adorable smile, “Quit driving like a girl and get us there.”

  I laugh.

  “We’re about to get him,” she says. “And that’ll be that. And . . .”

  “What?”

  “I . . . I’m gonna miss working with you,” she says.

  “Me too.”

  “See that reflector?” she says. “That’s it.”

  I slow a little, but not enough to get mocked, and sling the car onto the side road, fishtailing and slinging damp, clumpy dirt into the ditch.

  “That’s more like it,” she says.

  We race down the narrow, overgrown dirt road, the car bouncing hard over holes and ruts, knocking it out of alignment if not doing more serious damage.

  “There,” she says. “Look.”

  I lock up the brakes and we skid to a stop.

  “Back up,” she says.

  But before I can, she’s jumping out of the car and running toward the little side road we just passed.

  “Sam. Wait.”

  She keeps moving.

  I throw the car in reverse and back up fifteen feet or so to an even smaller, more narrow side road and turn onto it, my headlights illuminating Sam, the blue of the flashers splashing the back of the white truck she’s racing toward.

  The truck is parked down an overgrown dirt path, the branches of the oak tree canopy covering the top few feet of its big boxy back end.

  I pull up behind her, but by the time I reach her, she is already shoving up the back cargo door.

  “POLICE,” she yells. “DON’T MOVE.”

  Her gun is drawn and she wisely stands to the side.

  When the door rolls up, it reveals Bobby Lee Banks standing on the killing floor of his mobile torture chamber.

  Beneath the mounted metal crucifixes, what looks like an operating theater is brightly lit.

  A young, blonde, naked girl is strapped to an old-fashioned exam table, legs up, feet cuffed into stirrups.

  Jamming the car into Park, I jump out, removing my Glock from its holster as I do.

  “NO. NO. NO,” Bobby Lee yells. “NO. NOT YET. I’M NOT READY.”

  “Drop the knife, Bobby Lee,” she says.

  Coming up the other side, I point my gun at Bobby Lee’s disturbed and demented head. “We’ve got you,” I say. “Up to you whether you want to go in alive or dead.”

  “Drop the knife,” Sam says. “NOW.”

  “Okay, okay,” he says.

  He places the knife on a stainless steel tray beside him.

  “Don’t shoot,” he says. “I put it down. Okay? I did what you said, so—”

  He grabs a gun from the tray and starts firing, rounds ricocheting off the metal bed of the truck, pocking the equipment, piercing the windshield of my car.

  Sam and I both return fire.

  I have the cleaner shot. Hers has to come through equipment and the table with the girl on it.

  I squeeze off a single round. Wait. Aim again, adjusting for his movement. Then squeeze off a second.

  He goes down, dropping his gun as he does.

  Besides twitching a bit, he doesn’t move.

  My ears ring from the gunfire and I feel the slight disequilibrium from the partial deafness.

  On the table, Leslie Marie moves. Not much. But enough to let us know she’s alive.

  “You’re gonna be okay, Leslie,” Sam says. “We’re here now. You’re going to be fine.”

  My weapon is still aimed at the unmoving Bobby Lee as Sam holsters hers and moves over toward me.

  “Pretty sure it was my round that put him down,” she says with a smile.

  I smile back at her, realizing just how much I’m going to miss her, just how happy I am in this moment to get this killer with her.

  She starts climbing up into the back of the truck when we hear a door up front open.

  “Uncle Bobby?” a child’s voice says. “Is everything okay?”

  “Oh my God,” Sam says. “He’s got a child with him.”

  “It’s okay,” she says. “We’re the police. Just stay where you are.”

  She climbs back down. “You check on her,” she says. “I’ll take care of the kid.”

  Keeping my weapon trained on the still unmoving Bobby Lee, I awkwardly begin climbing up into the truck.

  I see movement out of the corner of my eye and glance back to see the kid—an eleven-year-old boy—rounding the corner.

  “Stay there, sweetheart,” Sam says. “Don’t come any closer.”

  She moves toward him, not much bigger than he is, holding her hands up, trying to keep him from seeing what’s inside the truck, when he brings up a small revolver and shoots her at pointblank range.

  56

  Though she won’t remember, I keep my promise to Johanna and wake her for a hug and kiss when I finally get home.

>   Long after she’s fallen back asleep, I sit there holding her—holding her and praying over her and caressing her hair and kissing her head.

  After risking waking Taylor because I couldn’t not kiss her too, I meet Anna in the sanctuary of our bed.

  Without uttering a single word, she comforts me more than anything can.

  Holding me, caressing my skin, kissing my head, she begins the process of healing for me.

  Then come the words.

  We talk for hours, past the point that night turns into day.

  She asks the right questions. Says the right things. Listens so intently. Let’s me both express and process everything I need to.

  Eventually I am able to make love. Eventually I am able to sleep.

  In my dream, I’m shooting and killing the kid who has just shot Sam over and over. The whole nightmare is on a loop that I can’t get to stop.

  Him shooting Sam.

  Her falling.

  Me turning and firing. Instantly. Automatically. Reflexively.

  A huge hole opening in the center of his chest, blood oozing out, staining his white T-shirt crimson and black.

  Over and over and over. Me killing a kid.

  Bang.

  Bang-BANG.

  In the dream I’m aware it’s on a loop, but no matter what I do I can’t jump off the giant, incessantly turning Ferris wheel of it.

  When I wake, I hear Anna talking very softly.

  She is on the phone, obviously trying not to wake me.

  I blink my eyes open, having no idea what time it is.

  I reach for my phone on the bedside table to check the time. It’s dead. I completely forgot to plug it in last night.

  “He’s awake,” Anna says. “Here. It’s Reggie.”

  She hands me the phone.

  “Sorry,” I say. “Forgot to plug in my phone last night.”

  “I wasn’t going to call, but . . . I wouldn’t have if . . .”

  “What is it?”

  “Search and rescue recovered Megan’s body late last night and they found Shane’s just now,” she says.

  “I’m on my way.”

  I hand Anna her phone and kiss her forehead.

  “I’ve got to go to the landing,” I say, “but then I’m coming back and we’re going to have breakfast and then spend the entire day together. Just the four of us. And we’re all going to take a long nap this afternoon. And then go out to dinner tonight. Just us.”

  “Sounds heavenly,” she says, stretching, it changing her voice. “Hurry back.”

  57

  Together in death, Shane and Megan lie next to each other on the wide-bottom boat, their hands actually touching as if they’re reaching for one another.

  Given the circumstances—her gunshot wound to the head and his length of time in the water—they both look remarkably well.

  The river had washed away all the blood and brain matter from Megan’s face, neck, and head. The hole beneath her chin is small and the flap of skin on her scalp is lying down, and she looks to be taking a nap after getting out of the pool on a pleasant summer morning.

  Though he shouldn’t, Shane looks even better than Megan—with one exception. He has some faint purplish bruising by his right eye and around his neck.

  It’s a week to the day since he went into the water, but he certainly doesn’t appear to have been in nearly that long.

  When the ME turns him over, his back and the backs of his legs have the dark purple patches of fixed lividity.

  “Ask any medical examiner or coroner in the country,” the ME is saying. “Drownings are the most difficult when it comes to determining cause of death and whether it was homicide, accident, or suicide. Hands down the hardest.”

  “But—” Reggie begins.

  “We’ll do a full autopsy,” he says, holding up his hands in a placating gesture, “and we’ll rush it for you, but I’m just telling you . . . don’t expect too much.”

  Drownings are almost always accidental. And he’s right, determining the manner of death is extremely difficult—often a process of exclusion, the ME beginning by ruling out what didn’t happen. Even the finding of pulmonary edema, water in the lungs, doesn’t actually prove drowning because it can occur in deaths from heart attacks and overdoses.

  “We understand,” I say, “but doesn’t the male victim look too good to have been in this warm river water for a week?”

  “We don’t get to speculate on stuff like that,” he says. “That’s your job. I don’t mean . . . I mean that in a good way. You get to speculate and theorize and deduce. All we get to do is tell you what the science says and what’s likely based on it.”

  “If you hadn’t been told the male had gone under a week ago,” I say, “how long would you estimate he’d been in the water?”

  “Less time than that.”

  Tommy and Michelle are waiting for us when we get back to the landing.

  Thankfully, it’s just me, Reggie, and Ralph. The boat with the bodies went to a lower landing to meet the funeral home that is going to transport the bodies.

  “Is it him?” Tommy asks as we walk toward them.

  All three of us nod.

  They both begin to cry, reaching out to the other for support.

  “We found Megan too,” Ralph says.

  “That’s . . . good,” Tommy says. “That’s . . . Ordinarily, they’d ask me to do her funeral, but . . . under the circumstances . . .”

  “Maybe they still will,” Michelle says. “I’m just so relieved we have them both back. I was beginning to think we might not ever find them.”

  Tommy looks at Ralph. “Thank you. And please thank your entire team for all their tireless effort and hard work on our behalf. We are truly grateful. It’s such a relief to be able to have a funeral and actually bury him. Such a relief.”

  “And thank you two for all you’ve done,” Michelle says to me and Reggie.

  “Yes. Absolutely,” Tommy adds. “I didn’t mean to leave you two out. I’m just—”

  “We know,” I say.

  “But we’re not the ones who found them,” Reggie says. “That’s Ralph and his team.”

  “Did he . . .” Tommy begins. “Just . . . was it . . . does it look like it was . . . just an accident?”

  Michelle says, “Megan and the other boys or that Bobby Lee Banks didn’t have anything to do with it, did they?”

  “We’ll know more after the autopsy,” I say. “Accidental drowning is still most likely, but we won’t know for sure until we get everything back.”

  They nod as more tears stream down their cheeks.

  “We heard what happened down in Crystal River,” Tommy says to me. “So, so sorry. I should’ve called you when I heard, but . . . I’ve just been . . . so . . . but things are going to get better now. Now that we have him back. If you need anything . . . please call me.”

  “I will and you do the same.”

  “Maybe,” Michelle says, “we can all help each other heal.”

  I return home and crawl back into bed beside Anna.

  When I wake again, I am alone.

  Stumbling down the hallway, I can hear my three girls interacting in the kitchen.

  “Who’s ready for breakfast?” I say.

  “Daddy!” Johanna squeals.

  She runs over to me and I pick her up and hug her for a long moment.

  “Finding breakfast might be a bit of a challenge,” Anna says. “It’s almost three in the afternoon.”

  “Who’s ready for lunch?” I say.

  “We already had lunch, silly,” Johanna says.

  “Who’s ready for dinner?” I say.

  “We’re ready for whatever you want,” Anna says. “What would you like?”

  “Just to be with my girls.”

  I can tell Johanna is ready to get down and return to what she was doing, so I ease her down and step over and kiss Taylor on the top of her tiny head. She smells so good, of new skin and gentle baby shampoo, that I li
nger and kiss her some more.

  “But you need to eat,” she says. “When’s the last time you did?”

  “I had part of a black and blue burger for lunch in Gibsonton yesterday.”

  “Tell you what,” she says. “Why don’t we ride into Panama City and go to Waffle House and you get breakfast, lunch, and dinner?”

  58

  The next day, Anna and I leave Taylor with her aunt and take Johanna to Eufaula to meet Susan.

  Susan seems better than she was, and the exchange, while heartbreakingly difficult, goes about as well as can be expected.

  “We can make this work,” I say to Susan.

  She nods. “We will.”

  As he has continually been, the eleven-year-old kid with the gun flashes in my mind again. Sam being shot. Going down. The kid turning the gun toward me. Both of us firing.

  A child. Just a child.

  “It’s just . . .” I say. “I’ve seen what happens when kids aren’t . . .”

  “Hey,” she says. “Johanna’s gonna be fine. We are too. It’ll all work out. Promise.”

  After leaving Eufaula, we drive to Gainesville to Shands Hospital to see Sam.

  We find Daniel at her bedside, touching and talking to her though she is in a coma and not expected to come out of it.

  “Look who it is, honey.” Daniel says. “John and Anna drove all the way down to see you.”

  “Hey partner,” I say.

  She looks so small, pale, and frail lying in the bed, her blond hair flat and matted—the side where she was shot shaved, its swollen skin iodine-orange.

  “You look so good,” Anna says. “We’ll be drinking wine on our back porch again in no time. Only this time you’ll have to bring this handsome husband of yours and we’ll grill some steaks. He’ll be ready for some after all this hospital food.”

  “Yes, I will,” Daniel says, his voice cracking. “I certainly will.”

  “We were talking in the car,” I say. “Sam and I. On the way to . . . toward Crystal River. And we were talking about how marital satisfaction isn’t as rare as some people make it out to be, talking about how lucky we were—me to have Anna and her to have you. It was one of the last things she said to me—what a great husband you are, Daniel.”