Blood Cries; Blood Oath; Blood Work

by Michael Lister

  With a dislocated shoulder, a broken jaw, a skull fractured in five places, and permanent deafness and equilibrium issues that ended her dance career, Cheryl Thomas was traumatized but alive—thanks to her friends, escaping a far, far worse fate at the hands of the man who would later describe himself as “the most cold-hearted son of a bitch you’ll ever meet.”

  But Bundy was far worse than that. Cold-hearted doesn’t begin to describe the cruel evil he was capable of, the pitiless savagery and sexual sadism he practiced and perfected without regard or remorse.

  When day broke on the morning after the massacre, Tallahassee and FSU in general and the lives of certain coeds in particular would never be the same, but as Janet Lester opened her eyes on that Sunday morning, her idyllic existence seemed exactly as it was when she had drifted off into peaceful sleep the night before. And maybe it was. But it wouldn’t be for long. For the fateful clock of her allotted time was already running backward, counting down toward the D-day of her tragic destiny.

  9

  On Sunday morning, January 15th, Janet Lester wasn’t the only one whose days were numbered. Ted Bundy, too, had a date with destiny. He was exactly one month away from finally being captured and kept in a cage for the remaining eleven years of his loathsome life.

  Of course, he didn’t know it at the time.

  For him, life continued in much the same way it had since he had escaped from the jail cell in Colorado. It wasn’t just stolen time he was living on, but stolen property and identities too. He continued pilfering cash, credit cards, identities, cars, and anything else his bent mind told him he was entitled to.

  He continued living large, frequenting fancy restaurants, sports equipment stores, tobacco shops, buying, at other people’s expense, any and everything that suited his unhinged whimsy.

  Who did he kill during this time? How many attempted assaults did he commit?

  I knew Dad believed there were other open unsolved homicides that were most likely the work of Bundy—and he had often mentioned trying to clear them too—but he was personally responsible for the Janet Lester case and felt a much greater responsibility over it. It would always come first. He couldn’t even consider investigating any others before solving once and for all the one he was ultimately answerable for.

  On February 8th, Bundy stole a white FSU van and drove one hundred fifty miles east on I-10 to Jacksonville. He approached fourteen-year-old Leslie Parmenter, the daughter of a Jacksonville detective, in a Kmart parking lot across from Jeb Stuart Junior High School. Flashing her an unconvincing badge and identifying himself as “Richard Burton, fire department,” he attempted to converse with the young teen, who described him as unkempt and agitated as he awkwardly tried to engage her. Unlike his early suave and sophisticated approaches of young coeds, Bundy, wearing dark-framed glasses, plaid pants, and a blue navy pea coat, abruptly stopped his van in front of the teen, leaving the door open.

  Immediately suspicious of the odd and awkward man, Parmenter was guarded and confused.

  As Bundy continued his attempt at inane conversation, Leslie’s brother, Danny, pulled up in his truck, stuck his head out the window, and asked Leslie what the man wanted. After instructing Leslie to get into his truck, Danny approached Bundy and asked him what he wanted. “N-Nothing . . .” Bundy stammered. “I just asked if she was somebody else and just asked who she was.”

  As Bundy jumped back into his van, rolled up the window, and drove away, Danny quickly jotted down his license plate number and attempted to follow the van, but soon lost him in the heavy traffic.

  That night, Bundy checked into a Holiday Inn in Lake City. As he ate dinner at the hotel and had drinks in the bar, the staff and other guests described him as weird, either drunk or spaced out, and unkempt, his hair greasy, dark, and dirty.

  Leaving the Holiday Inn the next morning, Bundy headed down US 90 for a couple of miles and saw Lake City Junior High School.

  As if the day was crying for what was about to befall little Kimberly Diane Leach, rain drops fell out of a gray sky of clouds.

  Moving slowly down Duval Street in the rain, Bundy spotted the twelve-year-old crossing the schoolyard between the main building and a detached portable. She was returning to her first-period classroom to retrieve her purse, which she had left there in her rush to get to her second-period class. Jerking the van around to the other side of the road and jumping out, Bundy rushed up to the startled and vulnerable young girl. Grabbing her by the arm, Bundy pulled the frightened young girl over to his van and thrust her inside.

  The vicious inhuman and all-too-human killer transported the young girl nearly thirty miles to Live Oak, where he pulled the van into a secluded rural area to rape, kill, and dump the body of what had just a short while before been a happy child looking forward to going shopping for her Valentine’s Day dance after school.

  Returning to Tallahassee with his mask of sanity back in place, Ted went on a date with a young woman from his rooming house that night. After abducting, subduing, brutalizing, raping, stabbing, cutting, killing, and dumping the body of little Kimberly Diane Leach in an old pigpen earlier in the day, Bundy dined at Chez Pierre with Francis Messier, eating good food and drinking fine wine in the company of an attractive young woman—all on a stolen credit card, of course.

  From out in the other room, I hear Dad cough and say something.

  Jumping up, I go check on him.

  10

  The dim, quiet house is warm and stuffy.

  In the living room I find both men snoring.

  Lying flat out on the couch, his hand over his heart as if saying the pledge of allegiance, Jake appears not to have moved at all since I eased him down there.

  Dad stirs and starts coughing again.

  Stepping into the tiny kitchen, I run a glass of water from the tap, and return with it to find him snoring again.

  In another moment he moans and says something incomprehensible in his sleep.

  The next time he coughs, he stirs and opens his eyes. Seeing me standing there startles him and he jumps, bringing up his hands in a defensive posture.

  As a child, I was always startled by the way he so often startled awake, and some of the old familiar feeling fluttered deep inside me now.

  “Dad, it’s me. You were coughing. Here’s some water.”

  “Huh?”

  His eyes are bloodshot, the brows above them in need of trimming and, like the graying brown hair on his head, standing up.

  Narrowing his eyes and blinking a bit, he seems to be having difficulty focusing.

  “What’re you doing here?” he asks.

  Like his cough, I wonder if his bloodshot eyes and trouble focusing have anything to do with him being sick and are really signs of a deeper, darker infirmity beneath—a thought that would not have occurred to me had Jake not said what he did.

  “Brought Jake home from the bar,” I say.

  He nods knowingly. “Knew someone would have to when he left to go out there. Figured I’d get a call. Must have fallen asleep.”

  He still hasn’t taken the water from my outstretched hand.

  “Drink some water,” I say. “How are you feeling?”

  He takes the water and drinks some, a small rivulet of which runs down the red-hued skin of his white-whiskered chin.

  Coughing again, he chokes a little, but only pauses a moment for it to pass before finishing off the glass.

  Jake stirs for the first time, licks his lips, adjust his body on the couch a bit, but doesn’t wake.

  “How bad was he?” Dad asks.

  I shake my head. “He was fine. Just a little lost at the moment.”

  He nods and holds the glass out for me. “Thanks.”

  I take it. “Can I get you anything else? Help you to bed?”

  He shakes his head. “I’m good here.”

  “Let me know if you need anything. I’ll be in the spare room looking through the Janet Lester case.”

  His eyes widen. “Re
ally?”

  “We’ve been back a while. That’s what I’ve been doing.”

  He nods, a small suppressed smile twitching his lips a bit. “I missed something. Hope you find it. Want to close it once and for all this time.”

  “Jake said you were sick,” I say.

  He shakes his head. “Don’t want to talk about it. Going back to sleep.”

  I nod and head back toward the kitchen with the empty glass.

  With his eyes closed, he says, “Been having a few symptoms. Brown sent me for blood work.”

  Our GP, Raymond Brown, is the old country doctor in Pottersville.

  “Results are on the table,” he adds. “We can talk about it tomorrow. Night.”

  “Night.”

  “And John,” he adds, still without opening his eyes, “thanks for looking at the book on Janet.”

  “Should have sooner,” I say. “Sorry I didn’t.”

  Placing the glass in the sink, I step over and sit down at the old, compact, rickety kitchen table. Propped against the wall, held in place by a wooden napkin holder, is a small stack of mail. Sifting through it, I find the one from Dr. Brown.

  In it are photocopies of the lab results, a note from the doctor in a thin, shaky, barely legible cursive, and a couple of printouts of articles about additional tests and treatment options if they confirm what Dr. Brown already knows to be the case.

  By reading and rereading the contents of the envelope and Googling the questions they raise, I think I am able to understand.

  The blood work Dr. Brown ordered for Dad included a complete blood count or CBC, a broad blood test to screen for a wide range of conditions and diseases. The results showed a markedly elevated level of lymphocytes.

  Brown wants to do further testing, including a bone marrow examination that could confirm that Dad has chronic lymphocytic leukemia, or CLL, a not uncommon condition for a man his age.

  Chronic lymphocytic leukemia is a type of cancer that starts from cells that become lymphocytes, certain white blood cells found in the bone marrow. The cancer or leukemia cells start in the bone marrow but then go into the blood. In CLL, the leukemia cells often build up slowly over time, and many people don’t have any symptoms for at least a few years.

  Based on the language used in Dr. Brown’s note, and knowing Dad the way I do, my guess is he is being resistant to additional testing.

  Folding the pages back the way they were and returning them to the envelope, I replace the envelope where I found it and walk back out into the living room, wanting to hug my dad, to wake him and hear his voice.

  He is sleeping soundly, as is Jake, and I find the little noises, breaths, and snores they’re both making comforting.

  Though it’s August in Florida and the single window unit running in the back bedroom can’t cool the entire house, and though it’s warmer out here where they are sleeping than anywhere else but the kitchen, I retrieve two flat sheets from the narrow linen closet at the end of the hall and drape one over each of them before returning to the spare room and the murder book awaiting me there.

  11

  Janet Lester was an active, involved, busy young woman. Between school, work, photography, her horse Cinnamon, family obligations, friends, and a boyfriend, she didn’t have much spare time. But sometimes she just liked to take it easy, chillin’ out in front of the tube with her little brother, sometimes her mom, and on rare occasions her stepdad.

  Ralphie liked The Bionic Man, Man from Atlantis, and CHIPS, which she watched with him when she could, but she liked shorter, lighter shows like Happy Days and Laverne and Shirley or One Day at a Time and The Jeffersons. Her stepdad liked Three’s Company, but she didn’t care for it. Everybody, including her mom, liked Charlie’s Angels.

  This is how she was spending the little life she had left—riding her horse, snapping pictures, lying on the shag carpet in front of the TV—while Ted Bundy was preparing to leave Tallahassee.

  News of the Chi Omega murders had spread across the country, and cops who had investigated and arrested Bundy in Colorado and other places began traveling to Florida, believing that the authorities here were dealing with the same coed killer. Tallahassee in particular and Florida in general were no longer safe places for Bundy to hide.

  While Janet and the other girls of Marianna High School were preparing for and participating in the Miss Valentine pageant, Ted Bundy was stealing tags and credit cards and cars in an attempt to flee Tallahassee.

  After some failed attempts and a close call with a cop, Bundy finally managed to steal a car on the evening of February 12th—a ’72 orange VW that belonged to Ricky Garzaniti, who had left his keys in his car while dashing into the babysitter’s house to pick up his child and gotten detained a bit.

  That same night, Janet and Ben attended the Sweethearts’ Ball, and for the second time that weekend a crown had been placed on Janet’s head. Crowned king and queen of the Sweethearts’ Ball after Janet had been crowned Miss Valentine 1978 the night before, Ben and Janet were having one of the best weekends of their short lives—one that was about to change in the most dramatic and horrific ways imaginable.

  As Janet went home and pretended to go to bed, only to sneak out a short time later, Bundy was driving his stolen orange VW west on I-10 toward Pensacola and eventually the Alabama state line—though three days later he’d be arrested before reaching it.

  After she was sure that her family was settled in for the night, Janet crept out of the house and to her car, which she had parked farther away than she normally did so no one would hear when she cranked it.

  Making her way out of her neighborhood, she took a left on Highway 90 and a right at Highway 71—the rural road leading out to the old farmhouse where the party was.

  As Janet was doing all this, Ted Bundy, some fifty miles from Tallahassee now, was cruising down I-10 watching the gas needle of the stolen VW bounce toward E.

  An acquaintance from school, Little Larry Daughtry, worked at the Gulf station close to where Highway 71 ran beneath I-10. Daughtry’s dad, Big Larry Daughtry, owned a liquor store just across the state line, and Little Larry sold booze to his underage classmates.

  On her way to the party, Janet stopped by the Gulf station and purchased a bottle of Dewar’s from Little Larry because she wanted to be as relaxed as possible.

  At around this same time, a strange and agitated man with dark unkempt hair wearing light pants and a dark blue coat pulled his orange VW into the Gulf station and had Little Larry fill ’er up, paying the uneasy young attendant with a credit card.

  The credit card turned out to be stolen and later Little Larry would pick Ted Bundy out of a lineup as the man who paid him with it, but he never could say for sure that the future murder victim and the infamous murderer had been there at the same time.

  My phone vibrates and I withdraw it from my pocket to see that Anna has texted.

  Anna: Woke up startled. Got worried when you still weren’t here. You okay?

  Me: Sorry. About to head that way.

  Anna: Wake me if I fall back asleep. Let me know you’re here.

  Me: Will do. Love you.

  Anna: Find out anything else about your dad?

  Me: Yeah. It’s not good. I’ll tell you about it in the morning. Haven’t really had a chance to talk to him yet.

  Anna: Stay if you need to.

  Me: Thanks, but I’ll be heading that way in about 5 mins. Should be home in less than 20.

  Anna: Be careful. Wake me when you get here. Love you.

  I return the phone to my pocket.

  I’m no longer single and I need to remember that—remember to be more considerate—especially of things that take me away from the house at night. Anna is understanding and supportive and enormously generous, allowing me a lot of leeway in the work I do and the hours I keep, but I’ve got to be better about managing my time away from her and our family.

  I have even more questions now than when I started, and don’t want to stop, but
should be in bed beside Anna.

  But being in bed beside Anna doesn’t mean I have to be asleep.

  As a compromise I decide to take the murder book with me so I can read it in the small beam of my battery-powered reading light.

  Withdrawing another piece of paper from Dad’s blue composition book, I leave him a note, letting him know I’ve taken the book and asking if we can talk in the morning before I leave for vacation.

  I then check on Jake and Dad again and quietly ease out into the night.

  12

  I place the murder book on the bedside table next to my reading light and climb into bed beside Anna.

  Rolling over close to her, I gently kiss her on the cheek and whisper, “I’m home, baby. Sorry I was gone so long.”

  “Will you hold me?” she says.

  “Of course.”

  She turns on her side and slides toward me and we begin to spoon, my mouth at her ear, my arms wrapped around her.

  Turning her head slightly up, she says, “I’m so glad you’re home.”

  “Me too.”

  “I must’ve had a bad dream because I woke up so scared, so worried about you. Then when you weren’t here, I just . . . panicked a bit.”

  “I’m sorry. I should’ve just brought the murder book back here to begin with. Was stupid not to. Just wasn’t thinking.”

  “No, I’m being silly,” she says. “I know it’s irrational, but I just haven’t been able to shake it. And then once my mind got going . . . I just knew you were going to decide to not go on our vacation. I know you really don’t want to anyway, and I thought, now he’s got his excuse. I hate feeling like this. I know I’m being neurotic and I hate that.”