Blood Cries; Blood Oath; Blood Work

by Michael Lister

  Our food arrives—seafood platter for Merrill, grouper imperial for me, and honey-glazed salmon for Anna.

  Anna and I both offer to take Taylor or to put her in her carrier, but Merrill tells us he only needs one hand to shovel the seafood into his mouth.

  We eat in silence for a while, enjoying the evening and being together.

  I finish first and ask them to excuse me for a moment. “I want to call Johanna before she goes to bed.”

  Walking down the wooden ramp to the beach below, I call my daughter at her mother’s in Atlanta.

  “Hey sweet girl,” I say when I hear her soft, sleepy voice.

  “Hey Daddy.”

  “How’s my girl? How was your day?”

  “I’m good. It was good.”

  “I miss you so much,” I say.

  “I miss you, Daddy.”

  I think about how similar our conversations are each evening and wonder how I can make them different.

  “I can’t wait to see you this weekend,” I say. “We’re going to have such a good time.”

  She doesn’t say anything and I can hear her yawning.

  “You sleepy baby?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Okay, I’ll let you go so you can get some sleep. I love you so much. Sleep well. Sweet dreams. Night.”

  “Night, Daddy.”

  When I get back to the table, Merrill and Anna are talking about Ted Bundy.

  “What makes the sheriff believe Bundy did it?” Merrill asks.

  Like so many people in Pottersville, Merrill still refers to Dad as the sheriff. For an entire generation of us, he’s the only one we’ve ever known.

  “I’m not sure exactly. We’re just starting. And I thought I was on vacation.”

  “You are,” Anna says, patting my leg. “For a few more hours anyway.”

  “I was hoping to finish the murder book tonight and talk to Dad about it tomorrow. I know Bundy was in the area around the time Janet went missing and that she looked similar to his most common coed victim type, but I’d think it’s more than that. Bundy being in the vicinity is enough to make him a suspect in a case like this, but Dad would have to have more than that to actually convince him he did it.”

  23

  It’s late.

  We’re lying in bed reading—Anna, the new Zadie Smith novel, me, the murder book—propped on pillows, our bodies touching, the fingers of our hands not holding our books entwined.

  “It’s so good to see Merrill doing so well,” she says.

  I nod. “Unlike so many of us, he’s not just talking about things, or worse, complaining about how bad things are, he’s actually doing something about it, actually making the world a better place. Can’t say that about many people.”

  “I wish he could find someone,” she says. “Be as happy as us. It’s the only thing missing from his life now. Wonder if Zadie Smith is single.”

  I laugh. “Now that’d be a good match.”

  “Don’t you think he’d be even happier, do even more and better if he had someone?”

  “He’s about to find someone,” I say. “Or she’s gonna find him.”

  “You sound so certain.”

  “I am.”

  “Why do you think he is?”

  “He’s in the right places, doing the right things,” I say. “It follows that’s where he’ll meet the right partner.”

  She nods. “You’re right. Wonder if we could get Zadie Smith to come speak at a fundraiser for one of the organizations he’s working for?”

  I laugh and shake my head and keep reading.

  After a little while, she yawns and closes her book.

  “Any blood or physical evidence in the car that wasn’t Janet’s?” she asks.

  I shake my head. “If there was, they missed it.”

  “Of course, Bundy rarely left any physical evidence behind, did he?”

  “Not much, no. He was pretty meticulous.”

  “Is Bundy’s DNA in the FBI database?” Anna asks.

  “Not until just recently,” I say. “Almost wasn’t at all. Look at this. Dad stuck it in the book just a few years back.”

  I hand her the news clipping.

  There’s a national database of DNA profiles of convicts maintained by the FBI, but America’s most notorious serial killer hasn’t been a part of it until now.

  Savage serial killer Ted Bundy, who confessed to murdering some thirty young women across several states before being executed in Florida’s electric chair at Florida State Prison in Raiford in 1989, could now be proven to have committed many more.

  Recently, a complete DNA profile of Bundy was created and is being submitted to the FBI database so that law enforcement agencies nationwide can finally determine whether Bundy was responsible for some of the open unsolved cases in their jurisdictions.

  There has long been speculation that Bundy killed far more people than he confessed to. When one police interviewer asked Bundy if he had killed thirty-five woman, Bundy responded “Add a one to that.” And now one of his former defense attorneys has a new book out claiming that Bundy confessed to him that he had murdered more than one hundred people.

  The vast majority of murders ranged around the Northwest, but he traveled to Florida, continuing to kill young women, some very, very young, after escaping a Colorado jail at the end of December 1977.

  After killing at least two women at Florida State University and brutally assaulting several others, Bundy then killed twelve-year-old Kimberly Diane Leach in Lake City before being captured on February 15, 1978.

  Executed in 1989, Bundy was then cremated, which created a problem for police departments that later began searching for his DNA.

  Following a few dead ends, investigators finally recovered a vial of Bundy’s blood drawn in 1978 from a clerk’s office in Columbia County—where he murdered the Leach girl.

  Bundy’s blood and the DNA profile it contains will now make its way to the FBI database so that investigators across the country might be able to now close several other cases.

  The hunt to track down Bundy’s DNA was primarily for the purposes of ascertaining whether or not Bundy was responsible for the death of eight-year-old Ann Marie Burr, the little girl many believe to be Bundy’s very first victim.

  It’s interesting to note that a Florida law passed in 2009 requires police take DNA samples of all those arrested in felony cases.

  Anna’s not quite finished reading the article when my phone vibrates, and continues reading to herself as I answer it.

  “Thought you were on vacation,” Reggie says.

  Reggie Summers is the sheriff of Gulf County and my boss—at least one of them. I have a different one at Gulf Correctional where I’m a chaplain.

  “I am,” I say.

  “From here and the prison?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Then why am I getting complaints from the sheriff of Jackson County that one of my investigators is harassing the fine folk up there?”

  I think about who we talked to today, who might complain, and why.

  “You there?” she says.

  “Yeah, sorry. I was just thinking about it. Sorry you got the call.”

  “Glenn was cool about it,” she says, referring to Glenn Barnes, the sheriff of Jackson County. “Just wanted to know what was going on and I couldn’t tell him. So what’s going on?”

  “Dad is working one of his old cold cases and I’m helping him a little.”

  “Which case?”

  I tell her.

  “Why now?” she asks. “Is there new evidence or—”

  “He’s got the time now that he doesn’t have a job,” I say. “But he doesn’t feel like he has much.”

  “Why’s that?”

  I tell her about his lab results and the bone marrow test and the fear that he has chronic lymphocytic leukemia.

  For a long moment she doesn’t say anything.

  She doesn’t talk about it much, but her mom has been sick—and
in fact the reason she returned to Wewa was to care for her.

  “I’m so sorry, John,” she says, and I can tell she means it. “Do what you need to do. Spend as much time with him as you can. Don’t worry about things here. And if you need more time just let me know.”

  “Thank you, Sheriff. I really appreciate that. We’re hoping the test comes back negative, which is a long shot, or that it’s the highly treatable kind.”

  “I hope so too. My mom beat hers. It happens all the time. Just stay in touch and let me know if you need anything.”

  “Thank you.”

  “And the next time y’all are in Marianna go by and see Glenn—as a courtesy and a favor to me.”

  “We had already planned to,” I say, “but we’ll do it first thing now.”

  24

  So make the case for Bundy,” I say.

  I am driving Dad’s truck. He is sitting awkwardly on his side in the passenger seat. We are driving along Highway 73 on our way to Marianna, the morning sun burning the dew off the pastures and pines.

  “It’s all circumstantial,” he says, “but . . .”

  Anna and Taylor are in her car in front of us—on their way to her parents’ place in Dothan, which is about thirty miles above Marianna.

  “Janet Lester looked an awful lot like Stephanie Brooks,” he says. “Maybe as much as any of his victims.”

  He’s right. She did.

  Stephanie Brooks (again, not her real name) was the young woman Ted was in a relationship with in college who called it off—and became the pattern for the type of victim he was drawn to and preyed upon. Attractive. Straight, longish dark hair parted in the center.

  Victim type, particularly for a serial killer, is highly significant, and Janet’s similarities to Stephanie cannot be dismissed or downplayed.

  “We know they both went to the Gulf station on 71 that night around the same time. So we have at least the possibility of a point in time and place where their paths intersected. A very good possibility.”

  I nod. “I want us to interview Little Larry again,” I say. “But you’re right. The fact that they both went to the same station around the same time that night is huge.”

  “The brutality and savagery of the crime,” he says. “Not many people on the planet at the time are capable of a bloodletting like that.”

  It’s not nearly as strong a point as the others he’s made, but I understand why he’s making it. And he’s not wrong. Not many people are capable of such an extraordinary slaughter.

  “The fact that he left no physical evidence,” Dad says. “How many killers could do what was done to that poor girl inside her car and not leave a single drop of his own blood? Or hair? Or fibers? Or prints? That has Bundy all over it.”

  “That raises another point,” I say. “I think we need to give some thought to how it was done. Because you’re right, it seems impossible for there to be that much blood in such a small, enclosed space and there not to be a single piece of evidence.”

  He nods and seems to drift off in thought about it.

  “I saw a note in the book that made reference to some other crimes committed that night,” I say.

  He nods. “Only one was possibly related, but we never found any connection. An old farm truck was stolen from the Carter’s farm, which was not too far from the field where Janet’s car was found.”

  “How far?”

  He shrugs. “Couple of miles, I think.”

  “So Janet fakes her own death, leaves her car, steals the Carter’s truck, and leaves town.”

  He shakes his head. “Truck didn’t leave town. We found it back in town. Just parked on the side of the road. Nothing wrong with it. No damage. Not even much of the gas used. Most likely just a joyride, but it was close enough to the party, the field where the car was found, the Gulf station where Bundy was, to make me look into it and make a note about it in the book. We even tested it for prints but it had been wiped clean—which was suspicious but didn’t tell us anything.”

  “I keep coming back to the possibility that it was staged,” I say. “Either by Janet or someone else. The truck could be part of that. If someone stood outside the empty car and splashed buckets of blood inside it would explain why there is no evidence at all that a killer was ever in there with her.”

  He nods. “We looked at that possibility back then, but the ME said there were definitely signs of arterial spray, meaning her throat was slit in the car. Can’t fake that.”

  I think about it. That certainly gives the greatest credence to the crime scene not being made to look like something it’s not.

  “We also have some of her prints in blood in the car,” he adds. “So we know definitively that not only was someone attacked in the car, but that it was her.”

  I nod and think about it some more. There are many things that can be faked and or staged, but certain things just can’t be.

  “Back to Bundy,” he says. “He often took his victims with him.”

  “Yeah, but he usually abducted them in one location, killed them in another, then interfered with them in another.”

  “Interfered?”

  I shrug. “Seemed better and shorter than saying ‘played with and raped repeatedly.’”

  “So this time, Bundy killed his victim in her car instead of his,” he says. “Killed her as part of abducting her. Don’t forget how much he had disintegrated by this point. He was no longer the suave predator luring coeds to his car. He was the vicious attacker of sleeping women in their beds and a child from her elementary school.”

  Anna’s brake lights come on and I tap mine, searching the road in front of her to see if there’s something in it, but it’s just for a moment and she continues at the same speed.

  I call her anyway.

  “Everything okay up there?” I say.

  “All good. How about back there? How’s your dad feeling?”

  “He’s okay. Just a little tired and sore. But he must not be feeling too poorly. He’s building a hell of a case against Bundy.”

  “I want to hear it tonight,” she says. “Along with all the other details of your day.”

  “Just as soon as I hear yours.”

  “I can tell you mine now. Washed Mom’s dishes. Cleaned her house. Cooked lunch. Hung out and listened to her and Dad tell me how pretty and perfect Taylor is.”

  “Save some of that cleaning for me,” I say. “I’ll try to get there early enough to help with things. I can also bring pizza or something for dinner. Don’t forget you’re still on vacation.”

  When I’m off the phone, Dad picks up right where he left off.

  “The fact that we haven’t found a body in all this time lets you know it wasn’t an amateur. This guy knew what he was doing. No evidence. No body. No motive. How many other cold cases around the country right now are similar because Bundy did those too?”

  “His closest biographers say at least ten but his defense attorney says over seventy.”

  “Either way this could be one of them,” he says. “Then there’s the Visqueen plastic with her blood on it. Have you gotten to that in the book?”

  I shake my head.

  “You will. It’s in there. We found sheets of plastic with Janet’s blood type on it up close to the interstate. I think Bundy wrapped her body in plastic to transport it and some of it fell out of his car when he was loading it or some of it blew out of the window when he was getting back on the interstate.”

  “No question it’s possible,” I say. “I can see why you—”

  “I haven’t even gotten to the best part yet,” he says.

  “Sorry. Thought that was all.”

  “Remember when Bundy was first arrested in Utah? Another time when a routine traffic violation got him pulled over. Utah Highway Patrol pulled him over in a Salt Lake City suburb.”

  I nod, trying to remember the details.

  “The patrol officer saw that the Volkswagen’s front passenger seat was missing, so he searched the car.
Remember what he found?”

  I do, but only vaguely. But it doesn’t matter anyway. The question is rhetorical.

  “A ski mask. Another mask made out of part of a pair of pantyhose. A crowbar. Handcuffs. Trash bags. Rope. An ice pick. Found what he thought was a burglary kit. But it was actually the kill kit of the most brutal bastard he would ever meet.”

  He pauses a moment and I glance over at him.

  “In the woods bordering the pasture where Janet’s car was abandoned we found similar items in a trash bag—and there were traces of Janet’s blood both on items inside the bag and on the bag itself.”

  25

  Glenn Barnes looks like a small-town sheriff from a hit TV show. Young but not too young. Tall, muscular, tough, with a military-style haircut, slow, sincere manner, and clear but penetrating blue eyes.

  He’s polite, laid back, comfortable to be around.

  He’s cordial to me and respectful to Dad as he welcomes us into his office.

  After an offer of coffee and a very small amount of small talk, we get down to it.

  “I’m sure y’all understand the position I’m in here,” he says. “Especially you, Sheriff Jordan.”

  “I not only understand it,” Dad says, “I appreciate it, and don’t want to do anything that causes you any aggravation or heartburn.”

  “I appreciate that. Now, let me give you the official line so we can get down to the real deal. Okay?”

  We both nod, though mine is superfluous. He’s only really looking at and talking to Dad.

  “Anyone coming into our county and conducting any kind of investigation is always told the same thing. You’re free to do so as long as you don’t interfere with any of our ongoing investigations, don’t harass our citizens, and share anything you uncover with us.”

  “We understand,” Dad says, “and don’t have any intentions of doing anything else.”

  “Now, just between us,” Barnes says. “I realize this was your case at one point. I also know that you two have a great deal of investigative experience between you. I also want this case cleared, and I don’t care who does it.”