Blood Ties (John Jordan Mysteries Book 16)

by Michael Lister

  When we finally relent and retreat to our own bedroom, we ignore the bags waiting to be unpacked and collapse into our bed.

  “You know the only thing better than being away on honeymoon with you?” I say.

  “What’s that?”

  “Being in our home with our girls with you.”

  She smiles. “I’m so happy to be home.”

  We had spent the past few nights on some pretty plush hotel beds, but none could compare to our bed in our room in our home.

  I slide over toward her and we meet in the middle of our firm kingsize. She lays her head on my chest as I put my arm around her, caressing every part of her I can reach.

  Outside the rain tings on the metal of the window unit and thumps the soggy soil of our backyard. Inside, we both nearly simultaneously release a contended sigh.

  “Did you talk to Sam or Daniel?” I ask.

  Sam Michaels, an FDLE agent I had worked with and Daniel’s wife, had been staying with us while he was away. She had suffered a gunshot wound to the head on a case we had worked together, and though her prognosis had not been good, she’s surprising everyone but those of us who know her best with her miraculous recovery.

  Since Daniel’s return, and because of his own need for healing and care, they have both been staying with us, though they are scheduled to move out this week.

  “He was doing PT with Sam when I got home,” Anna says. “I just waved and said hey but didn’t really get to talk to them.”

  “What’d Dad have to say?” I ask. “Everything go well with them?”

  Dad and his new wife Verna had kept Johanna and Taylor for us while we were away. Having surprised us with the announcement that they had eloped shortly before our wedding, they have been married only marginally longer than we have.

  “Everything went extremely well. Normal stuff. Taylor ran a little bit of a fever—probably getting another tooth—and Johanna has a bit of a cough. But the far more interesting thing is where I found them.”

  “Oh yeah?” I ask. “Where’s that?”

  “Well it wasn’t at their house.”

  “Really?”

  “They were here. Jack and Verna came here to help Daniel with Sam.”

  “What happened to Merrill and Za?”

  “That’s the even more interesting part,” she says.

  “We inspired them to run off and get married?” I ask.

  “Negatory. How’d your talk with Reggie go?”

  “Fine. She’s better. Just worried about how the case has been handled and if we can salvage it.”

  “That poor, poor child,” she says. “There’s some unimaginable evil in this world, but there’s nothing more evil than . . .”

  I nod and pull her even closer to me, feeling certain that she’s doing what I’m doing—thinking about our own girls being brought up in such a world.

  “Who does Arnie think did it?” she says.

  “The dad. Trace.”

  “That’s what I figured,” she says. “This should be interesting for you.”

  “Whatta you mean?”

  “That’s where Merrill went,” she says. “Trace’s defense team hired him to investigate and provide protection.”

  After leaving corrections and doing some community organizing work and mentoring, Merrill had started his own security and investigations agency, and though he had provided security for a few celebrities on Panama City Beach and Black’s Island before, this would be by far his most high profile case to date.

  “Really?” I say. “Trace already has an entire defense team? And Merrill is on it?”

  “You and Merrill ever been on the opposite sides of an investigation before?”

  4

  I find Daniel at the kitchen table.

  He’s eating a bowl of cereal.

  Sam is asleep in her hospital bed in the corner of the living room. Anna is asleep in our bed. The girls are asleep in their room. We alone are awake.

  The house is quiet and dim, the only illumination coming from the small light above the kitchen sink.

  I sit down across from Daniel and glance over his shoulder through the picture window to the wet front yard beyond.

  “Want some?” he asks, nodding toward the open box of cereal in front of him.

  His voice is soft, night-quiet.

  I shake my head. “Thanks. I’m sure there’s some real food around here somewhere if you’d rather have—”

  “This is fine,” he says. “Just wanted a little something before bed.”

  Bed for Daniel these days is our living room couch, which he has pulled next to Sam’s hospital bed.

  “How’re you feeling?” I ask, my voice low and a little dry.

  Anna and I had dozed off and I’m still a little groggy.

  He shrugs. “Not sure. Still sort of out of it.”

  He slides the cereal box over so it’s no longer directly between us.

  “Kinda numb,” he adds. “It’s still like I’m like way down inside my body, looking up, looking out from a distance. Disconnected. Kinda cut off.”

  I nod.

  Since returning to us, Daniel has been quiet, withdrawn, disoriented, lost.

  “Please don’t feel in a rush to leave,” I say. “Y’all are more than welcome here for as long as you need to be. Make sure you’re ready before you—”

  “Look at your living room,” he says. “It’s a disaster.”

  I turn and follow his gaze, looking over my shoulder at the rectangular room that resembles an open bay sick ward more than a residential living room.

  “Looks fine to me,” I say, turning back to toward him. “We love having y’all here and want y’all fully recovered before you . . .”

  “Thanks, John,” he says. “I can’t tell you how . . . I’ll never be able to thank you and Anna enough for all y’all’ve done for us.”

  “Just don’t rush.”

  “I really don’t know what’s wrong with me,” he says. “Why do I still feel so . . . off? Why can’t I remember more of what happened?”

  Since being back, Daniel has had very little memory of his time away, recalling only vague images and impressions.

  I’m sure drugs were used on him, but none were found in his system when he was tested while in the hospital for dehydration and observation when he first returned.

  “Anything else come to you while we were gone?” I ask.

  He shrugs. “Few things, but . . . I can’t know if they’re memories or dreams or . . . hallucinations. Like the others . . . they’re unlike any memories I’ve ever had before.”

  I wait.

  Though there is still milk and cereal in it, he slides the bowl and carton of milk to the side next to the cereal box.

  “This time . . . I didn’t just remember Randa being there. There was a man too. But . . . I don’t know. I think I’m . . . I think it was a hallucination—then or now or both. He doesn’t seem real.”

  If Randa had help it would explain how she had been able to do all she has—including taking and controlling Daniel.

  “Did he seem threatening? Dangerous?”

  He shakes his head.

  “Do you have a sense of his relationship with Randa?”

  He shakes his head again. “He’s all distorted in my foggy, addled images of him. They both are. It’s like one of those old B films, the low budget black and white pictures that had the scenes that depicted a guy on a bad drug trip—everything doubled and floating, voice distorted, images demented. It’s like that. Feels like it can’t be real.”

  I nod.

  It has stopped raining now, but raindrops continue to fall from the trees, catching the light of streetlamps and glistening as they do.

  “Tell you what is real,” he says.

  “What’s that?”

  “The guilt I feel,” he says, glancing over at Sam.

  A gust of wind ripples through the huge oak limbs and the shaking leaves release a torrent of rainfall beneath the branches.
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  “Why guilt, do you think?” I ask.

  Given the manner in which Daniel disappeared, we had wondered if he had perhaps gone willingly. Had he found himself attracted to Randa and wanting to escape a life of caring for his invalid wife for what seemed at the time the rest of their lives?

  He shrugs and frowns and looks down as his eyes begin to glisten. “Not sure exactly. Just . . . leaving Sam when she’s . . . or was the way she was.”

  “Did you leave her?” I ask.

  It’s the most pointed question I had asked him since his return.

  He looks up at me, his eyes narrowing into a question.

  “Of course I—what do you mean?”

  “Did you leave her or were you taken?”

  “You askin’ if I went willingly?” he says.

  “Did you?”

  “You know I didn’t know it was Randa at the time,” he says.

  I nod.

  “We connected, really hit it off. I was lonely and she was so . . . smart and energetic and so . . . alive. And my wife was . . . mostly dead.”

  I nod again. “I know.”

  “I was attracted to her, pulled to her in a way I hadn’t been to anyone other than Sam,” he says.

  “I don’t know anyone who wouldn’t understand the temptation,” I say.

  “But I never, not for one moment, ever considered doing anything that would betray my vows to my Sam or dishonor her in anyway. And it certainly never crossed my mind to leave her. Not even for a nanosecond during one of those random crazy thoughts that come out of nowhere and mean nothing.”

  I nod and smile, and before I know what I’m doing I’m standing up and moving to his side of the table and wrapping him up in a hug.

  As I do, he breaks down and begins to sob.

  Unable to be quiet any longer, he sobs so loudly it wakes Sam up, and I release him and he rushes over to her, leaning down on her bed so she can hold him as he cries.

  As I ease out of the room to give them the privacy this moment demands, I can see that she’s sobbing too—probably the most therapeutic experience either of them have had since their long nightmare began on a dirt road down near Crystal River a little over two years ago.

  5

  I crawl into bed next to Anna physically exhausted and emotionally drained.

  She rolls on her side and backs up toward me and I fall asleep in my favorite position—spooning the woman I love.

  Dreams come immediately.

  Vivid, lifelike, disturbing dreams of JonBenét Ramsey dance across the stage of my subconscious in colorful, feathery, sequined pageant dresses.

  Other girls and mothers waiting in the wings.

  As a hooded-eyed child molester in the audience licks his lips, the tip of his too-small tongue dryly darting out of his misshapen mouth.

  Jump cut to December 25, 1996 in a rambling remodeled sprawling house on 15th Street in Boulder, Colorado. A lit Christmas tree in every room. The remnants of Santa’s visit still strewn about the house. Quiet. Peaceful.

  Silent Night. Holy Night. Moments before a vicious assault, a violent brutalization, sexual savagery, the death of beauty and innocence. And there’s nothing I can do about it.

  I can feel myself trying to wake up, but I’m unable to escape the noxious nightmare.

  Scream of a child.

  Helpless.

  She is helpless.

  I am helpless to help her.

  I wake in a cold sweat, racing pulse in my throat, feeling frustrated and embarrassingly powerless.

  Sliding my arm out from beneath Anna, I slowly and quietly roll out of the bed, slip on my shorts and t-shirt on the floor and steal out of the room.

  The first thing I do is look in on the girls, lingering a few moments to listen to the sweet sound of their breathing.

  Then, padding down the dark hallway, I ease into the kitchen, glancing over to see Daniel and Sam sleeping in the living room.

  Slipping over to the cabinet and removing a glass, I fill it with water from the tap and stand at the sink sipping it while attempting to slow my breathing and heart rate.

  Through the wide window I can see the wet world, puddles on the driveway, standing pools in the front yard, oak leaves glistening, the window itself dotted with raindrops.

  Up beyond the old Wewa Hardware building, across Highway 22, the lights of the laundromat shine extremely bright in the dark night.

  The building was once and for many, many years a convenience store. Now it holds a fishing tackle and bait store called The Fishing Shack on one side and a no name 24 hour laundromat on the other.

  When the owner remodeled the building into two store fronts and rented them out to the two new businesses, he had installed the brightest lights in town beneath the cement covering of the small front porch—lights that actually partially illuminate our front yard nearly a block away.

  As I’m wondering what the electric bill must run, I see him.

  Sitting there inside the building, a scope in his hand, is Anna’s ex-husband Chris Taunton.

  I take a step back from the window, duck down and attempt to watch him without him seeing me.

  Holding a magazine as if he’s just waiting for his clothes to finish drying, he occasionally lowers it and brings up a rifle scope out of his jacket pocket and glasses our home with it.

  Stepping into the mud room and slipping my shoes on, I walk out through the garage and run across my neighbors’ backyard.

  The grass of my neighbor’s mostly neglected yard is high and wet. I run along the still and dark Lake Julia, random raindrops fall from limbs and leaves.

  In a few moments, I reach Highway 22 down near the Dixie Dandy—the small grocery store, gas station, and deli in the old, converted, dilapidated patchwork building on the same lake as our home.

  I’m far enough down so he can’t see me.

  I cross the empty highway. American flags adorning the light poles lining both sides of the street hang damp and motionless above me.

  The small, sodden town appears abandoned, stores closed, streets empty. The July night is hot and humid. There is no wind, no movement. Only the red and yellow flash of the traffic signal at the intersection of 22 and Main.

  Running along the small unpaved alleyway, I come up on the side of the building, around the ice machines humming in the quiet night, and along the front porch.

  Standing behind a Coke machine situated between the two storefronts, I am able to observe Chris without him seeing me.

  He’s the only person in the laundromat. For all I can tell from here, he could be the only person on the planet.

  He’s seated on a black plastic chair in front of a bank of dryers. Beneath him the flecked and speckled tile floor is the same one the convenience store had forty years ago.

  I step over and snatch open the door, the fresh, clean smell of detergent and fabric softener wafting over me.

  He jumps up.

  “Sit down,” I say.

  He holds his hands out in a placating gesture. “Okay, okay,” he says. “Don’t shoot.”

  He’s always making statements like that. It’s just more ironic tonight since I’m in shorts and a t-shirt without a weapon of any kind—or even a cellphone.

  Overhead white ceiling fans turn slowly, out of sync with the spinning dryers behind him.

  “I can’t even do my laundry anymore without being harassed?” he says.

  “This isn’t harassment and you know it. Hand me the scope.”

  His eyes flash wide for a split second, but then he recovers and shrugs and shakes his head. “I use Tide to wash my clothes. If you need mouthwash to hide the liquor on your breath before you go home to my wife and child, ’fraid I can’t help you.”

  “You know I wasn’t talkin’ about mouthwash,” I say.

  I extend my hand toward him.

  “Give me the rifle scope you’ve been using to watch our home with now,” I say.

  He shakes his head. “I don’t have a—”<
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  “Why’re you wearing a jacket in July?” I ask. “It’s hard to imagine a more hot or humid night.”

  He shrugs again. “I’m cold natured. That a crime now too?”

  “Do you have a weapon to go along with that scope or just the scope?” I ask.

  “I’m unarmed,” he says. “You think I’d be stupid enough to walk around your town with a gun? Not that it matters much. Y’all can just plant one on me after you shoot me, can’t you?”

  “Tell you what,” I say. “All I want to do is sit down beside you and have a little talk. That’s it. But before I do, you’re going to take off your jacket and hang it on that rack over there. Okay? That’s not too much to ask. Besides, think about how much more comfortable you’ll be.”

  He studies me.

  I hold out my hands and turn around. “Look,” I say. “I’m unarmed. Don’t even have my phone on me. I just want to talk.”

  He frowns and nods, then stands, shrugs out of his coat, and hangs it on the galvanized rack a few feet away.

  When he sits down again, I sit beside him.

  “I’ve worked with a lot of criminals over the years,” I say. “A lot. Both inside and out of prison.”

  “That’s nothing to brag about.”

  “The ones who never learn, never change, are the ones who justify and rationalize everything they do and truly believe themselves to be victims while they are victimizing others.”

  “You should write a book,” he says. “A murdering drunk home wrecker gives advice to criminals.”

  “Thing is,” I say, “you got away with murder.”

  “I’ve never gotten away with anything in my entire goddamn life,” he says. “And now I’ve lost everything. Check that. I had everything taken from me—most of it by you, the motherfucker dispensing advice in the laundromat in the middle of the night.”

  “You could turn your life around,” I say. “It’s not too late. You could take the opportunities you’ve been given and make a new start.”

  “Opportunities?” he says, his voice rising. “I never realized just how fuckin’ funny you are, John. When you lose your current job, you should consider standup.”