Blood Ties (John Jordan Mysteries Book 16)

by Michael Lister

  “Everything you’re doing is self-destructive,” I say. “I know you wish me ill. And I’m sure there are others you’re hoping to harm, but the end of the road is your own destruction—no matter who else you injure or kill along the way.”

  “Please look at me with a straight face and tell me you care about me,” he says.

  “I care about my wife—the woman you tried to kill,” I say.

  “I never tried to—”

  “I care about her.”

  “She was my wife at the time,” he says.

  “I care about your child—evidently more than you do.”

  “Why do you think I’m here?” he says, his voice rising again. “It’s because I love them both that I’m sitting here watching your stupid house. That’s my family over there in that house. Mine. Not yours.”

  “I was trying to appeal to your own sense of self-preservation,” I say. “Trying to get you to see that no matter who else you harm, you’re going to inflict the most pain upon yourself. Call it care—for you or for those in your wake.”

  “My family. Mine. I sit here all alone in the middle of the night in this piece of shit Podunk town and spy on my fuckin’ family because you stole them away from me.”

  “Okay,” I say. “But ask yourself this. When I got shot a little while back . . . if that had been fatal . . . if I had died and was out of the way . . . you and Anna would be back together, you, her, and Taylor would be one big happy family?”

  6

  “I know everyone blames me, “Andy is saying, “but I don’t know what else I could’ve done.”

  Andy Finch is a large, soft man with thinning blondish hair and flat blue eyes. He was the on-call deputy on Cape San Blas when the call came in and was the first to respond to the scene.

  Because Cape San Blas is relatively small, only one deputy is assigned there during the season. During the offseason, Cape San Blas shares a deputy assigned to other parts of the area.

  “I did everything by the book for what it looked like it was,” he says, “and every one of these damn Monday morning quarterbacks blaming me for what happened would’ve done the same things. No, that’s not true. Most of ’em wouldn’t’ve done half of what I did.”

  I nod. “I’m not here to blame you. I know how fluid and difficult these situations can be. I had something similar happen when I was a patrol officer in Stone Mountain.”

  Wanting Andy as relaxed and unguarded as possible, I’m meeting with him on his day off away from the department. We’re standing beneath an enormous oak tree in the front yard of the Methodist church on Main Street where Andy has been mowing the grass. In fact, he’s still sitting on the large yellow zero turn mower at the moment, the motor ticking and clicking as it cools.

  “You did?” he says.

  I nod. “So I understand, but it’s not my job to evaluate what you did or why. I’m not here to second guess or criticize you. And nothing you say will jam you up.”

  Beneath his large frame, the mower looks smaller than it actually is, and when he shifts his weight the seat groans and the metal structure below it moans.

  “The sheriff has asked me to look at everything we have so far,” I say. “Run a fresh pair of eyes over every aspect and element. That’s all I’m after.”

  He nods and seems to relax a little more.

  The morning traffic on Main is slow and intermittent—and about the only thing stirring any of the thick, humid air around.

  We’re in the midst of the wettest North Florida summer I can ever remember, and though it’s not raining at the moment, the sky is giving every indication that it will be again soon.

  “Will you take me through everything step by step?” I ask.

  He nods. “If that’s what the sheriff wants.”

  “Thank you.”

  Even beneath the shade of the giant oak limbs on an overcast morning the heat is stifling, and I can feel the sweat trickling down my brow and back.

  “The call came in,” he says. “Dispatch said some parents vacationing at Stars Haven woke up to find their daughter missing and a note that said she had run away. So I was responding to a runaway situation. And I did it by the book. Took me a few minutes to get in. I called up from the gate but no one answered for several minutes. At the time I didn’t see that as suspicious. Just figured they were looking for her or upset, out of sorts, or something.”

  Stars Haven is a small Gulf-front gated community with the largest and most luxurious mansions on the Cape.

  “We’re talking about people with a lot of money,” he says. “Staying in probably the safest place there is. I had no reason to suspect that this was anything other than what I was told it was. And it wasn’t just that I was told what it was. Everything I saw confirmed what I had been told.”

  From the black shingled roof of the tall redbrick church building, chimes began to play—the first chimes of the day, announcing it was ten in the morning. We waited for a moment for the loud gongs to finish so we could hear each other again.

  I glance around at the tall grass and feel bad for keeping Andy from his second job. With as much rain as we’ve been getting there’s no way he’s been able to keep up with his regular accounts.

  “I’ll be honest,” Andy says, “I was surprised by how young the couple was and how they looked.”

  “Whatta you mean?”

  “They looked too young and too . . . I don’t know exactly . . . to have enough money to stay in a mansion like the one they were in.”

  “Tell me more about how they looked.”

  “He’s black. She’s white. I learned later he’s some sort of rapper. And that’s what he looks like. Also didn’t know at the time that he’s an ex-con, but I could tell. He has the eyes. And the woman . . . well . . . between you and me . . . she looks sort of low rent. I don’t know. I’m just telling you my honest observations.”

  “That’s all I want. Don’t edit or clean it up. Just give me your unvarnished impressions and observations and tell me exactly what happened. I’m not recording this or even taking notes. This is just between us.”

  He nods. “The dad and the . . . woman. They’re not married and she’s not the girl’s mother. Not sure what to call her. Anyway, they meet me at the door. The woman, Ashley something, is holding the note. Soon as she sees me she hands it to me.”

  I had read the note this morning. A copy of it is in the murder book. It is written in a child’s hand that was matched to Mariah’s writing and reads: Dear Daddy, Ashley and Brett or to mean to me. I love them but cannot stay. I sorry for leaving you like this. Yall all will be happy with out me. Please do not look for me. I will be fine. I will miss. Love you, Mariah.

  “Told me they found it in her bedroom when they went in to wake her up,” he says. “Said she had put pillows under her covers the way kids do to make it look like they’re still in bed. I ask them to show me where they found it and told them I needed to do a full search of the house. They said they had already done that, but I told them I had to do it. I’m sure you know the statistics. Something like half of all kids who run away do so because of conflict with their parents, because the parents encouraged them to, or some sort of abuse—sexual, physical, verbal. I didn’t take their word for anything and I maintained a healthy suspicion about everything throughout. They asked me to hurry, said every moment counted and we had to get out there and find her. I told them I understood, but there was a certain way these things had to be done, a way they work best, that we did them for a reason, and I was going to do everything just by the book. So they took me to the girl’s bedroom—which took a while. I’ve never been in a house that big before. It was huge. I then searched it, which took a long time, room by room—every closet, every bathroom, every nook and cranny. They were impatient and rushing me the whole time, telling me I needed to call for more help and get officers on the streets searching for her. I followed procedure. I searched the entire house. You tell me, given what I knew at the time, did I do anyth
ing wrong?”

  I shake my head—something I would’ve done even if I thought he had done something wrong.

  “They kept saying, ‘we’re just here for the holiday. We’re renting this place. Mariah doesn’t know anyone. Doesn’t know her way around. We’ve got to get out there and find her.’ I then asked them for a picture. Have you seen her?”

  I nod.

  “She’s a very, very pretty little girl. Or was. ’Course mixed girls are always some of the most beautiful.”

  Many of the people around here—and I guess other places too—used the term mixed for biracial children, and though it’s extremely common and I truly believe most of them don’t mean it as a pejorative, I’ve never liked it. It’s probably just me, but the term seems to carry a negative connotation—almost like halfbreed—and I just don’t like it.

  But Andy’s right. Mariah Evers was a truly beautiful little girl. Flawless features. Mocha skin. Mesmerizing green eyes. Long, dark, thick wavy hair.

  “Now that I’ve finished a search of the house and have a picture of her, I go outside and began to look around the exterior of the house, through the neighborhood, and along the beach,” Andy says. “Since it’s a gated community, I figure she could easily still be inside it. Either way, I don’t think she could’ve gotten very far. ’Course I don’t know how long ago she left. Was it the night before or that morning? So . . . here’s what I was thinking. You tell me if I’m wrong. I do a search of the area—with the parents, the nanny, and the manager, who were also there. Maybe we find her and that’s the end of it. If we don’t, I have to figure out if we think she’s still in the area. If she is, I’ll get the K-9 unit out here and search for her, as well as get robocalls going in the neighborhood and surrounding area. If none of that works, then we escalate it and activate an Amber alert.”

  I nod. “Sounds solid to me,” I say, though I question how much time he’s taking with each step.

  “As we’re searching around, I see this kid watching us from the next mansion over. I mean . . . he’s not just watching, he’s . . . he’s not taking his eyes off us. And the way he’s looking . . . I know something’s up. I ask Miss Nadine, the nanny, who he is. She says his name is Caden Stevens that his family is vacationing here from Montgomery and that he and Mariah and Brett have played together some. He’s maybe eleven. Brett is ten, and Mariah is nine—but hell, from what I gather she’s more mature than both of them. Was, I mean. So . . . here again this is a judgement call, but I take the time to go over and talk to Caden. Have you seen Mariah this morning? Do you know where she is? Did you know what she was planning? And I can tell he’s lying to me. He knows something. So what do I do? Do I interview him, press him on what he knows? Do I call for the dogs? I did both.”

  “Hard for anyone to argue with that,” I say.

  “Oh, you’d be surprised. But anyway, I figured, hey, it’s gonna take a while to get the dogs out here—I mean out to the Cape. They’re coming all the way from Gulf CI, so I make the call and while I’m waiting for them, I interview little Caden.”

  7

  Large raindrops begin to fall and we dash over and take shelter on the front porch of the church. The porch, like the steps leading up to it, is smooth, bare concrete and holds up the tall white columns that hold up the high overhang.

  “Lived here all my life,” he says. “Never seen so much rain in one summer.”

  I nod and look out at the huge old bell mounted on the sign in the front with the Methodist cross and flame on it, the fat raindrops splatting hard on the black metal surface.

  “Caden’s a good kid,” he says. “You can tell. “Respectful. Good manners. Sort of quiet and shy. Has a gentleness about him. Wasn’t a formal interview or anything, so I just spoke to him outside of the house, kind of informal like. Didn’t ask the parents’ permission and they weren’t present at first. He told me he liked Mariah a lot. Enjoyed hanging with her a lot more than Brett. Swore he had no idea where she might be. I had a hard time telling, but I felt like he was telling the truth and keeping things from me. Figured if we didn’t find her soon, he’d warrant a second, more formal interview.”

  I thought the same thing while reading his report and noted that Caden hadn’t been interviewed again and had returned home with his family to Montgomery, Alabama.

  “I wasn’t even really finished talkin’ to him when I see Ashley and Trace over in their rental talking very animatedly into their phones. I tell Caden I’d like to talk to him again in a few minutes and walk over to see what’s going on with Trace and Ashley. When I ask what’s happening, Trace gives me nothing but attitude. Says I’m moving too slow, not taking it seriously. Said if he was white or Mariah wasn’t mixed I’d have my fat ass in gear. He was off the phone by now, but Ashley was still on. Told me she Googled what to do when a child goes missing and it said after reporting it to local law enforcement, call NCMEC and report it to them and that’s what she was doing.”

  NCMEC is the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

  “Said while she was doing that, he called his lawyer and publicist and had them contact the FBI and the media,” Andy says. “I felt like I had just stepped on a landmine and it was just a matter of time before it blew me to bits. I ask them to come back inside with me. I wanted to call Reggie and let her know what was going on before she saw it on her damn TV set. If I made a mistake it was here. After my little chat with Caden, he and his parents sort of followed me over to Trace’s and then a few other people gathered and when we went inside, they came in too. ’Course I didn’t know it was a crime scene. Didn’t know anything but that there was a little girl who left a note and ran away.”

  “There was no way for you to know it was a crime scene,” I say.

  He frowns, shrugs, and nods. “Since we had an hour until the dogs would arrive and all these people wanting to help, I told them to divide up in teams of two or three and start searching the area, beginning at Stars Haven and moving outward. While they did that, I called Reggie and told her what was going on. Even though she was on medical leave I knew she would want to know—given everything, including the money and fame of the dad involved—which is why I was gonna do it anyway, but with them calling the damn FBI and the media, I knew she had to know and the sooner the better.”

  I nod. “You were right to call her.”

  “She said I should’ve done it sooner.”

  I smile. “She’d have to be completely incapacitated not to want you to call as early as possible with something like that.”

  He shrugs. “Yeah, well . . . I called very early in the process.”

  I nod.

  “Anyway, so everybody’s searching as we wait for the dogs and more people arrive—some of Ashley’s family I think.”

  According to the murder book, Ashley Howard grew up very poor in Wewa—where most of her family still lives. At seventeen she got pregnant by Justin Harris, a young man from a wealthy family in Port St. Joe. The two had a short, tumultuous marriage, but had figured out a way to coparent pretty well over the years. In fact, Justin, who’s a real estate agent on the Cape, is who Trace and Ashley used to book their rental in Stars Haven.

  “Trace and his manager—an ex-con named Irvin Hunter who was staying in the house with him—kept berating me for not doing more, said they were gonna have my badge, questioned why I didn’t care more and concluded it was racial. Most of that came from the manager. Self-important prick. Trace . . . seemed, at least at times, genuinely upset and sort of lost, and others . . . like he was acting—saying and doing what he thought he should. I don’t know . . . take it for what it’s worth. That’s just my observation and we both know how often those can be wrong.”

  “Did the additional people—Ashley’s family and others—join in the search or . . .”

  “Ashley and Trace stayed at the house while the others searched. So did the manager and the nanny—and of course Brett was somewhere around. So when the family got there—and it was just th
e mother, a brother, and a sister—they stayed at the house with Ashley, didn’t join the search. ’Course they were all over the house. I just didn’t know enough at the time to keep them from . . . I wish I had treated it like a crime scene. I should have. I’m not sayin’ I shouldn’t, but . . . given what I knew, what I had been told and presented with . . . I made the best decisions I could.”

  “I know you did. So what happened next?”

  “Since we were just waiting I decided to make the most of the time and get as much information out of everyone as I could. Told them they could really help me by answering honestly and telling me anything they could think of. I asked about any conflict or problems between Mariah and anyone in the family. They said there was none. I reminded them of what her note said, and they said there had been an adjustment period since Ashley and Brett had been around more. Mariah got less of her daddy’s attention and Ashley took on a more parental role. But nothing major. Nothing to warrant any of this. What about Mariah’s mom, I asked. They said she has absolutely nothing to do with her, that she’s an addict and toxic person and lost custody back when Mariah was very small. Any other friends or family in the area she might go to? They said no. All her friends and family were in Atlanta. Everybody was on edge—even Ashley’s family that had just gotten there. Lot of nervous energy in the room. Tension. Lot of the interaction was intense—and not just with me, but with each other. I got the sense that Ashley’s family embarrassed her and she wished they weren’t there. Don’t think Trace wanted them there either. But Irvin, the manager, ran interference for him, and Trace kept leaving the living room where we were, disappearing for a while. Guess he was walking off his nervous energy or something. Anyway, wasn’t much interaction between him and Ashley’s family.”

  “How long was Trace gone at a time?” I ask.

  He shrugs. “Not too long. Longest time was probably ten minutes. Most of the time it was a lot shorter—like five or three. He wasn’t in there when the other note was found.”