Blood Stone

by Michael Lister

  He should have realized that before now. If he had, and if he had let his other offerings go around this same spot and placed them all within the huge crooks and crevices of the carving no one would yet know what he was doing and he would still be able to worship God and offer his sacrifices out of the sight of the ignorant, the unrepentant, and the unregenerate.

  For when you pray, do not as the hypocrites do in public in order to be seen and heard, but pray to God in secret. Don’t let your left hand know what your right hand is doing.

  He wasn’t sure how long this new hiding place could go undetected—especially since so many were already watching the mountain—but he’d be grateful for every second that his sacred sacrifice was just between him and God.

  50

  For the next few days, we made very little forward progress on the case.

  A lot was happening—the arrival of the FBI, the difficult and time-consuming work of getting them briefed on everything that had happened so far, the surveillance of Patrick Dorsey, the following up of tips and leads, the continued investigations into Benton Weston, Randy North, and Teddy Sears, and the sting operation that had Erin out running around the mountain each night and a rotating group of us following her.

  Activity. Movement. No forward progress.

  It was early evening on a particularly cold night in early November. I had a couple of hours before I had to go out and follow Erin around in the dark park, hoping the madman would jump out of the dormant brown brush and attack her.

  While I waited, I sat in the lobby of the Stone Mountain Inn and worked on the case.

  I was in the lobby because Summer was working and I wanted to be close to her and because I had spent too much time alone in the empty hotel room lately.

  Guests came and went—checking in, checking out the paintings hanging in the wide, curving stairwell, asking for various things—directions, extra towels, additional linens—or to complain about an odor or the discomfort or dirtiness of their room.

  In between, we talked and flirted and even kissed, but it was way too early in the evening for a trip up the staircase for a quickie on the floor by the french doors. I did, however, remain hopeful that perhaps when my sting operation had concluded later tonight we might be able to.

  I found Summer irresistible, my desire for her insatiable, and the longer I was with her the deeper I was falling for her.

  She was so cute in her little hotel uniform and blazer, and I couldn’t look at it without remembering the times she had taken it off for me or at least opened it to expose the parts of her I was most trying to gain access to.

  Nothing about her seemed forty-something—not her energy or body or demeanor or dress. She was the perpetual mature teenage girl quickly becoming the girl of my dreams, and the more time I spent with her the more Jordan Moore began to ever so slightly fade, her grasp on me ever so slightly loosen.

  Summer and I had spent a lot of time together lately, and during all that time I had only discovered a few annoyances—one of which she was doing right now.

  During and especially after drinking a drink—sweet tea, Coke, Sprite, whatever—she chomped on her ice with an enthusiasm and aggression like I had never quite seen before. The closest thing I could compare it to was the way some moviegoers chewed on popcorn once the lights went down.

  As I attempted to roll the case around in my mind I found what she was doing with her ice distracting and irritating.

  I continued to shake up the various elements of the case like dice in a cup, rolling them around and letting them tumble out in different combinations.

  The rope. What about the rope?

  The victims. Have we missed anything they have in common?

  How is he choosing them? Why does he go for this type?

  How did he get off the mountain when we had it surrounded?

  Why does he sacrifice them? How did that particular psychopathology develop?

  What does he do with their things—their clothes, shoes, purses, jewelry?

  All the while Summer, in between helping guests and answering the phone, chomp, chomp, chomping on ice.

  Why was the rope wet in certain spots? From what?

  Am I wrong about him making sacrifices? If so, what’s he doing?

  Who are you? What do you look like? What mask are you hiding behind?

  I thought through everything Benton Weston and Patrick Dorsey said during their interviews.

  “Could you do that a little quieter, please?” I asked.

  “What?” Summer said, totally unaware of what I was referring to.

  “Chomping on the ice,” I said. “I don’t see how you haven’t broken a molar by now.”

  “Sorry. Didn’t realize I was doing it. Was it loud?”

  “Just a little. Thank you.”

  “You getting anywhere?”

  I shook my head. “No. Not—”

  And then—lightning bolt.

  “What is it?” she said. “You’ve figured something out, haven’t you?”

  All of sudden, when I was thinking about something else, a moment of clarity and vision, the possibility of an insight.

  The rope. The large, intermittent wet spots near the top of it.

  I wasn’t sure if it was correct or not, but I saw a solution, an explanation as clearly and vividly as I saw Summer’s smile when she realized that she had been chomping ice loudly without realizing it.

  Large blocks of ice frozen around the top of the rope, hooked around the rocks and trees, melting as the day broke and the temperature rose, causing Daphne to plunge to her death.

  Is it really possible? How would he do it? How would he get the rope and blocks of ice to the top of the mountain?

  If I was right about it, it would explain why we didn’t catch him even though we thought we had him surrounded. He was long gone by the time we were even aware Daphne was up there.

  “Tell me,” she said.

  I jumped up. “I’ll tell you when I get back tonight, but whatever you do . . . don’t ever stop eating ice. For the rest of your life chomp it just as loudly as you like.”

  51

  There was a lot of chatter and activity on our radios tonight—more overlap between the surveillance of Patrick Dorsey and the sting operation involving Erin running than we had ever had before.

  “He’s moving again,” Joe said.

  “Got ’im,” Walt said.

  They had followed Dorsey from his house to a little restaurant in the town of Stone Mountain where he had eaten alone and now he was on the move again—presumably back home.

  “Must be a special night,” Joe said. “All this time of followin’ him . . . never seen him eat out at a restaurant. Not once.”

  Frank and I were following Erin as she ran along the south side of the mountain near the old quarry.

  It was just the two of us following her and I was uncomfortable with us being in the same vehicle, but I was happy for the chance to ask him about Sylvia and tell him about my theory about the ice blocks.

  “How would he get them and the girls and all the other stuff up the mountain?” he said.

  “I’ve been thinking about that,” I said. “He could be driving up. There’s an old service road. They used it when they carved the monument and when they built the summit building. Still use it. One of the park police told me as long as it wasn’t wet he could have an ambulance to the top of the mountain in eight minutes.”

  “And if it’s raining?”

  “It’s too slick and slippery to use at all. No traction.”

  “It was wet the morning Daphne died,” he said.

  “Maybe he did it before it rained. But he could also be using a wheelbarrow or some other cart or even a small vehicle—a motorcycle maybe.”

  He seemed to think about it for a moment. “No one would question a maintenance man on a vehicle or with a wheelbarrow.”

  I nodded. “The other thought I had is that he’s making two trips,” I said. “He takes all or
some of the supplies up and leaves them hidden, then comes back down to get his victim.”

  “It was cold enough that the blocks of ice wouldn’t melt much while they sat up there and waited for him to return.”

  It was dark and cold and Erin seemed to be jogging more slowly than in the past, her movements more stiff, less fluid, and I was sure she was just as exhausted as the rest of us—and far more physically fatigued.

  “We should probably make it an early night,” I said. “Erin looks exhausted.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “We could all do with a little extra sleep.”

  The radio was turned down some, but Joe and Walt had been talking on it in the background during our entire conversation. Now Joe was saying, “Looks like he’s headed back home.”

  “Roger that,” Walt said. “You got him if he turns off Main Street. I’ll keep driving straight and circle around.”

  “We’ve had some other developments,” Frank said. “Quite a few. Not sure what they all mean, but I’d like us to meet with Ernestine and the FBI agent in charge tomorrow and see if we can’t make sense of it.”

  “What is it?”

  “A few things. Bud went to see Stan Levinson, Daphne’s camera man, and was very troubled by some of what he said or what he refused to answer. He doesn’t have an alibi for the night Daphne was murdered and Bud said his explanation of why he wasn’t with her was essentially nonexistent. Wants to get him in for a formal interview, which is fine, but I want us to be prepared so we have the very best chance at getting what we need.”

  I nodded and thought about it.

  “Do you think he could be the killer?” he asked.

  I shrugged. “Certainly possible, though it’s just as likely if not more so that he’s a copycat. Maybe he wanted Daphne dead for some reason and made it look like the Stone Cold Killer. Who knows? Be good to talk to Ernie and the others about it.”

  “This other thing . . .” he began. “Well, before I get to that . . . Benton Weston is back in the country and has been longer than we realized. In fact, it’s possible he never left.”

  “What?”

  “It’s very confusing,” he said, “but . . . his dad has essentially the same name . . . and it looks now like it was his dad who was gone or either they both were but the son came back before the dad did and we thought he was still gone when it was the dad. I don’t know, but—”

  “Was he back before Daphne was killed?”

  “Looks like it,” he said. “Thing is . . . we can’t even talk to him. We can only talk to his attorney. We’d have to arrest him to talk to him and I want us to be damn sure it’s him before we do that.”

  “But knowing he was here or possibly was . . . we can take a closer look at him.”

  “Which is what we’re going to do starting tomorrow,” he said.

  “Look forward to that,” I said.

  “The other thing is . . .”

  “There’s more?” I asked, my voice rising.

  “Yeah, and this last one is . . . You’re the only one I’m telling this one to. I hope this is nothing. I really do, but . . . there’s this speed dating thing like once a month. It moves to different places all over the city. The women sit at the tables and the men rotate and they talk for a few minutes, then move to the next. It’s changed names a few times, but it’s the same thing and it moves around the city, so . . . it took us a while to find it. It was one of the GBI agents I have sifting through the victims’ lives that found it. All four victims had done it at some point.”

  “You sure?”

  He nodded. “And . . . last spring . . . Daphne Littleton did a special report on it, so was actually at one or two of the events.”

  “Which means her camera man was,” I said.

  “Yeah, I guess it does.”

  “But some of our other suspects may have been too,” I said. “What if Benton lied about how he met Shelly or what if Patrick Dorsey has done it?”

  He nodded again, but it wasn’t enthusiastically and I could tell something was bothering him. “Yes, we need to do all that, but . . . and this is the part that only you and I know for now . . . it was at one of these speed dating events that Walt met his girlfriend.”

  “Really?”

  “Unfortunately.”

  “Damn,” I said. “Damn. Damn. Damn.”

  “Yep.”

  “Damn. Damn.”

  “Exactly. So . . . tomorrow’s gonna be a big day—may even be the day we break the case, so we should call it a night.”

  I nodded, knowing that I wouldn’t be able to sleep.

  Frank picked up his radio and spoke into it, “Erin, you about ready to call it a night?”

  “Would like to make it an early night,” she said, “but let’s give it a little bit longer. Make it worth all the setup and everything.”

  “You just tell us when.”

  “Will do.”

  When he returned the radio to the seat beside him, I said, “I’ve been thinking about something else too. I think it’s possible that he only used the ice stunt in the Daphne Littleton murder. Knew everyone was watching. Knew there was no way he could get down without getting caught if he was up there when she was released.”

  “You’re probably right,” he said.” Though . . . could be that he likes to watch them fall from some vantage point below, set up beneath the mountain with binoculars—or even a video camera so he can watch it over and over and relive it. Fuel the fantasy.”

  I nodded and thought about it. He was right, and the sophistication of his thinking and the level of understanding and insight into how the killer might act or what he might do showed me just how much I had to learn.

  “It would let him be with the rest of us,” I said. “Like Walt was.”

  “God, I hope it’s not him.”

  I then told him about Walt appearing beside us as we approached the wooded area where Daphne’s camera was found. “Seemed far too fast for him to be up there if he had started at the bottom.”

  “You sure that’s him?” Joe said on the radio. “I don’t think that’s him.”

  “You sure?” Walt said.

  “We’ll know for sure when he gets out of the—that’s not him. Repeat it’s not him. We do not have eyes on suspect. Repeat we do not have eyes on Dorsey.”

  “You sure?” Walt said. “Damn sure him when he left the house.”

  “He must’ve switched with someone at the restaurant. Frank, what do we do? It’s not him. What do we do?”

  As Frank reached for his radio, I looked up to check on Erin and saw the last of her disappearing into the wooded area next to where she had been running.

  52

  “Erin,” I yelled into my radio. “Erin.”

  “Where’d she go?” Frank asked. “Was she—”

  I raced up to the spot where she had disappeared, jammed the car into Park, and jumped out, gun in one hand, flashlight and radio held awkwardly in the other.

  Without waiting for Frank, I ran into the woods near the spot where I had last seen Erin.

  It was thick and dark and I had to move far more slowly than I wanted to.

  The small beam of my light bounced about erratically, illuminating random spots and patches of ground and tree trunk and pine straw and hay-colored underbrush.

  From somewhere back by the car Frank yelled something that may have been, “John, wait,” but I couldn’t be sure.

  I thought I could hear panting and footfalls up ahead, but I couldn’t be sure about that either.

  Walt and Joe continued to talk on the radio until Frank explained what was going on and told them to get over here and call in more backup.

  I turned down my radio even more and tried to concentrate, sweeping the beam of the flashlight and the barrel of my gun all around me as I proceeded.

  I realized I hadn’t even remembered to look for footprints and so began searching the ground around me for them.

  There were none.

  Which meant I h
ad already gone off in a different direction than they had.

  I swung around to backtrack.

  As I did, I lost my footing, tripped over an exposed root in the cold earth and went down.

  I managed to hold onto my weapon, but had to drop my light and radio to use my left hand to catch myself.

  Reaching for my light and radio, I heard Erin scream.

  Jumping up and grabbing my light, I took off in the direction of the sound—or the direction I thought it had come from.

  I had gone no more than ten feet before I ran into a low-hanging oak limb.

  The limb struck me on the right side of my forehead and knocked me down.

  Blood began trickling down into my right eye. I tried to stand as I pawed at the blood and realized just how dazed I was.

  When I made it to my feet, the earth beneath me and the forest around me were spinning rapidly and I had to spread my legs and extend my arms to keep from falling down again.

  “GUN,” Erin yelled.

  “You’re a fuckin’—” Dorsey said.

  “Cop,” Erin said. “And you’re under arrest.”

  I walked toward the sound, squinting to see out of my left eye and trying to get my bearings as I waited for my wits to return and my legs to start cooperating.

  “Stop,” Erin said. “You’re under—”

  A shot was fired, its report echoing through the cold quiet of the night.

  Something moved to my right.

  I turned in that direction and could see Dorsey running toward me, gun up.

  I fired two quick shots as I dropped behind the base of a small tree for cover.

  He didn’t return fire and I heard him hit the ground.

  My heart was pounding so hard but I couldn’t tell if it was that or the cold that was making my torso quake.

  After a quick but deep intake of breath, I wiped blood from my eye, leaned out the side of the tree, shone the beam of the flashlight around, searching for Dorsey.

  When the small circle of light finally found the body it wasn’t that of Patrick Dorsey.

  I had shot Frank.