“I want to cry every time I think about missing the first few years,” I say.
“I know in the long run it will be good for her.”
I’m not sure what she means by that or why she’d even say it, but I learned long ago not to take the bait. She is fishing for a reaction. I am not going to give her one.
“That’s what makes this so difficult,” she says. “That and I know how you’ll react.”
“What’re you talking about, Susan?” I say. “React to what?”
“Johanna and I are moving back to Atlanta.”
“What?”
“It’s time. I only moved to Tallahassee so Mom and Dad could help me with her while she was little. Now that she’s older . . . it’s time.”
“No.”
She nods. “Yes. I should’ve already done it. I’ve been dragging my feet. Why, I don’t know exactly, but . . .”
“Why’re you doing this?”
“It’s my home. I need to be there. I’ve sacrificed so much—for you, then her. Now it’s time for me to give myself a little something.”
The lack of self-awareness or unmitigated denial contained in that one statement is astonishing. Essentially a self-centered and often selfish person, Susan has made little to no sacrifices for anybody over the course of her entire life.
“If you need time for you,” I say, “to focus on yourself and take care of you, Johanna should live with us.”
“What? No. Absolutely not.”
“We could just reverse the arrangement we have now and—”
“No. We can’t. I can’t. I won’t.”
“We wouldn’t even have to meet,” I say. “I’ll drive the entire way both ways—bringing her and picking her up.”
“You’ll drive six hours both ways twice a weekend every weekend?” she says.
“Yes.”
“No. It’s not about . . . It has nothing to do with that. She needs her mom.”
“And her dad,” I say.
“She needs her mother more.”
“I don’t think so,” I say.
“Well, it’s true. Regardless of what you might think, or try to convince yourself of.”
“In our home she has two parents and a sibling who—”
“Anna is not her mother and never will be. I’m her mother. Me. No one else. I can’t believe you’d say that Anna is—”
“I didn’t say Anna’s her mother,” I say. “I said she has two parents and a sibling. It’s a good home for her. Would you at least consider letting her—”
“It’s out of the question. We’ll talk more about this later, figure out the details when you’re not so emotional and irrational.”
I start to say something but stop, refusing to take the bait.
“For now I just want to get her and go home,” Susan says. “I’ve got a lot to do to get ready.”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“For the move. I have to—”
“No. What do you mean get her? We’re supposed to meet tomorrow night. Why would you get her early—especially when you’re saying you have so much to do?”
“I’m just afraid that . . . I’m concerned that now that you know, you might do something stupid.”
“Like what?”
“Kidnap her or something.”
“Are you serious?”
“John, don’t forget we don’t have a custody agreement.”
“Sounds like we need one,” I say.
“Perhaps we do, but for now we don’t have one and you’re only seeing her as much as you are because I’m being generous and thinking about what’s best for my daughter. If you’re going to act like this, I’m not sure being around you right now is what’s best for her.”
“Act like what? I’m not acting like anything. Given the circumstances, I’m being extremely—”
“I’m done,” she says. “I can’t deal with you when you’re like this.”
“Are you okay?” Tommy asks.
I shake my head.
Susan is gone—and Johanna with her.
I have just returned from saying goodbye to her and am unable to hide how I’m feeling.
Anna, Michelle, and Tommy have been joined by Reggie and Merrick, and the five of them are sitting around a picnic table down by the lake. Taylor is asleep in her carrier on the table.
All around us the festival is fading, people packing up their booths, kids squeezing the last bit of fun out of their time on the ponies and the swings and playground equipment and in the bouncy castle.
“What was that about?” Anna asks. “Why’d she get her today instead of tomorrow?”
I tell her, not minding that the others hear.
“Oh, John,” Anna says, standing and hugging me. “I’m so sorry. But we knew this was coming and we know what to do.”
“I’ve never seen a daddy look at his little girl quite the way you do,” Michelle says. “Why would she do this?”
“I’ll tell you why,” Anna says. “When John showed up at her door, she thought he was there for her. She introduced him to his daughter, who she had hidden from him for three years, and agreed to let him be a part of her life, thinking they were going to get back together. Things began to change when she found out we are together.”
“You’ve been telling me we needed to get a custody agreement in place,” I say.
“Good thing you’re sleeping with an attorney,” Tommy says.
“And not just any attorney,” Anna says. “A great one. We’ve got to move fast, though. Did she mention when she plans to move?”
I shake my head.
“First thing Monday morning I’ll file a petition for paternity,” she says. “And for a temporary restraining order to keep her from moving until we can establish paternity and have a custody hearing—though they don’t call it that any longer.”
“Do you really think a judge will prevent her from moving?” I say.
“Hard to say. He or she is supposed to be guided by what’s in the best interest for the child. It will depend on what reasons Susan gives for wanting to move back.”
“Obviously, John being in her life is what’s best for her,” Tommy says.
“Take whatever time you need to for this,” Reggie says.
“Thank you.”
“What are his chances?” Merrick asks Anna.
“Hell, she named the child after him, his name is on the birth certificate as the father, and she’s given him de facto visitation rights for the past six months or so. He’s been paying far more child support than any court would require—and she’s cashed every check. He’ll get parenting rights. No question. Keeping her in the state . . . that’s far more difficult.”
Merrick nods.
No one says anything.
The weight of the situation resting heavily upon us.
The silence doesn’t last long, though. Soon it’s shattered by the ringing and vibrating of phone calls—three nearly simultaneously for me, Reggie, and Tommy.
Though the calls come from different people, the message of all three is the same. Something horrible has happened, and Shane is missing.
Chapter Four
While Michelle and Anna stay and help Rain dismantle Merrick’s booth, Merrick, Reggie, Tommy, and I race toward the river. Merrick and Reggie in his car, Tommy and me in my unmarked Chevy Impala.
I have my department-issued .40 caliber Glock in a holster and my badge back on my belt—on the same side so people always see them together. The small-frame 9mm I normally wear in an ankle holster is locked in my gun safe at home, and I feel its absence.
“I could tell something just wasn’t right,” Tommy is saying. “I should have trusted my . . . gut.”
As we round the curve just past Red Bull Island, the small white wooden crosses along the side of the road seem to glow in the late-afternoon sunlight in a way I’ve never noticed before.
“But I thought it had to do with his breakup with Megan. I was so worried about her
finding out before he did it or how it’d affect her that I . . . I didn’t listen carefully enough.”
I nod. I know what he means. I know how he feels. I have felt the same way before, but it’s a lot of pressure to put on yourself—to feel responsible for your intuitions and their ability to warn.
Tommy breaks down and begins to cry.
I reach over and put my hand on his shoulder.
I slow as we reach the Dead Lakes. A man is fishing from the bridge, a bicycle propped against the cement railing beside him.
Formed when sandbars created by the Apalachicola River dammed the Chipola River, the Dead Lakes is a hauntingly beautiful cypress tree burial ground of nearly seven thousand acres.
On either side, rising out of the tannic waters, cypress trees and the jagged trunks of dead cypress trees make the area look like what it is. A flooded field full of dead trees.
Merrick is driving fast, his retro deep-water-blue Challenger hugging the curves of the winding Lake Grove Road like it has been designed to.
He loved the car the moment he first sat in it. Large. Classic. Muscular. Masculine.
He rarely gets to drive it like this and relishes the opportunity to open her up.
Beside him, in the passenger seat, Reggie is on the phone with the first deputy on the scene.
“Just stay there for now,” she is saying. “Secure the area. Don’t let anyone else launch right now. Search and rescue is on the way. Keep it clear for them . . . Okay. I’m five minutes out.”
After disconnecting the call, she looks over at Merrick.
“It’s okay to enjoy driving like this is a closed course,” she says, “but you might not want to look quite so happy about it.”
The car actually comes off the ground as it hits the bump at the end of the bridge where it connects to the road.
“I’ve been thinking,” he says. “I need a light and a siren to keep in here. One of those fireball teardrops to plug into the cigarette lighter and throw on the dash or a light bar for the grill or an LED for the visor.”
“You’ve given this a lot of thought, haven’t you?”
He smiles.
“That smile’ll get you nearly anything,” she says, “but . . .”
“But? But what?”
“I’m afraid you’d use it when I’m not around,” she says. “You know . . . for when you just feel the need . . . the need for speed.”
“Then maybe you should deputize me,” he says.
She turns serious again. “I might need your help with this,” she says. “Whatever it turns out to be.”
Objects on either side of the car whir by in a bit of a blur.
On the driver’s side, the swamp is thick and wet, the sunlight streaming through the tall trees barely bright enough to dapple the mud and cypress stumps below. On the passenger’s side, small wooden homes and old single wide house trailers—both suspended on stilts to protect from floods—back up to the Chipola River.
“You got it,” he says. “But things are different now. You have an entire department. And you’ve got John.”
“I’d like to assign him to it but think he might be too distracted dealing with the custody of his daughter. Whatta you think?”
“I still think you should,” he says. “He’s good. And he’s new—won’t be swayed by the politics of it.”
“See?” she says. “You’re helping already.”
“Besides, you know you and I will be working it anyway . . . so if he needs help or has to be away . . .”
“You and I?” she says.
“I may not be deputized yet, but I am an accredited member of the press and one hell of an investigative reporter.”
“One hell of an investigative reporter,” she repeats. “That’s not all you’re one hell of. I remember a certain someone making me come twice before I even had my damn coffee this morning. Twice. Before my goddam coffee.”
They are quiet a moment, thinking back fondly on this morning’s entanglements, but then the landing comes into view and brings them out of their reverie.
“How many kids has the river taken from us?” she says.
“Too many.”
A kid they had gone to school with, Ronald Raffield, a pudgy, freckle-faced boy everyone called Red Face Raffield, had vanished beneath the dark waters of the Apalachicola and had never been see again. Not a single sign of him in twenty years.
“God, I hope this isn’t another one like Ronald,” she says. “The only thing worse than the river taking your child is it taking him and never returning him. Never returning any part of him.”
“Oh, God, John,” Tommy is saying. “I don’t think I can deal with this. You know what the river does. It takes our kids and it doesn’t give them back.”
I don’t say anything. What is there to say? I just pat his shoulder.
I want to tell him that we don’t know anything yet, that it is too soon to worry, that he is borrowing trouble from the future, that he should stay in this present moment for now—but it won’t help, and it isn’t true, and I’m not going to say something I don’t believe.
“Please God, please, let him be alive,” Tommy prays. “Please. I’m begging you. I’ve always done my best to serve you and I’ve never asked for much. Well, I’m asking now. Please let Shane be okay.”
Silently, for his sake as much as Shane’s, I join him in the same petition.
He continues to pray as we speed past the camps and cabins that back up to the Chipola River, past the low-lying swamp area, past the entrance to Iola Landing and Byrd Parker Road.
Gaskin Park, the small landing and boat launch where Lake Grove Road ends in the Apalachicola River, is mostly empty. No children on the playground equipment and swings. No families cooking out or under the old cement picnic pavilion. No one launching a boat or leaving with one. A handful of trucks and empty boat trailers are parked about, but we don’t see a single soul except the deputy securing the scene until we pull up and park near the dock.
Only then is anyone visible—Cody, Matt, Megan, and an enormous kid I don’t recognize.
The distance from where we park down to the surface of the water is some twelve feet or so.
Because the rise and fall of the river fluctuates so much, the dock is constructed in two parts—a platform up top at land level and a floating dock down in the water below, with an aluminum gangplank connecting them.
As soon as I pull up, Tommy jumps from the car and runs across the landing and down the dock, his footfalls pounding heavily on the wood slats then clanging just as heavily on the aluminum gangplank.
“WHERE?” he yells at the kids. “WHERE IS HE?”
They point to a place about fifteen feet out from the dock.
“WAIT,” the deputy yells.
Without stopping or even slowing, Tommy dives into the green-tinged water, rippling the surface of the river, disappearing below.
Chapter Five
“What happened?” I ask the kids.
The four of them are huddled up near the entrance of the dock not far from the picnic pavilion. Matt and Cody are in blue jeans cutoffs. No shirts. No shoes. No towels. Their bodies, including their hair, appear to be completely dry. Megan is in an American flag bikini, a partially unzipped life vest clinging to her small, narrow body. The other kid, the one I don’t recognize, is a huge black kid in knee-length swimming trunks, an enormous wet T-shirt plastered to his big body.
“We were getting ready to leave,” Matt says. “We’d all just been in there together. Swimming. I reached the car and looked around. Cody was coming up. There was no sign of Shane. I was like, ‘Where the hell is Shane?’”
“I’s just walkin’ up,” the ginormous kid says. “I wasn’t with them. I’s swimmin’ when they got here and I’a swim whenever and wherever I want to, so I stayed. I’d been to the bathroom over there, then got a snack out my car. I’s walkin’ back up when they started talkin’ about where is Shane.”
I nod. “And you are . . .�
�
“Swolle.”
“Swolle?”
“’Cause he’s all swolle up,” Cody says. “Always has been.”
“Not your nickname,” I say.
“Daronté,” he says. “Daronté Jackson.”
I turn and look at Megan. “Where were you?”
She doesn’t respond.
“Megan.”
Appearing to be in shock, she just stares down at the river, water dripping from her hair. Her skin is pale and clammy and she’s shaking.
I grab her shoulders and give her a little shake.
Her eyes close for a moment. When she reopens them, she looks at me.
“Megan.”
“Yeah.”
“Where were you when all this happened?”
“Coming in over there,” she says, jerking her head toward the boat ramp. “I had just driven up on my Jet Ski.”
Tommy breaks the surface of the water, reaching out and grabbing the dock with his hand, takes several deep breaths, and pushes himself back under.
“At first I figured that’s where he was,” Cody says. “Figured he hopped on the back with Megan again. Didn’t know where else he could be. We didn’t even start looking for him right away.”
“But when we saw Megan walking up alone . . .” Matt says.
The first search and rescue boat arrives, and the diver wastes no time backing the boat down into the water and launching it.
In another moment, Merrick and Reggie arrive, the retro Challenger locking up and screeching to a stop back by the patrol car about fifty feet from where we are near the dock.
“How long has it been?” I say.
“Since we first noticed he was missing?” Matt asks. “I’d say fifteen minutes. Maybe. Not long.”
“We called right away,” Cody says.
“How long was it between the last time you saw him and when you noticed he was missing?”
Matt and Cody look at each other. Megan just continues to gaze out at the water.
They both shrug.
Finally, Matt says, “Couldn’t’ve been too long. Couple of minutes. Maybe. Maybe a minute. Not sure.”
“What is it, Megan?” I say.
Blood Oath: a John Jordan Mystery Book 11 (John Jordan Mysteries) Page 3
