I nodded.
He waited a moment, then said, “You think it’s the same killer?”
“Same killer as—”
“The Atlanta Child Murderer,” he said. “The same one.”
I shook my head. “If for no other reason than that the other killer dumped the bodies of his victims so they could be found relatively quickly and easily. In this case there are no bodies at all.”
We had yet to track down Jaquez’s and Vaughn’s dads, and we were still having difficulty finding the moms, but we felt like we had enough to take to the police.
Lonnie let us use his storage/meeting room.
Frank Morgan, Bobby Battle, and Remy Boss, the original investigator of most of the cases, attended, and listened attentively as Mickey and I made our case.
We told them about the geographical connections between the victims, the similarity in the disappearances, and the way the killer had planted clothes and toys belonging to the victims in the dads’ homes and vehicles.
When we finished, no one said anything at first.
I had expected hostility from Bobby Battle, but so far he had seemed quite sedate.
Eventually, Remy looked at Bobby and said, “Whatta you think?”
Bobby shrugged. “It was your case. You’d know better than any of us if there’s even a possibility of it being true, but . . . I don’t know . . . seems a little . . .”
Remy looked back at us. “I appreciate all the work you guys have done on this,” he said. “And I’m not sayin’ there’s not something to it, but . . . the two biggest questions are the breakdowns in your pattern. Why wasn’t anything planted on Cedric Porter’s dad and why is Vaughn Smith so far outside of your geographical area?”
“I have no idea,” I said. “And I know we’ve yet to speak to Vaughn’s or Jaquez’s dad, but . . . We could be wrong about all this, but we thought it was enough to bring to you.”
“It was,” Remy said. “It is. You did the right thing. We’ll look into it and see if we can find the other dads, make the other connections, answer the open questions.”
“You still have the problem of no bodies,” Battle said. “All this time and none of them have turned up. Argues against your serial killer theory. Williams dumped his in the woods and rivers and we found them pretty quick. If he did these, why haven’t we found them? If someone else did, same question. Where are the bodies?”
“Again, I have no idea,” I said. “I have far more questions than anything else—just felt like they were questions worth asking, ones y’all might want to try to answer.”
“And we will,” Remy said. “Thanks.”
And that was that.
I didn’t know exactly what I was expecting, but I felt an enormous letdown as we walked out of Lonnie’s meeting room and into his video store.
Chapter Thirty-one
The four other men scattered quickly, each with pressing matters requiring their attention, and I was left standing there in the store that would soon be closed, looking around, but not seeing anything before me.
It wasn’t until I realized Shaft and Foxy Brown, Lonnie’s Bombay cats, were staring down at me from the top of the shelf I was standing in front of that I came back to the present time and place.
“You okay?” Lonnie asked.
I nodded. “Thanks for letting us use your room.”
“No problem. Happy to help. How’d it go?”
I told him.
“For what it’s worth, I think you’re right,” he said.
“Thanks.”
“I’m not just sayin’ that,” he said. “It makes a certain sense like nothin’ else ever has. If the cops drop the ball on this again . . . I’ll hire someone . . . private. Not going to my grave without knowing what happened to Cedric. I can’t.”
I nodded. “How are you doing?”
He shrugged. “Feeling weak . . . like . . . I . . . I’ve been tempted to start drinkin’ again.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. Anything I can do to help?”
He shook his head. “Got a good sponsor. He’s helpin’. I’ll call him before I . . . do anything too stupid.”
“Do.”
“I will,” he said. “Will you do something for me?”
“What’s that?”
“Don’t stop looking for Cedric,” he said. “Don’t leave it up to them.”
I didn’t say anything, just thought about it.
“Think about how much time they’ve had,” he said. “And they wouldn’t have anything new now if it weren’t for you.”
I nodded. He was right.
“Thing is, I’ve got nothin’ left,” he said. “I’ll be losing my store soon. Have no idea what I’m gonna do next. But I’ll spend every last cent of my savings to find Cedric. And truth is . . . I’d like to get to whoever took him before the police do—not that they ever will.”
I thought about what he had done to Daryl Lee Gibbons and Cedric Porter, Sr., and knew exactly what he would do to the man who had taken his surrogate son.
When I stepped out of Lonnie’s shop, I saw Frank Morgan in his car out in the parking lot not far from the phone booth I had used to call him last week.
He motioned me over.
When I reached his car, I could see that he was on his radio so I waited, watching the traffic on Memorial, the activity on the sidewalks and shops.
The wind was more biting today, and I shoved my hands in my pants pockets.
When Frank finished, he climbed out of the car and closed the door.
“How well do you know Mickey?” he asked.
“Not well at all. Why?”
“His name rang a bell, and when you said he was a reporter I remembered something about a scandal he was involved in. I called a newsman friend of mine to make sure. He used to write under the name Michael Davis. Switched to Mickey after he got fired from the Journal. You need to be careful with him.”
“Okay,” I said. “I have been, but why?”
“He was fired for manufacturing a story, making up quotes from sources, in some cases making up the sources themselves. If he’ll do that for a newspaper story, imagine what he’ll do for his book.”
I nodded.
“Did anything we went over in there come only from him?” he asked.
I thought about it.
“No,” I said. “Best I can recall, the only thing that has come from him during the entire course of the investigation and our group meeting is that Daryl Lee Gibbons has a record.”
“Which is true. He does. Think I’m pretty close to finding him, by the way. We’ll see what he’s been up to and what he has to say about what happened back then.”
“Great. Thanks.”
“Just be careful, John. I don’t trust this Michael Mickey Davis character. I don’t think you should either. Think he’s got a very different motive than you do, has an agenda, and it’s selfish and sensational and can only hurt the investigation.”
Chapter Thirty-two
When I pulled back the curtains and looked out, I saw Summer Grantham standing there, her blond hair up in a ponytail, her eyes looking far sadder than I had seen before.
I had been alone in my room studying the cases, hoping she might come by.
I nodded toward my front door, and met her at it to let her in.
“Sorry,” she said.
“For what?”
“Just showing up like this. Not calling or coming by before now. You name it, I’m sorry for it.”
“Come in. Are you okay?”
We embraced for a few moments, then I led her down the hallway to my room and closed the door behind us.
“What’s going on?” I asked. “Where have you been? Why did you disappear? What’s wrong?”
She frowned and her eyes glistened. “Can we not talk about it right now?”
“I’d really like to,” I said, “but . . . if you can’t . . .”
“In a little while maybe,” she said. “Okay?”
; “Okay.”
“How have you been?” she asked.
“Besides worried about you and wondering what the hell happened to you? Pretty fair. You?”
“Not so good. I’m sorry again.”
“Could I at least get your number and address so I can contact you? You’re not listed.”
She shook her head. “It’s under my husband’s name.”
“Your what?”
“I know. I’m sorry. I should’ve—”
“Let me walk you to the door,” I said.
“Wait. Sorry. I meant ex-husband. We’re not married anymore. I just never changed it over to my name.”
“So you’ll give me the number?” I said. “We can go there right now? We can go see your ex and he’ll tell me he’s in fact your ex?”
She nodded, then gave me her phone number and address though I had nothing to write them down on at the moment.
“All but the visit him part,” she said. “He’s in prison.”
“I’m not sure I believe you, Summer,” I said. “I’m not sure I believe anything you’re saying—or have said to me.”
She nodded, tears beginning to stream now.
“I don’t blame you,” she said, “but it is the truth. Everything I’ve ever told you is. The only thing I’ve done is not tell you one thing—a very big thing, but that’s it.”
“What’s the big thing?”
“I suffer from depression,” she said. “It goes along with the gift. My grandmother who also had the gift battled with the same dark demon. That’s where I’ve been. I haven’t gotten out of bed in nearly a week.”
I believed her.
To the best of my ability to discern deception, I sincerely believed she was telling me the truth.
Everything in me wanted to take care of her, to hug and reassure her, to help her fight the darkness she was dealing with.
“I believe you,” I said.
“You do?”
“I do. And I want to help you.”
“You do?”
“I do,” I said. “But I can’t.”
“What?”
“Are you on medication?” I asked.
She nodded.
“Are you taking it?”
She nodded again.
“Are you under a doctor’s or psychiatrist’s care?”
She nodded again.
“Do you have a family member or friend who can help you?”
She nodded. “My daughter. She’s . . . very good at helping me deal.”
“Does she know how you’re doing right now?”
She nodded again. “I’m actually much better now,” she said. “She knew how I was earlier in the week. She checked on me every day.”
“Good,” I said. “Then . . . since you have all that, I’ll walk you to the door. I’m sorry. I wish I could help you—I mean, I don’t even know if you wanted me to help—but I just can’t. I want to. You can’t imagine how much everything in me wants to. But I just did that with another woman—it’s sort of my thing, I guess—and it didn’t go well at all. So . . . I’m truly trying to accept the things I cannot change and change the things I can.”
“That’s good,” she said. “That’s very good.”
We walked back down the hallway in silence.
When we reached the front door, we stopped.
“I didn’t come here tonight looking for you to save me, John,” she said. “At least the best part of me didn’t. I just wanted to explain and to . . . I wanted to be close again, maybe have some of the healing that flowed through me to you, flow back through you to me, but . . . we knew what this was, what the other night was. I’m more than twice your age. My daughter is a good bit older than you. But here’s the thing . . . what it was was sacred. What it was was real. What we shared, this connection, this . . . Don’t lose that, don’t let your aversion to drama and messiness, which I understand and appreciate, cause you to close down again and miss out on what life has for you.”
I nodded.
She kissed me quickly, then turned to leave.
“Wait,” I said.
She stopped.
When she turned I saw hope and desire in her eyes, and regretted calling out to her.
“Sorry,” I said. “I wasn’t trying to . . . I just want to walk you to your car.”
I could be in bed with Summer right now.
Had I made the wrong decision? Was I being too cautious, too rigid, too—
I decided to occupy my mind with something else.
Thinking back to my conversation with Mickey earlier in the day, I turned my attention to the type of motiveless murderer we might be pursuing.
A compulsive or serial or ritual killer—I wasn’t completely sure I understood the difference—is a killer who kills two or more people for psychological gratification. The murders must take place over more than a month and include a cooling off period between them. Most often the murders involve a sexual component and are carried out in a similar manner on victims who have certain commonalities—such as age, race, body type, or sex.
Serial or compulsive killers are often psychopaths or display the psychopathic traits such as sensation seeking, lacking guilt or remorse, predatory actions, impulsivity, and the need to control. In contrast with people with other major mental disorders such as schizophrenia, psychopaths can seem normal and can often be quite charming.
These type killers are often the victims of childhood abuse—emotional, physical, or sexual—often by a family member. Because of this, serial killers typically programed as children to become murderers by progressively intensifying a dark loop of dangerous, violent fantasies—elaborate mental thoughts with great preoccupation anchored in the daydreaming process. These fantasies serve to relieve anxiety, stress, tension, and fear—transforming the normal fantasies of childhood into a dangerous, compulsive form of escapism to deal with their isolation, pain, fear, abuse, neglect, and trauma.
When these dark, violent fantasies are combined with compulsive masturbation, a sexual component is added to the cognitive or mental process.
Anger, isolation, and resentment fuel fantasies, which leads to further isolation, which leads to an even greater reliance on fantasy for pleasure and relief from anxiety.
By the time a serial killer claims his first victim, he has fantasized, planned, plotted, obsessed over every minute detail of it for years. At a certain point, fantasy is no longer enough, and the killer reaches a state where he actually wants to live out his dark, violent daydreams. At this stage his victim is reduced to a mere player in the serial killer’s mind movie of sex and murder.
After committing his first murder, the novice killer will obsess over his need to kill again. Having discovered the key to acting out his secret desires, some killers continue to murder in order to experience the fantasy again and again, while others grow bored and move to escalate their actions instead.
All this—all this horrific death and devastation born out of the daydreams of a weak, frightened, terrorized little child.
Could it be that a victimized child, now housed in the body of an adult, was making victims of other children?
Chapter Thirty-three
I saw Summer the next day.
We were both back at Safe Haven for our next group meeting.
She seemed sad, but not overly so.
I came in a few minutes late and sat in the only seat left in the small circle, which put me directly across from her.
I nodded and gave her a small smile.
She returned it.
Over her shoulder, as if it were a month or so ago, as if he were still there, I caught a glimpse of Martin Fisher coloring at the small table—just like he had been the last night we were here together.
I blinked and he was gone, but I could still feel him, still sense his presence in the room that had held so many children over the years.
“I don’t think we’re doing enough for Wayne Williams,” Annie Bowers, the thin, black woman from t
he Free Wayne Williams initiative said. “I know that everything we do is important, but . . . it seems to me that . . . well, there’s only so much we can do for victims who are already deceased. But Wayne is still alive. What we do for him . . . can make a real difference.”
Miss Ida cleared her throat. “Our group has no agenda,” she said. “Not that one or any other. It can’t. We’re not here to free Wayne Williams. We’re here to share information and ideas and do a little investigating where we can. If that leads to Wayne Williams being released, so be it. If it proves his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, so be it. What we do here—not forgetting him, caring about him and his case, seeking some kind of imperfect justice, which is the only kind we get in this world—is a worthy endeavor, a noble cause. That helps me and it helps us. Sure, it won’t bring him back, but does make sure he’s not forgotten.”
It was the most eloquent I had ever heard Miss Ida be.
“I understand what you’re saying, I do,” Annie said. “I’m just saying . . . we could save an innocent man.”
“Lot of us don’t think he is innocent,” Melvin Pryor said. “Others aren’t sure. We’re here for the victims.”
“That’s what I’m saying,” she said. “He is a victim of this terrible tragedy, a living victim, spending every day of his life confined for something he didn’t do.”
“If that’s true,” Preston Mailer, the ex-cop said, “then maybe the work we do will help free him. Maybe it will.”
“Just be clear on why we’re here,” Ida said. “We don’t mind that you have an agenda, but our group does not and cannot.”
Annie nodded. “I understand. I don’t agree, but I understand.”
“John? Mickey?” Ida said. “Want to share with us what you’ve been doing?”
“Sure,” I said. “We’ve talked with Cedric’s father. Jamal’s too. We’ve looked into whether the missing kids on our new list are just with their dads, like the police believe, or if something else is going on. We think something else is going on.”
“Why?” Mailer asked.
I told them, with Mickey tossing in a detail or two along the way.
BLOOD CRIES: a John Jordan Mystery (Book 10) (John Jordan Mysteries) Page 12
