“I’m not saying everything was seashells and balloons in her life,” Ashley says. “She had problems to deal with like everybody else. She had her own issues too. But she wasn’t suicidal. She didn’t drive off to go kill herself.”
“Why do you think she left?” Nancy asks. “Why do you think she was where she was instead of the protest in Atlanta?”
“I honestly don’t know,” she says. “And unlike other people who didn’t even know her, I’m not gonna make shit up. I really don’t get why she was where she was. I can’t explain it—can’t even . . . I have a hard time believing it. It’s truly a mystery to me. I keep thinkin’ maybe someone forced her to go there.”
“You mean . . .” Merrick says. “You think someone could’ve been in the car with her, perhaps with a gun or something, making her do what she did?”
“I don’t know. I have no proof of anything like that. And I realize after I said it that I’m doing what I just said I wouldn’t do, but . . . All I’m saying is . . . it’s so . . . out of character . . . I’m just trying to figure out how it’s even possible. Randa was very responsible. She was a leader. In class. On the swim team. At work. She didn’t do flaky shit. She just didn’t.”
Nancy says, “Some have suggested she was going to meet someone. What do you think of that explanation?”
“I . . . could see that. I guess. It’d be . . . Either she was going to help someone—she did that a lot. Maybe someone she knew needed her help. If so, I wish they’d come forward and say so. But I could see that. The other thing . . . I could see is . . . her . . . maybe . . . meeting . . . a . . . you know . . . guy. If Randa was going to do something a little crazy or . . . you know . . . flaky, it would be for a guy.”
“But she had a boyfriend,” Daniel says. “Just got engaged. She had a fiancé. She’d just said yes a few weeks before.”
“Well . . . the truth is . . . she said yes in front of everyone . . . didn’t want to embarrass him—or herself—but later told him she didn’t want to marry him.”
“Really?” Daniel says.
“I’m pretty sure this is the first time anyone ever said anything like this,” Merrick says. “I don’t think anyone knew this before.”
“I did,” Ashley says.
“No, I mean law enforcement. Even people like us investigating the case. The media. The general public. This is huge. And . . . the implications are . . .”
“If investigators had known this,” Daniel says, “they would’ve taken a much closer look at Josh Douglas, the guy everyone thought was her fiancé, and his alibi.”
“No wonder he won’t talk to anyone about Randa or her disappearance,” Merrick says.
“Ashley, did Randa’s other friends know?” Nancy asks. “Do you know of anyone else she told or who knew about it?”
“Yeah, I mean . . . I’d have to think about it, but . . . I wasn’t the only one she told.”
“Did she give the ring back?” Nancy asks.
“That’s a good . . . I’m not sure. I don’t know.”
After they thank Ashley and she disconnects the call, there’s a moment of silence.
“Did we just . . .” Daniel begins. “Did we just uncover something big? Something law enforcement didn’t know?”
“I think we did,” Merrick says.
“Oh my God,” Daniel says.
You can hear the genuine thrill in both men’s voices.
“That’s something to savor,” Merrick says. “Don’t get many of those moments. I can tell you that.”
“Nancy?” Daniel asks. “You still with us? Isn’t it . . . incredible?”
“That’s what we have to find out,” she says. “How credible is it? Did Randa tell others about it? Did she give the ring back? We certainly need more corroboration. I have no reason to doubt that Ashley knows what she’s talking about, but we’ve got to doubt or at least question everything. If it’s true, others will know about it. And . . . on the other . . . the truth is we don’t know what law enforcement knows. They may have known this and still cleared Josh as a suspect. We just don’t know.”
“You’re right,” Daniel says. “We’ve got to . . . verify everything—everything we can. It was just so . . . such a surprising and . . . potentially huge . . . piece of information or evidence . . . I got excited and jumped ahead and—”
“I’m not trying to be a downer,” she says. “I think it’s potentially . . . huge. Like you say. But we just don’t know for sure if it’s even true and if it is what it means.”
“No, you’re exactly right,” Merrick says. “And we’re so glad you’re here.”
“Even if I am a negative Nancy?”
“You’re not,” Daniel says. “Not at all.”
“You’re doing what we should have,” Merrick says. “We lost ourselves for a minute. But if we don’t question and doubt and most of all verify and corroborate, we’ll be just like all the other assholes online with baseless speculation and ignorant, worthless opinions.”
“Thank you, Nancy,” Daniel says.
“No, thank you guys,” she says. “I appreciate just how . . . open and . . . You guys really want to get at the truth and you put your egos aside to do it. It’s very, very rare. I’m honored to be a part of your show.”
20
“What do you teach?” I ask.
“Political science mostly,” Josh Douglas says.
He is standing at the front of his classroom unpacking his briefcase, placing books, papers, folders, a computer, and a bottle of water on his table and lectern, arranging them carefully as if following an exact plan long since committed to memory.
“I’ve always been drawn to politics. Randa and I both were . . . though . . .”
After repeated calls to Randa’s fiancé going unreturned, I decided to show up at his classroom at Gulf Coast State College in Panama City to confront him in person.
The main campus of GCSC is crammed in the junction between Panama City and Panama City Beach where Highway 98 and 23rd Street intersect near the Hathaway Bridge and not far from Thomas Drive.
“Though what?”
He shrugs. “I don’t know.”
He stops what he’s doing and we sit in two of the students’ chairs at the table closest to the one holding his lectern, briefcase, and papers.
The classroom is plain—white walls, blue commercial carpet, two rows of tables with chairs beneath them, two dry-erase boards in the front, and a single bulletin board in the back, a few political news clippings tacked to it.
“I’ve thought so many things since she went missing, looked at everything a thousand different ways. There was so much I didn’t know. Anyway . . . I’ve wondered for a while now if she . . . was ever really into politics or . . . just doing it because I did.”
On my way into his classroom, I had asked a student out in the hallway to keep everyone out until I finished talking to him. Now, students periodically look at us through the narrow strip of glass in the closed door.
“You think she was faking?”
“Didn’t at the time. Now . . . I don’t know. And that’s . . . the kind of thing that’ll drive you crazy. Eventually, I figured out I had to just stop thinking about it. So I did. Mostly.”
I nod and think about it.
“Just hope you never have to second-guess an entire relationship,” he adds.
I know what he means, but think how often and for how many different reasons relationships get second-guessed—divorce, death, disappearance, breakups, even some that don’t end. I’ve performed relationship autopsies on nearly every one I’ve ever been in.
He seems perfectly willing to talk to me and I wonder why he hasn’t returned my calls.
“There’s so much information out there,” he says. “Sometimes . . . I have no idea who they’re talking about. I just know it’s not Randa. Others . . . I think I’m the biggest fool who ever lived and that I never knew her at all.”
Josh Douglas is now thirty-three years old a
nd bears little resemblance to the recently-old-enough-to-drink boy in the fading photographs with Randa. He’s heavier, his body and face filled out, his blond hair darker and already beginning to thin, and he has a full, neatly trimmed beard.
I notice a wedding ring on his finger and realize that how I’ve been thinking about him, as Randa’s fiancé, is wrong. He hasn’t been that for a very long time—and maybe never really was.
“How long have you been married?” I ask.
“Six, almost seven years,” he says. “Two kids. Alison, my wife, is . . . well, let’s just say I needed a very special, stable, secure woman after what I went through with . . . Randa. She’s great.”
“What did you go through with Randa?” I ask.
He looks at me like I just asked him how to breathe and if it was really necessary.
“I don’t mean her going missing or all that you’ve questioned since then,” I say. “I mean before.”
“Oh,” he says, and gives me a nervous little smile as he lets out a sigh. “Randa was so beautiful, fun and funny, smart, and really caring. But she was . . . damaged too. Had . . . I don’t know . . . I guess . . . some . . . childhood trauma. She required a lot—a lot of reassurance, attention, care . . . handling.”
“She was needy?” I ask.
He nods. “Not always, just sometimes, but when she was, she really was—we’re talking . . . a lot.”
“Was she ever unfaithful?”
His eyes widen and he swallows hard. He then frowns and nods slowly. “I didn’t realize just how much until later. Much later. But I knew she had . . . sexual issues. Knew that’s how she got most of her reassurance and sense of worthiness.”
“How did you handle that?”
“Like the classic helper-healer-savior I was trying to be,” he says. “It wasn’t easy, but . . . I’d always worked through it and doubled down on my commitment to her. She was always so scared I was going to abandon her.”
“Were you ever unfaithful to her?” I ask.
“Never. Not once. Even thought of only her when I’d masturbate. It was crazy. Extreme. Tried so hard to prove my love to her, to prove to her she was worthy of it. You ever tried to convince an extremely insecure person you love them and won’t leave them? It’s impossible. But like Sisyphus, I woke up every morning to push that boulder up that hill.”
“Did she sleep with any of your friends or people you knew?”
He nods. “She slept with everyone. And not just the guys. Girls too.”
“What made you propose when you did?”
“Thought the Pelican Drop would be memorable as hell and—going back to my earlier answer—to try to reassure her, to try to make it work. Pushing that boulder.”
“She said yes?”
“She said yes in the moment, but didn’t mean it. Or . . . hell . . . she may have meant it at the time. But not long after she told me she didn’t want to marry me, that she couldn’t. Said I was too weak. Said she needed to be with a stronger, more powerful and dominant man to keep her ass in line.”
“How’d that make you feel?”
“You know the answer to that, but the horrible fuckin’ feelin’ didn’t last long. Soon enough I felt free. Like I had dodged a bullet. And even from the very beginning, I felt grateful she didn’t embarrass me in front of all those people at New Year’s. That was good of her.”
A student trying to see in the door bumps into it and Josh turns toward it, then glances at his watch. “I’ve got to start my class. I’m already late.”
“Just a couple more quick questions. Where were you the night she went missing?”
“Where she was supposed to be—the war protest in Atlanta. I didn’t know she wasn’t coming until I got a call from her on the bus when we were about to leave. I had called her several times. She finally called me back . . . but only to say she wasn’t coming.”
“Did she say why?”
“Family emergency, she said, but I could tell she was lying. I knew a little better by then.”
“What’d you think it was?”
“Figured she was meeting someone. We saw each other even after she said she couldn’t marry me. Not as much. Far more casual. Far more as friends. But when she called that day, I told her I didn’t even want to do that anymore. I ended it with her right then and there and . . . have always felt guilty. Wondered if I caused her to do what she did, if I . . . could have been responsible for what happened. Maybe if I hadn’t done what I did, she . . . wouldn’t have been where she was and . . . wouldn’t have wound up . . . dead.”
“How do you think she died?” I ask.
“I have no idea. None.”
“I mean by her own hand or someone else’s.”
“Oh. I don’t know. She was such a . . . mystery. Sometimes . . . she was so different. It . . . it really depends on which Randa she was that night. But my guess is . . . someone got her. I know she felt like killing herself sometimes. She even talked about it occasionally, but . . . I don’t know, I think it was mostly just talk. I think it far more likely she met the wrong man or randomly ran into him. ’Course it might not have been random at all. He could’ve been following her.”
Something about the way he says this last line makes me think it might be an activity he’s had some experience with.
21
“Tonight we’re joined by Toby Collins of the Barstool Detective podcast,” Daniel says.
“Toby has a popular true crime podcast,” Merrick says. “Unlike ours, where we take one case and work it for an entire season—or until it’s solved—Toby does a new case every three episodes.”
I’m driving home from Gulf Coast State College, making my way through Panama City toward Highway 22. It’s dusk and all the taillights and headlights are a little brighter before the backdrop of evening.
“But that doesn’t mean he isn’t able to go in-depth,” Daniel says. “He’s known for digging deep into the cases he features.”
“Right,” Merrick says. “And that’s why he’s joining us here tonight—because of how deep he went into the time right before Randa went missing. Welcome, Toby.”
“Good to be here. Thanks for having me. I’ve really been enjoying your show. You guys have always been interesting and . . . easy to listen to, but . . . adding Nancy was genius. In fact, one of the reasons I agreed to do your show tonight is to see if I might steal her away from you.”
They laugh.
I only have a few more shows before I catch up to where the podcast is currently, then I’ll have to wait a week between episodes like everyone else who’s listening live. Of course, I hope we’re able to close the case before very many more shows are made.
“That’s very sweet, Toby,” Nancy says. “Tell you what . . . as soon as we solve Randa’s case we’ll talk about it. How’s that?”
“Well let me see what I can contribute to getting this thing solved.”
“Toby has really delved into the events leading up to Randa’s disappearance,” Merrick says. “And some fascinating theories of why she was where she was and what may have happened to her.”
“What do you think happened to Randa?” Nancy asks. “Just in case you were thinking about burying the lead.”
“Well, obviously I don’t know,” he says. “Mine are just theories like everybody else’s, but I try to tie them all to actual, provable facts. So let’s start there. Here’s a fact: Randa’s car had almost a full tank of gas in it when she went missing. And the doors were locked.”
“And what conclusions do you draw from those facts?” Daniel asks.
“I know a lot of people do, but I don’t believe Randa had any intention of harming herself. You don’t fill up your car with gas if you plan to commit suicide. And she had to stop and fill it up pretty close to where she wrecked. So . . . you see . . . that’s just an opinion . . . but it’s tied to a fact. Now . . . it’s entirely possible I’m misinterpreting the facts, but . . . there it is.”
“What do you t
hink her car being locked means?” Merrick asks.
“That she intended to come back to it.”
“So you think she locked her car because she was planning to come back,” Nancy says, “but then she met with foul play?”
“Or accidental death,” he says.
“Just seems like we’d have found her remains by now,” Nancy says. “Especially if she had met with an accident.”
“I know—and that bothers me too. There are so many holes and unexplainable mysteries in this thing. We may never know what really happened. It’s what makes it so interesting to me.”
“So . . . we know Randa stopped for gas not long before she got in the wreck and went missing,” Merrick says. “Do we know where? Do we know of any other stops she made?”
“We do,” Toby says. “I was gonna start at the beginning and go chronologically, but why don’t we do just the opposite. Since we already started with the car, let’s work backward from it. She stopped at a Racetrack gas station on Tyndall Parkway and filled her car up. She went inside and used the restroom, but didn’t purchase anything but the gas. The station is on the outskirts of Panama City on Highway 98, not far from Tyndall Air Force Base and about twenty-five miles from the scene of her accident.”
“Is there surveillance footage?” Merrick asks.
“I believe so, but I haven’t seen it. No one in the press or public has.”
“That’s so close to where she went missing,” Nancy says. “I never knew it was that close. Someone could’ve seen her there and followed her—maybe even caused her wreck.”
“Yeah,” Daniel says. “That seems far more likely than a killer happening upon her at the scene.”
“It’s one of the theories that fits best to me,” Toby says.
“Wouldn’t you like to have the files and evidence the police has?” Nancy says. “I feel like we could solve it if we did. I’d love to see the surveillance footage and . . . well, everything.”
COLD BLOOD (a John Jordan Mystery Book 13) Page 9
