BLOOD WORK: a John Jordan Mystery (John Jordan Mysteries Book 12)

by Michael Lister

  “Like Ted Bundy,” I say.

  “Yeah, maybe, I guess. I heard he was around here that night. Is that true?”

  Dad gives me the look again.

  “He was,” Dad says. “But we really just want to hear what you remember from that night.”

  Her gaze drifts up and away from us. “I just remember everybody bein’ happy. Carefree. For the last time. I guess we had the normal high school drama that we thought mattered so much, but it really was so nothing. You know? It was the last time we were ever just innocent kids. After that we always had this dark cloud hanging over us.”

  “Have you remembered anything over the years since we last spoke that you didn’t remember back then?” Dad says.

  She starts to answer, but stops as he adjusts in his seat and winces in pain.

  “Are you all right?” she asks.

  He nods. “Just got a sore hip. That’s all. What were you about to say?”

  “I’m sure it’s nothing and you probably read all kinds of things wrong after something like that happens, but . . . I just remember Kathy Holmes arriving late that night and being all out of sorts. She was never late for anything. Ever. It’s the only time I can remember her being late. And I’d never seen her act like that before. She was always with it, but that night she was a basket case.”

  “Who?” Dad asks. “I don’t recall anybody by that—”

  “Sorry. It’s her married name now. Kathy Moore. Janet’s best friend. I’m sure she had nothing to do with it—a girl couldn’t really do something like that, could she? But it’s just what came to mind when you asked if I had thought of anything else over the years.”

  “What was her relationship with Janet like?” Dad says.

  “A little strange, to be honest. Like love-hate. She seemed like she really liked Janet sometimes, then others she acted so . . . I don’t know . . . like jealous, but more. Like she wanted to be her . . . or . . . replace her. I’m probably reading way too much into this now. So please take it with a . . . just for what it’s worth. But it’s my honest opinion of how it was. She works up at Sunland but she should probably be a resident.”

  Sunland Center is a community serving some five hundred individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities housed in an old air force base up on Highway 71 between Marianna and Greenwood.

  “You ever talk to Ben Tillman?” I ask.

  “Ben? No. Why?”

  Getting no look from Dad this time, I proceed.

  “Y’all aren’t close?”

  “Never were. I sure feel bad for the guy. I just can’t imagine what he’s . . . But no, we haven’t spoken a single word since that night.”

  “So you have no reason to lie for him.”

  “Right. I liked Ben. Had a crush on him. But I wouldn’t lie for anyone—especially if they could’ve killed someone else.”

  “And he was with you that night?”

  “He was. I swear it on my life. I have no reason to lie. If anything, I have reason to lie against him—if I was that sort of person. Like I said, he never spoke to me again. I tried so many times.”

  “Why do you think he didn’t use you as an alibi?” I ask.

  She shakes her head. “I have no idea. Guilt, I guess. I really don’t know. My guess is if it had come down to him actually going to jail he might have, but . . . as it was . . .”

  “Y’all were together at the party and—”

  She jumps up suddenly. “That’s the garage door opening,” she says.

  I can hear a slow mechanical sound and various creaks and clicks coming from the other side of the wall to our right.

  “It’s my husband. You’ve got to go. Now.”

  She seems genuinely panicked, the crazed look in her eyes intensifying.

  “Please. Come on.”

  She grabs our glasses, pours the remainder of their contents back into the pitcher, then tosses them into the pool.

  “Please hurry. He knows nothing about any of this. He only moved to town about ten years ago.”

  We stand and begin to make our way across the patio, Dad limping, moving slowly.

  She quickly walks to the wooden gate, opens it, and ushers us through it when we finally make it there.

  “I’ve finally got a good life,” she says. “I can’t jeopardize it for a case that’s probably never gonna be solved anyway.”

  Chapter Twenty-two

  “How do you have people who knew her equally well disagreeing on whether she was there or not that night?” Anna says.

  “Eyewitnesses,” Merrill says. “Only thing worse than one is more than one.”

  I smile.

  I’m truly happy to have Merrill Monroe, my closest friend since childhood, here with us. As a surprise for me, Anna had invited him to the beach house for dinner and he was here waiting on me when I returned from my day in Panama City and Marianna with Dad.

  We are now sitting at a table on the deck at Toucan’s, a large, wooden ocean-side restaurant, the last of the setting sun only an orange glow sinking into the green Gulf.

  Taylor is in a highchair at the end of the wooden booth, being spoon fed veggies by Anna and slipped Cheerios by Merrill.

  This is the last night of our vacation, which I found out this evening is being cut short because Anna’s mom needs her help after all. Tomorrow Anna and Taylor will travel to Dothan to help care for her mom. I will use the time off I already have to help Dad reinvestigate Janet Lester’s disappearance, traveling to Anna’s parents’ farm in Dothan to stay each evening when Dad and I are done.

  “I know eyewitnesses are notoriously unreliable,” Anna says, “but this isn’t that exactly, is it? It’s not like there was an accident or event and they saw different things. It’s not like they’re saying a particular person committed a crime or something like that. This is a group of kids with no discernible reason for lying, more than one of which says she was there and more than one of which says she wasn’t.”

  I nod. “Yeah. There’s something off about it. I’m trying to track down pictures from that night. Hoping they will help clear up the confusion.”

  “’Less it ain’t confusion,” Merrill says, “and they just lying.”

  “In which case we’ll have to find out why.”

  “Be hard to find out anything thirty-eight years later,” Merrill says.

  I shake my head. “Nearly impossible.”

  “You need help, you let me know,” he says.

  “What are you doin’ with yourself these days?” Anna asks.

  About three months ago, Merrill quit his job as a correctional officer because kids were getting killed by cops in the street and he wanted to make a difference.

  “This and that,” he says.

  “Care to elaborate,” she says.

  “A little of this. A little of that.”

  “Oh, I see.”

  He laughs. “Fighting the good fight,” he says. “Doing favors for friends. Helping out where I can.”

  “He’s being vague out of modesty,” I say. “He’s volunteering at the Boys and Girls Club, he’s in the Big Brothers Big Sisters program, he’s helping raise money for the African-American Scholarship Fund, he’s part of a program where he works with at-risk kids to build houses for seniors, and he’s helping with some group I forget the name of now that’s similar to the Innocence Project.”

  Finished eating and now yawning and rubbing her eyes with her tiny fists, Taylor is ready to be out of the highchair. Anna begins to put her in her carrier, but Merrill stops her.

  “Let her sleep on Uncle Merrill’s shoulder,” he says.

  “Sure.”

  Anna hands Taylor to Merrill, who props her on his muscular shoulder as if he’s an old pro, and Taylor rests her small head near his neck and snuggles in to sleep as if it’s how she falls asleep every night.

  “And I thought you meant how was I payin’ the bills,” he says to Anna.

  “How are you?” she says. “All that sounds lik
e it pays in mansions in heaven.”

  “A little of this. A little of that. Odd jobs. Favors for friends. Track down shit that’s missing—people, property, whatnot.”

  “So you’re sort of like a Deep South Shaft?” she says.

  “Who’s the man who’ll risk his neck for his brother man?” I say.

  “Can you dig it?” Merrill says.

  “Is that enough to make ends meet?” Anna says.

  “First dollar I ever made, my mama made me put part of it up for a rainy day.”

  “’Cause your mama told you the same thing the Shirelles’ mama told them?” Anna says.

  “I’ve done that with every dollar I’ve ever made,” he says. “Still doin’ it. But it’s there if I need it. Hell, y’all need a loan, just let me know.”

  Our food arrives—seafood platter for Merrill, grouper imperial for me, and honey-glazed salmon for Anna.

  Anna and I both offer to take Taylor or to put her in her carrier, but Merrill tells us he only needs one hand to shovel the seafood into his mouth.

  We eat in silence for a while, enjoying the evening and being together.

  I finish first and ask them to excuse me for a moment. “I want to call Johanna before she goes to bed.”

  Walking down the wooden ramp to the beach below, I call my daughter at her mother’s in Atlanta.

  “Hey sweet girl,” I say when I hear her soft, sleepy voice.

  “Hey Daddy.”

  “How’s my girl? How was your day?”

  “I’m good. It was good.”

  “I miss you so much,” I say.

  “I miss you, Daddy.”

  I think about how similar our conversations are each evening and wonder how I can make them different.

  “I can’t wait to see you this weekend,” I say. “We’re going to have such a good time.”

  She doesn’t say anything and I can hear her yawning.

  “You sleepy baby?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Okay, I’ll let you go so you can get some sleep. I love you so much. Sleep well. Sweet dreams. Night.”

  “Night, Daddy.”

  When I get back to the table, Merrill and Anna are talking about Ted Bundy.

  “What makes the sheriff believe Bundy did it?” Merrill asks.

  Like so many people in Pottersville, Merrill still refers to Dad as the sheriff. For an entire generation of us, he’s the only one we’ve ever known.

  “I’m not sure exactly. We’re just starting. And I thought I was on vacation.”

  “You are,” Anna says, patting my leg. “For a few more hours anyway.”

  “I was hoping to finish the murder book tonight and talk to Dad about it tomorrow. I know Bundy was in the area around the time Janet went missing and that she looked similar to his most common coed victim type, but I’d think it’s more than that. Bundy being in the vicinity is enough to make him a suspect in a case like this, but Dad would have to have more than that to actually convince him he did it.”

  Chapter Twenty-three

  It’s late.

  We’re lying in bed reading—Anna, the new Zadie Smith novel, me, the murder book—propped on pillows, our bodies touching, the fingers of our hands not holding our books entwined.

  “It’s so good to see Merrill doing so well,” she says.

  I nod. “Unlike so many of us, he’s not just talking about things, or worse, complaining about how bad things are, he’s actually doing something about it, actually making the world a better place. Can’t say that about many people.”

  “I wish he could find someone,” she says. “Be as happy as us. It’s the only thing missing from his life now. Wonder if Zadie Smith is single.”

  I laugh. “Now that’d be a good match.”

  “Don’t you think he’d be even happier, do even more and better if he had someone?”

  “He’s about to find someone,” I say. “Or she’s gonna find him.”

  “You sound so certain.”

  “I am.”

  “Why do you think he is?”

  “He’s in the right places, doing the right things,” I say. “It follows that’s where he’ll meet the right partner.”

  She nods. “You’re right. Wonder if we could get Zadie Smith to come speak at a fundraiser for one of the organizations he’s working for?”

  I laugh and shake my head and keep reading.

  After a little while, she yawns and closes her book.

  “Any blood or physical evidence in the car that wasn’t Janet’s?” she asks.

  I shake my head. “If there was, they missed it.”

  “Of course, Bundy rarely left any physical evidence behind, did he?”

  “Not much, no. He was pretty meticulous.”

  “Is Bundy’s DNA in the FBI database?” Anna asks.

  “Not until just recently,” I say. “Almost wasn’t at all. Look at this. Dad stuck it in the book just a few years back.”

  I hand her the news clipping.

  There’s a national database of DNA profiles of convicts maintained by the FBI, but America’s most notorious serial killer hasn’t been a part of it until now.

  Savage serial killer Ted Bundy, who confessed to murdering some thirty young women across several states before being executed in Florida’s electric chair at Florida State Prison in Raiford in 1989, could now be proven to have committed many more.

  Recently, a complete DNA profile of Bundy was created and is being submitted to the FBI database so that law enforcement agencies nationwide can finally determine whether Bundy was responsible for some of the open unsolved cases in their jurisdictions.

  There has long been speculation that Bundy killed far more people than he confessed to. When one police interviewer asked Bundy if he had killed thirty-five woman, Bundy responded “Add a one to that.” And now one of his former defense attorneys has a new book out claiming that Bundy confessed to him that he had murdered more than one hundred people.

  The vast majority of murders ranged around the Northwest, but he traveled to Florida, continuing to kill young women, some very, very young, after escaping a Colorado jail at the end of December 1977.

  After killing at least two women at Florida State University and brutally assaulting several others, Bundy then killed twelve-year-old Kimberly Diane Leach in Lake City before being captured on February 15, 1978.

  Executed in 1989, Bundy was then cremated, which created a problem for police departments that later began searching for his DNA.

  Following a few dead ends, investigators finally recovered a vial of Bundy’s blood drawn in 1978 from a clerk’s office in Columbia County—where he murdered the Leach girl.

  Bundy’s blood and the DNA profile it contains will now make its way to the FBI database so that investigators across the country might be able to now close several other cases.

  The hunt to track down Bundy’s DNA was primarily for the purposes of ascertaining whether or not Bundy was responsible for the death of eight-year-old Ann Marie Burr, the little girl many believe to be Bundy’s very first victim.

  It’s interesting to note that a Florida law passed in 2009 requires police take DNA samples of all those arrested in felony cases.

  Anna’s not quite finished reading the article when my phone vibrates, and continues reading to herself as I answer it.

  “Thought you were on vacation,” Reggie says.

  Reggie Summers is the sheriff of Gulf County and my boss—at least one of them. I have a different one at Gulf Correctional where I’m a chaplain.

  “I am,” I say.

  “From here and the prison?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Then why am I getting complaints from the sheriff of Jackson County that one of my investigators is harassing the fine folk up there?”

  I think about who we talked to today, who might complain, and why.

  “You there?” she says.

  “Yeah, sorry. I was just thinking about it. Sorry you got the call.”
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  “Glenn was cool about it,” she says, referring to Glenn Barnes, the sheriff of Jackson County. “Just wanted to know what was going on and I couldn’t tell him. So what’s going on?”

  “Dad is working one of his old cold cases and I’m helping him a little.”

  “Which case?”

  I tell her.

  “Why now?” she asks. “Is there new evidence or—”

  “He’s got the time now that he doesn’t have a job,” I say. “But he doesn’t feel like he has much.”

  “Why’s that?”

  I tell her about his lab results and the bone marrow test and the fear that he has chronic lymphocytic leukemia.

  For a long moment she doesn’t say anything.

  She doesn’t talk about it much, but her mom has been sick—and in fact the reason she returned to Wewa was to care for her.

  “I’m so sorry, John,” she says, and I can tell she means it. “Do what you need to do. Spend as much time with him as you can. Don’t worry about things here. And if you need more time just let me know.”

  “Thank you, Sheriff. I really appreciate that. We’re hoping the test comes back negative, which is a long shot, or that it’s the highly treatable kind.”

  “I hope so too. My mom beat hers. It happens all the time. Just stay in touch and let me know if you need anything.”

  “Thank you.”

  “And the next time y’all are in Marianna go by and see Glenn—as a courtesy and a favor to me.”

  “We had already planned to,” I say, “but we’ll do it first thing now.”

  Chapter Twenty-four

  “So make the case for Bundy,” I say.

  I am driving Dad’s truck. He is sitting awkwardly on his side in the passenger seat. We are driving along Highway 73 on our way to Marianna, the morning sun burning the dew off the pastures and pines.

  “It’s all circumstantial,” he says, “but . . .”

  Anna and Taylor are in her car in front of us—on their way to her parents’ place in Dothan, which is about thirty miles above Marianna.

  “Janet Lester looked an awful lot like Stephanie Brooks,” he says. “Maybe as much as any of his victims.”

  He’s right. She did.