Blood and Sand

by Michael Lister

  “I’m gonna do my best to find out who did that to Magdalene, who has Taylor,” I say. “What they’ve done, they’ve done to both of our families. And I need to ask you a few more questions to clear a few things up.”

  Keith nods. “Of course,” he says. “Anything.”

  “During our search of the house for Taylor . . . we noticed quite a lot of sleeping medication—both prescription and over the counter and for adults and children.”

  “I’ve always had a hard time sleeping,” Keith says. “I used to take sleep aids all the time. Didn’t help much, but enough to keep me trying. I don’t take them like I used to. I bet if you look at the expiration dates of most of them they’ll be expired. We need to throw them out, but . . . there’s a lot we need to do that we haven’t gotten to yet.”

  “He doesn’t use it like he used to,” Christopher repeats. “Made him do some strange and dangerous things in his sleep.”

  “After what happened to Magdalene,” Keith says, “I just gave up on sleeping.”

  “Ironically, that’s when so many friends and family brought us the stuff,” Christopher says. “That’s why there’s so much of it—and why most of it isn’t opened.”

  “Some of it is for adults and some for children,” I say. “Did Magdalene ever take it?”

  I ask did Magdalene ever take it instead of did you ever give it to her to try to sound less accusatory.

  “Not often, no,” Keith says. “Maybe a few times during the entire time we had her. And that was mostly at the very beginning when she was getting adjusted. You’ll notice the packages say ‘for children and sensitive adults.’ Those were mostly for Christopher. He’s very sensitive to medication.”

  “Did Magdalene take any the night of the solstice party when she went missing?”

  Christopher shrugs and says, “I don’t think so.”

  “No,” Keith says. “She absolutely did not.” He looks at Christopher. “She definitely didn’t. How can you shrug and say you don’t think so?”

  “I’m just not sure anymore,” he says.

  “Well, I am.”

  “Okay,” Christopher says, as if trying to placate a bully.

  “Sorry,” Keith says, “but one of the crazy conspiracy theories out there is that we overdosed her on sleeping pills and this whole thing is just some elaborate cover-up. It just . . . it’s gets me going. Sorry.”

  I decide to leave this for now, but plan to come back to it at some point.

  “I noticed you have a lot of pet paraphernalia,” I say, “but I haven’t seen any pets since we’ve been here.”

  “We tried both a dog and a cat for Magdalene,” Keith says, “but neither worked out.”

  “The poor dear was allergic,” Derinda says.

  “She wasn’t the only one,” Christopher says. “Between the two of us I bet we went through a gallon of Benadryl while we had the damned things.”

  “See,” Keith says, “when you say things like that some people might take you literally and then it gives credence to the theory that we somehow overdosed our daughter.”

  “I just meant—I wasn’t being literal.”

  Keith looks at me. “But we also have all the supplies because some of our guests bring pets. They’re not allowed in the rooms, so we offer a sort of kennel service for them—take care of them overnight while their owners are staying with us.”

  “Did Magdalene still have a pet on the night she was abducted?”

  “I still can’t believe she’s dead,” Christopher says, more tears streaming down his cheeks. “And left like that in her bed for us to find.”

  Keith and Derinda both pat him and wipe at tears of their own.

  Keith says, “She still had the cat. Sammy Socks. We finally got rid of him shortly after . . . after . . . that night. Henrique took him.”

  “Which made no sense,” Christopher says. “He left right after that for three months. He had to know he was about to leave when he took him from us.”

  I start to ask them about the freezer, but decide to wait to see what FDLE finds out about it first. Instead I broach a subject that I had wanted to talk to Keith and Christopher about individually, but now don’t feel like I have the time to wait to get them alone.

  “I’ve got one more question for you guys,” I say, “and it may be sensitive, but my goal is only to find Magdalene’s killer and get my daughter back. The clock is ticking, which means I have to be more blunt than I usually am, use less finesse.”

  Keith sits up a little straighter and seems to set himself in a defensive posture, as Christopher’s eyebrows raise up.

  “In Christopher’s journal . . .” I say.

  “I knew this was going to happen,” Keith says. “I told him he was insane for including his journal in the casebook. They’re just his ramblings, his random, vulnerable thoughts.”

  “Go ahead,” Christopher says to me. “I stand by everything I wrote.”

  “You talk about guilt you feel about what y’all did that night,” I say. “You speak about being so angry at Keith you weren’t sure you could ever forgive him or be intimate with him again.”

  “For fuck sake,” Keith says. “You put that in your journal?”

  “I need to know why that is,” I say. “What that’s about. What happened that night that made you feel that way? What do you feel so guilty about? Because several of the others who were there that night noticed you guys disappeared for a while during the party.”

  Christopher looks up at Keith.

  Keith shakes his head and says, “We really gonna do this?”

  “We have to.”

  “Unbelievable,” he says, still shaking his head and looking disgusted, then to his mother, “Could you excuse us for a few minutes?”

  “No,” Christopher says. “No one has been more supportive of us than Derinda. I feel almost like she’s as much my mother as yours. I want her to stay. She should know too.”

  “Still looking for ways to punish me, aren’t you?” Keith says. “Okay. Fine. Take your best shot. Humiliate and embarrass me in front of my own mother. I don’t care anymore.”

  “Let me start by saying I have forgiven Keith,” Christopher says. “Despite what he might think. And I’m not doing this to embarrass or punish anyone. I just want absolutely everything out in the open.”

  He reaches up and takes Keith’s hand.

  “At a certain point in our relationship,” Christopher says, “the point where everything else was as good as it could be—our family, our child, our business, our relationships with friends and family, which is probably not a coincidence—Keith decided he was a little bored with our sex life.”

  “Not bored,” Keith says. “That’s unfair.”

  “A little restless,” Christopher says. “Anyway. He decided he wanted to shake things up a little bit. And this was about the time—probably also not a coincidence—that Scott Haskew expressed interest in having a threesome with us.”

  Keith is looking down now, avoiding eye contact with anyone, especially his mother.

  “So after a while of talking and planning and negotiating and preparing . . .” Christopher says, “we decided that the three of us would sneak into the escape room during the party for a quick little ménage à trois. That’s it. That’s what we did—that’s where we were when our friends said we disappeared. And I wasn’t mad at Keith for wanting to try it. I was mad at him and I feel guilty about the fact that while our little girl was being kidnapped and murdered, instead of protecting her we were in the escape room with our dicks out acting like much younger men with much less responsibility.”

  Keith begins to cry. “I’m so sorry,” he says. “If my . . . If I’m the reason she was killed.”

  His mom hops up from the couch and goes around to him and hugs him.

  “You are most certainly not the reason she was—that what happened to her happened. Neither of you are.”

  “We’d never done anything like that before,” Keith says.r />
  “Oh, my sweet boy,” she says. “You didn’t do anything wrong. Y’all are not the reason she was taken. What you were doing didn’t cause her to get taken. Do you think if you had been in the parlor with the rest of them instead of the escape room that she wouldn’t have been taken?”

  “She’s right,” I say. “What happened to Magdalene isn’t your fault and it isn’t because of what you were doing. And if you don’t believe me, just think about this . . . Anna and I weren’t in the escape room. Anna was in the bed with Taylor and I was in the parlor where you would’ve been if you hadn’t gone into the escape room that night, and Taylor was still taken.”

  That seems to make an impact. A slight change in posture and their breathing seems to convey a certain lifting of the burden of guilt they had been carrying since that night.

  All three of them are crying now, but the tears seem more like tears of release, of loss and sorrow instead of guilt and recrimination.

  For a few moments no one says anything. I wait as the three of them cry and comfort and console one another, thinking about Anna, Taylor, and Johanna and longing for us all to be together as I do.

  Eventually, Derinda says, “Can we ask you a question?”

  “Of course.”

  “Who could do such a thing?” she asks. “What kind of criminal could take a precious little girl like Magdalene, kill her, then put her back in her bed like that for the boys to find? What kind of sick psychopath does something so cruel and unusual and dramatic like that?”

  “A very specific one,” I say. “With some unique fantasies and proclivities that will actually help us catch him. And that’s exactly what I intend to do.”

  Day 214

  Day 214

  The books that Wren is bringing us are becoming more and more bizarre. What am I missing? How do all the crazy conspiracy theories making the rounds these days have anything to do with me wanting to die because someone took my daughter? Is she really saying I should check the nearest pizza place so see if Magdalene is part of some child sex ring operating out of the back office? WTF?

  39

  “FDLE is done here,” Roderick is saying. “They’re rushing everything—have actually called staff back into the lab tonight who will be waiting for the evidence when the crime scene unit gets back with it.”

  I nod. “That’s great. I really appreciate that.”

  We are standing in the hallway separating the B&B from the residence and have the door closed for privacy, even though as far as we know the only other people in the house are Keith, Christopher, and Derinda, and they are in the parlor.

  “ME is already performing the autopsy,” he says, “so we should have the prelim autopsy results and the lab work by early in the morning. Also said depending on what they test for—and assuming there’s enough viable tissue to test—certain toxicology tests, like a general drug screen, can be done in a matter of hours. So if she was drugged and it wasn’t with something too exotic, we should know about that tomorrow too.”

  “Gives us our greatest chance of finding Taylor quickly and alive.”

  “They left it up to me as to whether to let people back in the house or not,” he says. “I was thinking about just sealing off Magdalene’s room and your room and letting everybody back in. We really need it as a staging area for our search and I’d like to keep as close an eye on everyone as possible. I like the idea of having them here with us and interacting with each other. What do you think?”

  I nod. “I agree. That’s a great idea.”

  “We’re gonna find her,” he says. “Promise you that. Won’t stop until we do.”

  I get the worst sense of fear and foreboding when he says that, and I wish he hadn’t, but I don’t say anything, just nod.

  An awkward moment passes between us.

  He looks away, back toward the residence. “They took the entire freezer with them,” he says. “I cleared the backyard and had them take it out that way so no one would see. Obviously if we let Keith and Christopher back in here they will notice it’s gone, but . . . we can just deal with that when they ask.”

  I nod again. “Speaking of freezers,” I say, “we should use the search for Taylor to look in as many as we can—including the commercial ones in town, like at The Sand Witch.”

  “Will do. What else?”

  “I’m sure you’ve thought of this . . .” I say. “I’m not saying it because I don’t think you have, but we need to search carefully every empty house, rental, and place under construction. If the roadblock turned them around, then he may have her in one of those type places trying to outwait us.”

  He nods enthusiastically. “One of the teams has a rental agent with a master key with them.”

  “Perfect.”

  “I’ve been trying to track everyone’s movements tonight,” he says. “When your wife began screaming, everyone was together in the parlor and dining room except for Hal Raphael. You can actually attest to that. You were in there too. And they were in there a good while even before you got there. Correct me if I’m wrong about any of this: You checked on Taylor and she was fine. You spoke briefly to Rake and Charis on the landing, then you and Charis came down and joined the others. Eventually Rake comes down for some food, and though he intends to go right back up he never does. Then Haskins and I come in and talk for a few minutes. And your wife starts screaming that Taylor’s gone. Is that right?”

  I nod.

  “That’s a narrow window,” he says. “Very narrow. So, like the night Magdalene was taken, either someone broke in or someone inside took her—and the only two people who were here on the night of Magdalene’s disappearance and who weren’t accounted for while Taylor was being taken are Rake Sabin and Hal Raphael—assuming Taylor was taken before Rake came downstairs, which seems likely. And when I was wondering which one it could be, I started thinking . . . What if they’re in it together? What if Rake’s accusations and the bad things he has to say about Raphael are a cover? After all it was Rake who volunteered to go up there and keep an eye on Raphael. No one asked him to. What if that, like all his negative comments, was just a ruse?”

  Day 219

  Day 219

  Demi Gonzalez, our adoption agent, told us that given what happened to Magdalene, the chances of us being able to adopt again are very slim.

  The strangest, most disturbing thing about that is not that it means she or they or everyone blames us for what happened—as if we did or did not do something we should have to keep her safe—which I guess is what everyone thinks. (Including me sometimes, though I don’t know what the hell else we could’ve done). No, the strangest thing is that we didn’t ask. She told us this as if we had inquired about the possibility of adopting again, but we did no such thing. We have no interest in adopting again. There is no replacement for Magdalene. It would feel like such a betrayal to our little girl to say, Oh well, we lost that one, let’s just get another.

  40

  With no need to watch the front and back doors as a group, those who had been have now joined the search, and I try to talk to them as they come in occasionally for water or to use the restroom.

  To my surprise Demi Gonzalez has come back out in the middle of the night to help.

  “I really appreciate you helping with the search,” I say as she steps out of the bathroom and into the hallway.

  “Least I could do when I heard,” she says. “I’m so sorry this has happened. I just can’t wrap my head around it happening twice in the same house. And, my God, poor Keith and Christopher. After all this time and to find precious little Magdalene dead in her own bed.”

  Her expression of sadness for Keith and Christopher reminds me to check on Charis, who is probably equally as devastated and not receiving a fraction of the support and condolences.

  She starts to make her way back down the hallway, but stops and turns toward me again.

  “I’m hesitant to say anything,” she says. “For a variety of reasons—including legal issues o
f privacy—but . . . given the circumstances . . . I know how important it is that we find your little girl as quickly as possible. This may be nothing. Probably is, but . . . I just . . . Oh, God, I feel so guilty even saying it, but . . . I feel I must. Like I say, it’s probably nothing. Anyway, Brooke Wakefield has been obsessed with having a child for as long as I’ve known her. She’s . . . She was seriously considering adoption. When I say serious . . . she had already converted a spare bedroom in her house into a nursery. Anyway, she kept pestering me to find her a little girl. I mean . . . she was relentless. But then after Magdalene went missing she stopped. I’m talking full stop. She went from bugging me every day about finding her a little girl to saying she has changed her mind. It was the most stark contrast I’ve ever seen—and I’ve been doing this a long time. Then a few weeks later—a few weeks after Magdalene disappeared—she started up again, bugging the fuck out of me to find her a little girl. Something she’s done from then until now. But I just saw her out there while we were searching and she told me she had changed her mind again, that she no longer needed me to find her a little girl to adopt, that she was good. It probably doesn’t mean anything but just in case it did I didn’t want to not have told you. But given that it could cost me my job, please keep it between us.”

  “I will,” I say. “And I really appreciate you telling me. Truly.”

  As soon as she walks away, I text Roderick.

  Has anyone searched Brooke Wakefield’s place yet?

  Let me check.

  A few moments later, he texts again.

  No. It hasn’t been done yet. I’m assuming you have a reason for asking. Want to join me for it and a search of The Sand Witch’s freezers?

  Yes.

  Pick you up out front in five.

  * * *

  While waiting for Roderick on the narrow street at the edge of Keith and Christopher’s property, various weary searchers—both civilian and law enforcement—pass by, some heading to different search locations, others heading into the Florida House for water and the restroom.