When the footage ends, I click on the file named 12/23 and continue scanning.
More nothing. More hours of both the front and back doors—and nothing else—until . . .
At 5:43 a.m. Hal Raphael exits the front door rolling a suitcase.
“What’s in the suitcase?” I ask.
“Hey,” Merrill says. “We’re here.”
“Huh?”
“We’re here.”
I open my eyes to see that we are in the parking lot of Sacred Heart.
“How long was I out?” I ask.
“Couple of minutes,” he says. “Maybe.”
I nod. “Thanks.”
He finds a spot not far from the main entrance and parks the car.
“Ready?” I say.
“Sure,” he says. “Soon as you tell me what’s in the suitcase.”
Day 245
Day 245
I keep coming back to Raphael. It has to be him. It has to be. I have no idea how he did it exactly, but while we were partying he was doing it. No other explanation makes half as much sense. We need to hire a PI to investigate him, but we’re out of money and don’t have a heck of a lot coming in. There’s got to be a way though. Maybe we could get him back down here somehow.
44
I enter Anna’s dim, quiet room to find her sleeping.
She is propped up on pillows and her thick brown hair cascades down around her peaceful, beautiful face.
Verna, who has been asleep in the chair beside Anna’s bed, opens her eyes and smiles at me.
“Have y’all found Taylor yet?” she whispers.
“Not yet.”
Merrill, who decided not to come in, is grabbing coffee and refueling the car so that we can dash back over right after my brief visit.
“I’m gonna go down and get some breakfast,” she says. “Give you two some time alone.”
“How has she been?”
“Sleeping mostly.”
“Has the doctor been by?”
“Not yet. One saw her in the emergency room. They’ve run some tests and said a doctor would be by this morning.”
“Thank you so much for staying with her,” I say.
“My pleasure. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
She eases out of the room and pulls the door closed behind her.
I look back at Anna to see if the clicking of the door has awakened her.
Her relaxed and tranquil face looks like an earlier, younger iteration of itself, and I think back to just how long she has been in my life to one degree or another.
I miss her so much—not just the unconscious woman lying in front of me, but my sweet, kind, loving wife who all but vanished a few weeks back.
I’ve longed for her since she went away, and I’ve felt isolated and alone.
But as painful and difficult as that has been, I don’t think I’ve ever felt quite as lonely as I do at this moment with Anna asleep, Johanna at her mom’s, and Taylor missing.
I feel utterly and completely and absolutely alone.
The ache inside me, the one that permeates my entire being down to the hot lava core of my heart, is not only constant and complete but somehow both dull and acute at the same time.
I want to sit down next to her and cry.
But I know if I do I may not be able to get back up again.
I want to wake her up and seek solace in her.
But I know right now she has none to give and what I would get from her would only make me feel worse.
I want to yell, to rant, to scream, to break and crush and smash something or several somethings, but instead I bow my weary head and beg God to get my wife and daughter back.
A tap at the door is followed by the entrance of a middle-aged Indian man with bushy black hair and a mustache wearing a white lab coat.
“Mr. Jordan?”
I nod and extend my hand.
“I’m Dr. Patel. How are you?”
“Been better.”
“Well, hopefully we get your wife better and things get better for you as well. Happy life when wife is happy, no? Have you noticed anxiety, depression, irritability, mood swings?”
I let out a harsh little laugh before I even realize what I’m doing. Nodding perhaps a little too vigorously I say, “A little, yeah.”
“Maybe more than little?” he says. “How about fatigue, weight gain, dry skin, joint pain, muscle weakness, stiffness, aches, tenderness? Constipation? Swelling? Trouble sleeping? Irregular menstrual periods?”
I nod. “Some of that for sure. Maybe all of it.”
“I want to run a few more tests to confirm, but my guess is the culprit is hypothyroidism. Underactive thyroid disease disorder. It’s quite common. Your wife’s thyroid gland is not producing enough thyroid hormone. If this assessment is correct, simple treatment with a daily dose of synthetic thyroid hormone and . . . happy life with happy wife.”
Day 250
Day 250
Someone online asked about the possibility that Magdalene’s biological mother or father could be responsible. And I was like FUCK I hadn’t even thought of that. Of course.
When we asked Roderick Brandt about it he said they had been questioned and that they both had alibis, but he wouldn’t tell us who they are. Said he can’t.
But anyone can set up a fake alibi, right? I mean, that’s exactly what a guilty person does, right?
And here’s the kicker . . . by not telling us who they are . . . they could be someone we know—even someone we believe to be a close friend.
45
I walk through the hospital encouraged by Anna’s prognosis and return my focus to finding Taylor.
I plan to think about every bit of information I’ve gathered so far—or at least the ones I can remember—on the drive back to Sandcastle, but I fall asleep in Merrill’s passenger seat before we’re out of the Sacred Heart parking lot.
Still, my subconscious does the very thing my conscious mind had planned to—and probably far more efficiently.
It comes with a price, however.
My dreams, some of which can only be described as nightmares, are nonsensical, chaotic, and disturbing.
And even one of my recurring dreams is transformed into something it has never been before—something disconcerting, unsettling.
* * *
The last of the setting sun streaks the blue horizon with neon pink and splatters the emerald green waters of the Gulf with giant orange splotches like scoops of sherbet in an art deco bowl.
A fitting finale for a perfect Florida day.
Taylor, my daughter, who looks to be around four, though it’s hard to tell since in dreams we all seem ageless—runs up from the water’s edge, her face red with sun and heat, her hands sticky with wet sand, and asks me to join her for one last swim.
She looks up at me with her mother’s brown eyes, open and honest as possible, and smiles her sweetest smile as she begins to beg.
“Please, Daddy,” she says. “Please.”
“We need to go,” I say. “It’ll be dark soon. And I’m supposed to take your mom out on a date tonight.”
“Please, Daddy,” she repeats as if I have not spoken, and now she takes the edge of my swimming trunks in her tiny, sandy hand and tugs.
I look down at her, moved by her openness, purity, and beauty.
She knows she’s got me then.
“Yes,” she says, releasing my shorts to clench her fist and pull it toward her in a gesture of victory. Then she begins to jump up and down.
I drop the keys and the towels and the bottles of sunscreen wrapped in them, kick off my flip-flops, and pause just a moment to take it all in—her, the sand, the sea, the sun.
“I love you, Dad,” she says with the ease and unashamed openness only a safe and secure child can.
“I love you.”
I take her hand in mine, and we walk down to the end of her world as the sun sets and the breeze cools off the day.
I look down and she is gon
e, her tiny, sandy hand no longer in my own.
I spin around and look for her, searching in every direction.
In the far distance I see a small figure that might be her.
I race toward her.
But no matter how hard or fast I run I can’t gain any ground, can’t make up any of the distance between us.
And then she is gone.
Suddenly the beach breeze brings with it shrieks and cries, and I can’t determine if they are hers or the gulls gliding in the air over sea and shore.
* * *
I wake groggily and discombobulated as my phone vibrates incessantly in my pocket.
I withdraw it and squint to read the name on the display.
It’s Roderick.
“Just got a call from the ME,” he says. “Prelim autopsy shows no signs of sexual assault or violence.”
“Thank God for that,” I say, thinking not only of Magdalene but where Taylor might be right now and what might be being done to her.
“The body had been frozen shortly after death just as we had suspected,” he says. “And she estimates the body, which has been cleaned, had been out of the freezer less than sixteen hours or so.”
I’m doing my best to focus on what he’s saying and to add it to the other information that I’ve acquired so far, but my mind keeps trying to break in with the thought that I already know who did it.
“But the biggest revelation came from the rushed drug screenings,” he says. “Like so many in the media and online have theorized, she did die of a drug overdose—and it was sleeping medication. Something called chloral hydrate. Evidently it’s pretty common.”
I sit for a long moment taking it all in, adding it to everything else I know, and allowing the thought that I already know who did it to fully form within my conscious mind.
“You there?” he says eventually.
“I think I know who did it,” I say. “You mind if I try something unconventional?”
46
We enter the front door of the Florida House the way they did for the solstice party last year—en masse.
Wren Melody, Brooke Wakefield, Henrique Arango, Scott Haskew, Clarence and Sarah Samuelson, Jodi North, Vic Frankford, Rake Sabin, Hal Raphael, Roderick Brandt, Dad, Jake, Reggie, and me.
Making our way into the parlor, we join Keith, Derinda, Charis, and Christopher, who are all sitting on the same couch beside each other dozing.
They stir awake and sit up as we enter.
I had asked Roderick if we could gather together everyone who was in the house the night of the solstice and he had said he was willing to try anything.
Everyone is obviously exhausted—disheveled and drowsy.
“Could we have everyone who was at the party the night Magdalene was taken sit down in the parlor?” Roderick says.
Keith and Christopher remain where they are, as Scott and Vic replace Derinda and Charis on the couch with them.
Wren and Brooke sit on the loveseat.
Henrique takes the chair by the fireplace.
Rake sits in a high-back chair near another couch where Clarence and Sarah Samuelson are seated with Jodi North.
Everyone else is either in the doorway of the foyer area or dining room—Dad, Derinda, Charis and Reggie on the dining room side and Roderick, Jake, and Raphael in the opening to the foyer.
“Not just at the party that night,” I say, looking at Raphael, “but in the house. Would you join the others in here?”
He shakes his head, frowns, stomps into the parlor, and takes the last remaining empty chair—an uncomfortable-looking upright wooden one.
“We’ll bring around some coffee,” Derinda says, and she and Charis busy themselves doing just that.
“Thank you,” I say.
Roderick takes a step forward and says, “John has some things to say and some questions to ask. I want everyone to give him your undivided attention and unreserved cooperation.”
Merrill is the only one not present, and that’s because I have him checking on something for me that might verify and validate the theory I’ve formulated.
Because I have to buy some time while waiting to find out what he uncovers, and because it will help me further solidify and bolster or discredit and abandon my theory, I have decided to talk through what I’m thinking with the suspects.
I feel more like Hercule Poirot than I ever imagined I could and I have the urge to say Madame and Monsieur.
I resist the urge.
“Until last night,” I say, “we didn’t know who took Magdalene, how it was done, or if she was still alive or not. Until a few minutes ago we didn’t know how she was killed, how her body was put back in her bed, and who took Taylor from our bedroom.”
“You saying you know now?” Keith says.
I nod.
“How Magdalene was killed or all of it?” he says.
“Why is what I want to know,” Christopher says. “Why would anyone steal our little angel?”
“Let’s talk through all of it,” I say, pulling out my phone to make sure I haven’t missed a message from Merrill. “We can start with the security system here. No one can enter without having a current key card or being let in. And anyone who does enter or exit is recorded by the security cameras. It’s because of them that we know no one entered the house after you guys arrived for the party. And no one left until Hal Raphael left for the airport the following morning. But he appeared to be alone.”
“I didn’t appear to be alone,” he says. “I was alone.”
“There was no sign of Magdalene when the rest of you came out of the house to look for her later that morning,” I say. “So if no one breaks into the house after the party starts, then it has to be one of you already in the house. But even as we’re able to narrow it down to you all, that doesn’t tell us how you did what you did with all the other people in the house or how you were able to remove Magdalene from the house without being seen.”
“Does it have something to do with the key card that was stolen that day?” Christopher asks.
“The truth is . . . I’m not sure.”
“What?” Vic says. “You either know or you don’t. I thought you corralled us all in here like cattle because you knew.”
“I do believe the killer stole the key card,” I say. “I just don’t know if it was used in the commission of the crime. What I mean is . . . the killer could’ve used it but didn’t necessarily have to in order to get in or out of the house. I’m still left with some questions about the key cards—including my own. When I was trying to get back into our room to see if the secret passageway was used to take Taylor mine didn’t work, but instead of it having something to do with the crime, I may have just been rushing too much and didn’t give it enough time to work. I don’t know for sure. What I am sure of is that the key card that was stolen wouldn’t have to have been used for the crime to have been committed.”
“It seems like you’re dragging this out just to torture us,” Brooke says.
“Yeah,” Clarence says. “Why don’t you tell us what you know instead of what you don’t know?”
I glance at my phone again as Derinda and Charis begin passing out the coffee.
“What we now know for sure,” I say, “is that Magdalene died of a sleeping aid overdose. The drug screening the lab ran this morning reveals that.”
“Just like the media reported,” Vic says. “So . . . it was an accidental death.”
Everyone looks over at Keith and Christopher.
“Look over here all you want,” Keith says. “We didn’t give her any goddamn sleeping medication that night.”
“We certainly didn’t,” Christopher says.
“Yes, you did,” I say. “You both did.”
“I swear to God we didn’t,” Keith says. “Swear on . . . on . . . my life. What there is left of it.”
“You did,” I say again. “You both did. And Magdalene wasn’t the only one drugged that night. You all were. Everyone but the kille
r was. That’s how this was done. Recall how everyone of you told me what an off year it was, how exhausted everyone was, how normally everyone stays up late and some of you stay up all night, but this year most of you didn’t even make it up to your room, you slept in here—on the couch, the chair, the floor, propped up on the dining room table. It’s because you were all drugged.”
“How?” Wren Melody asks. “Tell us how, dear boy?”
“The solstice punch,” I say. “Both versions—the virgin and the alcoholic so that everyone would be. And before putting Magdalene to bed . . .”
“We let her have some of the virgin punch,” Keith says.
“Oh, my God,” Christopher says. “We killed her.”
Derinda quickly hands Charis the coffee she’s holding and rushes over to comfort her boys.
“I don’t think so,” I say. “I don’t think it was enough to kill her. I think the killer gave her sleeping medication later not knowing she already had some in her system from the punch. They just thought she was groggy from having been asleep, so they gave her the meds they had intended to all along—and together it was too much.”
“So,” Henrique says, “that means her death was accidental.”
I nod. “I believe so. I believe this was an abduction gone wrong.”
I pause for a moment and check my phone again as everyone digests what has been said so far.
“So,” I say. “Who did it? Why did they do it? And how did they get Magdalene’s body out of the house and then back in it nearly a year later—or did they? Was it in here all along? Let’s start with motive. Why would someone abduct a child?” I look at Brooke. “Perhaps because she wants her for her own. Or,” I add, looking at Raphael, “perhaps for far more sinister reasons. Or maybe,” I say, glancing back at Henrique, “it was so she could be traded on a black market barter system in an attempt to get experimental medical treatment.”
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