We are in the judge’s chambers—Wheata Pearl seated behind her enormous antique desk, Anna, Gary, and I standing across from her in front of it. On the desk is a rattlesnake mug identical to the one on the bench in the courtroom.
The Burrells had the option of joining us but declined. This is probably far closer to me than they want to get, and I can’t blame them.
“After reviewing the footage,” Scott rushes on, “we have concluded that it is of no evidentiary value, will only upset the victim’s parents and the jury—not to mention there’s no way to validate its veracity with certainty.”
“Well,” Wheata Pearl says, “that settles that. Guess we’re done here . . . because my instructions were for you and you alone to watch the footage, evaluate its evidentiary merit, and decide if you and you alone wanted to introduce it. Isn’t that what you recall, Ms. Jordan?”
Anna smiles. “Your Honor,” she says, “not only did he not follow your instructions to forward me the email with the attached footage, but he didn’t communicate with me in any way and ignored repeated attempts to get in contact with him.”
“Oh, you’re not the only one he ignored,” the judge says. “He ignored my instructions from the bench yesterday and my many phone calls last night.”
Anna had made good on her threat to Scott and had notified Wheata Pearl about his failure to forward the email as ordered and refusal to answer her calls. From that point, the judge began calling him too.
“Your Honor,” Scott says. “I’m very sorry for any inconvenience it may have caused but not only has my phone been acting up, but due to the stress of this case and its importance to my devastated clients, I haven’t been sleeping well. I took a sleeping pill early last evening and was comatose until this morning.”
“Let me tell you somethin’ ol’ son,” the judge says. “You’re gonna wish you were comatose for the foreseeable future when I get done with you. But for now that will wait. Just know that as soon as this trial is over your ass is mine. Now, while we’re all here watching you do it, forward the email in question to me and Ms. Jordan.”
“But—”
“Don’t utter another syllable,” she says. “Just do what I told you to do. Now.”
He lets out a long sigh and begrudgingly complies.
My phone vibrates in my pocket and I pull it partially out to and glance at it. I’ve received a text from Pamela Garmon saying that the home invaders from Mexico Beach on the night of the storm are in custody—except for the one that is in the morgue. Drawing on the SWAT team, he chose suicide by cop rather than returning to prison.
After she and Anna have both confirmed they received it, Wheata Pearl says, “Have you received any other messages or footage or been contacted in any way by this anonymous sender?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Or anyone else or received any other evidence of any kind?”
He shakes his head.
“Okay,” she says, “I’m going to pull up the video on my monitor and we’re going to all watch it together.”
After she has moved her mouse around and clicked a few times, she turns the large computer monitor on the corner of her desk around to face us and joins us on this side of her desk.
“I’m sure this is going to be difficult to see,” she says. “We ready?”
My heart is thudding against my chest, my temperature is spiking, and my skin turns clammy.
And then she clicks Play.
The video opens on a shot of a wooden classroom door.
Gunfire, explosions, and screams can be heard.
The camera moves up the door to the narrow pane of glass above the knob. At first it autofocuses on the steel mesh within the glass but then as it racks focus on the hallway beyond, the mesh nearly disappears.
Out in the hallway, Derek Burrell can be seen. His back is to the camera and he’s firing his shotgun in the opposite direction.
Where Derek is standing is about twenty feet away from the classroom door the video is being recorded through.
Each blast of the shotgun thunders through the hallway, echoes through the school, its extreme audible peaks distorting the sound of the recording.
Anna reaches down and takes my hand.
The video not only shows Derek firing but being fired upon—presumably by the school resource officer, though she is not visible around the bend in the hallway.
Between the explosions and gunfire something inaudible is said, perhaps by one of the students in the classroom. It’s difficult to make out.
Suddenly, Derek jerks around this direction and begins firing. Two quick rounds as I come into frame.
I can be seen at the far edge of the frame returning fire.
As Derek falls, the kids in the classroom scream and whoever’s holding the phone drops it and a moment later the recording stops.
“You okay?” Anna whispers to me.
I squeeze her hand and nod.
“Could we rewind to just before Derek turns and starts shooting at John?” Anna asks.
“Read my mind,” Wheata Pearl says.
“And could we turn it up as loud as it will go, Your Honor?”
“Way ahead of you,” she says.
Scott clears his throat and steps back away from us a few steps.
Unable to cue the video to the exact spot she’s looking for, the judge starts the video over from the beginning.
This time, though, every blast is magnified and bounces around the judge’s chambers.
“Wow, that’s loud,” the judge shouts, but doesn’t turn it down.
This time when we reach the moment just before Derek jerks around and starts shooting, we can hear what is said.
It doesn’t come from the classroom but out in the hallway, and there’s no doubt about who’s saying it or what’s being said.
Before Derek spins and starts shooting at me, I say, “Sheriff’s investigator, drop your weapon.”
They aren’t the best or most beautiful words I’ve ever spoken but in this moment it feels like they are.
Before this moment, I couldn’t remember if I had identified myself and given him a lawful command, and because of that I hadn’t said I did in any of my statements, but in the fateful moment, my training and experience hadn’t failed me.
50
“Heard things went well for you today,” Merrill says.
Merrill Monroe has been my closest friend since childhood—and his recent absence in my life has left a huge void.
We are in the parking lot of a flower shop next to a collapsed commercial popup tent near the main intersection and only traffic light in Wewa. I had been examining the controversial tent with the crime scene tape around it when he passed by, saw me, and swung in. He’s still in his black BMW and I’m standing next to his open driver’s side window.
I nod. “At least for me personally,” I say. “Not sure what if any impact it’ll have on the case, but for me . . . it was a great day.”
“Anna says that’s our main objective these days,” he says.
He and I have had so little contact lately I didn’t know he was still helping Anna out with defense investigation work and by extension keeping up with the case.
“I didn’t realize you were still helping her with the investigation,” I say. “Thought everything was done. I really appreciate all you’re doing.”
“Don’t mention it,” he says. “Though I have to say I was particularly proud of finding that video.”
“The student video we watched today?” I say. “You found that?”
“I said don’t mention it.”
I should have guessed the student didn’t suddenly decide to turn in the footage on his own. Of course Merrill was the one to find it. Had to be the only one still looking.
“So you had seen it and knew what was on it and . . .”
I realize then the genius of what he did by sending it to Scott.
“Having the student send it to Scott was brilliant,” I say.
> “Well . . .” he says. “You might say student . . . or you might say untraceable China hacker. But yeah, thought having Scott think it gonna benefit him would mean he couldn’t resist introducing it. He do that . . . We get it in and . . . save Anna having to deal with any discovery issues.”
“Does she know—”
“She knows nothing about nothing,” he says. “And neither do we.”
“Thank you,” I say. “You’ll never know what seeing and, more importantly, hearing that footage did for me.”
“You know, for being told not to mention something, you damn sure mention it a lot,” he says.
I laugh and neither of us says anything for a beat.
“How’d the video play to the jury?” he asks eventually.
The judge had allowed the video to be entered into evidence, and despite Anna’s earlier concerns about the jury actually seeing me shoot Derek, she had shown it in court this afternoon and questioned me about it, after which Anna rested and the judge dismissed court for the day, saying we’d have closing arguments tomorrow and then jury deliberations would begin.
“I couldn’t look at them,” I say. “Couldn’t look anywhere. Just locked my eyes onto the screen and fought hard not to close my eyes, look away, or cry. Of all the difficult and painful parts of the trial . . . watching that footage with and in front of everyone was by far the most difficult and painful.”
“Glad I could provide such an experience for you,” he says. “You willin’ for me to use your statement as testimonial on my website? Monroe Security and Investigations—we find footage that will fuck you up.”
I laugh and turn to see Arnie Ward, the person I’ve been waiting on, pull into the lot and park across the way.
“The only grace at all,” I say, “was that Bryce and Melissa weren’t present for it. Left the courtroom because they couldn’t bear seeing it.”
“Was it worth it?” he asks. “The pain and . . . embarrassment . . . or whatever it was . . . in order to hear that you did identify yourself, seeing how quickly he fired, how little time you had to react?”
“No question,” I say. “It’s the single most important thing that’s happened in the trial so far. It’s no exaggeration to say that . . . what you did by finding that footage and getting it into evidence . . . may just have saved my life . . . and at the very least my sanity.”
“Not even I can save somethin’ that ain’t there to begin with.”
“I mean it. Thank you.”
Arnie has yet to get out of his car, and I can see that he’s on the phone.
“I know,” he says. “You can’t imagine how happy I was when I found that little punk with the footage. Little bitch tried to sell it to me too. Shee-it. Talkin’ ’bout his side hustle is video. I’s like, your side hustle gonna be tryin’ to figure how to remove my boot from your ass if you don’t produce that shit.”
“I’m sure he was holding onto it for the documentary they’ll inevitably make about the Potter High shooting one day.”
“Exactly what he said.”
We fall silent again.
Eventually, he says, “Harassing high school students ain’t the only thing I been doin’. Been followin’ your girl too. Bitch been keepin’ some odd hours.”
“Who?”
“How many women I tell you I gonna be keepin’ tabs on?”
“Oh,” I say. “Randa.”
“Started to text you and let you know she was waiting by your car last night but wanted to see the look on your face.”
“How was it?”
“Priceless,” he says, “though if you were either surprised or happy to see her you hid it well.”
“What’s she been up to?” I ask.
“’Sides stalkin’ you?”
“Yeah.”
“She all over the place—all hours of the day and night when she’s not stalkin’ you in court. She up to somethin’. Just can’t tell what exactly. She like followin’ a bee, flittin’ around from flower to flower.”
“Where all is she going?”
“She’s revisited every crime scene—or least where the bodies were discovered—some more than once. She’s been to the RV Park out on Overstreet, the couple of tent cities we got with volunteers in them. She keeps ridin’ by and watchin’ those night crews working on the lines. Like she window shoppin’ or some shit.”
“Well, let me know if browsing turns to buying.”
51
For the past few days, the now collapsed popup tent has been a source of contention for our little town and has had many locals angry enough to threaten its owner and attempt to run him out of town.
The tent—which was set up during the first week following the storm when our town still didn’t have electricity, running water, or cell service and we were all continuing to grieve the destruction and loss of so much we held sacred—houses a T-shirt vendor from Tennessee who was selling colorful shirts that read “I Survived Hurricane Michael.”
Because we were all in so much pain, because we all knew people who hadn’t survived the superstorm, because the hurricane that decimated our homes and savaged our surroundings, bringing with it death and destruction like had never been seen here before wasn’t an amusement park ride, many among us viewed it as offensive and in extremely poor taste for an outsider, unaffected by the disaster, to rush in so soon afterwards to capitalize on our misery in such a crass and commercial way.
When hurting and resentful citizens had stopped by the man’s tent and told him what they thought about him and that it best he left town, his callous response had been, “It’s a free country. You don’t like what I’m selling, don’t buy one. I ain’t goin’ anywhere.”
When some of these same citizens took their complaints to the mayor and board of city commissioners, they were patronized and placated—and the offending T-shirt tent remained.
It looked as if no one could do anything about the insensitive entrepreneur from Tennessee.
And then along came the Chaos Killer, who in the early morning hours, as the Tennessean was setting up for the day ahead, had clocked him in the back of the head with one of the galvanized tent poles, broke his right ring finger, placed his mark on the man’s right palm, and had collapsed the tent around him to make it look like an accident.
Ironically, the tone-deaf Tennessean peddling the “I Survived Hurricane Michael” T-shirts had survived, and since no hospitals in the area had reopened yet he had been life-flighted to Tallahassee Memorial Medical Center. He’s now in critical but stable condition after being placed in a medically induced coma while surgeons try to deal with his blood-swollen brain.
Someone with a wicked sense of humor and about as much empathy as the T-shirt salesman had already sent him a homemade T-shirt that reads, “I Survived the Hurricane Michael Serial Killer,” with an accompanying note that said, “For you to wear if you actually survive.”
“An actual survivor,” Arnie says.
He has finally gotten out of his car and joined me at the scene.
“Maybe.”
“Wonder if he’ll be able to tell us anything?”
“Hard to imagine,” I say. “Most likely attacked from behind. But even if he wasn’t, I’d think the head trauma would prevent him from remembering anything.”
“Probably right,” he says, “but . . . it’s a shame. Got no other witnesses or anything else to go on.”
“Oh, but we do,” I say. “We have everything we need to make an arrest and we need to let everyone know.”
An hour later, Reggie is standing in front of the crumpled tent giving a statement to the media, the crime scene tape flapping in the wind behind her providing great optics for the drama unfolding.
“It’s moments like these,” Merrick says softly, “that make you wish you worked in TV news.”
I am standing next to him, Tim, and Bucky to the back left side, waiting for Reggie to begin.
“You just need a great photograph to accompany your words,�
�� Tim says. “I’ll take Bucky’s images over video footage any day. Why don’t you have a photographer on this assignment?”
“You kidding?” Merrick says. “We have like two photographers in our entire agency that we all have to share. And only one of them is full-time.”
“Give me that piece of shit camera you have,” Bucky says, “and don’t tell anybody—and for fuck sake don’t give me a photo credit—and I’ll shoot a couple good shots for you too.”
Reggie takes a step forward and clears her throat, and everyone in the small group of gathered reporters grows quiet and still.
“We are very close to making an arrest,” she says. “Not only do we have a witness to this brazen act of brutality right here in the middle of town, but the victim has survived and is expected to make a complete recovery. We’re waiting for word from his doctors now about when we can interview him. All of which gives me great confidence to say to you that very soon this nightmare within a nightmare will be over.”
They’re all lies, of course. Every word—except maybe the ones about making an arrest soon. Those at least are aspirational.
Only a few people in our department know they are lies, and Reggie comes off as very credible and convincing, so hopefully this will work to both increase help from the public and rattle the killer.
“If you have any additional information you’d like to add to the strong case we are building, call the Gulf County Sheriff’s Department. And to the man responsible for these vicious and insidious murders . . . you can call me directly if you’d like to put a peaceful end to this without a violent confrontation that could result in your death.”
Following the press conference, Tim, Bucky, and Merrick ask to speak with me in private after everyone else is gone.
Now that everyone but us is, we stand near my car.
“We think we’re not giving the public enough information,” Tim says. “This was preventable. I know no one around here really cares that the T-shirt guy got it, but . . . chances are the next victim will be local.”
The Blood-Dimmed Tide (John Joran Mysteries Book 22) Page 22