True Crime Fiction

by Michael Lister

  Returning to Tallahassee with his mask of sanity back in place, Ted went on a date with a young woman from his rooming house that night. After abducting, subduing, brutalizing, raping, stabbing, cutting, killing, and dumping the body of little Kimberly Diane Leach in an old pigpen earlier in the day, Bundy dined at Chez Pierre with Francis Messier, eating good food and drinking fine wine in the company of an attractive young woman—all on a stolen credit card, of course.

  From out in the other room, I hear Dad cough and say something.

  Jumping up, I go check on him.

  60

  The dim, quiet house is warm and stuffy.

  In the living room I find both men snoring.

  Lying flat out on the couch, his hand over his heart as if saying the pledge of allegiance, Jake appears not to have moved at all since I eased him down there.

  Dad stirs and starts coughing again.

  Stepping into the tiny kitchen, I run a glass of water from the tap, and return with it to find him snoring again.

  In another moment he moans and says something incomprehensible in his sleep.

  The next time he coughs, he stirs and opens his eyes. Seeing me standing there startles him and he jumps, bringing up his hands in a defensive posture.

  As a child, I was always startled by the way he so often startled awake, and some of the old familiar feeling fluttered deep inside me now.

  “Dad, it’s me. You were coughing. Here’s some water.”

  “Huh?”

  His eyes are bloodshot, the brows above them in need of trimming and, like the graying brown hair on his head, standing up.

  Narrowing his eyes and blinking a bit, he seems to be having difficulty focusing.

  “What’re you doing here?” he asks.

  Like his cough, I wonder if his bloodshot eyes and trouble focusing have anything to do with him being sick and are really signs of a deeper, darker infirmity beneath—a thought that would not have occurred to me had Jake not said what he did.

  “Brought Jake home from the bar,” I say.

  He nods knowingly. “Knew someone would have to when he left to go out there. Figured I’d get a call. Must have fallen asleep.”

  He still hasn’t taken the water from my outstretched hand.

  “Drink some water,” I say. “How are you feeling?”

  He takes the water and drinks some, a small rivulet of which runs down the red-hued skin of his white-whiskered chin.

  Coughing again, he chokes a little, but only pauses a moment for it to pass before finishing off the glass.

  Jake stirs for the first time, licks his lips, adjust his body on the couch a bit, but doesn’t wake.

  “How bad was he?” Dad asks.

  I shake my head. “He was fine. Just a little lost at the moment.”

  He nods and holds the glass out for me. “Thanks.”

  I take it. “Can I get you anything else? Help you to bed?”

  He shakes his head. “I’m good here.”

  “Let me know if you need anything. I’ll be in the spare room looking through the Janet Lester case.”

  His eyes widen. “Really?”

  “We’ve been back a while. That’s what I’ve been doing.”

  He nods, a small suppressed smile twitching his lips a bit. “I missed something. Hope you find it. Want to close it once and for all this time.”

  “Jake said you were sick,” I say.

  He shakes his head. “Don’t want to talk about it. Going back to sleep.”

  I nod and head back toward the kitchen with the empty glass.

  With his eyes closed, he says, “Been having a few symptoms. Brown sent me for blood work.”

  Our GP, Raymond Brown, is the old country doctor in Pottersville.

  “Results are on the table,” he adds. “We can talk about it tomorrow. Night.”

  “Night.”

  “And John,” he adds, still without opening his eyes, “thanks for looking at the book on Janet.”

  “Should have sooner,” I say. “Sorry I didn’t.”

  Placing the glass in the sink, I step over and sit down at the old, compact, rickety kitchen table. Propped against the wall, held in place by a wooden napkin holder, is a small stack of mail. Sifting through it, I find the one from Dr. Brown.

  In it are photocopies of the lab results, a note from the doctor in a thin, shaky, barely legible cursive, and a couple of printouts of articles about additional tests and treatment options if they confirm what Dr. Brown already knows to be the case.

  By reading and rereading the contents of the envelope and Googling the questions they raise, I think I am able to understand.

  The blood work Dr. Brown ordered for Dad included a complete blood count or CBC, a broad blood test to screen for a wide range of conditions and diseases. The results showed a markedly elevated level of lymphocytes.

  Brown wants to do further testing, including a bone marrow examination that could confirm that Dad has chronic lymphocytic leukemia, or CLL, a not uncommon condition for a man his age.

  Chronic lymphocytic leukemia is a type of cancer that starts from cells that become lymphocytes, certain white blood cells found in the bone marrow. The cancer or leukemia cells start in the bone marrow but then go into the blood. In CLL, the leukemia cells often build up slowly over time, and many people don’t have any symptoms for at least a few years.

  Based on the language used in Dr. Brown’s note, and knowing Dad the way I do, my guess is he is being resistant to additional testing.

  Folding the pages back the way they were and returning them to the envelope, I replace the envelope where I found it and walk back out into the living room, wanting to hug my dad, to wake him and hear his voice.

  He is sleeping soundly, as is Jake, and I find the little noises, breaths, and snores they’re both making comforting.

  Though it’s August in Florida and the single window unit running in the back bedroom can’t cool the entire house, and though it’s warmer out here where they are sleeping than anywhere else but the kitchen, I retrieve two flat sheets from the narrow linen closet at the end of the hall and drape one over each of them before returning to the spare room and the murder book awaiting me there.

  61

  Janet Lester was an active, involved, busy young woman. Between school, work, photography, her horse Cinnamon, family obligations, friends, and a boyfriend, she didn’t have much spare time. But sometimes she just liked to take it easy, chillin’ out in front of the tube with her little brother, sometimes her mom, and on rare occasions her stepdad.

  Ralphie liked The Bionic Man, Man from Atlantis, and CHIPS, which she watched with him when she could, but she liked shorter, lighter shows like Happy Days and Laverne and Shirley or One Day at a Time and The Jeffersons. Her stepdad liked Three’s Company, but she didn’t care for it. Everybody, including her mom, liked Charlie’s Angels.

  This is how she was spending the little life she had left—riding her horse, snapping pictures, lying on the shag carpet in front of the TV—while Ted Bundy was preparing to leave Tallahassee.

  News of the Chi Omega murders had spread across the country, and cops who had investigated and arrested Bundy in Colorado and other places began traveling to Florida, believing that the authorities here were dealing with the same coed killer. Tallahassee in particular and Florida in general were no longer safe places for Bundy to hide.

  While Janet and the other girls of Marianna High School were preparing for and participating in the Miss Valentine pageant, Ted Bundy was stealing tags and credit cards and cars in an attempt to flee Tallahassee.

  After some failed attempts and a close call with a cop, Bundy finally managed to steal a car on the evening of February 12th—a ’72 orange VW that belonged to Ricky Garzaniti, who had left his keys in his car while dashing into the babysitter’s house to pick up his child and gotten detained a bit.

  That same night, Janet and Ben attended the Sweethearts’ Ball, and for the second time that weeken
d a crown had been placed on Janet’s head. Crowned king and queen of the Sweethearts’ Ball after Janet had been crowned Miss Valentine 1978 the night before, Ben and Janet were having one of the best weekends of their short lives—one that was about to change in the most dramatic and horrific ways imaginable.

  As Janet went home and pretended to go to bed, only to sneak out a short time later, Bundy was driving his stolen orange VW west on I-10 toward Pensacola and eventually the Alabama state line—though three days later he’d be arrested before reaching it.

  After she was sure that her family was settled in for the night, Janet crept out of the house and to her car, which she had parked farther away than she normally did so no one would hear when she cranked it.

  Making her way out of her neighborhood, she took a left on Highway 90 and a right at Highway 71—the rural road leading out to the old farmhouse where the party was.

  As Janet was doing all this, Ted Bundy, some fifty miles from Tallahassee now, was cruising down I-10 watching the gas needle of the stolen VW bounce toward E.

  An acquaintance from school, Little Larry Daughtry, worked at the Gulf station close to where Highway 71 ran beneath I-10. Daughtry’s dad, Big Larry Daughtry, owned a liquor store just across the state line, and Little Larry sold booze to his underage classmates.

  On her way to the party, Janet stopped by the Gulf station and purchased a bottle of Dewar’s from Little Larry because she wanted to be as relaxed as possible.

  At around this same time, a strange and agitated man with dark unkempt hair wearing light pants and a dark blue coat pulled his orange VW into the Gulf station and had Little Larry fill ’er up, paying the uneasy young attendant with a credit card.

  The credit card turned out to be stolen and later Little Larry would pick Ted Bundy out of a lineup as the man who paid him with it, but he never could say for sure that the future murder victim and the infamous murderer had been there at the same time.

  My phone vibrates and I withdraw it from my pocket to see that Anna has texted.

  Anna: Woke up startled. Got worried when you still weren’t here. You okay?

  Me: Sorry. About to head that way.

  Anna: Wake me if I fall back asleep. Let me know you’re here.

  Me: Will do. Love you.

  Anna: Find out anything else about your dad?

  Me: Yeah. It’s not good. I’ll tell you about it in the morning. Haven’t really had a chance to talk to him yet.

  Anna: Stay if you need to.

  Me: Thanks, but I’ll be heading that way in about 5 mins. Should be home in less than 20.

  Anna: Be careful. Wake me when you get here. Love you.

  I return the phone to my pocket.

  I’m no longer single and I need to remember that—remember to be more considerate—especially of things that take me away from the house at night. Anna is understanding and supportive and enormously generous, allowing me a lot of leeway in the work I do and the hours I keep, but I’ve got to be better about managing my time away from her and our family.

  I have even more questions now than when I started, and don’t want to stop, but should be in bed beside Anna.

  But being in bed beside Anna doesn’t mean I have to be asleep.

  As a compromise I decide to take the murder book with me so I can read it in the small beam of my battery-powered reading light.

  Withdrawing another piece of paper from Dad’s blue composition book, I leave him a note, letting him know I’ve taken the book and asking if we can talk in the morning before I leave for vacation.

  I then check on Jake and Dad again and quietly ease out into the night.

  62

  I place the murder book on the bedside table next to my reading light and climb into bed beside Anna.

  Rolling over close to her, I gently kiss her on the cheek and whisper, “I’m home, baby. Sorry I was gone so long.”

  “Will you hold me?” she says.

  “Of course.”

  She turns on her side and slides toward me and we begin to spoon, my mouth at her ear, my arms wrapped around her.

  Turning her head slightly up, she says, “I’m so glad you’re home.”

  “Me too.”

  “I must’ve had a bad dream because I woke up so scared, so worried about you. Then when you weren’t here, I just . . . panicked a bit.”

  “I’m sorry. I should’ve just brought the murder book back here to begin with. Was stupid not to. Just wasn’t thinking.”

  “No, I’m being silly,” she says. “I know it’s irrational, but I just haven’t been able to shake it. And then once my mind got going . . . I just knew you were going to decide to not go on our vacation. I know you really don’t want to anyway, and I thought, now he’s got his excuse. I hate feeling like this. I know I’m being neurotic and I hate that.”

  I pull her even closer to me, hold her even tighter.

  “I’ll be fine by first light,” she says. “And if you want to stay with your dad or get to work on the case, I’ll understand. Just had a little meltdown. I just got you and I don’t want to lose you.”

  “I’m not going anywhere—except on vacation with you.”

  “Really?”

  “Of course. We’re going to have a wonderful time. You deserve a getaway. I just wish it was just us—or us and our girls.”

  “I know. Sorry Johanna can’t be there—and that my folks will be, but . . .”

  “We’ll have a great time. Can’t wait to walk along the Gulf at sunset holding your hand.”

  “Thank you, John.”

  Taylor’s rhythmic breathing coming from the baby monitor changes, and I can feel Anna’s body respond. Lifting her head slightly, tilting her ear toward the monitor, she listens.

  Taylor stirs, makes a sucking sound, and then her breathing returns to how it was before.

  After a few moments, Anna relaxes, the tension draining out of her body, and she lays her head back down.

  “If it’s okay, I’ll bring the murder book and read through it after you guys go to bed.”

  “Of course.”

  “And I might have to come back for part of a day to take Dad to the doctor, but—”

  “Of course,” she says again. “How is he? What’s he . . .”

  I tell her.

  “Oh John, I’m so sorry. Are you okay?”

  I nod, my nose rubbing her cheek as I do. “I’d like to go talk to him before we leave in the morning.”

  “Of course,” she says, then laughs a little. “I keep saying that.”

  “But of course,” I say with a little laugh of my own. “Because you’re so generous and accommodating. Best friend and wife ever. Now, get some sleep so I won’t be the only well-rested one for our vacation.”

  That gets a real laugh from her. “You sleep less than anyone I know,” she says.

  “Doesn’t mean I’m not well rested. Quality over quantity.”

  “Actually, that’s exactly what it means. You need both and you don’t get much of either. Don’t think I haven’t noticed that big blue binder on your nightstand. You’re gonna return to it after I fall back asleep, aren’t you?”

  “The thought had crossed my mind.”

  But that’s all it was—a thought. Nothing more. I may have even fallen asleep before Anna did, because I don’t remember anything else until Dad’s call came early the next morning.

  63

  “How far’d you get?” Dad asks.

  “Not even through the background,” I say. “It’s very thorough. Well constructed.”

  “You act like you expect something else,” he says.

  I shake my head. “Not at all. Truth is . . . I had no expectations.”

  Having met at the Corner Café and ordered breakfast, we got it to go and crossed the street to eat at a picnic table in Lake Alice Park.

  As usual, Dad is dressed in what for him has been a type of uniform. Like many old-timers in the area, and several sheriffs in the South and West, an agi
ng and scuffed pair of cowboy boots peek out at the bottom of his simple pressed and pleated tan trousers, and an old straw cowboy hat with a chocolate leather band rests comfortably on the crown of his head. His shirt is a solid cotton button-down, the sleeves of which are never rolled up, even in August.

  North Florida is filled with farms and cattle ranches and was home to the original crackers—cowboys who got their name from cracking their whips to herd cows—and boots and hats and cowboy culture lingers, though far more in Dad’s generation than mine.

  It’s early and quiet. The sun has yet to crest the tree tops and burn off the dew. Everything is damp.

  Alice is peaceful, placid, her still surface a mirror of the morning.

  Though not the Sheol it will soon become, the day is already hot and humid, my shirt clinging to my already sweating body the way the dew-damp seat is to my pants.

  “I was trying to think if I’d ever read one of your murder books before,” I add.

  “Probably not. Can’t be many of them. Past forty years I’ve been a damn politician more than anything else,” he says.

  He picks around at his eggs and takes a bite of toast, but seems to have no appetite. As he does, I study him. He’s lost some weight and has that lean, headed-toward-feeble look thin older men get.

  Pale and frail, he appears weakened and unsteady, his hands shaking ever so slightly as he rakes the fork through his scrambled eggs and holds the slice of brownish buttered wheat toast.

  “You did a great job with the book,” I say. “I’m hooked. I want to know what happened to Janet, who’s responsible for her disappearance, and where she is. But . . .”

  “But?” he says, his eyebrows rising. “There’s a but?”

  “I came to talk about your blood work, what it means, what’s next. We can get to the case later.”

  He shakes his head. “I came to talk about the case. We can get to that other stuff later.”

  “That other stuff is your health.”

  “And it’s not gonna change much while we talk about this case.”