“Mistakes are part of investigating,” I say. “Sometimes the biggest part.”
“It’s given me a greater appreciation for what you and Reggie do. Especially you. She says you’re the best investigator she’s ever worked with.”
It’s nice of her to say, nice of him to share, but Reggie has worked with very few investigators over the course of her short career in law enforcement.
“Does she know you’re talkin’ to me about this?” I ask.
He nods. “When I told her I’d be asking for your help with it, she said she knew you’d talk to her about it no matter what you decided.”
I nod. “I will. It’ll be her call, but if we get involved it’ll be officially. It’s an unsolved case in our jurisdiction.”
“You couldn’t just help me and Daniel a little?” he says. “Unofficially.”
I shake my head. “Not as long as I’m working for the sheriff’s department.”
“We’re really close. I think. I’ve thought that before, but . . . we’ve uncovered so much information. I know the answer is in there. We just need help putting the pieces together the right way.”
I nod and look out over the bay again to see a gull gliding just above the surface of the water.
“I thought my career was over,” Merrick says. “As a reporter. As an investigative journalist. This podcast has given me a second chance . . . and it’s been even better for Daniel. I think it’s kept him from going crazy during all this with Sam. He can do it all from home while he takes care of her—but it gives him something to do, keeps his mind occupied. But this isn’t about us. It’s about Randa. Finding out what the hell happened to her. That’s why I’m asking for your help. Our podcast is a success and I’ve got interest in my book.”
“I didn’t know you were working on a book.”
“That’s how it all started. My point is we’ll be fine. If it gets solved, we’ll finish the book and start a new season of the podcast investigating another unsolved case. If it doesn’t, we’ll keep working on this one. We’ll be fine either way. My main motive here is to get justice for Randa.”
“I don’t doubt that, but just to show good faith, what are some of your non-main-motives?”
He smiles. “Well, let’s see. We need help. A fresh set of eyes on this thing. We’ve hit a wall. Not sure how much further we can take it without . . . And like I said . . . it’s blowing up. We’re gettin’ a lot of attention. Not all of it good. We got crazies and scaries crawling out of the computer. We’re losing control of it.”
“It?”
“The . . . case, I guess. The investigation. But mostly the discussion about it. The circus surrounding it. And . . . if I’m being completely transparent . . . we now have some competition. Our biggest critic has started his own podcast about the case and says he’s working on a book too.”
I nod. “Thank you for being so honest.”
“I meant what I said. I just want it solved. Truth is, all I want is for you to look into it. If you do, you won’t be able to help yourself. It’s too mysterious, too maddening. You’ll investigate it. And if you do, we’ll solve it. I know it.”
108
When I leave Dockside, I head west on Highway 98 toward the spot where Randa’s car was found, listening to Merrick and Daniel’s podcast as I do.
“Welcome to another edition of In Search of Randa Raffield,” Merrick says. “I’m your host, Merrick McKnight, and I’m joined as always by Daniel Davis. Hey Daniel. You ready for another exciting episode today?”
“I am.”
I cross over the small bridge between the sites where the paper mill and chemical plant used to be and then over the much larger George G. Tapper Bridge above the Gulf County Canal that connects the Intracoastal Waterway with St. Joseph Bay, the bay extending out to the left beneath me, the sun refracting off the surface of the water causing me to squint. Coming down off the bridge into Highland View, I put on my shades.
“Well, let’s get right to it,” Merrick says.
He is the more natural podcaster of the two—more relaxed and comfortable, his voice deeper and richer—but I know from listening to a few of the other shows that Daniel contributes a lot, and the two men work well together.
“Today we’re going to focus on the location where Randa went missing,” Merrick says. “But before we do that, let’s do a quick review for everyone—especially first-time listeners.”
“Sure,” Daniel says. “On Thursday, January 20, 2005, Randa Raffield, a twenty-one-year-old student at the University of West Florida, crashed her car on a secluded stretch of Highway 98, between Mexico Beach and Port St. Joe, Florida.”
I am driving along that very spot right now, coming up on the Dixie Belle Motel on my left and, farther down, Barefoot Cottages on my right, and it’s a bit disconcerting to be hearing them talk about it as I do.
The Dixie Belle Motel is a 1950s-style roadside motor lodge. Barefoot Cottages is a gated community of coastal cottages—residents and rentals. Both of these developments, combined with Windmark Beach beyond, starkly contrast the rundown, empty, and abandoned buildings lining the highway just a short way back in Highland View. It’s at intersections like these that impoverished Old Florida fishing villages clash with the New Florida exclusive developments and pristine master-planned communities that are the vacation destinations and second homes for the wealthy of Atlanta and Birmingham.
“She was supposed to be at an Iraq war protest in Atlanta that coincided with the second George W. Bush inauguration,” Daniel continues, “so the place where she wrecked was over three-hundred miles from where she was supposed to be. All her friends and family had no idea she wasn’t in Atlanta—even her mom who she was on the phone with at the time of the accident—”
Merrick breaks in. “And we should say that all her friends and family and even her boyfriend claim they thought she was in Atlanta, based on the statements they’ve made, but we haven’t interviewed all of them yet. We hope to. We’re trying to.”
“Right,” Daniel says. “We’re reporting what’s out there—in statements and news stories and interviews—then asking our own questions and doing our own investigation. Right now we’re just recapping. So she wrecks her car near the new-at-the-time Windmark Beach subdivision. From all accounts she is okay, not injured or even really upset. Not long after the accident—how long we can’t be completely sure about—a truck driver pulls up, rolls down his window, and asks if she’s okay. She is out of the car, standing near it.”
I pull up and park on the side of the highway just down from the entrance to Windmark in the exact spot where Randa’s abandoned car had been found.
“The truck driver’s name is Roger Lamott,” Merrick says.
“Yes. According to Lamott, Randa was fine and didn’t want his help. Didn’t want him calling the police. Didn’t want him calling a tow truck. Didn’t want him giving her a ride or waiting with her. We don’t know if she had been drinking, but there’s some evidence to indicate she might have been. For . . . as an example . . . say she had been drinking. She wouldn’t want the police involved. Anyway, she tells Roger Lamott she has already called for a tow truck.”
“Which she hasn’t, and has no need of one,” Merrick says.
“Right. There is no record that she called for any kind of assistance, and her car was drivable. In his statement Lamott says he could see how a big bearded trucker could be scary to a young woman on a dark highway so he agrees to leave, but as he pulls away slowly, he watches her in his mirrors, and quickly calls the police and lets them know what has happened.”
“He says he was worried about her, and even though he said he wouldn’t report the accident he did so anyway—for her safety.”
“Now, from the time Lamott left Randa and called the police until the time they arrived was less than seven minutes,” Daniel says.
“And it’s important to note,” Merrick adds, “that we don’t just have Lamott’s word for this, because the enti
re time from the accident when Randa got off the phone with her mom until a Gulf County sheriff’s deputy arrived was only ten minutes.”
“So we have two witnesses that help establish the timeline,” Daniel says. “Three counting the deputy. To recap, from the time the dispatcher was called until the deputy arrived at Randa’s car was less than seven minutes.”
“Whatever happened to Randa Raffield happened in those seven minutes,” Merrick says. “Because when the deputy arrived, she was gone and there was no trace of her. And there never has been again.”
“Well,” Daniel says, “there have been reported sightings over the years.”
“True.”
“The question is are any of them legit. We have no confirmed sightings of Randa. And we haven’t even really started tracking down those who say they’ve seen her.”
“Like the guy who swears she’s a Vegas showgirl now,” Merrick says. “Or the woman who said she saw Randa performing in a circus in Ohio. Or the Russian TV producer who says she’s living in Russia and that he’s got footage of her that he’s soon going to reveal to the world.”
“Yeah, like those. Of course, there are more credible reports than those, but none have been verified or more importantly . . . produced Randa Raffield.”
“One final thing we should say in this recap is that the deputy found the business card of a tow-truck operator slipped into the driver’s side window. The man, a . . . Donald Wynn . . . says in his statement to the police that he wasn’t called by anyone, that he happened to be passing by, saw the car, stopped, didn’t see anyone, then left his card in case the driver came back and needed help.”
Turning on my flashers and turning off the car, I climb out and look around.
It’s like so many rural North Florida roads—lined by pine trees and sand scrub undergrowth and not much else.
The area is empty, desolate—and would have been far more so back in 2005 at night.
I lift the phone to my ear to better hear the podcast as I walk around.
“Now, this part of Highway 98 was actually moved so that the St. Joe Company could have more land to develop,” Merrick is saying.
“Really?” Daniel says. “I didn’t know that.”
“Yeah. When the St. Joe Company got out of the timber and paper industries, sold the mill and began to develop their coastal land, they asked and the obliging Gulf County Commissioners agreed to actually relocate the main highway to give them more private beach and bayfront property to develop. That’s another issue in and of itself. The point I’m making right now is that there are pine woods on both sides of the road where Randa wrecked her car. Several places on 98 you can see the Gulf of Mexico on one side of the road, but here it’s sand pine scrub on both sides.”
“So it’s like breaking down in the middle of the woods?” Daniel says.
“It’s a lot like that, actually,” Merrick says. “There are no houses, no buildings, no nothing. There is highway and there are pine woods. We’re talking about one of the least developed parts of 98. The entire region is not very populated, but there’s nobody along this part. We’re talking between Mexico Beach and Port St. Joe. Behind the pines on one side is the Windmark Beach development, which was just really getting started back then, and beyond it the bay. And behind the pines on the other side is just more pines, more woods, and what locals call Panther Swamp. It goes on and on for miles and miles.”
I look at what they’re describing. If you don’t know what’s behind each one, and I doubt Randa did, you’d think you’re deep in the middle of a dense pine forest.
Port St. Joe has long been a company town.
While South Florida was undergoing a land boom, the St. Joe Company, a company founded in 1936 as part of the Alfred I. du Pont trust and operated by his brother-in-law Edward Ball, purchased property in North Florida on the cheap. After the acquisition of a railroad and the construction of a paper mill, the newly formed company ushered in a new era in the Panhandle.
Smoke from the company’s paper mill rose in the blue sky over St. Joseph Bay and the small town beneath it for most of a century, releasing sulfurous exhaust and other deadly toxins, and drawing some tens of millions of gallons of water a day from the Floridan aquifer, seriously depleting the water table.
Then, as the paper market began to soften, the St. Joe Company sold its mill and became a land developer, turning to planned communities like the one here at Windmark Beach.
Traffic is light, a few vehicles breezing by intermittently.
I cross the road to examine the guardrail on the other side. The spot where Randa hit it is still bent and bears a hint of the green paint of her car.
As I start to cross back over, the sheriff pulls up in her black SUV with her light bar on.
109
“I see Merrick talked to you,” she says, climbing down out of her vehicle and closing the door.
I nod. “Took me to lunch and made a compelling pitch.”
Reggie Summers, the governor-appointed sheriff of Gulf County, is a muscular mid-forties woman with a widish frame, a darkish complexion, long, straight dirty-blond hair, and striking gray-green eyes. As usual, she’s in jeans, boots, and a button-down shirt. No makeup or jewelry and her hair is pulled back in a ponytail.
“Thought you were in PC with your mom?” I say as we step over and lean against my car.
“Doctor got called into emergency surgery so they had to reschedule her appointment. I was headed back to the office when I saw your car.”
We are quiet a moment as she looks around.
“So beautiful here,” she says.
“Certainly is.”
“So you found my Merrick compelling, huh?”
I smile. “It’s an interesting case. I was just listening to their podcast when you pulled up.”
She shakes her head, frowns, then slowly half smiles. “Used to think the only thing worse than a family member of a victim trying to investigate was a damned armchair detective, but . . . they’re doing a really good job with it. It’s convinced me they can be beneficial.”
I nod. “Adnan Syed is getting a new trial thanks to Serial and Undisclosed.”
“It’s a new day,” she says. “Don’t get me wrong, there’s some bad shit and horrible misinformation out there. And there’s plenty of cranks and crazies gettin’ in the way of actual crime solving . . .”
“No doubt,” I say. “There’s far more bad than good online, far more that is useless and negative and worse than . . . anything else, but the handful of serious podcasts I’ve listened to are asking the right questions and maybe even finding new evidence and breathing new life back into cold cases.”
She nods. “I agree. Some of it seems beneficial. Just not sure over all if it’s going to do more harm than good.”
“Will probably do plenty of both.”
“Too true. What’d you tell Merrick about helping?”
“That I’d talk to you. Your department. Your call.”
“I feel like he’s putting you in a difficult position, and I told him. I want you to be honest with me and not do something you don’t want to do or not do something you want to do because he’s my . . . whatever he is. Will you be honest with me?”
“I will.”
“Do you want to investigate it?”
“I do. But only officially. Only as an open unsolved case for the Gulf County Sheriff’s Department. That’s why it’s your call.”
“But you want to?”
“Yes.”
“What are you working on right now?”
I had recently returned from vacation time I’d used to help my dad work an old case and didn’t have a whole lot going.
“The Larcy fraud case and two other cold cases—the one involving your predecessor and the Remington James case you gave me. But I’ve barely started reading them. Haven’t done any investigating so far.”
“Why do you want to work the Raffield one?” she asks.
“It’s gone
unsolved too long. And I think Merrick and Daniel have uncovered details, facts, and maybe even evidence that wasn’t known before.”
“So you really want to work it?”
I nod. “I don’t feel any pressure from you to say what I think you want me to.”
“But if I say no, you won’t do it?”
“Right.”
“What if you really think you should and I still say no?”
I think about it. “I’d try to talk you into it. Failing that, I’d let it go or resign and work it on my own.”
She nods and studies me for a long moment.
“What is it?” I ask.
“I’m around men who really have major problems with women in authority all the time. Many of them in my own department. But you don’t.”
I nod. “I don’t.”
“It’s rare and refreshing. But it’s curious.”
“Curious?”
“Given what you’ve shared about your mom’s addiction and your relationship with her.”
“Ah. Yeah, I guess it is.”
“Why? How’d you . . .”
I shrugged. “Probably not just one thing.”
“Am I embarrassing you?”
I shrug. “A little.”
“I’m really, really interested. I mean, it’s one thing to respect women, but a corn-fed country bumpkin like me?”
I shake my head. “I hope your self-deprecation is just a shtick.”
It’s true that Reggie is a cowboy boot–wearing, Reba-loving, small-town country girl with a thick Southern drawl who occasionally uses improper grammar, but those things are endearing and charming, and could only obscure how strong and smart she is from those who lack perception or only have a fraction of her intelligence.
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