“I thought of that. I guess he could. That would explain it, make sense, but . . . I can’t imagine who it would be. He was a loner. Never had a girlfriend. Didn’t really have any friends. Can’t imagine who he’d do something like this for.”
“You ever ask him?” I say.
He shakes his head. “Haven’t spoken to him since the night they say I killed Angel.”
“Tell me about Angel, about your relationship.”
“To be honest with you, it was pretty casual. We liked each other. Had a good time. But we weren’t like Romeo and Juliet or anything. I cared for her. But I wasn’t like madly, passionately, deeply in love with her. Don’t get me wrong, she was great. And I liked her a lot. I just wasn’t like crazy about her. Truth is, we had just started dating. Plus, she was like this sort of hard, tough, take-no-shit-from-anyone kind of girl. Wasn’t as if you can get really gushy over a girl like that. She won’t allow it.”
“Your sister and aunt said her previous boyfriend was still hung up on her.”
“Oh yeah,” he says, nodding, “in a big way. Eric Pulsifer. Kids called him Pussifer. He was a whiney, wimpy little punk. Guy was nuts. See . . . I would think he did it, but there’s no way Justice would help him or cover for him. That, and I don’t think wormy little Eric could take badass Angel. I know for a fact she whipped his ass more than once while they were together. The whole thing is just inexplicable. Only thing I know for sure is that I had nothing to do with it.”
I think about what he’s said.
“You mind me asking . . . why you’re interested in all this?” he says.
“Ida and I go way back,” I say. “Way, way back. Told her I’d look into it.”
“Look into it? You mean like my case?”
I nod.
“I’m not bein’ smart or anything, I swear, but . . . what could a chaplain do that all the cops, private investigators, lawyers, reporters, and my own sister couldn’t? Wait. What’d you say your name was?”
“Jordan,” I say. “John Jordan.”
“You . . . you’re the one who figured out who killed Lamarcus, aren’t you?”
“Had a hand in it,” I say, nodding.
“And you’re a prison chaplain?”
“Among other things.”
“Aunt Ida and Katie asked you to look into my case and you’re going to, for real?”
I nod.
“Man . . . I’m grateful and all, I am, but . . . wish it could’ve been about eighteen years ago—or even five or ten. Only way I’ll get any post-conviction relief now is if you find new evidence.”
“Maybe we will.”
“Well, if it’s all the same with you I won’t get my hopes up just yet. I’ve found a way to be at peace, even happy most of the time in here, and hope ain’t a part of it.”
“I understand. What is?”
“Having no expectations,” he says. “Acceptance is the path to peace. My equilibrium comes from living in the present moment with no attachments, no desires, just embracing what is.”
“You Buddhist?” I ask.
He smiles and lets out a little laugh. “Katieist. She writes me these long letters and we have these marathon phone conversations, and she mails me these books to read. Not sure what it is, just know that it works.”
“Which is what matters most,” I say. “I’m gonna see them this evening—Kathryn and your aunt. Want me to tell them anything for you?”
He smiles and nods. “Thank you. Yes. Let them know not to worry, that I’m all right, I’m good. Tell them I’m in here over something stupid I didn’t even do and should be out soon. Tell them I’m sorry I couldn’t get word to them to save them the trip, that I feel bad they drove over for nothing. Especially Aunt Ida from Atlanta. Tell them how much I love them and I appreciate them, they’re the only ones who have stuck by me. Let them know their faith in me is justified, that I really am truly innocent, and that someday, somehow everyone will know.”
I stand to leave, take a few steps then turn around and walk back where I was. “Why are you in confinement?”
“I’m on TV again. My case, I mean. Every time my case is on one of those true crime shows, on the news, or in the papers, guards—well, one guard, uses it as an excuse to lock me up. Says it’s for my own protection but it’s not.”
“What show?” I ask. “Which officer?”
“Convicted Innocence,” he says. “It looks at what they believe to be unsolved cases where an innocent person was wrongly convicted for the crime.”
“And you’ve been on others?”
“Yeah. TV shows. Radio programs. Podcasts. Sometimes it’s just like what really happened to Angel Diaz?” He says this last part in his best, deep broadcaster voice. “Other times it’s a look at the entire case. Sometimes they say I’m innocent, others, that there’s a need to find her remains and give her family closure. The lady from Convicted Innocence believes I’m innocent and is trying to get the case reopened. I doubt anything’ll come of it, but it makes me feel good that somebody believes me, that somebody is trying to remind people that Angel’s killer is still out there, that he got away with it.”
“Who do you think did it?”
He shakes his head and lets out a long, heavy sigh. “I have no idea. It’s . . . it doesn’t . . . all this time later and it doesn’t even seem real to me. Only thing I can think of is that she crossed paths with a killer. That walking down Beach Drive she ran into the wrong person. Nothing else makes sense. No one I know would want to kill her.”
“And the officer?”
“Sergeant Payne,” he says. “Troy Payne.”
161
“Chaplain, don’t let that slick bastard pull the wool over your eyes,” Troy Payne says.
He’s waiting for me at the end of the hallway in confinement.
Troy Payne is ignorant and arrogant—that dangerous combination that so often goes together. Jacked up on roids and a life spent in front of mirrors in weight rooms, he’s a thirty-something Neanderthal with feathered blond hair, a gold chain around his neck, and too much cologne.
“He’s smooth and comes across all innocent and shit but he’s a vicious rapist and killer of women.”
Incarcerated since he was eighteen, Qwon has spent as much of his life inside prison as out. He’s never been charged with or even accused of rape, and as far as I know, no one has ever said he killed anyone but Angel.
“Really?” I ask. “What makes you say that?”
“’Cause he is.”
“He was convicted for the wrongful death of his seventeen-year-old girlfriend when he was eighteen,” I say. “He’s been inside ever since. How does that make him a rapist and killer of women?”
“He’s already got you fooled.”
With that he turns and waddles away, his thick, bowed up body, tight and swollen, making it difficult for him to move, his arms hanging out wide at his sides in the manner of bodybuilders.
Earlier I had invited Ida and Kathryn over for dinner, and though I’m already running late, I stop by my office on my way out and do a quick search of Angel Diaz to try to figure out why her name sounds so familiar to me.
As soon as the first image appears on my screen I realize why the name is so familiar, and it has nothing to do with Acqwon Lewis or his girlfriend Angel Diaz. She just happens to have the same name as one of Florida’s most notorious death penalty cases.
On December 29, 1979, three men robbed a Miami strip club called the Velvet Swing Lounge. During the commission of that crime, while everyone else was locked in the bathroom, the manager, Joseph Nagy, was shot and killed.
Angel Diaz, a twenty-eight-year-old Puerto Rican man was believed to be one of the three robbers. In 1983, his girlfriend at the time told authorities that Diaz had confided in her that he had been involved. In 1986 he was found guilty of first-degree murder, kidnapping, armed robbery, attempted robbery, and felony possession of a firearm. He was sentenced to death.
Diaz was largely c
onvicted on the testimony of fellow Dade County inmate, Ralph Gajus, who testified that Diaz confessed in his cell that he had been the one who pulled the trigger. However, Diaz spoke very little English and Gajus understood almost no Spanish, and later Gajus recanted his entire testimony, claiming he lied to get back at Diaz for not including him in an escape attempt.
Angel Diaz maintained his innocence until his death.
But none of this is why Angel Diaz and his case are so notorious that the name was familiar to me.
Angel Diaz is best known for the severity with which the state of Florida botched his lethal injection execution.
On December 13, 2006, the state of Florida’s execution team pushed the IV catheter’s needles straight through the veins in both his arms and into the underlying soft tissue. As a result, Diaz required two full doses of the lethal drugs, and the execution that should have only taken ten to fifteen minutes took over two to three times that.
A medical examiner said that Diaz had chemical burns on both arms, and many anti-death penalty activists claimed what was done to him amounted to torture, cruel and unusual punishment.
It was so bad, in fact, Jeb Bush, the then-governor of Florida, issued a moratorium on executions.
None of this has anything to do with Angel Diaz, the Bay High junior who went missing on January 16, 1999, or her boyfriend Acqwon Lewis, who was convicted of killing her, but I now know why her name was so familiar to me.
On the drive home, I turn on Merrick McKnight’s podcast.
Merrick is a former reporter and the significant other of the Gulf County sheriff and my other boss, Reggie Summers. His true crime podcast is extremely popular—not only because he does such a good job with it, but because the first case he ever investigated on the show was solved. Not only was it solved, but in the process his partner on the show went missing and the guilty party got away. At that point his show changed from In Search of Randa Raffield to In Search of Daniel Davis and eventually just became In Search of. Having a successful resolution to his first case but losing the suspect and his partner as a result was enough to give him the number one podcast in the world for a while, but then another case he covered, the ten-year-old unsolved mystery of a young school teacher from Ocala named Lina Patterson was also solved and the show’s popularity grew even more exponentially and took on an aura of investigative invincibility.
“Welcome to another episode of In Search of,” Merrick says. “I’m your host, Merrick McKnight.”
Merrick records the shows late at night now, and it sounds like it. As if an overnight DJ on an old fringe FM station, his resonant voice sounds slightly haunted and a little world-weary and as if he’s drinking and smoking as he does the show.
“If you’ve been listening to the show, you know that we’re delving deep into the Stetson Ulrich case, but tonight I’m putting that one on pause for a few to circle back to talk about my old partner Daniel Davis and deal with some of the rumors about him I’ve heard lately. But even before I get to that I want to say directly to Daniel, ‘Daniel, if somehow you’re listening or in case you get to hear the show in the future, we miss you, we love you, and we’re looking for you. Call us if you can. But just know that we won’t stop trying to find you. Not now. Not ever. So no matter what the time or date is when you hear this, we are searching for you, brother.’”
We are all searching for Daniel, but so far every lead we’ve followed has led us straight down a dim, dead-end path.
“So . . . now . . . onto the rumors. Let me start by saying that I love the internet, the plethora of portals average people have to both share and receive information. It’s unprecedented in the history of the world and is a powerful force for freedom around the globe. That said, it’s also a sewer system of some of the most hateful, ugly, unhelpful sewage certain types of sick and soulless philistines ever came up with. One I came across today on one of the many subreddits about the case is that this is all a stunt for ratings, that Daniel isn’t really missing, just hiding from the public so we can perpetrate this elaborate ruse on the true crime podcast world, that we never solved the Randa Raffield case, that we made all that up along with Daniel’s disappearance to get the number one podcast on iTunes and elsewhere. Now, I know you sociopaths who write shit like this don’t really care, but Daniel is an actual human being with a wife who needs him and friends and family who love and miss him. We have no idea what’s happened to him or if he’s even still alive.”
Is Daniel dead? His abductor warned me not look for him, not to come after him if I ever wanted to see him alive again, but I began searching for him the moment I knew he was missing—and have enlisted the help of any and every one I can. We won’t stop until we find him, but what will we find? The man himself, his mortal remains, or nothing at all, as in the case of Angel Diaz?
“To suggest otherwise isn’t just irresponsible, it’s cruel,” Merrick is saying. “And I would remind you that we didn’t solve the case, the Gulf and Franklin County Sheriff Departments did. Everything related to Randa and Daniel’s disappearances are part of official police investigations. It’s in their files. It’s in the statements they’ve issued and the press conferences they’ve held. It wasn’t our case. It was never our case. Did the attention we brought to it help get it solved? I truly believe so, but that’s for others to say. But to suggest that we made up all of it for ratings and that our dear friend isn’t really missing is as ludicrous as it is offensive. And I’m asking all of you, our sane, regular listeners to shut shit like this down when you come across it. I wouldn’t want even one official looking for Daniel even a little less because he or she heard it was a hoax. Help us find Daniel. He is really, truly, actually missing and in grave danger.”
162
“Everyone liked or at least respected Angel,” Kathryn says. “She wasn’t a particularly warm person, but she was real—always the same, treated everyone the same. You knew where you stood with her. She came at you straight, no BS, no backbiting, nothing two-faced about her.”
We have just finished dinner and are still sitting around the tall cypress table Anna’s nephew built her, Anna and I on one side, Ida and Kathryn on the other. Taylor is in her room sleeping. A baby monitor sits on the table between us.
Though I gave her very short notice, Anna had made Thai shrimp, vegetables, and fried rice, and my mouth still tastes of tangy sweet chili spices.
Sam is asleep in her hospital bed in the left corner of the living room, and we are talking like we ate—as quietly as possible in an attempt not to disturb her.
Sam Michaels is a Florida Department of Law Enforcement agent I had worked with and the wife of Daniel Davis. She suffered a brain injury during a case we worked on together the previous year. When Daniel, who had been taking care of her, went missing, she moved in with us.
“I hope I’m describing her right,” Kathryn says. “You know how fake some girls can be—especially in high school. She wasn’t that. She was strong, tough, didn’t take any shit from anybody, but she was nice—very nice, just not overly friendly or warm.”
Anna nods. “I know exactly the kind of girl you mean. We would’ve been friends.”
Kathryn nods. “Exactly. I always thought a lot of her. Never cared for most of the other girls Qwon dated, but I really liked Angel.”
“We all did,” Ida adds. “Whole family. Felt like maybe Qwon was growing up, making better choices—in girls and life.”
We had recently replaced the old, fogged up sliding glass doors in our living room with a set of french doors—part of our ongoing process of restoring and updating this aging home piece by piece, board by board—and through it I can see the craggy cypress trees lining the lake, backlit by the low-slung moon. It’s breathtakingly beautiful, and sitting here with Anna at our kitchen table with old and new friends, this place feels more like home to me than any I’ve ever lived in.
“You know how people will be telling a story from the past and say the world was different back t
hen,” Kathryn says. “Well, it’s true in this instance. The world really was a different place. The nineties had been a pretty good, prosperous, mostly peaceful time for us, our country, and this was before 9/11. That’s not an insignificant detail.”
“No it’s not,” Anna says.
“It was also a more racist and racially charged time. I realize it still is—and always has been—especially around here, but . . . it was more so then. Believe me I know. My white mom married Acqwon’s black dad—something we were looked at and treated differently for.”
“How hard was that on you and Qwon?” Anna asks.
“Not too hard. We knew the problem was with the ignorant bigots and not us or our parents. Qwon and I knew each other before our parents did. We were friends, even went on a date. We introduced them. The point I was trying to make wasn’t about me or Qwon or our parents.”
“It’s about the fact that Qwon was dating a white girl,” Ida says.
She has been picking at the last of a piece of pie, but places the fork on the plate and pushes it away from her.
“Well, more to the point of thinking about what might have happened to her,” Kathryn says, “it’s that Angel was dating a black guy. I know she got taunts and even threats at school, but I was mostly thinking about her family and ex-boyfriend. I know they threatened her—I mean specifically related to Qwon being black.”
Anna says, “With a name like Diaz, I wouldn’t have thought Angel was white.”
“Her mom was white and her dad was Venezuelan,” Kathryn says. “She had dark hair, eyes, and features, but her skin . . . she looked like a white girl. Was a white girl.”
“For a whole lot of people,” Ida says, “they’s black and everything else.”
I nod.
“She vanished MLK weekend of 1999,” Kathryn says. “It was a busy weekend, lots going on downtown. Maya Angelou spoke and did a reading at the Marina Civic Center on Saturday night, the sixteenth.”
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