True Crime Fiction

by Michael Lister

  We don’t take the time to go over the report line by line, which would be a waste of everybody’s time. Instead, we ask him the questions most relevant to our investigation.

  “Thank you again for doing this, Dr. Luttrell,” Reggie says. “We really appreciate it. We know how busy you are and won’t take up too much of your time. Let’s start with the most pressing question for us—cause of death. Can you tell us what Mariah died from in the simplest terms?”

  “Blunt force trauma,” he says. “Quite simply a blow to the head. A subdural hematoma. Her skull was fractured. It was an extremely violent blow.”

  “I saw her head at the crime scene when the body was first discovered,” Arnie says. “It looked fine. No blood. No marks. Nothing.”

  “What little there was to see was hidden by her hair,” Luttrell says. “But there wasn’t much to see. Remember the skin is elastic. When the blow happened, the skin stretched inward and then out again. There was a very small laceration, but not much blood. Death occurred quite quickly so the heart was no longer pumping the blood out of the small scalp laceration.”

  “Any indication of the weapon used?” Reggie asks.

  Parents who kill their kids typically use what is known as a personal weapon to either beat, choke, or drown them—particularly in cases involving underage children. I can’t help but believe that if we discover the weapon used on Mariah, we’ll stand a much, much better chance of identifying her killer.

  “I’m afraid I can be of no assistance there,” he says. “There’s nothing to indicate what it was. Though if you find it, there might be hair and traces of blood and cerebrospinal fluid. I wouldn’t think there would be much, but even microscopic amounts can confirm it is the murder weapon.”

  Reggie starts to stay something, but he interrupts her.

  “Sorry,” he says, “I need to go back to something I said earlier. I described the blow as vicious, but that was more of an emotional reaction to it happening to a little girl. The truth is, a child that age, the skull is still quite thin. Sixteenth of an inch.”

  “So it wouldn’t require a lot of strength to wield a weapon that would cause that kind of trauma,” Jessica adds.

  “Exactly,” he says. “Quite right.”

  “What about the ropes,” Reggie says, “Was she strangled or choked during the assault?”

  “There’s no evidence of strangulation,” he says.

  “So her restraints have nothing to do with her death,” Reggie says, “apart from restraining her.”

  “I can’t be certain they even did that,” he says. “Normally I’d expect to see some bruising and abrasions on the skin beneath and around the restraints—at least the wrists, ankles, and neck where the victim moved or struggled against the restraints. It’s not always the case, but more often than not there would be bruising and abrading. In this case we have neither. Which could mean nothing, but if it does mean something, I can think of three possible explanations for their absence. The victim was willingly restrained—or at least didn’t struggle against the restraints, possibly due to some sort of threat or coercion. To me, this is the least likely scenario, but is at least possible. The other two are far more likely in my opinion. The victim could have been tied up postmortem or died so soon after being bound that she didn’t have time to struggle against the restraints.”

  I can think of at least one other possibility that would explain the forensic findings. There would be no bruising or abrading of the skin if Mariah was unconscious when tied up and killed. The thought of her being unconscious during her assault brings a certain comfort and I retroactively wish and pray for it to be so.

  “How long before we get toxicology back?” I ask. “Is it possible there was no bruising and abrasions because she was unconscious?”

  “Yes, that too is a possibility.”

  ’Tis a consummation devoutly to be wish’d, I think.

  “That would be a grace,” Keisha says.

  “Yes it would,” Reggie says.

  “I’m sorry to say I don’t expect us to find that that was indeed the case,” Luttrell says. “But we’re looking at four to six weeks.”

  We are all quiet a beat as we let both of those bits of information sink in.

  “What about time of death?” Arnie asks. “Anything you can tell us on that?”

  “Just a range I’m afraid,” Luttrell says. “My best guess is between ten the night of the fourth and six the morning of the fifth.”

  “Looking at your notations on livor mortis,” I say, “is it safe to say that her body wasn’t moved after lividity was set?”

  “Yes, that’s correct,” he says. “The body could have been moved after death, but not after about six hours after death.”

  “Anything else?” Reggie asks.

  No one says anything.

  “I saved this one for last because I’ve been delaying it as long as possible,” she says. “Was she sexually assaulted? The way I read the autopsy . . . she was, but . . .”

  “To me that’s the most fascinating finding,” Luttrell says. “Given the way she was tied up—a way that can only be described as erotic bondage, I would’ve predicted we would find evidence of sexual trauma. And we did, but here’s the strange thing. It didn’t occur around the time of death, so it wasn’t part of her being tied up the way she was or being killed. The vaginal trauma she suffered had already started to heal. I’d say it occurred approximately twenty-four to thirty-six hours prior to her death.”

  224

  “Merrill says you’re very good at this,” Trace Evers says. “Says if anyone can figure out who did this, you can. Says I can trust you.”

  We—he, Merrill, Irvin Hunter and I—are on the screened-in back porch of a large home overlooking the Chipola River. The house is high, the backyard steep as it slopes down to the river below.

  Hunter found this place online—at Airbnb or For Rent By Owner, or some such site—when Trace found that he couldn’t stay with Ashley’s family another moment.

  “I trust Merrill,” he says. “He says I can trust you, I trust you.”

  I haven’t asked for his trust and probably won’t really need it, though it can’t hurt. What I need is his cooperation—which I’m hoping his trust will lead to.

  “But . . . the news reports keep quoting unnamed sources close to the investigation saying I . . . that I . . . killed my own . . . little girl. Or if I didn’t . . . someone else in the house that night. Y’all just lookin’ at me, at us?”

  I shake my head.

  “Don’t tell me you haven’t heard them sayin’ it over and over.”

  “I haven’t,” I say. “I haven’t watched or read any of the coverage so far.”

  “For real?”

  “I’m about as close to the investigation as you can get,” I say, “and feel free to use my name. We are open to and looking at every possible suspect and every possible scenario. You have my word on that.”

  “Then tell me what you need to find whoever did this to my little girl,” he says.

  He pauses for a moment in what looks like an attempt to keep from breaking down, but then breaks down anyway, tears creasing his already red eyes and streaming down his cheeks.

  “Still can’t believe she’s . . .”

  Trace “Evidence” Evers doesn’t look, act, or sound like a successful rapper. He’s dressed modestly in t-shirt and jeans. He’s soft spoken and none of the words he’s speaking sound street or ex-con, not angry, cocky, or defiant.

  “She was my . . . little angel. My everything. She mattered more to me than anything in this world.”

  From across the porch, Irvin Hunter clears his throat and says, “And the whole world knew it. I’m tellin’ you, somebody wanted to get to you . . . they knew what to do.”

  Older than Trace and not half as polished, Hunter looks and sounds like what he is—a hanger-on. Trace feels like he owes him from their time in prison together and Hunter is taking full advantage.

 
Trace is shaking his head as he looks down. “If this is because of me . . .”

  I realize Trace is broken, brought low by the loss of his little girl, but I can tell by his manner and bearing and speech just how much of his public persona is just that—the affect of an entertainer in a certain medium and genre with its own conventions and expectations.

  “If someone who I invited to my party, into my home . . .” Trace says.

  “Let’s start there,” I say. “You’re talking about the party you had here on the third, right? Who did the inviting? Did you know everyone who came?”

  He nods. “There were a few faces I didn’t recognize,” he says. “Always are. Somebody brings somebody. Somebody crashes. But the whole thing was pretty chill. Not many people period and we included the kids for the first part of it.”

  “And after that?”

  “We sort of split up the adults and the kids a little later that night.”

  “There were only a few kids,” Hunter says. “No more than, what, five? And two of ’em were yours.”

  “Where’d they go?” I ask. “What’d they do?”

  “Nanny took them upstairs to play,” Trace says. “We stayed down—mostly out on the deck by the pool, but some people were inside, others on the beach.”

  “Truth is,” Hunter adds, “people were all over the place, but she wasn’t killed that night.”

  “And Nadine was watching the kids,” Trace says. “The whole time.”

  I nod.

  “I’ve made you a list of who was at the party that we know about,” Trace says.

  Hunter stands, crosses the porch, and hands me a sheet of paper with fifty or so names on it, then returns to his seat.

  I glance at the list. Beside each name is an address or at least the name of a city and a word of identification—such as media or friend or publicist or rapper or actor or family.

  “Don’t get me wrong,” Trace says. “I’m not trying to cast suspicion on anyone. But I want you looking at everyone. I know you’re looking at me, at us, and I want you to. I just don’t want you to focus on us so much that you don’t find the real killer. I’m cooperating in every way I know how so you can clear us and move on to find the killer. So let me know what I can do—what we can do. We’ll take a polygraph or whatever. Just tell me.”

  “Thank you,” I say. “That will be very helpful for the investigation.”

  FDLE has a tech who administers polygraphs, but I’m far more inclined to use CVSA or computer voice stress analyzer on them—and we have an investigator in-house certified to run it.

  “Medical examiner finally released her to us,” Trace says. “We’re taking her back to Atlanta tomorrow for her . . . funeral. God, man, I can’t . . . We’ll come back when you need us to, but anything we can do today.”

  He keeps speaking for everyone who was in the house that night, but I wonder if he really can.

  “Where is Ashley?” I ask.

  “Her mother’s place,” he says. “Brett’s there too. We all were for a while, but . . . I couldn’t take it anymore. She’s got a small place and her son still lives there with his kid and . . .”

  “Why didn’t Ashley come here with you?”

  “She’s going to tonight, I think. Didn’t want to hurt her mom’s feelings by all leaving at once or something. I’m not sure.”

  “Where is Nadine?”

  “She went back to Atlanta yesterday,” he says. “Start getting things ready for our return and the . . . funeral and stuff.”

  “We asked y’all to stay here so we could—”

  “She’d already been interviewed,” he says. “We’re all leaving tomorrow. She’ll come back anytime you need her to. She’s the nanny.”

  “We wanted to talk to everyone again before y’all left,” I say, “including her.”

  “I can get her back by tonight,” he says. “I’ll fly her down, but I’m tellin’ you no one staying with us had anything to do with . . . what happened to Mariah.”

  “Know how you asked me not to focus on y’all so much that I didn’t look at anyone else?” I say.

  “Yeah?”

  “You need to do the opposite. Don’t be so certain it was an intruder that you’re completely closed to it being someone staying in the house that night. There are no signs of forced entry and when a child is killed the chance of it being a family member or someone close to the family are extremely high.”

  “Fair point,” he says. “But . . . there’s no way anyone of us did that to Mariah. No way.”

  “And if we find out it was one of them?”

  “I’ll hack them into tiny pieces with the dullest knife I can find and burn the bits to ash myself. Don’t care which one of ’em it is.”

  225

  “It wasn’t any of us,” Hunter says. “No doubt in my mind. So there won’t be any need for hacking anybody. None of us could do what was done to little Mariah. You know that, man. Come on.”

  “Did either of you hear anything that night?” I ask.

  “Wish to God I had,” Trace says. “Give anything to have heard something. But I was wiped. Stayed up all night the night before, then spent all day with the family and fireworks. Turned in early and when I did, people were still shootin’ off fireworks down on the beach, but soon as my head hit the pillow, I never heard another sound.”

  I look over at Hunter.

  He shakes his head. “Nothin’ out of the ordinary.”

  “Either of you hear the elevator come up late in the night?” I ask.

  Hunter nods. “But that’s not out of the ordinary.”

  “Who would be on it that late?” Trace asks. “None of us really used it. The kids played in it a little when we first got there, but after that . . .”

  Hunter shrugs. “Don’t know. I just think I remember hearing it while I was sending the last of my emails before lights out.”

  Trace looks at me. “Did the killer use the elevator? That why you’re askin’?”

  “Just askin’,” I say. “Have no reason to think so.”

  I glance back at Merrill. He’s yet to utter a single sound.

  He gives me the slightest of nods.

  “How about Mariah’s mother?” I ask. “Never hear anything about her. Do you have sole custody?”

  Hunter shakes his head and lets out an expression of disgust. “Mayra,” he says.

  “She died when Mariah was very small,” Trace says. “OD’d. Her family blamed me, accused me of killing her, said if I didn’t actually murder her, which they think I did, that at a minimum I got her hooked on the shit in the first place. Her parents, Pick and Rhonda Baxley and her sister, Deidre, fought me for custody. I’ve had nothing to do with them since.”

  “They who you need to look at,” Irvin says, his voice rising.

  Trace shakes his head. “They could no more hurt Mariah than I could. They’re broken—all of them. Older than their years. Losing a daughter—” He stops suddenly and tears fill his eyes again. “Sure that’s the way I’ll be soon. Oh, God. I just can’t . . . believe she’s . . . They wouldn’t harm her. They’re decent people—all three of them. They could’ve tried to take her or harm her when I was in prison if they were going to, but they didn’t. Now, I’m sure you’ll talk to them. Just remember they blame me for their daughter’s death. No telling what all they’ll tell you about me. Just remember it’s their grief talkin’. I was young and stupid and selfish when I was with their daughter and I made a lot of mistakes, but I didn’t kill her. Just like I didn’t kill their granddaughter.”

  “Know who you really need to be lookin’ at,” Hunter says.

  “Who?” I say.

  He looks at Trace. “Who has the biggest beef with you on the planet?”

  Trace shakes his head. “He wouldn’t do something like this, not to Mariah, just to get at me.”

  “Who?” I say.

  “Little Swag,” Hunter says. “Biggest beef in rap right now. He’s threatened to do something like
this and more.”

  “In his songs,” Trace says. “It’s not an actual threat.”

  “The hell it’s not,” Hunter says. “Fucker ain’t like you. He’s crazy. He’s street hard and crack crazy. Means what he says in his songs and you know it. And he’s killed before.”

  I look at Trace.

  “I’m not sayin’ you shouldn’t look at him. I want you lookin’ at everybody. I just . . . It’s hard to imagine anyone doing this, so . . . I can’t picture him or anyone else doing what was done to my baby.”

  “Give me a little backstory,” I say.

  “He’s another Atlanta rapper. We used to collaborate,” Trace says. “He was part of our posse. When things took off for me, he wanted to take the ride with me. I tried to give him a few things here and there, but he thought they were beneath him. He wanted to be on my new record. Wanted me on his. Wanted me to get him a spot on a TV show I was on.”

  “His punk ass took it public,” Hunter says. “Spittin’ all kind of dark, twisted rhymes about my boy here. And he never been anything but good to him. Made all kinds of threats. Tried to take him out a couple of months ago.”

  I look back at Trace.

  “Drive-by at a club in Buckhead,” he says. “We were standing out front, but so were a lot of other people. Don’t know it was for us. And . . .”

  “And what?”

  He shrugs. “I don’t know. Seemed like the guy wasn’t really trying to hit anybody. Could’ve easily taken us out. Nobody got hit. Sort of shot up over the top of us.”

  “You think it was him?”

  “If it was, it sort of proves my point about him really not wanting to hurt anyone,” he says. “I just don’t think he would.”

  Hunter shakes his head and lets out a harsh laugh. “And you never been wrong about something like that before?”

  Trace nods slowly. “Fair point there. Not saying I’m always the best judge of character. Keep you around, don’t I?”