I handed him to her.
As soon as I did, Wilbur pushed past her and hugged me.
I bent down and hugged him back.
“Where was he?” Camille said. “Who had him?”
I told her.
“Oh my God. Are you sure? Right next door all this time. Is he the . . . Did he kill the others?”
I nodded.
From the building across the way I could see Annie Mae Dozier open her door and look out at us.
“I actually was beginning to think it might be Mickey,” she said. “Thought he might be doing this for his damn story. Where is he?”
“McDonough. He’s fine. Was looking for Cedric. Now he’s just waiting until the storm passes and the roads open again.”
An ambulance pulled up.
“Come on,” she said to Wilbur. “Let’s get your brother to the hospital.”
50
Over the next several days, I spent a lot of time prayerfully pondering what I should do about Cedric. Turn over what I knew to the authorities in an attempt to find him and bring him home, or leave him where he was?
I didn’t feel adequate to the task of deciding the fate of this little boy who had been through so much. I wasn’t adult enough, mature enough, wise enough.
Who was I to say what was right or best for this child?
And yet . . .
Fate had made the decision mine to make, and Mickey had agreed to go along with whatever I decided.
Was he better off where he was or back with his mother?
I didn’t want to decide, but more than that I didn’t want to abdicate the responsibility I had been given.
In one sense, Annie Mae Dozier and her daughter were criminals—kidnappers who had stolen a child. In another, they were two caring women who had acted heroically in an attempt to save an abused and neglected child. Who knows, maybe the actions they took ensured that another isolated and traumatized child wouldn’t turn to dark fantasies that would lead to much darker actions.
I realized I didn’t have enough information to make the best decision possible, which let me know what I needed to do.
I went back to Annie Mae Dozier’s.
“Figure I see you again,” she said through her open door. “Heard you caught the killer. Tol’ you that family was no good for Cedric.”
I nodded.
“Why you here?”
“Trying to decide what to do,” I said.
“’Bout?”
“Cedric.”
“Leave the boy be.”
“I’m inclined to,” I said. “And I think you should be with them too.”
Tears filled the old eyes behind the big glasses, and she stopped blinking.
Suddenly, this ancient, freckled, narrow, emaciated, parchment-covered thing before me was younger, more vibrant, and bent over no more.
“Y’all can be together,” I said. “No running. No looking over your shoulder. All I want to do is talk with Cedric and your daughter. That’s it. I have to make sure he’s good before I can let it go. If you agree and he is doing well, no one will ever know and I’ll be out of it forever. If you don’t, I’ll be forced to go to the authorities and . . . your daughter can be found. It wouldn’t even be that difficult. You know it’s true.”
She nodded. “I do. Know somethin’ else true too. That boy couldn’t be any better or any happier. You’ll see.”
And I did.
And that was that. And like Kenny, a positive result was achieved for Cedric—something far too infrequent in what had become my work.
Susan and I started dating a little later. She had saved my life after all. It seemed the thing to do.
I still missed Jordan and I still felt conflicted about it.
I still missed Martin and I felt no conflict about that.
I stopped going to the missing and murdered children group. I never saw most of the members again, including Summer, who seemed more like a specter than anything else. Miss Ida and I stayed in touch. We had shared too much not to. Most often we’d meet at Jordan’s grave.
I never found any evidence that Laney Mitchell’s death was anything but a tragic, senseless, preventable accident. Maybe Lonnie was right. Maybe it was just a sad, sorry drunk like us.
Mickey continued calling and coming around while he was working on his book, but not much after that.
Frank got out of the hospital and made a full recovery. He continued to be the person in Atlanta I could count on most.
Two people who never got out of the hospital were Daryl Lee Gibbons and his mother—his mother because she died after a little less than a week inside and Daryl Lee because, when he was eventually able, he was sent straight from the medical hospital to a psychiatric one.
In the end, Martin’s mother dropped her lawsuit for the most unexpected reason imaginable. Bobby Battle told her if she didn’t he was going to arrest her for killing her own son and a hundred other charges besides, and that he could make them stick. She must have believed him. I never heard anything out of her again.
I found a new AA group and continued going. I stopped drinking.
I got back in school—the first day back after the snowstorm in fact, and dug in to theology and my studies in a way I hadn’t before.
And the reason I was able to do all this was because I was able to make a certain imperfect peace with the Atlanta Child Murders.
There were things I would never know and I was learning to live with that.
Were the victims connected? Yes. Many of them were intimately connected. Were there geographical and social relationships between victims and suspects? There were. Many.
Was there a child sex ring and more than one killer? I believe so.
I suspected John David Wilcoxen, Jamie Brooks, and others of all manner of evil—including murder of one kind or another—but because of the nature of such cases and the mistakes made by the various law enforcement agencies involved, there is much we will never know or be able to prove.
I believe that poor, at-risk, vulnerable street kids—the type of kids Wayne Williams called drop shots—were crushed by those streets and the predators lurking on them. I believe some kids sold their bodies and certain sexual services for money and attention and affection. I believe others were just available prey, children whose ancestry and geography sealed an impossibly cruel fate for them.
When people learn of my fascination with and investigation into the cases, they always ask me the same questions. Is Wayne Williams guilty? Did he do it?
It has taken a while, but I finally have an answer.
I believe Wayne Bertram Williams is the Atlanta Child Murderer. I still have many questions, but I am convinced by the evidence against him. There’s simply too much of it, particularly trace evidence—the combination of fibers and human and dog hairs too unique, the probabilities against it being him too low—for it not to be Williams.
Wayne Williams also failed a polygraph three times.
But it’s not just all of that. It’s that he had such a ridiculous story about why he was on the James Jackson Parkway bridge the night he was stopped, or that the person he claimed to be looking for never came forward, or that he burned evidence, or that he had so many connections to so many of the key places, people, and victims, or that eyewitnesses claimed to have seen him with some of the victims, or that the relatively rare trilobal green carpet fibers from his bedroom as well as nearly twenty other fibers and hairs from his home and vehicle were found on so many of the victims, or that he used Cap’n Peg’s as the address on his flyers, or that his flyers turned up in so many of the areas where the victims lived and were taken. It was Williams himself.
I don’t believe Williams. I don’t buy his explanations and find his protestations incredible.
That said, I don’t believe he’s responsible for killing everyone on the task force’s list. I don’t think it very likely he killed Clifford Jones, for example—or the two female victims, Angel Lenair and LaTonya Wilson. Or some of the others.
And the blood of each and every one still cries out—for justice, for acknowledgment, for truth.
I believe Wayne Williams is a practiced and habitual liar. In short, I believe him to be a compulsive, sociopathic serial killer.
Partly because of the way the investigation was conducted, partly because of the nature of such cases, there are truths and facts about the cases we’ll never know. Crimes will remain unsolved. Guilty people will remain free—or at least free from answering for these particular crimes.
Am I okay with that?
Do I have a choice?
Blood Oath
A John Jordan Mystery Book 11
Author’s Note
The John Jordan series is just that—a series. And should be read as such. I write each book in such a way as to avoid spoilers of previous entries and to prevent faithful readers from being subjected to endless recaps. Because of this approach the series can be read out of order—but it also means that questions raised in this book will be answered in the books that came before it.
Blood Oath is the first John Jordan novel to feature characters from my other series.
If you haven’t already, I recommend that you read Burnt Offerings and A Certain Retribution before reading Blood Oath.
There are other Merrick McKnight/Reggie Summers and Samantha Michaels/Daniel Davis novels, of course, but they aren’t as pertinent to Blood Oath.
In the same way that reading the first ten John Jordan books before reading this latest one will greatly enhance your experience with and enjoyment of it, reading Burnt Offerings and A Certain Retribution first will be similarly beneficial.
But it’s just a gentle suggestion. Nothing more. It’s certainly not necessary. It will just answer questions raised in this book and reveal far more about these characters and their relationships and experiences.
You could always read the others after reading Blood Oath. Or not at all—though I hope you won’t choose this last option.
Regardless, I truly hope you enjoy John’s new adventure and the new direction his life is taking him. I certainly am.
Thank you very much for reading and for continuing to take this journey with me and John.
1
Shane McMillan goes missing on the sweetest day of the year—the third Saturday in May, the day dedicated to celebrating the year’s honey harvest at the annual Tupelo Festival in Wewahitchka—the tiny town that is the tupelo capital of the world.
The morning is bright, cool, and clear.
A beautiful day. The kind when nothing bad should be able to happen.
Beneath the enormous canopy of ancient live oak trees, the breeze blowing off Lake Alice waves the Spanish moss about and wafts around the savory smells of stir fry, barbecue, chargrilled chicken, sausage, burgers, and hotdogs, fresh fried catfish and grouper, and funnel cake.
Thousands of people fill the little lakeside park. Some winding their way around the cement walking track, slowly moving from vendor to vendor, lifting and examining and talking about the bottles of honey, homemade candles, kids clothes, wooden toys, wind chimes, hand-painted signs, scarves, and glass jars of special spices and sauces. Others sitting beneath the green tin roof of the pavilion listening to live music. Still others standing in line for food or sitting beneath the shade of a pole barn at picnic tables eating it. Some parents watch their kids play games, ride ponies, and jump in the bouncy castle in the middle of it all, while others look on as their kids swing and slide and climb on the permanent playground equipment at the far end. Politicians pass out campaign cards, brochures, T-shirts, and buttons. And, of course, competing commercial tupelo producers hawk honey like the golden nectar of the gods it is.
Anna and I and our two girls are right here mixed up in the middle of it all, soaking in the sights and sounds and smells, seeing people we haven’t seen in years, meeting our new neighbors and citizens.
This is our home now.
Everything has changed.
Everything.
Well, everything but the most important things. Anna and I are together. Our daughters are healthy and well.
But everything else has changed.
We have moved, taken new jobs, are now a family of four.
We now live in Wewa. Anna now has a legal practice. I am now a chaplain at Gulf Correctional Institution and an investigator with the Gulf County Sheriff’s Department. We now have two young girls—Anna’s seven-month-old daughter, Taylor Elizabeth Taunton, and my four-year-old daughter, Sarah Johanna Jordan. Of course, they are only mine and hers by blood and birth. By every other measure, in every way that truly matters, they are both ours.
We are Wewahitchkaians.
Less than half an hour from Pottersville, Wewa is an awful lot like it—as are all the small towns and rural routes in this part of North Florida.
Growing up, Anna and I both spent a good deal of time here. We both had family here. We both dated people from here back in high school. And we both always had a fondness for this place where so many of our friends live.
As we walk around the festival, each of us holding our daughter on our hips, we receive many warm congratulations for the wisdom we have displayed in moving to this great place.
They told us the same thing at the carnival in the old school yard last weekend and at our brief appearance at the softball tournament at TL James Park the weekend before.
“I like it here,” Anna says to me. “A lot.”
“Me too.”
Tall and athletic with longish brown hair and big brown eyes, Anna still projects strength and beauty, but she’s a bit more vulnerable than she’s ever been before—because of both the brutal assault she had been subjected to and the distress she had suffered giving birth to Taylor.
“It really does feel like a new life.”
“It is,” I say.
After what we had been through—particularly her—we needed a new beginning. The physical trauma she had suffered alone was enough to warrant it, but she had been through enormous emotional turmoil as well.
“I just feel so damn hopeful and happy,” she says.
“Me too,” I say, reaching over and touching her face tenderly.
Across the way, through the throng, I can see Reggie Summers and Merrick McKnight.
They are heading this way and we walk toward them.
Reggie Summers is Gulf County’s first female sheriff and my boss. Merrick McKnight owns and operates the local paper, the Gulf County Breeze, and his family’s beekeeping business, McKnight Apiaries, since his dad passed away at the end of last year.
“Sheriff,” I say to Reggie.
She smiles. “Still haven’t gotten used to that.”
Reggie is an early forties country girl with a powerful five-nine frame, striking blue-green-gray eyes, straight saddle-brown hair perpetually in a ponytail, and olive skin. As if a uniform, I’ve never seen her in anything but blue jeans, boots, and a button-down.
If Anna has the build of a volleyball player, Reggie has the body of a softball player—the respective sports each woman excelled at in high school.
“Better hurry up,” Merrick says with a rueful smile.
He’s a little taller than Reggie, with intense eyes and a gentleness about him.
“That’s true,” she says. “Won’t have it long. If I don’t embrace it now I’ll never get to.”
Reggie has been appointed to her position by the governor and is under no illusion that she could actually win the seat in an election.
Both Anna and I are about to say something about her chances and our support, but she quickly moves off the subject.
“My, what beautiful girls,” Reggie says. “If they still had the Tupelo Queen competition, you two would have to share it. With your mom.”
She’s right. They are truly lovely. Simple, unadorned beauty.
“Whatta you say, Johanna?” I ask.
“Thank you,” she says, her small voice soft and airy.
She probably has no idea what Re
ggie has actually said, but she knows the right response to my question.
She looks up at me with her enormously big brown eyes and smiles.
I smile back and feel as I always feel when I look into her precious little face—a complex mixture of pure love, undiluted joy, and a fierce desire to keep her safe and happy. Looking at her also always reminds me that she looks as though she could be my and Anna’s daughter instead of my and Susan’s.
“Such good manners, sweet girl,” I say. “I love you.”
“I love you, Daddy.”
“Thank you,” Anna says to Reggie. “That’s so . . . You’re very kind.”
“This your first Tupelo Festival?” Merrick asks.
We both shake our heads.
“First as Wewahitchkaians,” I say.
“Makes a difference,” he says. “How’s the house working out for you?”
We had bought and are living in and fixing up his dad’s old house, a red-brick ranch-style house built in the late sixties located on the other lake in town, Julia—the sister to Alice—just across Highway 22, less than a football field away.
Wewahitchka—Wewa to everyone who lives here—is a Native American term that means water eyes, named for the two lakes in the center of town, Alice and Julia.
“Perfectly,” Anna says. “We love it.”
“Sorry again about your dad,” I say.
“Thank you,” Merrick says, averting his gaze momentarily, blinking, clearing his throat. “It’s amazing how many times a day I pick up my phone to call him or start to drop by and check on him. Don’t be surprised if you open your door and I’m standing there sometime.”
“You’d be welcome anytime,” Anna says.
“Speaking of dads,” Reggie says, “I had a thought about yours, John.”
“Oh yeah?”
This past November, my dad lost his bid for reelection as sheriff of Potter County—the first time in decades—and has been adrift ever since, stuck in a sort of self-imposed purgatory.
“How do you think he’d feel about being a mentor and consultant for our department?” she says.
Blood Cries; Blood Oath; Blood Work Page 20