Blood Cries; Blood Oath; Blood Work

by Michael Lister

  “Already am.”

  Walking down the covered walkway toward the double glass doors of WHS, me towering over her, Sam says, “Smell that? That smell like teen spirit to you?”

  “Boredom and desperation,” I say. “Monotony, banality, caste system, and conformity.”

  “That about covers it,” she says. “Sounds like we had about the same high school experience.”

  Stepping aside and holding the door open for Sam, I can’t help but think she looks more like a student entering the building than what she actually is.

  Just before we walk in, she says, “Hey, you’re a prison chaplain. What’s worse, prison or high school?”

  “High school. Not even close.”

  Entering the building, I’m reminded just how much like prison high school really is.

  A smiling, upbeat, energetic, youngish teacher is waiting for us.

  “Good morning,” she says.

  “Morning,” I say.

  “You’re here to talk to Angel, right? Come this way. I’ve got a quiet corner in an empty classroom where you won’t be disturbed.”

  “Thank you,” I say.

  The halls are empty, the kids all in classrooms. Everything is red and white—the school colors. Everywhere you look there is a gator—the school mascot.

  “You seem really upbeat for a high school teacher,” Sam says.

  “I love my job. Love the kids. Happy to be here.”

  “We were just talking about our high school experiences. Never had a teacher like you. I bet you liked school back when you were in it, didn’t you?”

  “Actually, it was a nightmare. I bounced between being bullied and being invisible. That’s why I’m here, to try to keep that from happening to other vulnerable young students.”

  “That’s very commendable,” Sam says.

  “Truly heroic,” I say.

  The teacher looks back at me to see if I’m serious and smiles even wider when she sees that I am.

  “Thank you.”

  “It’s inspiring,” I say, “and I have no doubt you make a difference.”

  Angel is a pale, skinny, narrow girl with no hips and no breasts and a crimson hair color not found in nature.

  She is quiet and shy and nervous and has a slight speech impediment that makes her a challenge to understand.

  “You know why we’re here?” Sam asks.

  She shakes her head.

  Though she doesn’t act like it, Angel is eighteen—so can be interviewed without a parent present.

  “Tell us about the party at Iola Landing last Saturday night,” Sam says.

  Though we didn’t discuss it ahead of time, it’s obvious to us both that Sam should take the lead and ask most of the questions.

  “Nothing to tell. I didn’t go.”

  The classroom is beige and bland with empty chalk and bulletin boards and smells faintly of feet.

  “Sorry,” Sam says. “Saturday before last.”

  “It was pretty lame. Not much to it. I left kinda early.”

  “Anybody go or leave with you?”

  “No. Oh, I gave Amber a ride home.”

  “Who?”

  “Amber Matthews. New girl who needed a ride.”

  Here five months and still the new girl.

  “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why’d she need one?”

  Angel shrugs. “I think she was ready to go and her boyfriend wasn’t. I’m not sure.”

  “Where’d you take her?”

  “Well, she said to her aunt’s place at the five-acre farms in Dalkeith, but she ditched me.”

  “Whatta you mean?”

  “I stopped by the Express Lane for some Skittles and a Sprite. When I came back out she was gone.”

  The Express Lane is the convenience store in the middle of town at the intersection where Highway 22 dead ends into Main Street. It’s on a small lot at the only traffic light in town. The back and side of the building are dark at night, though with only a few spots in front of the building a lot of people park out there.

  “Where’d you park?” I ask.

  “On the side. I came in from the back by the fire department on Second Street.”

  “What time was it?”

  “Just before midnight, ’cause they were about to close.”

  “Anyone else around?” I ask. “Anybody in the parking lot?”

  “Empty. Like the town at that time of night. Dead.”

  “Why didn’t you call the police?” Sam asks.

  “For what?”

  “For what? Amber disappearing?”

  “Are you for real?”

  “What did you think happened to her?” I ask.

  “Figured she just bailed. Got in with someone else—someone cooler, one of her actual friends, or that her boyfriend changed his mind, caught up to us.”

  “So it didn’t seem all that unusual to you?” I say.

  She shakes her head. “Happens all the time. Even with people I know well. ’Cept with them I can text and say what the fuck?”

  “It never crossed your mind something could be wrong?” Sam asks.

  “Like what? It’s Wewa. No.”

  “How long did you wait for her?” I ask.

  “A while. Even got out and looked around, thought she might be out back pukin’ or something, but nothing. I waited way past the time they locked up the store and left. Always do stuff like that. Get taken advantage of. Eventually, I went home.”

  “And it didn’t seem strange to you that she hasn’t been in school this week?” Sam says.

  “She hasn’t? You sure?”

  “You haven’t noticed?”

  “We’re not friends. I don’t really know her. We don’t have the same classes. We don’t hang. The first time she ever spoke to me was when she asked me for a ride.”

  What she is describing is typical high school. Ordinary self-involved immaturity. Of course she would think she got ditched because a cool kid came by and offered her a ride. Of course she wouldn’t notice if the new girl suddenly dropped out. She’s transient. It’s expected.

  As we are walking out of the classroom with Angel, my mind drifts back to Shane, to his poor family, to the search underway at the moment, to his friends and girlfriend. Cody had graduated, but Swolle and Megan are still in school.

  “Is Megan here today?” I ask.

  Angel shakes her head. “Would you come to school if you killed your boyfriend?”

  25

  Amber’s aunt who really isn’t her aunt, Francis Randolph, lives in a little wooden house on a five-acre tract of land in Dalkeith.

  She’s a frail, wrinkled fifty-something woman with a wicked smoker’s cough who looks at least twenty years older than what she is.

  We reach her place by eleven in the morning and find her still in her pajamas and already smelling of booze.

  “I’m not really her aunt, but I feel sorry for the child. Her mother and I were drinking buddies back in the day. What’d she do? She in trouble? Why are you looking for her?”

  She’s sitting on a sinking sofa with a too-loose vinyl cover on it, a small dog of indeterminable breeding in her lap.

  We are sitting across from her in the dim, smoky room in old, uncomfortable chairs covered in dog hair.

  She seems to be staring at me.

  “You sure you’re a cop, handsome?” she says. “You have kind eyes for a cop.” She turns to Sam. “Got nice eyes, don’t he? Intense, but nice, you know?”

  “Do you know where she is?” Sam asks. “Amber.”

  She shrugs.

  “I know the two places she was always threatening to go to,” she says. “Every time I asked for her help around here or expected her to follow a few simple rules or show some common courtesy and respect for her elders . . . she threatened to go back to her dad’s or go live at Taunton’s.”

  By Taunton’s she means the Taunton Family Children’s Home in Honeyville, a privately owned home for kids
operated by a former judge and his wife, David and Abigail Taunton.

  “You don’t know where she is?” Sam asks.

  She shakes her head. “Not for sure. Always came and went as she pleased. What has she done? Why are you looking for her?”

  “When’s the last time you saw her?” I ask.

  “Last Saturday. I forbade her from going to a party and she went anyway. I told her if she did, not to come back, but . . . I have said that before and she has always come back before. This is the longest time she’s stayed away since she showed up here at Christmas.”

  “What was she wearing when you last saw her?” Sam asks.

  She describes the outfit and jewelry Amber was wearing in the Facebook photos and on the phones of the kids at the party in surprising detail.

  “Now,” she says, “I’m not going to answer any more questions until you tell me what this is about.”

  “I’m very sorry to have to inform you of this,” Sam says, “but we’ve found the body of a white female in the river that we believe may be that of your . . . of Amber.”

  “In the river? But Amber’s a good swimmer. Had she been drinking? Oh no, it . . . it can’t be her. Oh my merciful Jesus. Please not that poor child. Hasn’t she suffered enough?”

  “No one was ever going to put out an Amber Alert for Amber, were they?” I say.

  We are walking back toward my car, dusting the dog hair off of us and trying to air the smoke out of our hair, clothes, and lungs.

  “Wonder how long it would’ve taken anyone to realize she was missing if we hadn’t found her?” Sam says.

  “And we wouldn’t have found her if we hadn’t been looking for Shane,” I say, shaking my head. “God, I hope we find him soon.”

  She nods. “Me too.”

  I start to say something else, but both of our phones ring.

  I step away from her so we can both take our calls simultaneously.

  Mine is from Merrill, my best friend and former coworker at PCI .

  “Had enough, John,” he says. “Finally had enough.”

  “Of?”

  “Us gettin’ killed in the streets,” he says.

  I know what he’s referring to. Another unarmed black man was shot and killed by the police last night. It was the second in less than a week caught on video by a nearby witness.

  “Me too.”

  “No more sitting by watching it happen for me,” he says. “Time to join the fray.”

  “What’re you doing right now?” I ask.

  “Just turned in my notice,” he says.

  “So you’re free?”

  “In so many ways.”

  “Can you meet for lunch?”

  “I’ll drive over,” he says. “Least I can do. Your ass has two jobs and mine ain’t even got one no more.”

  “See you at Mitchell’s in half an hour,” I say, and disconnect the call.

  “That was Reggie,” Sam says when she gets in the car.

  My call ended sooner than Sam’s so I have the car nice and cool by the time she gets in.

  “She spoke to Amber’s dad. Says he hasn’t heard from her in quite a while, thought she was still with Francis, had no idea she was even missing.”

  I nod as I back out of Francis Randolph’s little dirt driveway.

  “It’s a good thing Reggie interviewed him and not me,” she says.

  “Why’s that?”

  “She said he indicated it was her own fault, that he suggested that the reason she was killed was because she wasn’t living in his house following his rules and obeying her stepmother. I’d’a had to bitch slap the shit out of him.”

  “Then I wish we’d’ve interviewed him.”

  “And missed out on the whole Francis Randolph experience?” she says. “Can you imagine talking like that about your own daughter? What a . . . We’ve got to find her killer and get some sort of justice for her.”

  “We will.”

  “We’ve got to care enough not to stop, because no one else does.”

  “We do.”

  26

  Merrick and Reggie are heading toward the No Name Café in downtown Port St. Joe in his car.

  It’s a rare thing that they get to have lunch together, but after sitting in on Rain’s interview, he stayed down here to work on a story about how the BP Deep Horizon oil spill settlement money is being spent in Gulf County and asked if Reggie could get away.

  Barbara Radcliff, the owner and operator of the No Name Café and bookstore, is a friend of theirs and always whips them up something special, plus they get to browse through the bookshelves while they wait for their food.

  “What’s wrong?” Merrick asks.

  “I was trying to hide it,” she says.

  “Well you shouldn’t. Not from me.”

  “I just feel so fuckin’ bad about how I handled the Rain-Amber thing,” she says.

  “What could you have done differently?” he says.

  “I didn’t just jeopardize the investigation and the prosecution’s eventual case,” she says. “I lost the respect and trust of John and Sam. They handled it all very professionally but I can tell they don’t look at me the same way. I wouldn’t be surprised if John quits and Sam reports me.”

  “They probably understand better than you think. Especially John. You see the way he looks at his little girls. Besides, you’ll have the opportunity to win their trust back again countless times.”

  “I don’t know what else I could’ve done,” she says. “I knew he didn’t do it, but I can’t not think like a mom, can’t not protect my family.”

  He nods.

  “I’m just already so compromised from the last big case. I feel so corrupt about what I did on it that . . . I . . . I’m not sure I should be sheriff.”

  “You’re a great sheriff.”

  “I’m corrupt and compromised—the very things the previous one was. But . . . I was so proud of Rain. So proud. How he handled himself. And his commitment to not driving after he’d been drinking—even when—especially when being pressured by his girlfriend.”

  “He’s a good kid.”

  “And it makes me so happy that he chose you to sit in with him in the interview,” she says. “I mean, that’s huge.”

  “Made me pretty happy too,” he says. “Made me feel like we’re a family.”

  “We are,” she says. “That’s exactly what we are.”

  As they’re getting out at the No Name, Tim Munn, the manager at Dockside Seafood, is walking up.

  “I was just about to call you,” Reggie says.

  “Oh yeah?” he says.

  He’s wearing what Reggie has come to think of as his uniform—cargo shorts, a green short-sleeved button-up fishing shirt, and a burgundy baseball camp with an FSU emblem on it.

  “What’re you doing here?” she asks. “Shouldn’t you be running your own restaurant?”

  “My day off,” he says. “Out getting tacos and reading material. Just left Pepper’s so I’m full of tacos, and now I’m stopping by here because Barbara got in the new book by my favorite author. Why do I feel like I’m being interrogated?”

  “She has that effect on people,” Merrick says.

  “You’re certainly answering like you’re being interrogated,” she says. “Thought you only gave those kind of detailed answers when someone’s husband’s askin’.”

  “Funny,” he says, flashing a half smile on his sun-reddened face that says it really isn’t.

  “I need to talk to a young man who I believe works for you,” she says.

  “Who’s that?”

  “Furnell Gant.”

  Tim starts smiling. “He’s a cook. Should be at work right now.”

  “What is it?”

  “Last time he was arrested,” he says. “Police came to the restaurant, cuffed him right there in the kitchen, and as they were dragging him out he was yelling back over his shoulder would he still have his job when he got out.”

  “So the sheriff’s si
gnificant other is your best friend?” Sam asks.

  “No. I’m just getting to know him.”

  “I thought you said he was. Who are you meeting for lunch?”

  “Merrill, not Merrick.”

  “Oh. Who is Merrill again?”

  “Merrill Monroe. My best friend since childhood. Big, badass black correctional officer. Not to be confused with Merrick McKnight. An average-sized white reporter and main squeeze of Sheriff Reggie Summers.”

  “Makes a lot more sense now.”

  I meet Merrill at the Corner Café in Wewa—a place we call Mitchell’s because our friend Mitchell Johnson owns it.

  An African-American man in his sixties, Mitchell operates the Corner Café in a building on Main Street that has been, among other things, a drugstore and a storefront church. He owns it and the small building next to it that was a Whites Only game room he was kept out of as a kid.

  While I’m here seeing Merrill, Sam takes my car to check the Express Lane for surveillance footage and to see if the clerk working the night Amber disappeared remembers anything.

  Merrill is waiting for me when I arrive and we embrace in the sort of half-hug way that includes a couple of fist pounds on the back.

  Merrill Monroe, my closest friend for nearly my entire life, is a muscular black man with broad shoulders and intense, intelligent, penetrating black eyes.

  Having come straight from the prison where he’d just resigned, he’s still wearing his correctional officer uniform, and it’s strange to think this may be the last time I ever see him in it.

  As we decide what we want and wait in line, I can hear four different conversations going on around us about Shane’s disappearance and Amber’s crucifixion. Shocked, confused, fearful, the entire town is talking. Theorizing. Speculating. Gossiping.

  We place our order at the counter, but instead of sitting there like we normally do, we find a booth in a quiet corner so we can talk privately.

  “You okay?” I say.

  His eyes are wide and a bit wild, and something about my familiar friend seems foreign and unfamiliar.