Blood Cries; Blood Oath; Blood Work

by Michael Lister

  “Only three days until Johanna is back with us,” she says.

  “Counting the minutes,” I say.

  “It took us a while,” she says, “but . . . we finally have the life we both always wanted.”

  “Yes, we do,” I say.

  “And the work you do gives us constant reminders of how very precious and fragile it is.”

  “It does,” I say. “But I don’t think we need them.”

  “No,” she says. “I don’t think we do.”

  And she reaches up to where my hand is on Taylor’s stroller and puts her hand on it.

  In that moment that is not enough for me, so I stop in the middle of our new little town, take her in my arms, and kiss her as if it’s the first time.

  “You did it again,” she says, voice hoarse, hand over her heart, breaths coming rapidly.

  “What’s that?” I ask.

  “Kissed my soul,” she says. “You kissed me down to the very depths of my love-drunk soul.”

  Blood Work

  a John Jordan Mystery, Book 12

  by Michael Lister

  1

  Before being arrested, tried, convicted, and ultimately executed by the state of Florida, Ted Bundy, perhaps the most notorious serial killer in American history, cut a bloody swath across my part of the Panhandle.

  It began at dawn on Sunday, January 8, 1978, when Theodore Robert Bundy arrived at the Trailways bus station in Tallahassee and began to blend in among the tens of thousands of college students returning for the spring semester.

  After only a week in Florida’s capitol city, in the early morning hours of January 15th, shrouded by dark of night, Ted Bundy entered the Chi Omega sorority house at Florida State University through a rear door with a faulty lock.

  In less than fifteen minutes, and within earshot of some thirty potential witnesses, he viciously assaulted four young coeds.

  Sometime around two forty-five in the morning, he bludgeoned Margaret Bowman with a piece of oak firewood while she slept, after which he garroted her with a pair of nylon stockings.

  Moments later, he stole into Lisa Levy’s bedroom and beat her unconscious, strangled her, tore one of her nipples nearly off, bit her so deeply in her left buttocks that it left his bite mark impression, and sexually assaulted her with a hairspray bottle.

  A few moments after that, he entered the adjoining bedroom occupied by Kathy Kleiner and broke her jaw and deeply lacerated her shoulder.

  A short while later, he snuck into Karen Chandler’s room and brutally assaulted her, knocking her teeth out, breaking her jaw, crushing her finger, and leaving her with a concussion.

  In less time than it takes water to boil, Ted Bundy savagely attacked four young women inside the Chi Omega sorority house, murdering two of them, but he wasn’t finished yet.

  Eight blocks away, Bundy broke into a basement apartment and attacked another FSU student, Cheryl Thomas, dislocating her shoulder and fracturing her jaw and skull in five places, leaving her with permanent deafness and an equilibrium complication that ended her dance career.

  On February 8th, Bundy stole an FSU van and drove east on I-10 to Jacksonville, where he unsuccessfully attempted to get fourteen-year-old Leslie Ann Parmenter into the van with him.

  On February 9th, in Lake City on his way back to Tallahassee, Bundy abducted twelve-year-old Kimberly Diane Leach from Lake City Junior High School.

  On February 12th, Bundy stole yet another car and left Tallahassee, heading west on I-10 across our part of the Panhandle for Pensacola.

  On February 15th at one in the morning, Bundy was pulled over by Pensacola police officer David Lee after the Volkswagen Beetle he was driving came back stolen in a wants and warrants check.

  This is what we know of what Ted Bundy did, but what about what we don’t know?

  Before his execution in Florida’s electric chair in 1989, Bundy confessed to killing some thirty women in seven states, but in a recently released memoir, Bundy’s former attorney, John Henry Browne, revealed Bundy confided in him that it was more than three times that.

  Did Ted Bundy kill over one hundred women?

  If so, when? And where? And who?

  What did he do, who did he attack and kill between arriving in Tallahassee on January 8th and the slaughter at Chi Omega on January 15th?

  Who did he murder and rape between his attack of Cheryl Thomas on January 15th and his abduction of Kimberly Diane Leach on February 9th?

  Who did he brutalize and butcher between leaving Tallahassee on February 12th and his arrest near Pensacola on February 15th?

  Could Ted Bundy be responsible for the disappearance of Janet Leigh Lester near Marianna in the early morning hours of February 12th following her Valentine’s Day Sweethearts’ Ball, as he made his way west on I-10?

  Could he be the monster responsible for the open, unsolved case that devastated an entire town, utterly shattered two families, and still haunts Jack Jordan, my dad and the man who many believe let the killer get away?

  2

  Anna and I are making love when the call arrives.

  The buzz buzz of my phone on the nightstand in our dim, hushed bedroom illuminates a small area around it and joins our breathing and intimate expressions as the loudest sounds in the room.

  “Get it if you need to,” Anna whispers. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  I shake my head. “Absolutely not.”

  Our first attempt at making love this evening had been interrupted by Taylor’s upset little cries coming from the baby monitor on Anna’s nightstand, and we had only recently returned to this secret sacred sanctuary where we alone worship.

  “What if it’s—”

  I glance at the number being displayed.

  “It’s not Johanna,” I say. “Everyone else can wait.”

  As an investigator with the Gulf County Sheriff’s Department and a chaplain at Gulf Correctional Institution, I get a lot of emergency calls. But it’s as the dad of a young daughter who lives with her mother much of the time that I most often check my phone before the first vibration is concluded.

  “But—” she begins.

  “Homicide, kidnapping, hostage situation, riot . . . doesn’t matter.”

  She smiles up at me. “Thank you.”

  It’s August in Florida and hot even inside our air-conditioned home with a fan and window unit running, and a small bead of sweat rolls down my nose and drops onto her forehead before I can catch it.

  “Sorry,” I say, and ineffectively attempt to wipe my face on my bare shoulder.

  “Don’t be. Clearly I adore your body fluids and I love it when our sweat mixes.”

  “But you’re not sweating,” I say.

  “Only because you’re doing all the work. We can flip around if you want me to sweat on you.”

  The incessant buzzing on the hard surface of the bedside table has a certain relentless rhythm to it.

  “Did you start . . .” Anna begins. “Are you moving in sync with the vibrations of the phone?”

  “Not consciously,” I say with a smile, “but I think maybe I am.”

  She laughs that laugh that lightens the world.

  Our lovemaking is many things—sometimes playful, others intense, sometimes gentle, others aggressive, sometimes sacred, others profane. At times we talk and laugh our way through the early stages of our entanglements. At others the only noises able to escape our mouths are unintelligible expressions of ecstasy and private words whispered from passion-hoarse voices.

  This evening our lovemaking is tender, nurturing, restorative.

  When my phone stops vibrating, I return the full weight and focus of my attention to the woman I have been in love with since we were kids, casting aside all thoughts of the call, who it might be, what they might need.

  Being intimate with Anna is my favorite thing in all the wide world, and everything else I feel and experience while one with her is infused with gratitude.

  Looking down at her bottomless
brown eyes, I feel as if I could dive right into them and never resurface, and in a very real way that’s exactly what I’m doing.

  “Some women go their entire lives without ever being looked at the way you look at me,” she says.

  “Some go their entire lives without having sex to the rhythm of a vibrating cellphone,” I say.

  “If they’re lucky, neither group knows what they’re missing,” she says.

  Our eyes lock again.

  She had confided in me near the beginning of our relationship how much she loves our intense eye contact while we make love and that Chris, her ex, would never look at her, would never open the windows to his soul while in the vulnerable state of sexual intimacy.

  My phone vibrates again to notify me whoever called left a voicemail message, but it’s as desultory as the swishing, swirling sound the little window unit and box fan are making.

  “Who was it?” Anna asks. “Who doesn’t know how to leave a tender moment alone?”

  We are lying on the bed, our moist, naked bodies entangled, all the covers shoved down toward the bottom.

  I am holding my phone above us, squinting to see who had called and caught us in flagrante delicto.

  “Don’t recognize the number,” I say.

  Without moving my torso, which her head is partially propped on, I reach over and replace the phone on the nightstand.

  “What’re you—you’re not gonna check the message?” she says.

  “Eventually,” I say. “I’m busy right now.”

  I put my other arm around her and pull her even closer.

  “Now, come closer and whisper secrets to me and let’s keep the outside world away for just a little longer.”

  She does and we do and for a short, inviolable while, there is no world outside this one.

  And when I do finally listen to the message, I wish we had kept it at bay even longer.

  The call had been from a bartender at 22, the Package and Lounge out on Highway 22. The message, “Come and get your brother before I make an official call to the cops.”

  3

  I open the door to the newly remodeled little bar wondering how many I’ve been in over the years.

  Dim and nigh quiet.

  Smoke and chatter and laughter and Chris Stapleton’s version of “Tennessee Whiskey” playing softly on the jukebox.

  “Oh hell,” Jake yells from the far end of the bar, “it’s on now.”

  The large, sullen man sitting next to him with thick, sunbaked arms and hands looks up from his drink. I have no idea what he’s drinking because the rather large glass is completely obscured by the massive mitt of his right hand.

  “My alcoholic brother is in the house,” Jake adds. “This round’s on me. Whatcha drinkin’, John? ’Bout some Tennessee whiskey?”

  I cross the dance floor, nodding at the two middle-aged men shooting pool in the small side room, feeling an old familiar familial dread that dates back to childhood.

  The wooden bar is in a squared U-shape with people seated on three sides. When I reach this end of the bar, a young, brunette Sunday-night bartender is waiting for me.

  Behind her on the back wall, the rope lights on the mirrored shelves of whiskey change colors, and something about the bright, beautifully colored bottles and the way they’re displayed makes me think of Christmas.

  “He’s out of money and he keeps demanding drinks and he won’t give me his keys,” she says. “I’m new and I didn’t know what to do. Bonnie said call you.”

  I glance over her shoulder at Bonnie, a pale elderly lady with poofy bottle-black hair stacked high on her head nursing a glass of white wine.

  Thank you, I mouth to Bonnie.

  She lifts her glass and nods toward me.

  “You did good. Thank you for calling me. Figure out what we owe and give Bonnie a glass of wine on me.”

  “Thank you.”

  She moves down the bar toward the register and her pad, and I make my way over to where Jake is slumped on his stool.

  On the wall behind Jake is an enormous red and white neon Budweiser sign with a lit crown above it. Seen from a certain angle it looks like the crown is sitting atop Jake’s head.

  As I move over toward Jake, he starts shaking his head. “John, John, John. Never ’spected to see you here. But it’s okay, buddy. I won’ let you ’rink too much. I promise.”

  “What’re you doin’ in town?” I ask.

  “Visitin’ Dad.”

  Since retiring, our dad has spent far more time at his fishing cabin here in Wewa than at his home in Pottersville.

  “He’s over here most of the time these days,” Jake says, “and I still see him more than you do. It’s like you don’t even care.”

  Though Dad had been of retirement age, retiring hadn’t been his idea. He lost the election that would have kept him as the sheriff of Potter County for yet another term. When he did, Jake, a deputy in Dad’s department, lost his job too.

  Both men have had difficulty adjusting to their new reality, but some eight months later, Dad has found a certain equilibrium investigating unsolved homicide cases he always meant to return to, while Jake is still lost. Unemployed. Perhaps unemployable. He’s tried a few different things but nothing for very long.

  “Come on,” I say, “we’ll go see him now.”

  “You go ahead. I’m gonna . . . I’m gonna stay . . . and have another ’rink or two. This place is so nice now. I really like what they’ve done with the place. Isn’t this place nice? I like it here. Do you like it here? What am I saying . . . you like all bars, don’t you, big brother?”

  “It’s nice, but it’s time to go.”

  The beefy man beside him looks up from his drink and glares at me. “He says he wants to stay and have a drink. Hell, let him stay and have a drink. He ain’t botherin’ nobody.”

  “I ain’t botherin’ nobody,” Jake says.

  “Tennessee Whiskey” ends and “Smokin’ and Drinkin’” begins.

  From across the bar, beneath a huge blue neon Bud Light sign, Bonnie says, “Go with your brother, Jake. We’ll be here tomorrow night. Come back then.”

  Jake’s face clouds over and he looks wounded as he tries to focus on her.

  The thick man beside Jake looks over at me again. “You here as a cop or his brother?”

  “Why?”

  “Determines how involved I get.”

  “Whichever one gets you the least involved,” I say. “Come on, Jake. Don’t make this difficult.”

  “One more drink,” Jake says. “Have a drink with me. Just one. Just one more. Then we’ll go check on Dad.”

  “You need to go with him, Jake,” the bartender says.

  “You need to calm your tits, Leslie Jean,” he says.

  “I ain’t servin’ you another drop, so you might as well go with him.”

  She then lets me know how much the bill is and I pay it, tipping her well.

  “Buy me one and I’ll help you get him to the car,” the big man beside him says.

  Jake whips around toward the man and falls off his barstool, laughing as he lands on the floor as if it’s the funniest thing ever.

  Far quicker than I would have thought him capable, the huge man jumps off his own barstool, bends over, and pulls Jake from the floor to his feet in one smooth motion.

  Now that he’s standing, I can see that the thick man is even bigger than I realized. Not only does he tower over us, but one of his arms is larger than both of mine together.

  “Thanks,” I say.

  “Time to go, partner,” he says to Jake.

  “One more drink,” Jake says.

  “Not tonight, brother. Let’s go.”

  Without waiting for Jake’s consent, he lifts him by the arm and walks him toward the door.

  “You’re a good friend, Goliath,” Jake says to him as they pass me.

  I lay a twenty on the bar. “For Goliath’s next several drinks. And tip yourself well out of it too.”

  4<
br />
  You really got your shit together,” Jake is saying. “And I really respect that. I do. You don’t drink anymore. You don’t. You’ve got a family. Smokin’ hot wife. She is. I hope you don’t mind me sayin’, but she is. You know? Two beautiful girls. They are. Both beautiful in their own way. You really got it together, big brother.”

  We are winding down Lake Grove Road in a low-slung fog toward Dad’s little cabin on the Dead Lakes.

  It’s a damp, dark night and the rural road that dead-ends into the Apalachicola River is desolate, only the narrow swath of headlights providing any illumination at all—and it’s mostly the reflective bounce back of the fog.

  High humidity and everything is moist. Wipers on intermediate, clearing occasionally the droplets of dew clinging to and sliding across the windshield.

  “I’ve never had my shit together,” Jake is saying. “Not really. Not totally. But used to be a fuck of a lot better than it is now. Now, I’m a wreck. A train wreck. A . . . interstate pileup. A . . . a mess. I keep tryin’ to get it together, but . . . I . . . just can’t. Ever felt like that? Like the ends of whatever you’re tryin’ to grab are like that goddamn fog out there and you can’t pull them together. You try. Truly you do. But they won’t . . . you can’t get a hold of them.”

  Foolishly, I start to respond, but realize he’s not pausing for a response, only taking a quick breath.

  “I need a damn job,” he says. “That’s what I need. Hey . . . Hey . . . you know what? You know what? You could get me on with the sheriff’s department over here. I could be a deputy here. We could work together. How about that, man? Wouldn’t that be cool?”

  I have been dreading this moment for as long as I’ve been working at the Gulf County Sheriff’s Department, and am glad it’s drunk Jake who’s asking, and hope he won’t remember it tomorrow.