Blood Cries; Blood Oath; Blood Work

by Michael Lister

“She never kept her room perfect,” Verna says. “But because of how busy she was that weekend, it’s far messier than normal.”

  A bulletin board on the wall above her desk is filled with photographs, mostly taken by her, and clippings from fashion magazines and fancy photoshoots.

  “Family, photography, and fashion,” Verna says. “With a little time left over for her boyfriend, friends, and her horse. That’s how my girl filled her short life. And fill it she did.”

  We look around a little while, but are limited in what we can do and not disturb anything.

  “It’s like I’ve gone back in time,” Dad says. “Like I was just in here yesterday.”

  Verna nods. “I experience that every morning when I come in here to tell her I love her and every evening when I come in to tell her about my day.”

  Dad reaches back and takes Verna’s hand. “I’m so sorry,” he says.

  She squeezes his hand, caressing the top of it with her thumb.

  “Sorry it happened. Sorry I wasn’t able to find out exactly what happened or why or who did it. Sorry I left. So sorry for all of it. Every damn bit of it.”

  She starts to say something, but Ralphie yells for her from the den and she excuses herself to go check on him.

  Dad shakes his head. “Before Janet was killed, she had a little help—Janet, even Ronnie—now she has no one. To go through what she has . . . and still be able to take care of . . .”

  “Batman?” I offer.

  “Yeah.”

  “You two seem pretty close,” I say.

  He nods. “We really bonded while I was working on the case up here. Nancy was younger than Janet but not by much. She was into horseback riding at the time. I . . . I really . . . I was able to put myself in Verna’s place and . . .”

  Eventually, Verna returns. “Batman made a Batmess and needed Batmother to make it better.”

  “You’re so good with him,” I say.

  She smiles and shrugs. “He’s all I’ve got. And it’s easy. He’s easy to love. Fun to do stuff for. Not everyone gets to live with Batman.”

  I nod and smile at her and miss Anna, Johanna, and Taylor something fierce.

  “We’ve seen enough,” Dad says. “Thanks for letting us take a look.”

  He turns to leave, but she lifts her hand to stop him. “There’s something I need to tell you.”

  “What is it?” he asks. “Are you okay?”

  “I held something back,” she says. “I . . . I hid something. I was just tryin’ to protect my baby girl, that’s all. And I was going to tell you back then—only you, no one else—but just about the time I was ready to, you left.”

  “Sorry again that I did,” he says. “You can tell me now. And you can say anything in front of John.”

  She nods. “I know that. He’s a good man like you. I can tell.”

  “So what is it?”

  “I took two things out of her room before the police arrived,” she says. “And I’d do it again. I don’t think they have anything to do with . . . what happened to her, and . . . it would have embarrassed her. She is a private person. Shy, in a way.”

  Dad nods.

  She looks over at me.

  I also nod, and give her an encouraging expression.

  “I took her diary and . . .”

  “And?” Dad says.

  “She had lingerie laid out on her bed. It was new and sweet but very sexy. Had red hearts and lace and looked like a Valentine. Her last entry in her diary said she was excited and nervous because she was going to give her virginity to Ben that night.”

  Dad touches her shoulder tenderly.

  “I don’t think Ben killed my Janet and I don’t think her last diary entry or the fact that she had lingerie laid out had anything to do with what happened to her. And it was too private to . . . I couldn’t let the world see that. I couldn’t.”

  Dad nods. “We understand,” he says. “I’d’ve done the same thing if it were my daughter.”

  “Oh, I know only too well what you’re willing to do for your daughter.”

  Dad looks a little embarrassed. “You should see how John is with his.”

  “You have a daughter?” Verna asks.

  “Two,” I say.

  “Would you do what I did for them?”

  I nod. “I would. That and more.”

  “What I did wasn’t the reason the case wasn’t solved, was it?” she says.

  Dad shakes his head. “I don’t think it was.”

  She looks at me again.

  “I don’t either,” I say. “I really don’t.”

  As they turn to leave, I step over to the closet and look at the clothes.

  Turning back toward me, Verna says, “She had such great taste, such a flair and eye for fashion.”

  I nod. “She really did.”

  “Had she worn the outfit she wore to the farmhouse party that night before?”

  “What outfit?” she says. “Is there a picture of her there that night?”

  “I’m sorry, I figured you would’ve seen it,” I say, reaching into my pocket and bringing out the copy Kathy had given me.

  “No,” she says. “I didn’t know there was one. It would be the last picture ever taken of my baby girl.”

  She takes the photo from me and pulls it close to her to study it.

  In only a moment or so, she is shaking her head and frowning. “I can see why you’d think that was her,” she says, “but it’s not.”

  “It’s not? Are you sure?”

  “Looks an awful lot like her,” she says.

  “The clothes,” I say. “The car.”

  She studies it even more intently.

  “Those are clothes like she would wear but they’re not her clothes. She didn’t have an outfit like that. To be honest, several of her friends tried to look and dress like her. I bet it’s one of them. And the car . . . it has a moon roof. Hers didn’t.”

  “So we have no evidence she was even at the party,” Dad says.

  “I’d say we have pretty strong evidence she wasn’t. The person we thought was her, wasn’t.”

  “Who do you think it is?” Dad asks Verna. “Is it Kathy? She’s the one who gave us the pictures.”

  She shakes her head. “Kathy was influenced by Janet. They were very close. But Kathy never tried to copy Janet to that extent, never tried to look like her.”

  “Who did?” I ask.

  “Wasn’t a close friend. Really wasn’t a friend at all. Sabrina. Sabrina Henry.”

  37

  As we leave Janet’s room and start back down the hallway on our way out, Dad says, “I’m gonna slip into the den and say goodbye to my crime-fighting buddy Batman.”

  “He’d like that,” Verna says. “Sheriff Jack is one of his heroes.”

  As Dad walks ahead, I slow my pace hoping Verna will do the same.

  She does.

  “Shame no one is reading all these great books,” she says. “Guess we should find them a better home, maybe donate them to the library. If you see any you’d like, please feel free to take them.”

  “Thank you,” I say. “I might just take you up on that.”

  “I wish you would.”

  “I need to ask you something,” I say. “I’m only asking as it relates to its impact on the original investigation. That’s all. Okay?”

  “Okay,” she says, her voice and expression uncertain.

  “Were you and Dad having an affair before he came here to take over the investigation?”

  She takes a step back, her eyes widening in alarm, but quickly recovers, takes a breath and regains her composure. “I didn’t know him before he came here to try to find out who killed my little girl. Are we that obvious?”

  “Especially when you’re trying not to be,” I say.

  “Have you talked to your dad about it yet?”

  I shake my head.

  “Are you going to?”

  I nod. “I plan to.”

  “Your dad’s a v
ault,” she says. “Good luck getting anything out of him. He saved my life. I’m not sure I . . . what I would’ve done without him. He quickly became my everything back then—he and Ralphie. I thought God had sent him to me in my darkest hour. Not only was he the closest companion I’ve ever had, but he was going to bring my little girl’s killer to justice. But it wasn’t long before he vanished just the way Janet had. He was here and then he was gone. No explanation. No warning. Just gone.”

  I nod as I think about it, but before I can respond, a loud crashing sound comes from the den and I run toward it.

  Crossing the kitchen, I can see through the open doorway into the den. Ronnie Lester, a pistol in one hand and a sword in the other, is telling Dad to get on his knees.

  “Swore if you ever came into my house again I’d cut your dick off,” Ronnie says.

  His words are slurred, his movements shaky, his bearing unsteady, but in a glance he doesn’t appear to be too inebriated to do what he swore he would.

  I slow down a little, not wanting to run in and startle him, cause him to squeeze the trigger and shoot Dad in the head.

  “We lose our little girl, dying of grief, and you come in and start fuckin’ my wife,” Ronnie says. “GET ON YOUR GODDAMN KNEES. NOW. She was out of her mind with pain and sorrow and you took advantage of her. Didn’t find Janet’s killer. Too busy raping her mother.”

  Dad slowly, unsteadily eases down onto his knees and raises his hands.

  Drawing my gun, I walk into the room slowly.

  Ralphie, in his Batman costume, is sitting in the recliner just a few feet from Ronnie and Dad, watching with what seems like only mild interest.

  Raising my gun toward Ronnie, I edge toward them.

  Ronnie glances over at me with no reaction and says nothing to me.

  In another moment I know why.

  I hear the bat cutting through the air in the instant before it connects with the back of my head and I go down, dropping my gun, blacking out for a few seconds.

  “RONNIE,” Verna shouts as she runs into the room. “Stop this nonsense right now.”

  “Shut up, whore,” he yells at her, spit flying out of his mouth.

  Still dazed I reach for my gun, but it’s too far away.

  I start to crawl toward it, but the young guy holding the bat steps out from behind me and picks it up.

  “This is all your fault . . . you faithless whore.”

  Jamming the pistol into the waistband beneath his beer gut, Ronnie grabs the sword with both hands and raises it, preparing to strike.

  But as he begins to bring it down, the large, old, overweight Dark Knight in the recliner rises, bringing up his cane, and blocks Ronnie’s swing.

  “Leave Mommy and Sheriff Jack alone,” he says.

  He then jabs Ronnie hard in the stomach with the end of the cane, and as he doubles over in pain, hits him on the back of the head, sending him to the floor.

  Ronnie drops the sword and tries to catch himself as he goes down.

  From all fours on the floor, Ronnie turns his head and looks up at Ralphie. He starts to say something, but Ralphie holds his cane out toward him, one hand on the shaft, the other on the large silver Batman head of the handle, which he pulls on just a bit until the metal of the sword inside gleams in the dull light.

  Ronnie freezes and Dad quickly reaches beneath him and grabs the pistol from his waistband.

  The guy close to me drops my gun on the floor and runs out of the room.

  “It’s okay now, Batman,” Verna says. “You did good. You can sit back down now.”

  “Batman and Sheriff Jack,” Ralphie says as he collapses back into the recliner. “Crime-stopping crusaders.”

  Dad nods. “Yes we are,” he says. “Yes we are.”

  38

  You want the whole sordid truth?” Dad asks.

  “And nothing but.”

  “It’s plenty ugly,” he says.

  “I can handle it.”

  We are in Ronnie and Verna’s front yard waiting for Glenn to arrive with a deputy to take Ronnie into custody.

  Ronnie, his hands cuffed behind him, sits on the front porch crying the way drunks do.

  We are standing in the shade of an oak tree far enough away that he can’t hear us, close enough to keep an eye on him. I’m holding an icepack to the back of my head.

  “Your mom and me . . . we were never a good match,” he says.

  I nod. Slowly because my head is throbbing.

  “We just didn’t . . . fit. Her drinkin’ didn’t help, but even before it got bad . . . we just weren’t . . . But we had kids and we did our best to stick it out and do the best job we could raisin’ y’all.”

  Ronnie is blubbering now.

  “Being up here, working this case . . . I was up here a lot. Being away from . . . made me realize just how miserable we were. What I did was wrong on so many levels, in so many ways. But . . . I was so susceptible and she was so vulnerable. I felt so bad for her and she was reaching for anything to cling to . . . and I was there. And we . . . We truly and genuinely fell in love. Sure, it was mixed up in her loss and the case and me being the savior and all that shit, but it was real too.”

  I nod.

  “How hard is this for you to hear?” he asks.

  I shake my head. “It’s not.”

  “Really. Why’s that?”

  “I lived it. We all did. Hearing the truth behind it, getting the secrets out in the open is . . . refreshing.”

  “I’ve always tried to be a good man,” he says. “Always wanted to honor the badge—live the law not just enforce it for others.”

  “I know that. And you did. You do.”

  “This was the only time I was unfaithful,” he says. “The only time. But . . . it’s not like that makes it any better. I just wanted you to know. I . . . I realize how wrong I was, how bad I fucked up. Hurt so many people. Failed to . . . close the case. And . . .” He shakes his head and I can see moisture in his eyes.

  “What? And what?”

  “You thought Nancy left and never looked back because of Mom’s drinking, didn’t you?”

  Nancy, my older sister and Anna’s best friend back in high school, left home the same day she graduated and never came back—except briefly for Mom’s funeral last year.

  “Not just—more the overall state of our family, but yeah, that was a big part of it.”

  “It was mostly because of me, because of what I did.”

  “She knew about—”

  “She was so into horses back then. Wanted one so bad. Verna said she could have Cinnamon, Janet’s horse. I brought her up here with me one Saturday to let her look at the horse. Maybe even ride it. The truth is . . . it was mostly an excuse to see Verna.”

  Verna appears at the front door, looks at Ronnie then us, and gives a little wave.

  I wave back and she disappears back into the house.

  “She was supposed to be keeping an eye on Ralphie . . . We had already let her ride and told her she could have the horse. She was so happy. So . . . I never saw her like that again. I . . . I just wanted a little time alone with Verna. Just wanted to hold her, to get a chance to talk to her, to check on her. While Nancy was watching Ralphie in his room, Verna and I went out to the barn.”

  He stops talking, blinks against the moisture in his eyes, shakes his head, and frowns.

  He looks so old, so frail, so different from the strong, capable man he was when all this happened back then.

  “Ralphie got upset about something. Nancy didn’t know what to do, how to calm him. Why would she? She should’ve never been—I should have never put her in that position. She came looking for me, came to ask Verna for help. She . . . She walked in on us. Saw . . . her father fucking a woman not her mother in a barn like an animal.”

  In all this time Nancy had never even hinted at anything like this to me.

  “She didn’t say a word, just stood there in shock, then turned around and walked over and got in my truck. N
ever spoke another word to me. Not really. She’d answer a direct question if she had to, but . . . that was . . . She refused the horse. Refused to forgive me. I dropped out of the investigation. Stopped coming up here. Ended things with Verna. Did my best to make it work with her—y’all’s mother, but it didn’t matter. Even staying single all this time, even after the divorce, even after her mother died. Nothing I’ve ever done has made any difference. My daughter is as dead to me as Verna’s is to her.”

  39

  A deputy arrives.

  While Dad goes over to give him a statement, I call Nancy.

  “John? Is everything okay?”

  I rarely call her. We seldom talk. The last time we spoke was at Mom’s funeral. The last time I called her was to tell her Mom had died.

  “Are you alone?” I ask. “Can you go somewhere quiet so we can talk?”

  “I’m alone in my apartment. What is it?”

  Nancy is an artist living in New York. I don’t know much about her life beyond that. I don’t know where she lives or if she lives alone or even much about her art.

  “How are you?” I ask.

  “No. Don’t do that, John. Don’t ask me how I’m doing. You called for a reason. You have something to say. What is it? Is it Dad? Is he . . .”

  “It’s about you and Dad,” I say.

  “There is no me and Dad,” she says.

  “There needs to be.”

  “What? What the—”

  “We’re in Marianna reinvestigating the Janet Leigh Lester case,” I say. “He told me what happened at the Lester farm.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Why didn’t you ever tell me?” I ask.

  “I don’t know. I . . . just . . . You and he were . . . I’m not sure. You seemed to have the best chance of any of us at a sane life. I didn’t want to fuck up your relationship with him.”

  “It’s time to let this go, Nancy,” I say.

  “Actually, it’s long past time for you to tell me what to do, little brother. That’s what time it is. I’m hanging up now.”

  She ends the call.

  I wait a few moments, take a few deep breaths, and call her back.

  She answers—which is more than I expected.