“Are any of the sets of keys or individual keys you have missing?” I ask.
“Not that I know of, but . . . nothing like this has ever happened before. I . . . We’ve never had any problems or issues before. I’ll have to double check, but . . . I don’t think so. I just don’t know.”
“What about—how do the maids get into clean?” Reggie says.
“They come by the office and get their assignments and keys. I gave Arnie a list of our cleaners and recent guests.”
Reggie finishes printing him and he thanks her, which sounds odd.
“Don’t know why I said that,” he says. “Sorry.”
“Is there a hidden key anywhere on the property?” I ask.
When I say hidden he begins to nod, but by the time I get to the end of the sentence he’s shaking his head.
“No,” he says. “Not that I know of.”
“Why did you nod at first?” I ask. “What did you think I was asking? What else is hidden here?”
“The room,” he says. “I thought you meant the hidden room.”
17
“Looks like we won’t be releasing this property back to you today after all,” Reggie says.
“Really?” Justin asks. “Why?”
We are standing just above and outside the hidden room.
“Is that an actual question?” she says. “Because we have to have the crime scene techs process it.”
“Oh. Really? But if no one knew it was there and didn’t have a key to get in it . . .”
“We can’t know that for sure, can we?”
“Guess not. Sorry. But I really don’t think anyone knows about it but me and the owner.”
For what reason exactly I’m not sure, but the homeowner had a hidden room constructed in the house. It’s located in the bottom of the elevator shaft and is accessed by raising the false floor once the elevator has left the first level.
According to Justin, only two keys to this room exist. One is kept in the owner’s possession, the other stays locked in the safe at his office—except for days like today when he gets it out and brings it with him to the house.
With gloved hands, we take the key from him and follow his instructions on raising the elevator and lifting the false floor to reveal the locked door beneath.
“See?” he says. “No way anyone even knew about this, let alone got in it.”
“Tell you what,” Reggie says. “We’re gonna keep your key. You go back to your office and double check on the other sets of keys for us. We’re gonna process this room. When we’re finished—unless there are any other surprises you want to tell us about—we’ll bring your key to you and release the property.”
“No, no other surprises. Sorry about this one. I really didn’t think of it. Most owners who rent have a locked room they keep their personal things in.”
“Sure,” she says, “but not a hidden safe room in an elevator shaft.”
Twenty minutes later, with Justin gone and Jessica joining us, we enter Roger Garrett’s secret room.
Reggie has decided to let Jessica process the room instead of calling FDLE back in, but if we encounter anything that warrants calling them, we’ll ease out and do just that.
Jessica has already dusted the false floor and door for prints and is now suited up and leading the way.
The steel door is heavy but on a hydraulic system that makes it easy to lift. As it comes up, soft lights around the room come on.
Beneath it, a set of metal stairs leads down into the room.
Though tall, the room is no wider than an elevator shaft. It sits on the ground floor in the center of the six-car garage, which from the outside just appears to be the enclosed shaft of the elevator.
The hidden room is essentially a bomb shelter or safe room with reinforced steel walls and its own air filtration system and power supply.
Apart from the paranoia and fear for a bleak future, the saddest thing about the room by far is it’s designed for one person—presumably Roger Garrett. A lone recliner sits in the center of the room surrounded by survival supplies, weapons, and communications devices.
“Can y’all see any sign that anyone’s been in here recently?” she says.
“Hard to tell,” Jessica says.
“Well, John and I will clear out of here and let you process it. Let me know if you find anything. Looks like ol’ Roger plans to ride out the apocalypse right here.”
“Or a hurricane or home invasion,” I say. “He’s equally set for all.”
18
That evening I met Merrill at the old gym to play basketball.
What everyone refers to as the old gym is a freestanding red brick gymnasium on Main Street that was once part of the elementary school. When the school was torn down, a few classrooms left on one end of the property were restored and remodeled and became part of a pre-school and across the now-empty field, where once stood the main body of the school, is the old gym.
Merrill is part of an area league team that practices here and has a key to this huge old building that looks and smells the same as it did decades ago.
I grew up loving basketball, but stopped playing after what happened to Martin Fisher in Atlanta.
After several years of not playing, I was playing again, and Merrill and I, who were on the high school team together, are playing more one-on-one these days than jogging or anything else.
Since high school, I had played mostly on outdoor asphalt courts, which presented challenges—such as heat, light, rain, wind—that having access to our own gym does not.
We sit lacing them up on the old wooden bleachers we had as kids when the Pottersville Elementary team played Wewa Elementary in after school afternoon matchups.
“We straight?” Merrill says.
It’s just the two of us in the enormous old gym and his words seem to get lost in all the open space.
“Always,” I say.
“Sorry I had to call in the second string to look out for Sam and Daniel,” he says.
I smile. “Not sure Dad and Verna see themselves as the second string, but it’s no problem.”
“It was only for the last day.”
“Wouldn’t matter if it had been for more. It’s all good.”
“How about me working Trace?” he asks. “You got a problem with that?”
I shake my head. “Wouldn’t matter if I did,” I say, “but I don’t.”
“Told him I’ll follow where the case takes me no matter where that is. He said that’s what he wants me to do because it won’t lead me back to him ’cause he didn’t do it. Said what he wants most in this world if he can’t have his little girl back is to find the fucker that took her from him.”
I nod.
“Thing is . . . you weren’t here,” he says. “Couldn’t count on the investigation going like it should from the beginning—most important time.”
I continue to nod, not pointing out that I can screw up the early hours of an investigation with the best of them.
“I want whoever did this,” he says. “Don’t care who it is. Knew takin’ the job would give me access nobody else would have.”
He’s right. He does have access I’ll never get, and it could prove to be extremely useful.
“Not that I’m working for you or the po-lice or anyone else. I really don’t think he did it, but . . . it comes to it, I’ll be in a position to know shit and do shit.”
I would’ve thought it went without saying that he wasn’t working for me or law enforcement, but I would have been wrong.
“And I didn’t want this ending up like Girl X,” he says. “There was some attention at first, but I wondered how long it would last for the mixed girl of a mid-list rapper.”
Just days after JonBenét’s murder another young girl was savagely attacked in Chicago, but she didn’t receive even a fraction of the attention that JonBenét did. The nine-year-old African-American girl, who became known as Girl X to protect her identity, was viciously assaulted, bru
tally raped, choked, tortured, had gang signs scrawled on her body and roach poison poured down her throat and left for dead in an apartment at Chicago’s infamous Cabrini-Green public housing complex. It seems as if the entire world knows who JonBenét is, but nearly no one has ever heard the name Shatoya Currie, who survived her rape and attempted murder, but has brain damage, blindness, deafness, and is wheelchair bound.
“Trace is paying me,” he says, “but I’m working for Mariah.”
“Never doubted it.”
“And if he did it, I’ll help you burn him just as quick as anybody else.”
19
The next morning we get the autopsy report back.
After reading and rereading it several times, there’s still much I don’t understand or know how to interpret.
Thankfully, the medical examiner has agreed to answer our questions.
Arnie, Keisha, Jessica, and I are with Reggie in her office. Dr. Luttrell is on speakerphone.
Raymond Luttrell is the medical examiner for the 14th Judicial Circuit, which covers Bay, Gulf, Calhoun, Holmes, Washington, and Jackson counties. He’s calling us from his office in Panama City.
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.”
20
“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.”
Blood Ties (John Jordan Mysteries Book 16) Page 7