“Is that common knowledge?” I ask.
“What?”
“How much money Trace carries with him in cash.”
He shakes his head. “Not like it is with Mayweather. He doesn’t flaunt it or talk about it like he does. You’d have to be a true fan who dives deep or a friend.”
“You two still friends?” I ask.
“He still accepts my collect calls,” he says.
Collect calls are the only kind inmates can make. And if he’s telling the truth, then Trace is on his approved call list.
“How long since you’ve talked to him?”
He shrugs. “Last month sometime. He’s pretty good to send me some canteen when I run out.”
“That term you used,” I say.
“What’s that?” he asks. “Oh,” he adds with a smile, “nigger rich?”
“I’ve heard it before and think I know what it means, but would you tell me what you think it means and why you used it about Trace?”
“Nigger rich is when you have just a little money and you spend on things that can be seen. Shiny new Cadillac, rims, gold teeth, gold chains, what not, but live in a dump or have no money in the bank. Spend it on flashy shit the minute you get it. I ain’t sayin’ Trace is just like that, but . . . I don’t know. Just meant he’s got a lot less than Floyd and . . . And he’s got a song called Nigger Rich.”
“Really?”
“Oh yeah. Hell, I helped him write it.”
“So both Trace and Irvin Hunter are dangerous, but in different ways,” I say.
He nods.
“Trace may’ve killed his kid, but Hunter will kill you,” he says. “Keep your eyes on that nigga.”
“Got it.”
“Then they’s one more player in this little drama you betta watch out for. Another nigga they used to run with—Little Swag.”
“Rondarius Swaggart,” I say.
“So you heard of him. Ain’t sayin’ he’s a direct threat to you, just . . . They had a fallin’ out or some shit. Wouldn’t want you to get caught in the crossfire. You know how nigga’s like to be shootin’ each other. This shit develops into a Biggie Tupac situation, wouldn’t want you to be some kind of cracker collateral damage.”
29
“Cracker collateral damage?” Anna says.
“That’s what he doesn’t want me to become,” I say.
“Me either,” she says.
“Let’s hope none of us become that,” Reggie says.
It’s evening. Reggie has stopped by on her way home. She and I are sitting at our kitchen table as Anna makes dinner a short distance away. The girls are intensely playing with a variety of toys in the corner of the living room where Sam’s hospital bed used to be.
“You sure you won’t stay and eat with us?” Anna says.
We had both already asked and both been told no.
“Keep askin’,” she says. “Smells so good my resolve is weakening.”
“It’s settled,” she says. “I’m gonna make you a plate too when it’s done.”
Reggie looks back at me. “Do you believe what the inmate said about Trace? Be very telling if he does carry two-hundred-and-fifty thousand dollars around with him at all times.”
“Yes it would. I’ve asked around some. I think it’s legit. Far as everything else Chance said . . . I believe some of it. Need confirmation for other parts of it. But I did leave my interview with Trace thinking he acted and sounded a little too good to be true.”
She nods. “Yeah, things aren’t adding up. Aren’t what they seem. You heard all the stuff about him that’s come out in the media?”
I shake my head. “Avoiding it completely.”
“Probably a good thing, though I don’t know how you’re able to. It’s everywhere. They’re saying plenty of shit about our department too. And about you and me. Mentioned Robin’s murder and how I got the job. Mentioned you working the Stone Cold Killer case back in the day.”
“Don’t tell me,” I say. “I don’t want to know.”
“None of it?”
“None.”
“I feel like we need to do a press conference soon,” she says. “Not sure whether to just make a statement, try to correct all the misinformation, take questions. I was hoping you’d participate.”
“I’d really rather not,” I say. “I want to work this case with little to no contact with any media of any kind. And whoever does it—I think it needs to be you, they’d chew Arnie up and spit him out—trying to correct all the incorrect information is as futile as trying to clean up a hurricane with a hand towel.”
She shakes her head and frowns. “Case like this has a life of its own out in the public sphere, doesn’t it? Nothing we can do about it. And I get that it’s a shocking and compelling mystery and that the public’s appetite for information is insatiable, but the tabloid-type shit they’re all reporting isn’t just irresponsible, it’s . . . dangerous . . . damaging . . . lies.”
“Makes you wonder how much information out there on any subject is accurate, doesn’t it?” Anna says.
“Part of the reason I don’t want to go home right now,” Reggie says, “is I can’t talk about the case with Merrick and that’s all he wants to talk about.”
I nod and attempt to convey understanding.
“Not sure if we’re gonna make it,” she says. “And that’s something I never thought I’d hear myself say. But . . . there’s just so much conflict all of the time. Anyway . . . Didn’t come here to talk about that. The real reason I dropped by was . . . Couple of things I found out today . . . Didn’t want to wait ’til tomorrow to tell you.”
“What’s that?”
“All the keys to the rental house are accounted for. None are missing—not to the house or the secret room.”
“This is from Justin Harris?” I ask.
“Yeah, but remember it makes him more of a suspect if it’s true,” she says. “So I don’t think he’s lying.”
“If it’s true,” I say, “then he and the owner . . . Roger Garrett are supposed to be the only ones with keys besides the renters.”
“Right. Narrows things down a lot.”
“Except anyone—a maid, a previous renter, someone who works in Justin’s office, a handyman—”
“Repair person,” Anna corrects from the kitchen.
“Repair person,” I amend. “Any of them could’ve made copies of the keys.”
“That’s the other thing,” Reggie says. “They couldn’t. They can’t. Garrett put in this elaborate lock system where the keys are made with lasers and have a chip in them and cannot be copied.”
“Really?”
“Uh huh.”
“Of course someone paranoid enough to have a secret safe room would have keys you can’t copy,” Anna says. “So . . . since there was no break-in, it was either someone inside, Harris, Garrett?”
“Or,” I say, “someone stayed inside after the party, or someone left a window or door unlocked or someone inside let someone from outside in.”
In her best Alex Hunter, the DA in the JonBenét Ramsey case, Reggie says “The field of suspects narrows. Soon the only one on the list will be you.”
I nod. “It does narrow the list down considerably.”
“Think Merrill may have backed a losing horse,” Reggie says.
“Why’s that?”
“Not looking good for Trace,” she says.
“Merrill’s not backin’ him,” I say. “He’ll be the first to take him down if he killed his little girl.”
“Well that’s what it’s looking like,” she says. “He or one of the people he had in the house with him.”
30
That night with all three of my girls in the room with me, I worked on the case in the pale illumination of the small book light clipped to the murder book.
I think about what Reggie said about the media coverage, about Trace’s public image, and can imagine what is being reported. I’m sure he and Ashley and Brett and Na
dine and Irvin have already been found guilty in the minds of most passive, non-critical consumers of media. John and Patsy and Burke were. And though statistically the odds of a family member or someone in the house the night of the murders is very, very high, a likelihood is not a certainty.
Why are we so quick to believe the worst about certain people and not others? What is it about John and Patsy and Trace that make them so easy to despise, condemn, presume guilty?
Why are we so quick to listen to information that confirms our biases and reject that which challenges them?
Why did so many refuse to believe OJ was guilty in spite of concrete physical evidence?
I think about the keys being accounted for and not being able to be copied and what that might mean.
No forced entry. No missing keys. Six people in the house.
I think about the notes—the fact that Mariah planned to run away and her motivation for doing so, the fact that in spite of the runaway note, the kidnaper left the ransom note.
I think about the use of Trace’s song lyrics in the note and the demand of the exact amount of cash he keeps with him at all times. Was the note part of staging to cover up the true crime of murder? Does it include so much inside information because someone inside the house and deep inside Trace’s life wrote it—including or especially Trace himself?
I consider the ropes used to tie up Mariah, the fact that they belonged to Trace and Ashley and were used in his sexually suggestive music video.
Ashley and Brett or to mean to me. I love them but cannot take it.
The line from Mariah’s runaway note floats through my mind.
And with it another question.
Was the runaway note part of staging? Did Mariah even write it? If she did, was it from an earlier time, kept by someone and used to confuse this situation?
As usual, I have far more questions than answers, but the questions are instructive and may lead to some crucial answers.
I think about Mariah and JonBenét and ask the question that contains its own answer—Why is it always the most vulnerable among us who are victimized?
I think about how both little girls were tied up, sexually assaulted, and received a savage blow to the back of the head.
But whereas that appears to be the extent of what happened to Mariah—and even her sexual assault was from the day before—JonBenét was garroted, suffered a far more horrific death, her body bearing not only the marks of brutality and violence, but the defensive wounds of fingernails scratching her own neck as she fought against the garrote that was choking the life from her little body.
Suddenly I am overwhelmed with grief and fear, thinking about unthinkable things as I listen to the sweet sounds of Johanna and Taylor’s breathing.
I’m stricken with stifling heart-breaking heaviness for Mariah and JonBenét and filled with a dreadful fear for Johanna and Taylor.
Why did Mariah and JonBenét have to suffer such horrific deaths? Why’d they have to die at all?
Will I be able to protect Johanna and Taylor? How about when I’m not around? What happens to them if something happens to me?
As if a powerful constricting serpent, fear coils around my heart and lungs and I feel as if I’m dying.
Can’t breathe.
Can’t . . . feel my . . . pulse.
Though there is so much more I need to be studying and thinking about, I click off the light, place the murder book on the floor, and slide over to hold Anna and feel her warmth, her life, her heartbeat.
“Hey,” she whispers. “You okay?”
She shimmies into me, contouring her body to mine, her warmth and life and heartbeat immediately beginning to comfort and heal and revive.
I nod. “Will be. Just needed to feel you, your life.”
She reaches around behind her and pulls me to her even more.
“First case like this since we’ve had the girls,” I say. “Not sure I can do it.”
She pulls me even tighter with her left hand and squeezes my hand with her right, and by not saying anything lets me know she not only understands but will love me no less no matter what I do—even if I can no longer do one of the things so core to me, so essential to who I am, that I can’t remember not doing it, can’t remember not being it.
31
I wake up feeling much better, which may have something to do with waking up in Anna’a arms and having both girls in bed with us.
By the time I’m showered and dressed, the smell of breakfast is wafting through our big old house.
When I reach the kitchen, Anna is placing breakfast on the table and Reggie is sitting down to it, Johanna catty-cornered across from her on a stool at the table, Taylor at the end in her highchair.
“Morning,” I say to Reggie.
“Morning,” she says. “Dinner was so good I came back for breakfast.”
“Morning, beautiful,” I say to Anna and kiss her before taking a seat across form Reggie.
“Morning ladies,” I say to Johanna and Taylor, and kiss Johanna, who is next to me, on the head.
“I’m coming,” Anna says, “but y’all go ahead and start. Don’t let it get cold.”
“It’s not gonna get cold,” I say, “but even if it does, I’m waiting on you.”
“I’m not,” Reggie says, and begins to dip the white sausage gravy onto the huge cathead biscuit on her plate.
In her highchair, Taylor is eating some sort of mushy, soft cereal, and next to me at the table, Johanna is pinching small bites of biscuit, the crunchy golden crust on the top, with her thumb and index finger.
“Would you open this for me, Daddy?” Johanna asks, lifting the large jar of jelly with her little hands and passing it to me, her biscuit-greasy fingertips leaving a little residue on the moist jar.
“Gladly,” I say.
Anna joins us and we all begin or continue to eat.
Before we’ve eaten much, there’s a knock on the door.
“I’ve got it,” I say, jumping up and dashing over to the door.
When I open the door, Sam and Daniel are standing there backlit by the morning sun.
“We were out for our morning constitutional,” Daniel says, “and smelled breakfast.”
“Come in. Come in. You’re just in time.”
By the time we reach the table, Anna has two more plates and is fixing them.
I grab an extra stool from the garage, and in a few minutes we’re all breaking bread together in a way that nourishes far more than just our bodies.
“We miss you, Ms. Sam,” Johanna says. “When are you coming back?”
“I . . . miss . . . y’all . . . too,” she says.
As good as the breakfast is and as appetizing as it smells, I know it’s not the real reason Reggie is here, and I suspect Daniel and Sam are here not because they smelled it, but because Anna invited them.
Reggie looks at Daniel. “When you gonna help Merrick with the podcast again? He’s struggling without you. Needs you back.”
He shrugs. “Not quite ready yet. But getting there.”
As he eats, I can see the outline of the weapon beneath his shirttails on this side. Reggie helped him get a concealed carry permit when he and Sam moved out of our place into their own. And though he didn’t say so, I know it’s because of his recent experiences with Randa Rafffield.
The biscuits are big and dense, the sausage gravy creamy and spicy, and I eat more, and more quickly, than I should.
Eventually, I say to Reggie, “You might as well say what you came here to say in front of them. Not only can you trust them, but I’m going to tell them anyway.”
She smiles. “I was going to. Was just finishing my breakfast first.”
“Any . . . thing . . . coming from the . . . search of known . . . sex offenders in the . . . area?” Sam asks.
Reggie shakes her head. “Nothin’ so far from the ones we know about, the ones that are actually registered and were in the area that night. But I’m wondering how many there are w
e don’t know about—who’re either not registered or were in the area without us knowing.”
Sam nods.
“Not gettin’ any joy from the list of previous renters or cleaning staff either,” she says. “House like that . . . doesn’t rent much, so the list was small and so far it seems everybody has an ironclad alibi. We’ll know more when we start getting some DNA results back, but at this point it really looks like it was someone staying in the house—Trace or Ashley or Irvin.”
“But none of that’s why you stopped by,” I said, “any more than breakfast is.”
She smiles and nods. “True. Got some results on the ransom note first thing this morning. Lab’s in Tallahassee and an hour ahead of us. Didn’t realize how early he was calling. I told him to always call as early as he possibly can. So . . . we don’t have any handwriting results yet, and we’ll really need them to know what we need to know, but . . . the pen used to write the ransom note was in the house. They got a match to a cheap promo pen in one of the kitchen drawers with a Justin Harris Real Estate logo on it.”
Anna says, “So far all the evidence is pointing in the same direction.”
“How about the paper it was written on?” I say. “Did it—”
“That’s the best part,” she says. “It’s a sheet of paper ripped out of Trace Evers’ songwriting journal—the one he never goes anywhere without, the one that is never very far away from him at any time.”
32
After graduating high school and a tearful goodbye at which my mom smelled of booze and from which my dad was absent, I had loaded my car, filled my tank using some of my graduation money, and set out for the city too busy to hate.
A little over three decades later, I’m heading back to Atlanta again.
Atlanta is haunted for me, sure, but it’s also a reservoir of experiences and memories that seem somehow to be touched with magic, and I feel a unique connection to this place that is the birthplace of my hero and spiritual mentor Martin Luther King, Jr.
Blood Ties (John Jordan Mysteries Book 16) Page 11