He hangs up without saying goodbye and I call Reggie.
“Justin is refusing to give any more handwriting samples or to cooperate in any way,” I say.
“Oh, really?”
“And he’s lawyered up.”
“Interesting.”
“Even more so when you hear who his attorney is.”
“Who’s that?”
“Hugh Browning.”
“Thought he only worked for Roger Garrett?”
“My guess is that’s who’s picking up the tab.”
“Extremely interesting,” she says.
“I’m pulling up to Arlene Lafontaine’s house now,” I say. “Just wanted you to know about Justin.”
“Thanks. Call me when you leave there and let me know how it goes.”
When he finally comes to the door, Hank Howard tells me essentially the same thing Justin had—though without the expensive lawyer part.
“Ain’t givin’ no more,” he says. “Should’a got what you needed the first time. TV news says y’all don’t know what you’re doin’ and are about to frame up somebody for it. Well . . . ain’t gonna be me.”
When I get back in the car and drive away, I call Reggie back.
“That was fast,” she says.
“Seems he too is done cooperating,” I say. “Evidently everybody’s doing it.”
“You have no idea,” she says. “I just got off the phone with Trace’s attorney and was told the same thing. His client won’t be returning to Gulf County for questioning. He will not be speaking with us again. If we’d like to submit questions in writing to him, he’ll see if his client is willing to answer them in writing, but no guarantees.”
“From what Merrill says, Trace’s life is unraveling.”
“Arnie’s right, be a good time to question him.”
“Yes it would,” I say. “Maybe we can figure something out. Merrill might be able to help us some on that end.”
“Well, let it go for tonight,” she says. “Kiss your wife. Hug your babies. We’ll regroup in the morning. See where we go from here.”
“I plan to do those very things,” I say.
But a dangerous and demented man with a gun had a plan of his own—a plan that differed from mine about as much as a plan possibly could.
48
When I enter our home, no one greets me.
When I call out to my girls, none of them respond.
When I step far enough into the kitchen to see through the living room that the french doors in the back are ajar, I realize something is wrong—or could be.
I had parked beside Anna’s Mustang in the driveway and passed the stroller in the mudroom on my way in, so they haven’t gone for a drive or a walk.
I rush over to the back door and look out into the backyard, actually stepping out onto the porch and looking down around the lake and in the neighbors’ yards.
There are no signs of them.
When I re-enter the house, I draw my weapon, hoping I’m overreacting.
Removing my phone from my pocket, I check to make sure I haven’t missed any calls or texts from Anna.
There are none.
I text Dad and Verna, then Daniel and Sam, to see if they’ve heard from Anna and the girls.
Then I begin my search of our home.
Easing down the hallway quietly, I listen carefully, trying to detect any sound that would signal both their presence and whereabouts.
About halfway down the hall I hear the whimpering of a child and the soft incessant talking of a man.
I start to text Reggie, but since I don’t know exactly what’s going on and I doubt having a SWAT team outside would help, I decide against it.
As I get closer, I can tell the sounds are coming from the girls’ room, which is at the end of the hall and around the corner to the right.
I start to take my shoes off so I can move even more quietly, but decide taking them off would make more noise than keeping them on and continuing to walk with them.
I thumb the safety off my Glock as I near the foyer.
I’m pretty sure I’ve been quiet enough to go undetected, but I’m wrong.
“Why don’t you come on in here and join us, John,” Chris says. “But leave your weapons out there in the hallway.”
Without laying my gun down, I continue.
When I reach the end of the hallway and turn the corner, I bring up my gun, but then quickly drop it to the floor.
Inside the girls’ room, Chris sits on the floor holding Taylor, his biological daughter, like she’s a stranger to him, which she is. Beside him, Johanna sits crying quietly, his gun to the back of her head.
One slip of his finger, one tiny little twitch, just an inadvertent jerk, and my daughter will be dead. It doesn’t even have to be intentional. A little cough or a small sneeze and the most precious little girl in the whole world to me will be as lifeless as JonBenét or Nicole or Mariah, and I will join John Ramsey, Trace Evers, and Jerry Raffield as a father who lost a daughter.
In the back corner across from them, Anna sits with her back against the wall, her wrists and ankles bound together by zip ties.
All three of my girls look relieved to see me.
“I told you to drop your gun in the hallway,” Chris says.
I pivot a little and kick it back out into the hallway.
Chris looks down at Johanna. “What should daddy’s punishment be for disobeying Uncle Chris, huh?”
Johanna looks up at me, her big brown frightened eyes searching mine for what to do, how to respond.
“Look at me,” Chris says. “Not him. What should I do to him?”
She looks at him, but still doesn’t answer.
“If you don’t tell me what to do to him I’m gonna shoot him,” he says.
“Timeout,” she says. “He should have to go in timeout.”
“Doesn’t seem punitive enough,” he says, “but I said I’d let you decide, didn’t I? Okay, John, toss your phone and other gun over here and then we’ll put you in timeout.”
I do as he says, moving very slowly, then lift my hands up, palms facing out in a placating gesture.
He checks the phone to make sure it’s not recording, keeping Taylor trapped in his lap and the gun to Johanna’s head. Then he places the phone and gun on the floor to his right.
He’s in no hurry and this take a few minutes.
“You try anything and your daughter dies first,” he says.
“I know. I’m not going to try anything. Please just remove the gun from her head. It’s so easy for accidents to happen with—”
“You took my daughter from me,” he says. “Why shouldn’t I do the same?”
I haven’t taken his daughter from him, but I can understand how he sees it that way. And not for the first time lately, I am overcome with sadness and loss.
So much loss. Jerry Raffield losing Randa. Chris losing Taylor. Trace losing Mariah. John and Patsy losing JonBenét. I have been here before. Though not quite the same, losing Martin Fisher the way I had in the way I did at such an early age is a scar I’ve carried with me ever since.
On the floor beside Chris, my phone vibrates, and I wonder if it’s Dad or someone calling me back about where Anna and the girls are.
“Chris, your daughter is in your lap,” Anna says. “She hasn’t been taken from you.”
“Close the door behind you and sit on the floor with your back against it,” he says.
I comply, moving very slowly and deliberately, making sure I don’t do anything to make him react in any way.
“Why?” He says. “Why is she in my lap right now? Look what I had to do just to have a little time with her. Look what . . . y’all make me do just to see my own flesh and blood.”
“It’s not us and you know it,” she says. “A judge will decide all that.”
“But you’re fighting for me not to see her.”
“I’m trying to protect her,” she says. “I’m not trying to keep her away f
rom you. All I want is what’s best for her. That’s it. Given all that you’ve done . . . I’m sure you can understand me wanting supervision in place. I’m trying to protect your daughter. You have a gun inches away from her, Chris. Are you really saying—”
“He has a gun around her all the time,” he says, nodding toward me.
“That’s different and you know it,” she says. “His is holstered or put up, never out or as close to the girls as yours is now.”
“He’s around her all the time. He’s taken everything from me. Everything. Y’all are my family. Not his. I have nothing. Nothing. I’ve lost absolutely everything. Y’all have everything. I shouldn’t have to walk around town like a gutter bum and watch how fuckin’ happy y’all are, how y’all have everything that I once had—including my own goddamn daughter. Get so sick of seein’ y’all . . .”
“Chris,” Anna says. “You’re in the position you’re in because of choices you made, actions you took. Nothing just happened to you. John didn’t take anything from you. You can have a different life than the one you have, but you have to rebuild it. It won’t be quick or easy, but you can do it.”
He doesn’t say anything for a long moment, just seems to contemplate what she’s said.
“I want my old life back,” he says. “Want what we had.”
My phone continues to vibrate next to Chris but he doesn’t seem to notice.
Anna seems like she might be getting through to him. He’s at least listening. I decide not to say anything, just let her talk to him and see what happens.
“You have to take responsibility for all you’ve done,” she says. “That’s where it starts. Then you have to work hard to rebuild, and there’s no going back. There’s nothing to go back to—and that’s not just true of you or us, that’s true of everything. Whatever was back there is long gone. There is no going back. But you can move forward. Accept responsibility. Make amends. Work on your character defects.”
“How can I make amends with you?”
“It would start by putting down the gun and not holding us hostage,” she says.
“I want to make everything up to you,” he says. “Show you how sorry I am and how it’ll be different this time. Win you back.”
“That’s not something you can do with a gun,” she says. “Not something you can do by breaking into our home and threatening us.”
“You sayin’ I have a shot?” he says. “I mean with you. Could we be together again?”
“That’s not a conversation we can have in this situation,” she says. “You have a gun to the back of Johanna’s head.”
“Just to keep y’all from doing anything stupid.”
“You’ve got me tied up.”
“Just to protect you. I don’t want anybody getting hurt. I don’t. And I know how you are over these two. I just wanted some time with my little girl. That’s not too much to ask, is it?”
“Of course not,” she says, “but this isn’t the way to do it.”
“How else was I gonna do it?”
“By getting a job. By paying your back child support. By not stalking us. By seeing a therapist. By showing the judge you’re taking the extraordinary and undeserved second chance you got and doing something positive with it. Not like this.”
“I just wanted to talk. You would’t talk to me if I didn’t do it this way. See how you’re talking to me now. That’s all I wanted. That’s all. You wouldn’t be doing it otherwise. I just wanted to hold my kid. For her to know I’m her daddy. She’s growing up so fast—and without me in her life. She needs her real father, not some fake one.”
“I understand what you want,” Anna says. “I truly do. But this is not the way to go about it. Period. It’s the exact opposite way.”
“What do you want me to do?” he asks.
“Put down the gun. Untie me. Let us go.”
“I do that, your new husband’s gonna put a bullet in my brain.”
“No he’s not.”
He looks at me.
I shake my head. “I’m not going to shoot you.”
“But you’re going to arrest me. Just for wanting to spend a little time with my daughter. You’re gonna arrest me for that and you claim to be a kind and caring person. I don’t want to go back to prison.”
“One step at a time,” Anna says. “Put down the gun. Let the girls go. Untie me.”
He seems to think about it. “Tell you what,” he says, “we’re gonna skip that first step, okay? But the girls can come over there with you. Give daddy a hug, Taylor.”
He tries to hug her but she’s trying to squirm away.
“Y’all go sit with mommy,” he says.
When he lets go of Taylor, she starts to crawl toward Anna, but Johanna doesn’t move.
“You can go,” he says. “Go ahead. Go to . . . . Anna.”
Removing the gun from the back of her head and pointing it toward me, he says, “See? The gun isn’t pointed at you anymore. It’s okay. You can go. Go to Anna.”
She looks at me.
I nod. “It’s okay,” I say. “Go sit with Anna.”
She shakes her head.
“What is it baby?” I ask.
She shakes her little head again and begins to cry.
“What is it sweetie?” I ask.
“I . . . I . . . wet . . . myself.”
“It’s okay,” I say. “I did too. It’s what we do in situations like this. Everybody does it.”
“I did it too,” Anna says. “It’s okay, little darlin’. I promise it is.”
She’s mortified, my shy, modest girl, too embarrassed to move, and it makes me want to kill Chris Taunton with my bare hands. Slowly.
“I’m sorry,” Chris says. “I didn’t mean to scare you like that. Tell you what, I’ll move. Okay? I’ll move and Anna can come to you. You don’t have to move.”
He picks up my phone and gun and stands, still keeping his gun pointed at me.
“Come on over here with her,” he says to Anna.
“Come on,” Anna says to Taylor. “Let’s go sit with your sissy.”
Anna tries to scoot and slide over to where Johanna is in the middle of the room, but has a difficult time doing it with her ankles and wrists bound.
“Here,” Chris says, and steps over, withdraws a pocket knife from his jeans and cuts the zip ties, then takes a step back so she and Taylor can get to Johanna.
Anna pulls Johanna to her, wrapping both girls in her arms and trying not to cry.
“John, let’s you and me take a little walk,” Chris says.
I nod. “Okay.”
“Stand up slowly,” he says, motioning with the gun.
I stand very slowly.
“I’ll be back in a little while,” I say to Johanna. “I love you. I’m so proud of you. You’re such a big girl. You did so good.”
She tries to smile. “Love you, Daddy. Hurry back.”
“I will.”
I look at Anna and our eyes lock, but neither of us says anything, and I’m sure she’s thinking what I’m thinking—Don’t do anything that might set Chris off.
“Okay,” Chris says, “clasp your hands behind your head and walk down the hallway and out the back door. “Don’t get too far ahead of me and don’t try anything.”
I do exactly as he instructs.
When we round the corner from the hallway into the living room, Dad is hiding against the wall with his nightstick, which he brings down hard on Chris’s hand holding the gun.
Before the gun hits the floor, Dad brings the stick back up and strikes Chris beneath the chin, the blow snapping his head back and knocking him to the floor, my phone and backup gun skittering out of his outstretched hand and down the hallway.
I spin around and lunge onto Chris, rolling him over and cuffing him.
Still dazed, he’s extremely compliant.
“Glad he finally brought you out,” Dad says. “I’ve been waiting out here for the past twenty minutes trying to figure out how the he
ll to get in that room.”
49
“Hate I missed the excitement,” Merrill says.
We are sitting at our kitchen table, and though it’s later that night, Johanna is still sitting in my lap—where she’s been since we got her cleaned up after the ordeal.
Anna is next to me, Taylor sleeping on her shoulder.
Merrill is across from me and Reggie is next to him.
I have a hand on Anna’s leg and the other around Johanna.
I kiss Johanna’s head, as I often have over the past few hours, her soft, still-damp hair smelling of baby shampoo.
“But sounds like ol’ Jack didn’t need no help,” he adds.
I smile. “If Chris’s arm isn’t broken or if he isn’t missing a couple of teeth I’ll be very surprised.”
“Deserves much worse,” Reggie says.
“Nightstick Jack,” Merrill says. “Think the sheriff’s got a new name.”
“Will he be in a while?” Anna asks Reggie. “What all can you charge him with?”
“Burglary for breaking into your home. Assault for the threat—aggravated assault since he had a weapon. False imprisonment for holding y’all hostage. He could get a good bit of time—especially after the judge hears about his pattern of criminal behavior and past charges.”
“Will he stay in jail until his trial?” she asks.
Reggie shrugs. “It’s doubtful. Most don’t. Bail isn’t punitive. But a condition of bail will be absolutely no contact with y’all. And who knows . . . maybe he won’t be able to make bail. He’s broke, right? Does he have anyone who will post it for him?”
She shrugs. “Can’t imagine anyone would. His mom is dead. His dad is nearly as indigent as he is and they don’t speak.” She looks at me. “Can you think of anyone?”
I shrug and shake my head. “No, but . . . I just don’t know him or his connections that well.”
Johanna stops drawing and cranes her little neck to look up at me. “Daddy, is that bad man gonna get out of jail?”
“We’re working on keeping inside for a long, long time,” I say, “but we’ll all protect you no matter what. Do you know that? I’m not gonna let him ever get near you again. I promise.”
Blood Ties (John Jordan Mysteries Book 16) Page 17