Blood Ties (John Jordan Mysteries Book 16)

by Michael Lister

  “If we been lookin’ all this time and she right here in our backyard . . .” Merrill says.

  “I could be wrong.”

  “Not according to Keller you ain’t.”

  Keller Branch is the bail bondsman who bonded out Chris and according to his records the person who put up the money for it was Nancy Drury.

  Nancy Drury is an alias for Randa Raffield. She’s not in some non-extradition country sippin’ on sex on the beaches. She’s right here.

  And I think she’s at her dad’s.

  It would explain why he keeps calling me to check in, to find out what I know or if I have a lead on where she is. He hasn’t been looking for her, he’s been trying to protect her. It would also explain how she was able to vanish so completely and how she would have been able to handle Daniel—both of which she would have needed help with.

  And now we’re racing over to Seaside to see if I’m right.

  “Even if I’m right about her putting up the bail money,” I say, “I could be wrong about her being with her dad.”

  “We’a soon find out,” Merrill says.

  “She’s my daughter, John,” Jerry Raffield says. “I had to help her, had to take her in and . . . I was just so glad to have her back in my life. I . . . I thought she was dead for so long . . . to get her back was like having a child come back from the dead. Who wouldn’t want that?”

  I understand what he’s saying and why he would do it—something I wouldn’t have nearly as well before I had Johanna.

  Thinking of Johanna reminds me of Chris holding his gun to her precious little head and fills me with a deep red rage that makes me want to kill him.

  The fire of my rage is extinguished by my overwhelming desire to be with her, to have her in my arms, to be there protecting her than over here chasing down Jerry’s daughter.

  “This whole time,” he adds, “I—you’ll appreciate this—the entire time she’s been here with me I keep thinking of the parable of the prodigal son and what the father said, ‘My son who was dead is alive again.’”

  I nod. “I get it. I do. But we still have to take her in. Is she here?”

  He shakes his head. “She’s not back yet.”

  “From?”

  “Over your way,” he says. “I tried to get her not to go, but . . . I can’t get her to do or not do anything she doesn’t want to. I begged her.”

  “She went to hire Keller Branch to post bail for Chris Taunton,” I say.

  He nods. “I gathered it was something like that.”

  “What else was she going to do?” I ask. “She should’ve been back quite a while ago.”

  “I don’t want to think about it,” he says, “but . . . I’m afraid she might be planning to do something to him. You’ve got to stop her. Please. She’d be doing it for you, for what she feels like she owes you. She’d see it as settling her account with you. Please stop her. Protect her from herself. Please.”

  After having the Walton County Sheriff’s Department take Jerry into custody, I feel sad and guilty.

  Jerry had lost Randa and it devastated him, but then he got her back. Now he is losing her again—and not just her, but a big part of his life as well.

  Now Merrill and I are racing back toward Wewa to try to stop Randa from killing Chris.

  The irony is not lost on us.

  “I can drive slower,” Merrill says. “You could not call Reggie about sending a deputy over to check on him. Just seems surreal to be tryin’ to save the bastard who had a gun to Johanna’s head yesterday. And tried to have you killed not so long ago.”

  “It is,” I say. “Surreal. But . . . don’t look at it as saving him so much as catching her. Just finishing what we set out to do.”

  “But we can still do that after she puts one in Chris’s brainpan.”

  “I know,” I say. “But . . . I can’t just let her kill him.”

  “Only way that makes any sense is if you want him for yourself—or your best friend and Johanna’s godfather.”

  I smile. “Sorry.”

  He laughs and shakes his head. “How many times you wanted his sorry ass dead just in the past twenty-four hours?”

  “Too many to count,” I say.

  “But when an opportunity arises for that very thing to happen your ass is workin’ to stop it.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Don’t ever change, babe,” he says. “Don’t ever fuckin’ change.”

  I call Reggie and explain the situation to her and ask her to have a deputy check on Chris and stay with him until we get there.

  When I’m off the phone, Merrill says, “Let me ask you somethin’. You feel bad for having Jerry arrested, don’t you?”

  I nod. “I do. Whatta you want me to say? I’m sorry, but I do. Guy got his daughter back from the dead.”

  “Made a deal with the devil to do it,” he says. “And the devil is his daughter.”

  “She may or may not be the devil, but she is his daughter.”

  “Like I said, don’t ever change, babe. Whatever you do, don’t ever change.”

  53

  The small house is dark and quiet.

  I’m set up on the front door in the living room. Merrill is set up on the back door in the kitchen.

  We’re in Chris’s tiny, dilapidated rental on Second Street waiting to see if Randa shows.

  It’s late. We’ve been waiting a while.

  All around us the town has shut down for the night. There is no traffic on Second Street and only the occasional, lone vehicle on Main.

  Earlier, Reggie moved Chris to a secure, secret location. Since we arrived, we’ve just been waiting.

  Reggie and a deputy are hidden at each end of the street.

  I shouldn’t be in here. Neither should Merrill. But I reminded Reggie she owed me for what I had done for her mom. I basically blackmailed her because I had to be here when Randa walked in—and because I knew Merrill needed to be after she stole Daniel right out from underneath him.

  Chris’s mostly empty, about-to-collapse little wooden house is a sad reflection of his own implosion. Barren, hollowed out, on borrowed time.

  It smells of neglect, of the years-old, baked-in sweat and cigarette smoke of previous tenants, of the mildew of damp, rotting boards, and the hint of a septic system not working properly.

  It’s the fringe smell of desperation and decay, and indicates just how far the once hot shot Tallahassee attorney has fallen.

  I’m missing my girls so much I’m about to tell Merrill we should call it a night, when I hear the unmissable metallic ticks and scratches of a lock being picked. They’re coming from the back door.

  I move across the small living room and position myself against the wall next to the opening to the kitchen.

  In another few moments, the lock is picked and the back door creaks open.

  And Randa is following the beam of a small penlight into the room.

  She’s only taken a few steps inside the kitchen when Merrill steps from behind the antique GE refrigerator and places the barrel of his gun to the back of her head.

  “Drop it,” he says.

  “You’re surrounded,” I say.

  “Okay,” she says and drops both her light and the murder kit she’s carrying.

  I snap on the bare bulb overhead light as Merrill subdues her and zip ties her wrists behind her back.

  She smiles when she sees us. “Should’ve known,” she says. “Thought I could be in and out before you even realized I was the one who posted bail.”

  I withdraw a pair of latex gloves from my pocket and put them on. Stepping over to where her penlight and small leather bag are, I pick them up.

  A quick glance in the bag reveals a small pistol, syringes, and several small vials with no identification on them.

  “Seriously,” she says. “No way, y’all’ve already had a hearing to—”

  “Merrill was able to obtain the information on his own,” I say.

  “I owed you one,” Mer
rill says from behind her.

  “You did at that,” she says. “At least one.”

  I place her bag and light on the leaning lemon formica table, take off my gloves, and pull out my phone to call for a deputy to take her into custody.

  “Don’t suppose you’d give a girl a head start,” she says. “I was here to do you a favor after all.”

  I shake my head and smile at her.

  “I’ll tell you who killed Mariah,” she says.

  “I already know,” I say.

  54

  “Mariah’s murder was what a lot of people thought JonBenét’s was,” I say.

  Arnie and Keisha are back from Atlanta. They, along with me, Reggie, Jessica, and the district attorney—a middle-aged man named Houston Reynolds—are in Roger Garrett’s rental house one last time.

  We’re here at my request. We were supposed to be meeting in Reggie’s office to go over the case against Trace Evers and to coordinate with Dekalb County on his arrest, but I’ve asked them back out here to hear me out during a crime scene walkthrough before we do.

  “Many if not most people, especially early on, thought JonBenét’s death was unintentional and that the crime scene was staged, part of an elaborate coverup, but you only have to look at JonBenét’s autopsy report to know that what that poor child suffered through was a horrific, brutal assault and murder. Unlike, Mariah, JonBenét had defensive wounds. She was struggling against her killer, fighting for her life. We see none of that with Mariah.”

  “You’re sayin’ we’re dealing with staging at this crime scene,” Reynolds says. “It’s part of a cover-up to hide what really happened?”

  I nod.

  Houston Reynolds is a soft, pudgy, sweaty man with a sparse halo of light brown hair and squarish glasses that keep sliding down his nose.

  “Even if there was some staging involved,” Keisha says, “Mariah was sexually assaulted. That’s what was being covered up.”

  I shake my head. “I don’t think so.”

  “You sayin’ the notes and ropes were all part of a staged crime scene?” Arnie asks. “I’m tryin’ to follow you.”

  We’re standing in the main floor great room, each of us holding notebooks and pens and crime scene photos and notes and the autopsy report.

  “Was she not really running away?” Reggie says. “The note is in her handwriting.”

  “No, she was,” I say. “Only the ropes were part of the staging.”

  “But the ransom note,” Keisha says. “If there was staging, that’s part of it.”

  “A jury is never gonna follow all this,” Reynolds says.

  “Let’s start with the runaway note,” I say. “I believe Mariah wrote it and had planned to run away.”

  “Then why have a ransom note? And if you’re gonna leave the ransom note, why not remove the runaway note?”

  “I don’t think he saw it,” I say. “Let’s walk up to the room Mariah was staying in.”

  They agree and we do, Reynolds bringing up the rear, breathing heavily and sweating even more.

  “Mariah was going to run away because, as she put it, Brett and Ashley were being mean to her. I believe that’s why—well, that and how overbearing and overprotective Trace could be.”

  “Not because her daddy was sexually molesting her?” Keisha says.

  I shake my head. “I don’t think he was.”

  We are all standing in Mariah’s room, fanned out around the bed.

  “Then who?” she says. “His semen was found in her bed. You saying he was framed?”

  “No. It was his semen and he left it here—but with Ashley, not Mariah. Ashley told me that she and Trace have sex all the time. She’s is bottom, his submissive. He takes her when he wants to. They try to do it in every room in the house. I think at some point during their stay, Trace and Ashley had sex in this bed—or against it. Maybe while the kids were downstairs watching a movie with Nadine or eating, or down at the beach. I think that’s why his DNA was found on the bedsheets in here.”

  “But Mariah was sexually assaulted,” Keisha says. “It’s like you’re ignoring that.”

  Reynolds nods and says, “What’s easier to buy, that Trace and . . . ah, Ashley had sex on this bed and just happen to leave DNA evidence, or that because of the sexual assault evidence that he was molesting her and that’s why it’s there?”

  “And it’s not just that,” Keisha says. “Look at how he sexualized her in that video they made together and how he acts in general—like in his other videos. They’re like a confession.”

  “I don’t think she’s sexualized in any way in the video they made together,” I say. “It’s sweet and fun. Looks like home movies of a dad and daughter who really like each other. But would you accept my explanation for his DNA in this bed if we knew he didn’t molest her?”

  She nods and Reynolds shrugs.

  “Remember that the vaginal trauma Mariah suffered didn’t take place at the time of her death, but twenty-four to thirty-six hours prior to her death.”

  “Yeah, he assaulted her earlier and killed her to cover it up,” Keisha says.

  “The party the night before falls within that timeframe,” I say. “And I think that’s when it happened. Mariah and Caden Stevens, the boy from next door, were sweet on each other and kissed an experimented a little sexually. He said she asked him to stick things in her—like his finger and other objects around. Nadine watched them closely, but when she wasn’t looking I think they were playing doctor the way kids sometimes do. My guess is there’s an object in this room that he used that has her DNA on it that is sharp enough to cause the injuries detailed in the autopsy.”

  I turn and look at the little desk with the open stapler on it. They follow my gaze.

  “Something like this,” I say.

  With my gloved hand, I lift the narrow metal pusher rod and follow spring.

  “We can ask Caden about it and have it tested to know for sure,” I say, “but if it’s not this it’ll be something like it.”

  “You sayin’ Caden killed her to cover it up?” Jessica asks.

  “That’s certainly not a bad theory,” I say. “Neither is Brett killing her because of it—out of jealousy or because she wouldn’t let him do the same thing, but . . . I don’t think it’s either one of those. I don’t think the relatively mild vaginal trauma Mariah suffered has anything to do with her murder.”

  I withdraw a plastic evidence bag from my coat pocket and drop the staple pusher into it and place it back on the table.

  “If that’s true,” Reggie says, “and it makes sense, then it changes the motive for the murder, doesn’t it?”

  “Then we’re back to kidnapping and ransom,” Keisha says.

  “But why tie her up like that and kill her?” Arnie says. “It makes no sense.”

  “Brett said he thought he saw a man with no face pass by his door that night,” I say. “I think that was our would-be kidnapper and that he was wearing a mask.”

  “Who was it?” Arnie asks.

  “Who could it have been?” I say. “Who would need a mask and a taser? Who would know Trace always carries two-hundred-and-fifty-thousand dollars in cash at all times? Who would write such a condescending and racist ransom note? Whose handwriting couldn’t be eliminated as a suspect based on his handwriting sample?”

  Reggie says, “Hank Howard, Jr., Ashley’s brother.”

  “He and his mother are so bitter that Trace won’t give them some of his money. They live in abject poverty and resent Trace. I heard Hank tell his mother he had been working on something, that his ship was about to come in. I think he had overheard Ashley talking about the cash that Trace always carries at some point and decided if Trace wasn’t going to let Ashley give her family some of his money, he’d just take it. His prints were all over the house, not just on the first floor like most of the other party guests. My guess is he scoped out the house the night of the party—and even tore a piece of paper out of Trace’s song journal when h
e saw it on his bedside table. Probably hoped Trace would know it was an inside job and not call the police.”

  “How do you explain no taser marks on the victim’s body?” Reynolds asks.

  “He never tased her,” I say. “My guess is he placed the note down—didn’t even see her note. No telling what all he didn’t see with the mask on. And he tased the pillows Mariah had put under her covers to make it look like she was sleeping. He pulls the covers back, sees she’s not there. Panics and runs out, leaving the note, the blast plate, and one of the probes behind.”

  “So he didn’t kill her?” Reggie asks.

  I shake my head. “I don’t think so.”

  “Then who?”

  “Who would help her run away?” I ask. “Who would want to help her and hurt Trace? Who would have to take her iPod so their texting wouldn’t be discovered? Who would use Mariah’s own mom to manipulate her—and be in the best position to do it? Who would bribe her with getting her ears pierced? Who would Mariah let in the house that night?”

  “Who?” Reynolds says.

  55

  “I know you didn’t mean to kill her,” I say.

  I’m in Deidra’s small office in Myra House, this place where she does so much good for so many people.

  I don’t like being here. Not for the reason I am.

  To Reynolds question of who I responded that no one wanted Mariah away from Trace more than Deidra did, no one wanted to surprise her folks with their granddaughter, some living piece of their daughter, more than she did. I think Mariah mentioned wanting to run away, and Deidra not only encouraged her but told her she’d help her. My guess is she took her folks to Helen for the Fourth as part of her alibi, that she invented an emergency at Myra House and instead of going there, drove to Cape San Blas instead to get Myra’s daughter. She said she had to be back to Myra House the second day of their vacation—the Fourth—but Sandy let it slip that Deidra had been away for the entire time, said the place fell apart without her there.

  She went to Cape San Blas to get Mariah and took the picture of her with Myra and Mariah to bolster their connection and Mariah’s trust. She also took the earrings to show her what her new life could be like. She knew she had to explain why her prints would be on items at a crime scene 300 miles away from where she was supposed to be, so she volunteered the info when I first spoke to her, telling me she had given Mariah the picture and her mom had given Mariah the earrings at an earlier time, but Rhonda Baxley’s prints weren’t on the earrings and she told me she hadn’t seen Mariah since Myra died.