“I hear what was found was really bad,” Dad says.
“Maybe the worst I’ve ever seen,” I say.
“Really?” Anna asks.
I nod.
“That’s saying something,” she says. “What exactly was it?”
I tell them.
“Oh my God,” she says. “That poor child.”
Dad shakes his head.
“I was thinking about it,” I say. “Thinking about all the homicide victims I’ve seen over the years—the kids in Atlanta, the inmates in the prison, the women killed by the Stone Cold Killer at Stone Mountain, even the exorcism victims at the retreat center near Mexico Beach, which involved a crucifixion—and as truly tragic and terrible as all of them were, none of them were as elaborate and sadistic as what I witnessed today.”
“I’m so sorry, baby,” Anna says. “I wish you would’ve said something sooner.”
“Nothing to say. Not really.”
Dad says, “Worst ones I ever saw were victims of Bundy. Well, were said to be victims of Bundy’s killing spree through the Panhandle. I have my doubts about one of them actually being his.”
“Really?” I say. “A copycat? I didn’t know you thought that about one of them.”
“I’m actually taking another look at it now that I have all this free time. Why I told Reggie I wouldn’t be able to accept her kind offer to consult for her department. I always said I’d reopen it one day. Just didn’t realize it would take decades.”
“That’s great,” Anna says. “Let us know if we can help in any way with it.”
Research into the role of sacrifice in human history is extremely informative and relevant to contemporary ritual killings. There is an undeniable link between accounts of historical ritual murder and blood rites and modern ritualistic crimes, which points to similar motivations, goals, and justifications.
Glasses empty, each exhausted from the day, we walk Dad to the door and say good-night.
As Anna and I prepare for bed, I walk through the house checking the doors and windows and turning off fans and lights.
In my library, I pause for a moment and read one final passage for the night.
Human sacrifice has been a widespread and complex practice throughout history—from blood rituals to cannibalism to ritual murder. The incontrovertible evidence is clear. The ideology behind the practice of sacrifice and sacrificial rituals is that blood is life and contains the life force and energy necessary for life, and shedding it, offering it, constitutes the highest offering possible. Both bloodletting and ingesting blood from a victim represents a reception of pure power, and the longer the victim is tortured, the longer the pain is prolonged, the more life, energy, and power is emitted. In this way, ritualistic torture and homicide become a modern act of human sacrifice, an act that is for the murderer/priest a sacred communion in which the power of life is assimilated and regenerated.
Later that night as I am making love to Anna, I see the crucified girl when I close my eyes.
“Look at me,” I say.
She looks up at me and our eyes lock.
“You okay?”
“Just need to see into your soul right now.”
“I swear it feels like you’re making love to my soul when you look at me like that.”
Chapter Twenty-two
On Monday morning, while Anna is filing papers to petition for paternity and a temporary restraining order against Susan in Leon County, I am with Sam Michaels and Reggie in Reggie’s office behind the Gulf County Courthouse in Port St. Joe.
Located on the opposite end of the county from Wewa, Port St. Joe is a coastal town and the county seat.
“We’ve got a lot to cover,” Reggie says, “so let’s get started. I’ve got some things I need to share with you, but I’d like to do that last.”
She looks like she hasn’t slept. Her tired eyes are bloodshot and underscored by large, dark, purple half-moons, her face pale and puffy.
“Let’s start with Shane. I’ve spoken with a Sergeant Foster from Fort Benning. Since this happened here while Shane was on leave, the army won’t really be involved in the investigation. They do want updates—notifications of our findings, that sort of thing, but that’s about it. The search continues. Nothing yet. Ralph says sometimes the bodies move and it makes it difficult to find them, but not to worry, they will. This is just the third day and they’ve gone as many as thirty-two before.”
A tap at the door brings three coffees and the shy smile of the non-sworn young civilian receptionist.
The sheriff’s department is behind the courthouse—between it and the jail—and Reggie’s office is in the back of it.
Still fairly spartan, as if emphasizing how temporary it will be, the walls are mostly bare, her desk mostly empty. Pictures of her mom, Rain, and Merrick and her name plate on the desk are the only clues to whose office it actually is.
“I know we’re not thinking there’s a connection between Shane and . . . the crucifixion victim, but . . . there might wind up being one, so I’d like to go over what we have with you here,” Reggie says to Sam.
Sam nods, her shoulder-length blond hair swinging a bit as she does. “I’d prefer that. You never know what might be the thing one of us needs to hear to connect to some other thing we know.”
She’s so small I wonder if her feet would touch the floor if she leaned all the way back in her chair.
“John?” Reggie says.
I tell them about the interviews and what came out of them. Looking back and forth at them the way I am highlights the stark contrast between them—Reggie so dark, Sam so pale, Reggie so much larger than Sam, Reggie’s stern face, Sam’s default pleasant expression.
“So,” Reggie says, “we’ve got the contributing factors of the bump on the head from the Jet Ski, the drugs and alcohol, and the foolish swim across the river and back.”
“Except that the Xanbar they took should mean they can’t remember anything much about it,” I say.
“Think they’re all lying?” Sam asks, her blue eyes wide beneath raised brows.
“I don’t know. I want to interview them again at some point. I was just hoping to have the body and the evidence it provides before I do.”
“But,” Reggie says, “even with the bump to the head, the exhaustion from the swim, and the effects of the substances, we’re still most likely looking at an accidental drowning.”
“Maybe,” I say. “We need to find the body.”
She nods then turns to Sam. “How about the results of the prelim autopsy on the body we did find?”
“As you can imagine, the water washed away any evidence we had hoped to find, and the state of decay makes it far more difficult to determine much, but—” she flips through a few pages in her narrow note pad “—all of the crucifixion stuff was done postmortem.”
“That’s something to be grateful for,” Reggie says. “Not much, but something.”
“She appears to have been sexually assaulted and to have died of ligature strangulation. Don’t have much more than that at this point. We’ll have more after the full autopsy, toxicology, and DNA testing, but I was told it most likely won’t be much more. No ID yet. And my ViCAP searches haven’t turned up any matches on missing persons or similar crimes, but I just know in my marrow this is not his first time.”
“Think we all agree on that,” Reggie says.
“I’m gonna keep searchin’,” she says. “Widen my search. I’m gonna find his previous victims.”
“Unless they’re still at the bottom of the river,” I say.
“What about the way she was staged?” Reggie says.
“It’s a hell of a signature,” Sam says.
“And will probably make it easier for us to catch him,” I say. I then tell them more about the meaning and import of sacrifice in religious ritual killings.
“Daniel was saying some of those same things last night,” Sam says. “We’re dealing with one sick twisted fuck. Look forward to t
aking him off the board.”
Reggie nods. “Okay, now to the hard part. This isn’t easy for me, puts me in a very difficult spot, but I know we can find our way through it.”
She pauses and we wait, a moment fraught with tension and piqued interest passing between us.
“I’m pretty sure I’ve figured out the identity of our victim. Her name is Amber Matthews. She’s seventeen and she went missing a little over a week ago.”
She hands us each a file folder with Amber Matthews’s information and pictures in it.
“The pictures are printouts from Facebook and a few of her friends’ phones,” she says. “See the anklet tattoo? And I think this one is the last one ever taken of her. I’m pretty sure that’s what she was wearing when she was taken.”
Amber Matthews is a pretty girl, and it’s truly difficult to conceive that the poor creature we pulled from the river once looked like this.
She poses for the camera the way so many young girls do these days, like models in training, showing off her outfit and accessories, smiling in a way that looks more unsure and insecure than happy.
She and Rain lying on a sheet in the sand at the beach. Her standing in front of a bonfire, a beer in one hand, giving the bird with the other. She and Rain sharing cotton candy at the carnival. A shot of her from the side taking a chocolate-covered banana into her mouth like she’s going down on it.
Unlike her mouth and the rest of her face, her eyes aren’t smiling. They are sad and wounded and wary—just not wary enough to keep her from getting too close to whoever snatched, killed, and crucified her.
Dressed to go out, she is wearing a sandstone cami tank top, blue jeans shorts with lace around the legs, sandals, and a headband that matches her top. Her long legs are smooth and shapely and show the first faint hints of a tan. Her long, narrow feet are in brown sandals and her anklet tattoo is clearly visible.
Hanging from a cord around her neck, a teardrop-shaped rose quartz hangs just above where her sandstone cami starts.
“Her phone has been used since she died so I’ve already sent a preservation letter to Verizon—her cell provider—and I’ve also been working with them to ping it to find the location, but it’s been off. If it’s turned back on and we can get a location, I’ll let you know.”
“This is great,” Sam says. “But how’d you make the ID? How did you even first figure out it was her?”
“Because,” Reggie says, “she was dating Rain, my son.”
Chapter Twenty-three
Rain is saying, “I’m sad and upset, you know what I’m sayin’, but I’m also . . . I don’t know . . . a little . . . I’m . . . I’m glad I wasn’t ghosted.”
Getting ghosted by an ex is when they vanish out of your life and block you on all social media with no explanation. They just disappear and ignore all your efforts to contact them because you are dead to them and they are dead to you.
“She didn’t seem like the type to do somethin’ like that,” Rain continues, “but . . . I didn’t know her long or very well, so . . .”
We are in the sheriff’s department’s small interview room—Sam and me on one side of the desk, Rain and Merrick McKnight on the other.
The investigations office is behind the supervisor of elections office on Long Avenue—a mile or so from the sheriff’s department, courthouse, and jail. The interview room is equipped with a hidden camera inside what appears to be a smoke detector.
I remember something from the Tupelo Festival.
“She didn’t ghost you,” I say. “She was murdered. So . . . if the person who answered her phone on Saturday wasn’t her boyfriend . . . it could be the killer.”
His eyes grow wide as the blood drains from his face. His eyes aren’t as striking as his mom’s and they’re more squinty, but it’s obvious he’s her son.
“What did he sound like?” I say.
He shrugs. “I don’t know. Quiet. Sort of soft spoken.”
“Young? Older? Southern?”
“Yeah,” he says, nodding. “Young and from the South.”
“How long did you date?” Sam asks.
“Let’s see . . . she moved here during Christmas break. I had a girlfriend at the time. We broke up not too long before Valentine’s Day, ’cause I was like, why not before I spent all that money on candy and gifts, you know what I’m saying? Then I kicked it solo for a month or more. Amber and me started talkin’ on April first. I remember ’cause I made a joke about her not prankin’ me ’cause it was April Fool’s Day. She went away spring break. We became exclusive sometime end of April, beginning of May.”
“What can you tell us about her?” I ask.
“Probably not much, you know what I’m sayin’? Didn’t know her long. She was cool. No drama. We just hung out. Had fun. Between school, basketball, then baseball and helping take care of my grandma, I didn’t have a ton of time. Her mom split when she was little. I know that. She lived with her dad and his new family in Dothan, but her stepmom was a real bitch and her stepbrother and sister real brats. So she left. Seemed like they didn’t even care. She moved here to get away from them. Lived with an old lady who kept her mom when she was young. She was like an aunt but not really, know what I’m sayin’?”
We are quiet a moment and he tears up again. Wiping his eyes with his thumb and forefinger, he sniffles and pats his foot. Beside him, Merrick puts a hand on his shoulder.
“Rain, did your mom tell you not to tell us anything?” Sam asks.
He shakes his head. “She told me to tell y’all everything I know. I didn’t . . . I haven’t done anything wrong and she knows it. Got nothin’ to hide. She said she doesn’t know you all that well, but that John will do the right thing by me.”
“He will,” she says, nodding, “and so will I.”
“So when’s the last time you heard from Amber and when’s the last time you saw her?” I ask.
“Saturday before the Tupelo Festival,” he says. “We spent nearly the whole day together. Did all kinds of things. Ended up at a party at Iola Landing.”
Merrick’s eyes widen, mirroring mine.
“What?” Sam says. “What is it?”
“Iola is the landing just above Gaskin Park,” I say.
If she was put in the water there, she could have drifted down along the bottom and gotten hung up on something where we found her.
“Tell me about the party,” I say.
“Just the usual. Big fire. Everybody standing around talking and drinking.”
“Did you drink?” Sam asks.
“Yes, ma’am. I know my mom will hear this. I’m sorry Mom, but I did. But I only had two beers. I was going to have one, but we stayed a while so I had two.”
“Take anything?” she asks.
“No ma’am. I never have and I never will.”
“How about Amber?” I ask.
“Not that I know of—I mean, she had a beer or two. I didn’t see her take anything.”
“It’s mostly young people your age at these parties, right?” I say.
“Yes, sir.”
“What about that night? Anyone older there? Anyone you didn’t recognize? Anyone acting creepy or—”
“No, sir. Was just us. The usual group. Wasn’t many of us that night. Everybody there was our age. All people we knew. Wait. There was one kid from St. Joe. He’s our age, but he’s not one of us. He plays basketball for them.”
“You ever see him at a party before?” I ask.
“No sir.”
“What’s his name?”
“Furnell Gant.”
“Anything out of the ordinary happen that night? Anything unusual? Anything at all?”
“No sir. Just wasn’t much to it. Tell the truth, it was kind of boring. I was tired from all we had done that day. So was Amber. She got real sleepy. She’s the type that goes and goes but when she’s done, she’s done. Once she decides she’s ready for bed, nothin’s gonna stop her from going home and gettin’ in bed.”
; “So y’all left?” I say. “Together?”
“No sir. She wanted me to take her home, but . . . I couldn’t. I wanted to, but I just couldn’t yet, so—”
“Why couldn’t you?” Sam says.
“My mom’s the sheriff,” he says. “And she raised me right. By herself too, know what I’m sayin’? She’s told me things. Taught me things. Made me the man I am, know what I’m sayin’? I’m not ever gonna let her down. Not ever.”
“What’s that got to do with—”
“I’ve never had more than a beer or two. And I nurse the shit out of ’em. Lot of times I won’t even finish them. Sometimes I pour them out when I go into the woods to pee. But even when I drink, I never have more than one in an hour and I always wait at least an hour since I’ve had one to drive. I told Amber to be patient. I just had to wait twenty-five more minutes, but . . . she wouldn’t wait. Rode home with one of her friends. At first I thought that’s why she wasn’t responding to me the next day, thought she was mad about me not being able to take her home, but she’s the one who said have another beer, let’s stay a while longer, then just a little while later wanted to leave.”
“What’s her friend’s name?” Sam asks. “The one who gave her the ride home?”
“Angel.”
“Angel what?”
“Angel Keller. She’s a senior.”
Chapter Twenty-four
“When do you think Reggie knew who the victim was?” Sam asks.
We are in my car, driving down Highway 71 toward Wewa to interview Angel Keller at Wewa High School while Reggie tries to track Amber’s phone and get in touch with her dad.
Blood Oath: a John Jordan Mystery Book 11 (John Jordan Mysteries) Page 9