An African-American man in his sixties, Mitchell operates the Corner Café in a building on Main Street that has been, among other things, a drugstore and a storefront church. He owns it and the small building next to it that was a Whites Only game room he was kept out of as a kid.
While I’m here seeing Merrill, Sam takes my car to check the Express Lane for surveillance footage and to see if the clerk working the night Amber disappeared remembers anything.
Merrill is waiting for me when I arrive and we embrace in the sort of half-hug way that includes a couple of fist pounds on the back.
Merrill Monroe, my closest friend for nearly my entire life, is a muscular black man with broad shoulders and intense, intelligent, penetrating black eyes.
Having come straight from the prison where he’d just resigned, he’s still wearing his correctional officer uniform, and it’s strange to think this may be the last time I ever see him in it.
As we decide what we want and wait in line, I can hear four different conversations going on around us about Shane’s disappearance and Amber’s crucifixion. Shocked, confused, fearful, the entire town is talking. Theorizing. Speculating. Gossiping.
We place our order at the counter, but instead of sitting there like we normally do, we find a booth in a quiet corner so we can talk privately.
“You okay?” I say.
His eyes are wide and a bit wild, and something about my familiar friend seems foreign and unfamiliar.
He nods. “In the way you askin’, yeah.”
“What way is that?”
“In the ‘have I lost my mind ’cause I quit my job’ way.”
I smile.
“Ain’t sayin’ I know what I’m doin’,” he says. “Just sayin’ I know what I’m not. And I’m not gonna sit by anymore while unarmed black men and boys are being gunned down in the streets. And I’m not gonna be part of the prison industrial complex. I’ve reached my limit. A tipping point. I can’t do it another second.”
I nod and listen and think about how much I admire and respect him.
“The whole world is a fuckin’ tinderbox right now,” he says. “Got to do all I can to make sure the whole thing doesn’t go up in flames.”
He’s right. Everywhere we turn there’s cause for great alarm—the rising tide of terrorism, the proliferation of world-destroying weapons, overpopulation and the poisoning and plundering of the planet, the militant ignorance and anti-intelligence movement, the political polarization and paralysis, the mass shootings, the mass hysteria, the palpable fear and paranoia of people who feel powerless arming themselves to fight the wrong wars, cops killing unarmed citizens.
“I’ve had all I can take,” he says.
“What’re you gonna do?” I ask.
He shrugs. “Something. Join the frontline somehow, in some . . . constructive way. Don’t know exactly how or what yet. Just know I have to make a positive contribution now. Right the fuck now.”
I nod.
“You think I’ve lost my got-damn mind, don’t you?”
“You know better than that,” I say.
“I may actually be insane,” he says. “I wouldn’t know if I was, would I?”
“The world’s insane,” I say. “What you’re saying sounds like sanity to me.”
“I feel more free than at any time in my entire life,” he says.
“What was it that Camus said? ‘The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.’”
“I like that,” he says. “That’s what I’m going for.” Then in his best Mookie from Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing he adds, “Want to be like M-M-M-Malcolm and M-M-M-Martin.”
I smile and think back to the two of us watching it on VHS in my little apartment in Atlanta back when it first came out in 1989.
“You know what the man said,” I say. “‘The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.’”
“Martin or Malcolm?”
“Martin,” I say. “I’d be hard pressed to come up with a quote by X off the top of my head. The point is—you measure up, man.”
“Ain’t done nothin’ yet,” he says.
“Sure you have. You’ve taken the first step. And it’s the most critical and the most difficult. Think about how many people are seeing what’s going on, see actual video footage of it and want to do something, but don’t.”
Mitchell walks up with our food and asks what we’re talking about.
I tell him.
“I’ve been prayin’ about what I can do,” he says. “You let me know how I can help, how I can get involved. March. Sit-in. Mentoring. Whatever I can do. And today’s lunch is on me.”
Chapter Twenty-seven
“No security footage,” Sam says when I get in the car. “Lasts a little less than a week then is erased to make room for current recordings.”
She has parked my Impala on the side of Mitchell’s building, left it running, the AC blasting, and is waiting for me in the passenger seat.
“Didn’t figure there would be,” I say. “The clerk remember seeing anything?”
“The one working now wasn’t the one working that night, but I got her number and called her.”
“And?”
“She can’t be certain it was that night, but she thinks it was. She remembers Angel coming right before she closed and thinks it was the same night. She saw a white delivery truck pull out of the parking lot. Stood out because she had seen it riding around town earlier in the evening. Said it was plain white, big and boxy. Hasn’t seen it in town since.”
“That fits, doesn’t it? Vehicle like that would give him the room he needs for his tools and props and—hell, he may even do what he does to them inside the back of the truck. Like a mobile murder room.”
“Sounds as though it’d be big enough,” she says. “This could be our first big break. If it is him and he’s—”
My phone rings. It’s Susan.
“I need to take this. Sorry.”
I step out of the car and take the call, walking around to the front of Mitchell’s and down the sidewalk.
“What the fuck are you doing?” she says.
“What?”
“You didn’t think I’d already know? We have friends in the courthouse. A restraining order? Really? The fuck are you thinkin’?”
“I’m thinking I don’t want to lose my daughter again,” I say. “I’m thinking the last time we spoke you seemed pretty cavalier about me being in her life.”
“I did not,” she says. “Or I didn’t mean to be. But even if I came off that way . . . a restraining order? Seriously?”
“It’s just to keep you from moving until paternity can be established and we can have a custody hearing.”
“We need to meet and discuss this before it gets out of hand,” she says.
“Okay.”
“Halfway?” she says. “In Bristol at the Apalachee. Seven my time tonight?”
Crossing the river changes the time zone. She is an hour ahead of me.
“Bring Johanna,” I say.
I disconnect the call, tap in Anna’s number, and tell her what just happened.
“I’m not even back from Tallahassee yet and she already knows,” she says. “Do you have any idea how unethical it is for someone at the courthouse to tell her like that?”
“She wants to meet to discuss it,” I say. “Think maybe it scared her. Sounded like she’s open to working it out.”
“I don’t trust her. Be very careful where she’s concerned.”
“I will,” I say. “Have too much to lose not to.”
This time when I get back in the car, Sam is on the phone.
“Sorry about that,” I say when she ends her call.
“No problem. That was Reggie. She just finished interviewing Furnell Gant. Said we can interview him if we want to but that she’s convinced e
nough to clear him. He was there to see a particular girl. Didn’t even know who Amber and Angel were. He gave a couple of kids a ride to another party back in St. Joe later that night. Has solid alibis nearly all night.”
I nod. “Didn’t think it was him,” I say. “We’re looking for someone older and white, not a high school kid still living at home with his parents.”
“Agreed.”
I put the car in gear and back out of the small Corner Café parking lot.
“I told her about the white delivery truck,” she says. “She’s gonna see if she can find a match in any of the databases for a similar truck used in any crimes and get a list of the ones registered in the area.”
I take a right on Second Street and a left on Lake Grove Road.
“I think if it’s him,” Sam says, “I mean if the truck is his . . . I think it’s a very good chance he’s mobile and was just passing through.”
I nod. “Would explain why search and rescue haven’t found any more victims in the river. If he was using it as some sort of killing field or dumping ground . . . think they’d’ve found more already.”
“Probably, but . . . the river only begrudgingly gives up its bodies. Look at Shane.”
I frown and nod and think again about Tommy and Michelle.
“But,” I say, “if we we’re saying the killer was just passing through, that Amber was just random, convenient, available—I don’t know. I have a hard time buying that. It’s not like he’s cruising around in his mobile killing machine and sees a car with a young girl sitting in it and stops in and grabs her, not knowing how long whoever was with her was going to be in the store.”
“Well, when you put it like that . . .” she says. “The truck may not even belong to the killer. Even if it does, the mobile killing machine thing is just an idea, a theory, but . . . what if we’re right about that and right about him passing through? Maybe it wasn’t purely random, not purely opportunistic. What if he stalked her, followed her for a while? The clerk said she had seen the vehicle in town earlier.”
“That makes more sense. Then we have to figure out what brought him to town—if he doesn’t live here—and where and how Amber crossed his path.”
“What if Shane saw something or the killer thought he saw something and that’s what got him killed?” she asks.
“But Shane wasn’t around—and hadn’t been. He got into town a week after she was killed.”
She nods. “They’re most likely not connected. Just trying to consider all the possibilities.”
“Which is good,” I say. “Like you said, all we have are ideas and theories. Have to keep thinking, talking, figuring as we keep uncovering more information.”
“Glad you feel like that,” she says. “’Cause I have another. I’ve been hesitant to say it to you, but . . .”
“Why?”
“Because of Reggie, but . . . Anyway, what if we moved off her son too quick? We said he’s too young and lacks the sophistication for something like this, that it’s far more likely a practiced serial, but . . . since we haven’t found any other bodies, any other evidence that there is a serial at work . . . what if Rain read up on some sick shit or saw a movie or something . . . and . . . tried to make it look like . . . I don’t know . . . something that it wasn’t?”
“It’s crossed my mind,” I say. “I think it’s highly unlikely, but you’re right, we shouldn’t rule it out. Let’s keep it as a possibility as we continue to gather evidence and information.”
Less than a mile back from the landing at the end of the road where the search for Shane and other victims continues, we veer off to the left and drive to Iola Landing.
Chapter Twenty-eight
Iola was once a thriving small town, the place where the railroad met the river, where goods were loaded and unloaded, shipped and hauled, bought and sold.
Now nothing remains of the little town, and the only evidence that the railroad ran this way is a huge round, bowl-shaped indentation in the ground near the landing where the old railway turntable once sat. Turntables or wheelhouses were used for turning railroad rolling stock, in this case the locomotive, which, when it reached the river, had to be turned so it could then push the train back to Port St. Joe and the ships in St. Joseph Bay.
We park at the landing not far from the cement boat launch that slopes down to the river below.
It takes a little while, but eventually we find the remnants of the bonfire where the kids gather to drink and talk and socialize and hook up. It’s back in the woods a bit from the landing, but only fifty feet or so, in a small clearing surrounded by oak and pine and cypress trees.
The area is littered with beer bottles and cigarette butts and a variety of trash, the charred logs in the center of it all dusted with and surrounded by thick gray ash.
“Chances are we’re not gonna find anything here,” I say. “Most likely nothing to find. But I wanted to at least take a look around.”
She nods. “Unless it was one of the kids from the party, he wasn’t here. An older guy would stand out like a mofo at a gathering like this one.”
“Unless he was hidden,” I say.
“A watcher in the woods,” she says, her eyes widening, her voice rising. “Could be. Especially if he stalked her for a while.”
“What if he wasn’t stalking her so much as the party. He comes here looking for prey—maybe even picks out a few possibilities—but when she leaves with Angel, she becomes his target. Or they both do. But she’s the one left alone in the dark parking lot so he takes her.”
She shrugs. “Far more likely he already has his eye on her, that something about her fuels his fantasy, that she is specifically and not randomly his choice.”
I nod. “You’re right. That fits the profile of these kinds of killers better.”
“So,” she says. “You want to split up and look around for a while or see if Reggie will assign some deputies to do it?”
“I’d rather us do it—at least at first. At least for a little while.”
“Let’s do it,” she says.
And we do.
We search in concentric circles, starting at the fire and working our way out ever wider, her covering one half, me covering the other.
The May day is pleasant, the early afternoon sun balanced by the breeze blowing in off the river. Above us branches wave ever so slightly in the wind, the Spanish moss draped over them swaying lazily.
I think about Merrill again and all he’s doing, and wonder if I’m doing enough.
I’m trying to figure out what else I might do when Sam begins to yell for me.
“What is it?” I say, moving in her direction.
She is over about forty feet or so on the backside of the woods opposite the river, her small frame completely eclipsed by the magnolia tree she’s behind.
“He was here,” she yells. “He was right fuckin’ here.”
I rush over to her, careful not to touch or step on anything on the backside of the tree where she’s staring.
“We were right. He was stalking her. He stood right here and looked right through there and watched her. So it’s probably not Rain.”
I turn back to look in the direction she’s pointing.
From where she’s standing, just above the underbrush and between the trees, there’s a perfect line of sight to where the kids would’ve been hanging out around the fire.
“Look at this,” she says. “Look.”
I turn and take a few steps, then come up behind her and look over the top of her head at the carving in the tree.
The cuts and carvings in the tree are crude but there can be no doubt what they form—a nude female figure crucified face down on a cross, her legs spread slightly to accommodate a phallic-shaped piece of pipe penetrating her.
Chapter Twenty-nine
While Sam waits at Iola Landing for forensics to arrive, I drive to the end of the road to check in with Ralph and Tommy.
I find Ralph first.
; “How’s it going?” I ask.
“It’s a goin’,” he says. “Slow and steady. All it takes is time and stubbornness and we have plenty of both.”
“What’s the longest it has taken to find someone?” I ask.
“Thirty-two days.”
“Wow.”
“Bodies do tricky things down there on the bottom. We call it walkin’. Can go on for miles, just bouncing along.”
“What’s the shortest?”
“Less than an hour.”
I nod and look out at the activity on the river, the slow-moving boats and the search and rescue volunteers aboard them.
“But we always get our man,” he says. “Or woman. We won’t leave until we do.”
I nod. “What y’all do for our community, and for the families of the victims, is such a gift. Thank you again.”
“Our pleasure.”
“Have you seen Tommy?”
“He’s around here somewhere. Only goes home for a few hours in the middle of the night. Rest of the time he’s here searching, helping, supporting. Just stand there and act like you need help and he’ll show up eventually.”
Unable to find Tommy, I walk over to the first house on Byrd Parker Drive and knock on the door.
The first two houses back up to the river and have great views of the dock. Reggie was supposed to have sent someone to interview the occupants, but it won’t hurt for me to do it too.
The gruff old man who answers the door at the first house informs me that he and his wife were at the Tupelo Festival until after dark and didn’t see anything. He also asks when we’ll wrap up all the commotion at the landing and quit bothering them.
The elderly lady in glasses who answers the door at the second home tells me her name is Vera and invites me in and offers me lemonade.
“This is very good lemonade,” I say.
“It’s sort of my speciality.”
She is tall and thin and frail, her voice soft and airy.
“You know what happened here on Saturday?” I ask. “Know why search and rescue has set up near your home and is dragging the river?”
She nods. “I saw the poor dear go under.”
Blood Oath: a John Jordan Mystery Book 11 (John Jordan Mysteries) Page 11