COLD BLOOD (a John Jordan Mystery Book 13)

by Michael Lister

  Images from the investigation float toward me like oncoming headlights, bits of information, insights, and impossibilities.

  Lost in thought about the case and operating on autopilot, I lose time, and only come out of the state I’m in as I park in the exact spot Randa had.

  I get out.

  It’s late, the highway empty.

  I check my phone. I’m on the edge of the continent. Service is spotty here. At the moment I have none. I have to figure that it was far worse at the beginning of 2005. Could Randa have even used her phone if she wanted to?

  I walk in the direction the dogs traced her scent, stumbling in the darkness along the uneven shoulder of the road.

  To my left, the nocturnal noises of the swamp are soft and muted. To my right, beyond the breeze, a hint of the incessant tide rolling in and rolling out. Rolling in and rolling out.

  I have to walk around the small popup tent being used as the water and coordination station for the search of the swamp behind it.

  On the other side, I nearly trip over the pile of pictures, flowers, candles, cards, balloons, posters, and ribbons that constitute the Randa Raffield shrine. The candles are unlit, long since extinguished by the breeze blowing in off the bay and rain from earlier in the evening.

  I pause for a moment and look down at the expressions of love and concern, hope and solidarity. White teddy bears with big red hearts. Swim caps and goggles. UWF attire. Notes. Signs. Drawings.

  We Love You Randa. Come Home Soon. RIP Randa Raffield. Thoughts and Prayers. We will find your killer. I am Randa Raffield and so are You!

  I continue walking, somehow more melancholy now, an even greater heaviness resting upon me.

  Each step labored, each stumble nearly a fall.

  Eventually, I reach the spot where the dogs stopped because her scent ended, and pause to look around.

  “RANDA,” I yell into the dark void of empty night. “RANDA. WHERE’D YOU GO? WHAT REALLY HAPPENED? WHO TOOK YOU? WHAT DID HE DO TO YOU?”

  The clouds above me part, letting marginally more moonlight through, but no answers or insight of illumination pierces the dark veil of my benightedness.

  What are you doing here? You should be at home in bed beside your beautiful wife. What’s wrong with you? Who’s this helping? What good is it doing? Is this more useful than sleep and the perchance to dream a solution, an insight, an answer?

  Ignoring the questions, I cross the street, walk a short ways, and enter Windmark.

  A few lights dot the darkness but it remains mostly a ghost town.

  A whistling wind whines through the empty buildings and through the trees.

  I continue farther into what looks like a small, abandoned seaside town.

  Beneath the pale, diffuse moonlight, the deserted development is eerie and unsettling, and only adds to my disorientation and disquietude.

  There in the distance, I see Randa, her auburn hair flowing in the bay breeze, its tips streaked with moonlight, her green eyes glowing, her pale skin translucent.

  I blink and she is gone.

  And though I know what I’ve just witnessed is a figment, a fiction, a fragment of memory and imagination, I still find it unsettling—and a troubling sign of my altered state.

  A noise coming up behind me startles me out of my dissociative state and I whip around, bringing up my weapon and pointing it at the tall figure in the dark.

  “Steady there, mate,” the man says. “I’m just walking my dog, aren’t I?”

  He’s old, tall, and lean, with longish, fine white-blond hair and a much and deeply lined face. His hands are up. A leash extends from his right one to a large dog on the ground below.

  “Sorry,” I say, holstering my firearm.

  “Mate, are you okay?”

  I nod.

  “You want me to telly a . . . ambulance for you?”

  I shake my head. “I’m okay. Sorry I startled you.”

  “Think I’m the one what startled you. You sure you’re okay? Want some tea and a biscuit or something? Get you right as rain. Drink a little tea, have a little biscuit, and Bob’s your uncle you’ll be fit again in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.”

  “You British Bob?” I ask.

  “I sometimes answer to that name. How the hell’d you know that?”

  “I’m John Jordan with the Gulf County Sheriff’s Department,” I say. “Left a card on your door. Been trying to reach you.”

  “Oh, right, well, I’ve been meaning to ring you, but been . . .”

  “Busy walking your dog?”

  He smiles. “Among other things. Intended to call you though, I swear it, mate.”

  “Did your neighbor tell you what I wanted to talk to you about?”

  He nods.

  “Is that why you were hesitant to return my calls?”

  “Really have been busy, but . . . that’s a bad business, ain’t it, and I must admit I weren’t too keen on gettin’ involved.”

  “Why exactly?”

  “No offense to you, I’m sure, but . . . I ain’t had the best of experiences with coppers in my past, I can tell you that.”

  “Were you here the night Randa Raffield went missing?”

  He shakes his head. “Came in the next day. Had nowhere to stay back then. We was just beginning construction, wasn’t we?”

  “Anyone or anything suspicious or out of the ordinary when you arrived?”

  He frowns and shakes his head. “Bloody hell, man,” he says. “I . . . I . . . This is why I . . . didn’t want to . . . It didn’t even occur to me to be suspicious of it until recently, did it? I swear, mate. But . . . they were late pouring my foundation because they had to fix and re-level the dirt beneath it where it had been disturbed the night before. They had to adjust the rebar and grade pins. It’s probably nothing, most likely an animal, but . . . there it is. I was going to tell you, wasn’t I? I just . . . But . . . you can’t tear down a one-point-six-million-dollar home because something might be buried beneath it.”

  36

  “We can’t just dig under a man’s house because some dirt was disturbed before he poured his foundation,” Reggie is saying.

  “But—”

  “Not any house, but especially a million-dollar Windmark mansion.”

  “It’s not just a little disturbed dirt,” I say. “It was enough to make him question whether or not she could be under there. And it happened the night she went missing—just a few hundred yards from where her car was found.”

  “It’s probably more like a mile, but . . . I understand what you’re saying. I do.”

  “I did some research,” I say. “There are non-destructive ways to at least see if she’s buried there. We could use a ground-penetrating radar to—”

  “If and when we decide to do it, we can get FDLE to do it.”

  “If?” I say, my voice rising. “If?”

  “Yes, if. We have to tread very carefully—and not just from a—”

  “Tread carefully? This could be—”

  “John, no judge is going to give us a warrant with what we’ve got. We’ve got nothing. Some innuendo and disturbed dirt. That’s it.”

  “What if I can get the homeowner to sign a Permission to Search?”

  “That might be a direction we can go at some point, but . . . do you know how many Permission to Searches get suppressed at trial? All the homeowner has to claim is that he signed it under duress, that you forced him, threatened him, and it could get tossed—along with anything we might find.”

  “But, listen to me . . . if I’m—”

  “You okay, John? You sleeping?”

  “Not lately, no. Why? I’m okay.”

  “You seem a little strung out,” she says. “Is this case getting to you?”

  I hesitate a moment, sigh, and nod. “Yeah. They all do. But this one more than most. I’m fine. Just didn’t sleep last night.”

  “You’ve got to take care of yourself,” she says. “You won’t be any good for anybody—in
cluding Randa—if you come apart at the seams. Now, listen to me. Get some rest. Take care of yourself. I’m not saying no to going the Permission to Search route, but a court order would be far better, a search warrant when we have probable cause. So let’s work on getting that. Okay? Find me that. Then we’ll do the sonar scans. Let’s exhaust every other possibility. Okay? See if we can find probable cause. If not, we’ll revisit the Permission to Search. Seem reasonable?”

  I nod.

  “So get some rest. Get yourself together. Once you’re not exhausted, exhaust all the other possibilities, and if you still haven’t found her, we’ll look under British Bob’s McMansion.”

  “Okay.”

  “And if you find her without us having to look under his foundation, I don’t tell anybody you wanted us to.”

  I smile. “Thanks.”

  “Now—”

  She stops as both our phones begin to vibrate—an occurrence that never brings good news.

  Merrick is calling her and Chris is calling me—both about the same thing.

  A man claiming to be Randa’s killer has just posted a video online.

  “Take a look at it,” Chris says, “while I work on tracking down where it came from.”

  After we disconnect our calls, Reggie opens her laptop on her desk and I walk around to her, and we watch the video together.

  The In Search of Randa Raffield website has been hacked. All that is on it now is an image of her abandoned car on the side of the road, beneath it the words I confess.

  Clicking on the image takes us to a site called IKilledRandaRaffield.com. On it, an average-size man is sitting in a dark room. He’s wearing a black hoodie and his face has been blacked out and his voice digitally distorted.

  “Who I am is not important,” he says, his altered voice deep and demented. “What I did is. I am a man with a demon inside me. I’m a slave to his desires. I wish I could control him better, but I can’t. I’m sorry, but I can no more control him than you can the tide. Be clear about this. I’m not asking for forgiveness. I neither want it or deserve it. I only want to bring closure to Randa’s family. Mr. and Mrs. Raffield, I am sorry for killing your daughter. I truly am. Please know it was quick. She didn’t suffer. In a way, her death was like a baptism into her new life. I drowned her in the bay and gave her body back to the sea, from whence all life proceeded. I had no idea her body wouldn’t be discovered or that that fact would lead to so much fanciful speculation. For that too I am sorry. And I’m sorry for not contacting you sooner. I should have. Just know Randa is at peace and I hope now you can be too.”

  Without saying a word, Reggie clicks for the video to replay.

  The room the man is in is so dark nothing is clearly visible—part of a dark curtain, his hoodie. A dark figure in front of a darker background. That is it.

  “Think it’s real?” she asks.

  I shrug.

  “Gut?” she says.

  I shake my head. “But that’s all it is. Just an instinct.”

  “Mine says the same thing. Either way, I hope Chris can—”

  My phone starts vibrating again. It’s Chris.

  “It’s the same person who sent the email to the dad—Randa’s dad. Same guy. And I’ve got a location on him.”

  37

  “Fuck,” Chris says.

  “What?” I say. “What is it?”

  “Spoke too soon. Don’t have them. Thought I did. Sorry. I’ll keep working on it. Think I’m close.”

  I want to throw my phone across the room, but find the strength to refrain.

  “Okay,” I say. “Just keep at it. Let me know when you have something.”

  “Hopefully it won’t be long.”

  “Anything stand out to you about the video?” I ask. “Or how it was posted or—”

  “Just that there are two of them,” he says.

  “Whatta you mean?”

  “Huh? Two people. To make the video. It’s very subtle but . . . at the very end . . . there’s the slightest . . . the camera moves. Someone is holding it.”

  “I watched it twice and missed that,” I say.

  When I’m off the call, Reggie and I watch the video again.

  “There it is,” she says when the camera moves right before the video ends. “How’d we miss that? Well, I know how you did. You need some sleep. But how did I miss that?”

  “I should’ve seen it,” I say.

  “Go home and get some sleep,” she says. “That’s an order.”

  “But—”

  “It’s an order. Don’t so much as think about the case. Think about other things. Turn your phone off and sleep. Sleep a long time, then call me when you get up.”

  I try to do as I’m told—with the exception of turning off my phone—but as tired as I am, when I lie down I am unable to fall asleep.

  The house is empty and quiet.

  Dad had a doctor’s appointment and Anna and Taylor went with him and Verna.

  The shades are drawn, the curtains closed. The room is dark. The fan is on. All the conditions are right, but I can’t fall asleep.

  When I close my eyes I see Randa. In vivid detail—her young, muscular swimmer’s body, her silky, auburn-tinted hair. Her huge, sparkling green eyes and the complexity of the person behind them they reveal.

  I toss and turn, roll onto my right side, then my back, then my left. I pull Anna’s pillow to me and hold it the way I hold her when we spoon to fall asleep. Nothing works.

  Sleep eludes me.

  Eventually I give up, grab my phone, and turn the In Search of Randa Raffield podcast back on.

  “As we’ve mentioned before,” Daniel is saying, “Merrick is working on a book about this case. He’s a former reporter and a very good writer and we know it’s going to be a good book you’ll want to read when it comes out. But that means that Merrick is under deadline so he can’t be with us today. Nancy is here. Say hi Nancy.”

  “Hi Nancy,” she says.

  “And we’re joined by a special guest today,” Daniel adds. “Roger Lamott. You’ll remember Roger is the only witness. He saw Randa after her accident and called the police. Welcome, Roger.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Thanks for being on the show,” Nancy says. “We really appreciate it.”

  “No problem.”

  I press Pause and call Daniel.

  “Are y’all doing a show right now?” I ask.

  “No. Why? What’s up? Everything okay. You sound—”

  “When’d you do the show with Roger Lamott?”

  “Week, week and a half ago. Why?”

  “How’d you get him?”

  “Merrick did. Took a while. Just kept trying. Finally he agreed to do it. Why?”

  “I’ve been trying to talk to him. Feel like he’s been avoiding me. Won’t answer my calls. Won’t return my messages.”

  “Oh, shit, wish we’d’ve known. We would’ve let you know.”

  “Did he come and record with y’all in person or call in?”

  “Called in. I’ve never seen the guy. He was awkward to interview. Weird. Acted like he didn’t want to be doing it. Had to pull every word out of him. I don’t know. Have you listened to the interview?”

  “Not yet. Why?”

  “He came on the show to clear his name. He’s very hostile to local law enforcement. I think that’s the real reason Merrick wasn’t on the show. Think he thought he’d have to say something to defend Reggie and . . . Anyway, Lamott said he’s lived under a cloud of suspicion for twelve years now because of leaks, lies, and innuendos from investigators.”

  “Even if that’s true, and I really don’t think it is, there’s a new sheriff and a new investigation—all new investigators.”

  “I pointed that out, but . . . I don’t know. Didn’t seem to do any good. Want me to call him, see if he’ll answer for me, see if I can get him to meet with you? I think we had a pretty good rapport by the time the show ended.”

  “Would you? I’d really
appreciate that. Thanks.”

  After ending the call I start the podcast again, but am distracted by thoughts of Roger Lamott and his motive for avoiding me and saying what he did on the show.

  I pause the podcast.

  Had Lamott had a bad experience with one of the previous sheriffs? Was there talk around town about him being the killer? Or was he going on the offensive as a way of disguising his defensiveness?

  I decide I can ask him myself when my phone starts vibrating a moment later and I see that it’s him.

  38

  “Hear you’re lookin’ for me,” he says.

  “You heard right.”

  “I ain’t avoiding you or nothin’,” he says. “I just ain’t got nothin’ to say. Nothin’ to add. All I did was see her on the highway, stop and ask if she needed help, and call the cops as I pulled away. That’s it. And for that, for happening to be on that road at that time and for trying to do the right thing . . . I get suspected for the rest of my damn life. It ain’t right. And I’m sick of it.”

  “I genuinely don’t know of anyone saying you had anything to do with Randa’s disappearance.”

  “Well, you’re new and not listening I guess.”

  “The sheriff’s new too. It’s a new investigation. We’re trying to get to the truth. That’s all. Do you have something to hide?”

  “The hell would you ask me that? See? I told you I was a suspect.”

  “You’re acting suspicious. You’re acting like you have something to hide. That’s why I asked.”

  “You sound like everybody else,” he says. “Guilty ’til proven innocent. Just like all the rest.”

  He ends the call without another word and when I call back it goes straight to voicemail.

  I try a few more times and on my fourth attempt Chris Anderson beeps in.

  “I’ve got him,” he says. “This time for real. Same person that sent the email to the dad definitely uploaded the confession video online.”

  “Where?” I ask, jumping up from the bed and pulling on my clothes.

  “You’re not gonna believe this,” he says. “Dalkeith.”