COLD BLOOD (a John Jordan Mystery Book 13)

by Michael Lister

  Dalkeith is a small unincorporated area of farms and rural route old home places, dirt roads, dilapidated mobile homes, and river camps. It’s located between Port St. Joe and Wewahitchka, but is a little closer to Wewa.

  “Really?” I say.

  “What if her killer has been right here, that close to us, all this time?”

  “Great work. Thank you. Text me the address. I’m gonna call Reggie. Hang tight. As soon as we secure the scene I’ll call you to come look at his computer.”

  I end the call with Chris and tap in Reggie’s number.

  “We got him,” I say. “Chris tracked him down.”

  “Where?”

  I tell her.

  “Dalkeith?”

  “I’m headed there now. Gonna call dispatch and have a deputy meet me there.”

  “Bad wreck in White City,” she says. “Everybody on the north end of the county is tied up with that. I’ll meet you.”

  “You sure?”

  “Actually already headed that way. Just left the scene of the accident.”

  “Anyone hurt?”

  “Yeah,” she says, “but no fatalities. Log truck coming down off the bridge too fast. Hit two cars stopped in the road waiting for a dog to get out of the way. So . . . what do we have?”

  “Chris says this is definitely the location of the guy who sent the email to Jerry Raffield and posted the confession video on the In Search of Randa Raffield website.”

  “But not the one who Snapchated the picture of Randa or who’s been emailing you?”

  “Right. Though I guess he could be using different accounts or IP addresses or something. Just don’t know enough about it to even guess, but Chris says he thinks it’s two different people.”

  “So this could be . . . May not be the killer. Wow. It’s interesting. To me they all seem credible—the different emails, the Snapchat image, the confession. Hard to believe one of them might be a . . . fraud.”

  “Could be dealing with two killers,” I say. “Work or worked together but now live in and communicate from two different places.”

  “In one way it would make more sense—in terms of them getting away with it, helping each other with every aspect of the abduction, murder, and hiding the body—but . . . in another . . . you’d think one of them would’ve talked by now.”

  “Oh whoever it is, is talking,” I say.

  “No doubt,” she says. “Let’s go see what else they have to say.”

  “Texting you the address,” I say. “See you there.”

  “Wait for me,” she says. “Don’t go in without me.”

  39

  The faded and falling-apart old trailer sits less than fifty yards back off the highway, fronted by a weed-infested yard filled with junk and trash.

  We drive down the dirt and mud driveway, passing piles of aluminum cans, old appliances, abandoned toys, and two vehicles, their hoods up, their tires flat, trash stacked on their roofs and trunks.

  Near the front door of the trailer, tethered to a metal rod in the ground by a chain, is a snarling, squat, bound-up brown and white pit bull.

  Reggie and I had met at the little Dalkeith convenience store and gas station. She had parked her car there and is now riding with me.

  “Can this really be the place?” she asks. “Property records have it listed to a single female with no record. Wonder if she has a boyfriend living with her?”

  Most of the skirting around the bottom of the trailer is missing, revealing a collapsing floor support underneath, and faded, wet, pink insulation falling out of it like stuffing from a dying homemade sock monkey.

  We park at the end of the dirt drive near one of the abandoned vehicles and get out.

  Avoiding the trash and mud and angrily barking pit bull, we make our way to the door and knock on it.

  “Hope that chain holds,” Reggie says. “Hate to have to shoot a dog.”

  It takes a few minutes but eventually the warped aluminum door is opened a crack by a chubby, pasty white boy of about seventeen with black hair and bad skin who looks like he just woke up.

  “Gulf County Sheriff’s Department,” Reggie says. “Who are you?”

  “Huh?” he asks, rubbing sleep from his squinting eyes.

  “What’s your name?” I ask.

  “Alec,” he says. “Alec Henry. My mom’s at work.”

  “What’s her name? You alone here?”

  “Yeah. Ah, June. June Stapleton. She’ll be back . . . sometime this evening.”

  “Can we come in, Alec?” Reggie asks, pushing on the door and walking in without waiting for him to answer the question.

  It’s dim and quiet, the only illumination coming from the light over the stove in the kitchen, the only sound the hum of central AC.

  The inside of the small, narrow house trailer is only slightly less cluttered with junk and trash as the outside. Of course, it could be more cluttered. It’s just too difficult to tell in the dark.

  Alec is wearing either chef pants or pajama bottoms—I can’t tell which—with cats on them and a too-tight wife beater.

  “What do you do, Alec?” Reggie asks.

  “Workin’ on my GED.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Seventeen.”

  “Why aren’t you in school?”

  “Y’all truancy? I’m all legit. Old enough to drop out of that boring shit and still get my degree on my own.”

  “Who lives here with you and your mom?” I ask.

  “Just us.”

  “Make a lot of mess for there just being two of you,” Reggie says.

  “Yeah, we been talkin’ ’bout gettin’ a maid.”

  He’s serious. No hint of humor in what he’s saying.

  “Where’s your computer?” I ask.

  He hesitates a moment, then jerks his head back toward an old desktop at a makeshift desk in the corner of the crowded room.

  It’s old and out of date and covered with papers and magazines.

  “No,” I say. “Your computer.”

  “The one you uploaded the video with,” Reggie says. “The one you used to send the email from Randa to her dad.”

  He tries to look confused but can’t pull it off.

  Suddenly he bolts toward the hallway.

  I lunge at him, slamming into him and knocking him down, his body putting a hole in the thin, brittle paneling of the wall.

  Putting my knee in his back and pulling his hands around behind him, I begin to cuff him.

  Reggie withdraws her weapon and a small penlight and begins down the hallway.

  “Anybody else here?” she asks.

  He doesn’t respond. Too busy expressing his discomfort and pain.

  “Don’t get somebody killed, Alec,” she says. “Is anybody else here?”

  He still doesn’t answer her.

  “Gulf County Sheriff’s Department,” she yells down the dark hallway. “Anybody here? Come out with your hands up. This is your last warning.”

  She feels along the wall and eventually finds a light switch, but nothing happens when she flips it.

  I pull Alec to his feet, press him against the wall, and pat him down.

  “Why were you running?” I ask. “Where’s your computer? Who helped you record the confession? Is anyone else here?”

  “What confession? I didn’t confess to anything? Ain’t done anything.”

  “Where’s your mom work? Anyone else here?”

  “Dollar Store.”

  “Which one?

  “General.”

  “Is she there now?”

  “Yeah. I told you.”

  Footsteps. Someone running.

  I spin around.

  Two loud shots from the hall.

  Shoving Alec down face-first on the floor, I withdraw my weapon and start down the dark hall.

  “Reggie,” I yell. “Reggie. Are you okay?”

  “Oh no. Oh . . . Motherfucker,” Reggie yells. “Goddamnit.”

  “What is it?
You hit?”

  “Quick. Call an ambulance,” she says. “I just shot a kid.”

  40

  “His little brother held the camera and helped him make the video,” Chris is saying. “It’s all here on his computer. All the outtakes and unaltered audio and video.”

  He and I are in the small evidence room of the sheriff’s department, the laptop on the table in front of him, his gloved fingers dancing across the keyboard and track pad.

  “Sent the email to Jerry too,” he says. “Didn’t really even try to hide anything. It’s all in here. Not behind any security walls or anything.”

  “Anything in there indicate why he did it?”

  “Because he could,” he says. “Just thought it’d be cool. See how many views he could get. How’s Reggie?”

  I shrug. “Waiting to see her.”

  He shakes his head. “That’s . . . so . . . I just can’t . . .”

  “I know. Anything else on his computer?”

  “All kinds of shit.”

  “Anything else related to Randa? Did he send the image of her or the emails to me?”

  He shakes his head again. “Wasn’t him.”

  “Anything else? Other crimes or—”

  “Definitely some cyberbullying and . . . theft . . . some . . . sexual stuff that . . . it looks like he made it and . . . it looks illegal. We know his brother’s underage . . . so . . .”

  “Keep looking,” I say. “Let me know what else you find. Be careful with everything. Back it up. Guard chain of custody. When you finish, we’ll turn it over to the FDLE lab and see if they can come up with anything else.”

  Reggie appears as if she’s aged over ten years in less than ten hours.

  Her eyes are hollow and vacant, small and puffy, her normally dark skin pale and splotchy, stretched across her skull like a too-tight drumhead.

  Her movements are slow—like her labored breathing and everything about her.

  She seems to be doing everything from a great distance away, distracted, damaged, dissociative.

  She’s in shock—and acts like it.

  “I’ve asked FDLE to investigate the incident,” she says. “They probably would have anyway, but . . . I’m cooperating fully with them. And I want you to too.”

  She has yet to make eye contact with me. She’s standing behind her desk, a pencil in her hand though she isn’t writing and there is no paper in front of her.

  “The . . . main . . . thing . . . I wanted to . . . say is . . . don’t let any of . . . this . . . interfere with your investigation. Don’t stop. Don’t get . . . distracted by . . .”

  “Forget about all that for now,” I say. “Talk to me. Tell me what you’re thinking, how you’re doing.”

  She shakes her head and frowns. “Don’t know what I could’ve done differently. He came flying out at me from the side with . . . something in his hand. I . . . I just . . . reacted. I . . . Why the fuck wasn’t he in school?”

  The kid, a large-for-his-age eleven-year-old, ran at Reggie from the bathroom with part of a broken and black-taped muffler in his hands.

  “Exactly. Why wasn’t he? Why was he helping his brother in criminal enterprises? Why didn’t his brother tell him to come out, tell us he was there? It’s all on them. Not you. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “I . . . I should have found working lights. I should have waited for . . .”

  “You did everything right in a difficult, unfolding situation,” I say. “I should’ve been back there with you. I took too long with Alec. It’s more my fault than yours—and it’s not your fault at all.”

  “I keep playing it over and over in my head,” she says. “Trying to remember exactly what happened, exactly what I was thinking, if I could’ve done anything differently. The thing is . . . I can’t think of anything I could’ve done differently. And I know given the circumstances . . . I . . . I did okay. But . . . all that’s just intellectual. In my heart I just keep saying I killed a kid.”

  “But you didn’t,” I say. “You only clipped him. He’s gonna be okay. We’re all just grateful you’re not a better shot.”

  She almost smiles at that. Almost, but not quite.

  “I know you feel like shit and you’re in shock,” I say. “It’s understandable. Just go home and get some rest. Sleep for a while. Give yourself time to get over it. But as you do, give yourself a break. Don’t keep going over and over it. Don’t beat yourself up or blame yourself for the obvious criminal failings of others. We should’ve never had to be in that situation. That’s on them. Not you.”

  “Other thing is . . .” she says. “This’ll be shit I have to deal with. More fodder for my critics. More ammunition for my political opponents. It’s embarrassing. And I’m sure there will be some sort of lawsuit against me from the family. It’s just . . . the nightmare of all this . . . is just beginning.”

  “Don’t borrow trouble from tomorrow,” I say. “Today has enough of its own. We’ll deal with everything as it comes and none of it will be as bad as it seems right now. Okay? For now, let it all go and just take care of yourself. Tell Merrick all about it and let him hold you and care for you. Get a big hug from Rain and your mom. Hug them back and remember all the good you’re surrounded by. Then show back up here tomorrow and let’s catch the evil bastard who got Randa. Okay?”

  41

  “Murder is not entertainment,” Nancy is saying. “It’s violent and depraved and as awful as anything humans have ever come up with. Criminal investigation is not entertainment. It’s not just there for our enjoyment. We do this podcast and others like it because we’re interested in murder and homicide investigation. We’re fascinated by it. And we try to make an entertaining show, but . . . murder is not entertainment. What law enforcement does is not for our amusement. What the families of missing and murdered victims go through is unimaginable. It’s a deep, brutal, bitter, acute pain that is merciless and relentless and that has no cure.”

  “Well said,” Daniel says. “An important reminder we all need to hear. All of us who do this and listen to it.”

  I’m driving to Daniel and Sam’s. Anna is already there waiting for me. She, Daniel, and I are driving over to East Point to have dinner at Nancy’s place. Merrick and Reggie were meant to be going too, but I can’t imagine they will after what she’s been through today.

  “If you’ve ever been touched by true crime,” Nancy says, “I mean if brutality and violation and loss has touched you directly, then you’ll know what I mean. It’s not fun or funny. It’s not amusing or entertaining. It’s devastating. Painful beyond belief.”

  “We get that this is entertaining,” Merrick says. “We do. And we’re not saying there’s anything wrong with that. And the last thing we’re trying to do is alienate any of our listeners. But . . . we’ve seen enough and heard enough to know we needed to address this head-on.”

  “Nothing wrong with being entertained by what we and others are doing,” Nancy says. “It becomes wrong when we look at it as purely entertainment, here for our pleasure and titillation, when we forget that these are real people who had unimaginably horrible things happen to them, whose families suffer every single day.”

  “Right,” Daniel says. “If we lose empathy or compassion for the real people we’re talking about—or if we do anything that leads our audience to do that, to stop caring and feeling . . . then we’ve failed.”

  “According to some of the emails and messages we get, we have,” Nancy says. “We’ve done just that. Some of them are so callous and . . . well, cringeworthy.”

  “So we’re just sending out a little reminder to everyone, saying check yourself as we check ourselves. Just to say take a moment, take a look, be aware, remember these are real people, hurting people we’re talking about here.”

  “Tell you another thing that really bothers me,” Daniel says. “And this is just me. I’m not saying it’s wrong for everybody, but . . . while we’re on the subject . . . I’ve heard some true crime podcast
s that are essentially comedy routines throughout the entire show. And they don’t just laugh at criminals and killers and cops, but they make fun of victims and their families too. Actually try to be funny at their expense.”

  “Yeah, I know you have a real problem with those,” Merrick says, “but I don’t. I thought they were using humor—sometimes very sick humor—to get some good points across.”

  “I’m with Daniel on this one,” Nancy says. “Don’t want any part of anything where nothing’s sacred. Victims are sacred. Their families are sacred. And if we’re talking about the same podcast . . . at least one of them got so many case facts wrong it was . . . that was even worse than the gallows humor. Their show was sloppy. So many errors. And not just because they were sacrificing nuance for humor, but just getting the underlying case facts wrong. It was unconscionable.”

  “Do you think . . .” Daniel begins. “I’m just thinking that . . . I wonder if those who are drawn to either create or listen to unsolved murder podcasts are essentially . . . Do we have addictive personalities? Are we always just looking for the next rabbit hole we can jump into? Be it podcast, true crime TV show, book, Reddit or subReddit discussion. We’re all, in a way, armchair detectives, and the best of detectives are obsessive, aren’t they? How else can we explain the explosive growth in popularity of these types of shows?”

  “Remember the one show that was going to examine the effects of these cases on the people who obsessively work them, and then they started working the case instead? They became the thing they were supposed to be studying.”

  “It’s easy to do, isn’t it?” Nancy says. “Which is why this is such a good reminder to us and all our listeners.”

  “Part of what we’re doing here,” Merrick says, “a big part, is consuming other people’s tragedies, isn’t it? Think about that. How warped is that. We eat darkness. We inject sin. We’re bloody voyeurs, virtual rubberneckers but on steroids.”

  “When you say it like that,” Daniel says, “I wonder if there’s any redeeming qualities in what we’re doing.”