Blood Reckoning, page 15
Driving to Carla’s, I glance at my phone and see I’ve missed calls from Dad, Merrill, Sam, Daniel, Merrick, Arnie, Michelle, Fred Miller, Darlene, and Hank Stevens.
As I search Carla’s place again, I listen to the messages and read over the texts.
The first search I did of Carla’s small apartment was a quick search for any obvious signs of violence or clues to where she might have been. Now that I know her fate, I’m doing a much more thorough search.
Knowing that she’ll never have even another second of breath, of life, of growing and evolving, maturing, and pursuing her dreams, makes this small, cluttered, dirty apartment all the more sad and tragic.
Wearing gloves and trying to disturb everything as little as possible, I start in her bedroom.
Her unmade bed has two pillows and two obvious spots where people have slept recently—one adult size and one the size of a small child. Most nights even if John Paul started in his big boy bed he’d wind up in here with his mommy, something he’ll never get to do again.
I blink my stinging eyes and look away.
Searching through her closet, drawers, bedside table, beneath her bed, I place my phone on top of her dresser and play the messages on speaker.
“John, Hank Stevens here. I want to extend my condolences to you from my family. I’m very sorry for your loss. Carla had a lot of potential and was a good girl. I’d like to meet with you at your earliest convenience to discuss a few things, including how my office can assist you in the investigation. I know you spoke with Easton earlier. I just want to reiterate that he had nothing to do with any of this, obviously. I won’t have his life turned upside down or he or his wife embarrassed because . . . Look, I know you’re going to be gunning for revenge. I get it. I want to help you catch the bastard who did this. But don’t let your anger and sorrow make you hurt innocent people. Okay? That’s the main thing. Don’t punish innocent people just because you’re upset. Call me when you can.”
“I’m so sorry, son,” Dad says. “Call me when you can. Let me know what Verna and I can do. And anything my office can do just let me know. Anything at all.”
Merrill’s message says, “I’m here. Anything you need. Call me.”
Besides more sadness and deep sorrow, the only thing I turn up in Carla’s bedroom is a journal in between her mattress and boxsprings near the top of her bed by her nightstand.
I bag it to bring with me.
Though I don’t expect to find anything of evidentiary value, I search John Paul’s room.
Setting down the evidence bags in the hallway, I open a large trash bag and fill it with the toys and stuffed animals I think will be the most comforting. I also grab his pillow, blanket, and the picture of him and his mom on his little nightstand.
The living room and kitchen don’t yield anything helpful, but the bathroom delivers a bombshell.
In the bottom of the small trash can, beneath wadded tissues, Q-tips, and a few empty makeup and hygiene containers, I find a positive pregnancy test.
CHAPTER
FIFTY-THREE
Back in my truck, I call Zaire, Merrill’s wife.
She’s a doctor at Sacred Heart in Port St. Joe, and I have a few questions for her.
Merrill answers.
“Just about to come looking for you,” he says.
“Spent the evening with the family, comforting John Paul,” I say. “Just got them to sleep not long ago.”
“Where you now?” he asks.
“In my truck outside Carla’s apartment. Got a couple of questions for Za.”
“Ask away,” he says. “You on speaker.”
“Hey, John,” she says. “I’m so, so sorry about Carla. Let us know anything we can do to help.”
“Thank you.”
Someone pulls into the apartment complex, their headlights hitting my rearview.
“I just found a pregnancy test in Carla’s apartment,” I say. “I have no idea when she took it, but she’s been missing three days so . . . at least that long. Will the reading still be accurate?”
“Depends,” she says. “A negative reading is probably still accurate. If it reads positive it’s going to depend on a few factors.”
“I thought I had heard somewhere that negative results can flip positive over time,” I say.
“That’s right,” she says. “It can happen—especially with the cheap tests. What’s being tested is the woman’s HCG hormone. It needs to be a five or greater. It doubles every forty-eight hours, so the farther along she is the better chance for an accurate result is. The more distinct the positive line will be and the better chance it’s not a negative test that flipped positive later. How thick and dark and distinct is the positive line?”
“Very,” I say.
“Then the chances are very good that she was actually pregnant—and probably a few months.”
Merrill says, “And chances are there’s the motive for her murder.”
CHAPTER
FIFTY-FOUR
“Carla was pregnant,” I whisper.
We are sitting at our kitchen table having a quiet cup of tea, the kids a few feet away asleep on the floor in the living room.
Anna frowns, tears glistening in her eyes.
It was one of our fears. Carla was having a difficult enough time taking care of John Paul—even with our help. We wondered what she’d do if she had another child. We wondered what we’d do. Now I wish we would’ve been able to find out.
“Seems more of a motive for Easton than Mason,” she says.
I nod. “Yes, it does. Or Easton’s wife. But it may not have been part of the motive at all. We’ve got to find out whose it was and who if anyone even knew about it.”
She nods. “Yeah, hard to see that really being the motive.”
“Certainly not what it once was, is it? But . . . it could’ve been part of what caused someone to lose it in the moment. Not necessarily the motive behind a premeditated murder.”
“That what you think happened?”
I shrug and nod. “Seems to be spur of the moment, unplanned, disorganized.”
She shakes her head, more tears spilling out of her eyes. “Still can’t believe she’s gone.”
I nod and take her hand, trying not to think about it.
On the way back home I had called Michelle and told her what I had discovered and asked her to get the ME to check to confirm and take the necessary steps for us to be able to do paternity tests. I also asked her to keep it quiet for now.
“We are going to take John Paul in, aren’t we?” she asks.
I nod.
“Think anyone will fight us for him?”
I shrug. “I’ve given up guessing what other people will do, but . . . it’s hard to imagine anyone will . . . His biological father has never had anything to do with him, and on Carla’s side there’s only Rudy.”
I don’t tell her any of what Rudy said.
“Don’t suppose she ever made a will,” she says.
Anna had encouraged her to make a will after John Paul was born and even offered to help her, but as far as we know she never did it.
“Her bedside table seemed to hold all her important papers,” I say. “I bagged them and brought them with me, but I haven’t looked through them yet.”
“I can’t see Mason or Easton agreeing to a paternity test,” she says. “Especially Easton.”
I nod.
There are ways around that, but I don’t mention it.
“Mason might be willing, but . . .” she says. “I doubt it. No upside. He’ll still be the prime suspect whether it’s his or Easton’s. If her death has something to do with her pregnancy or who she was involved with—and they most often do—who else has a motive? Mason and Easton. Easton’s wife, Meg, right? Lillian Mosely, who Mason was still seeing . . .”
“Lily’s husband, Joel,” I say. “He could’ve gone out there looking for Mason and found Carla instead and got into an altercation and . . .”
“True.”
Eventually, we lay back down on the living room floor with the kids.
Anna is asleep in moments.
And with my family sleeping around me, I open Carla’s diary with gloved hands and read her most intimate thoughts and feelings in the light from my phone as “The River” echoes in my head.
CHAPTER
FIFTY-FIVE
Jordan Grant is a late-twenties single mom of twin boys who works at one of the three Dollar Stores in town.
She’s biracial with the most exquisite toffee skin, big black eyes, and long black hair.
I catch her on a break, eating a Honey Bun and drinking a Diet Mountain Dew on the side of the corrugated tin building.
“I still can’t believe she’s really gone,” she says with tears in her eyes. “We weren’t all that close, but . . .”
“She wrote in her diary what a good friend you were to her,” I say.
Carla only wrote in her diary occasionally, sporadically, and mostly about John Paul. I’m working my way through it, searching for clues as to what happened to her and who might be responsible, but I’m not hopeful there will be much in it that’s helpful in that regard.
She nods. “I was.”
“But you two weren’t close?”
“Right. I was a good friend to her when she’d let me be. She wasn’t really a good friend to me. She wasn’t bad to me or anything. It was sort of one-sided and only like . . . here and there . . . now and then. She had y’all. She depended on y’all. She ran with Bailey some, but mostly if she was taking time away from John Paul it was to be with a guy.”
“Who all was she seeing?”
“Mason Hayes,” she says. “Before him. Easton. Before that . . . nobody in particular. A random hookup here and there.”
Jordan was Carla’s most settled friend, the one she could count on for help with John Paul, support, and sound advice.
“We never went out together or anything,” she says. “I don’t really go out. Don’t date. I take care of my boys and work. That’s about all I have time for. She’d come over and hang out some while the boys played. She’d get me to keep John Paul some. But that was about it. We’d talk a little when she’d bring him by or pick him up or when she’d hang a little, but that’s about it.”
“Did you know she was pregnant?”
She nods. “She asked me what I thought she should do. I was honest with her. I told her it seemed like she was having a hard enough time caring for JP, so if she did keep it she needed to get serious about making motherhood more of a priority. Don’t get me wrong. She wasn’t a bad mother. She was good. But her focus was scattered some. You can’t really be about your kids and chasing a guy.”
“Did she know whose it was?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “Said she wasn’t sure. She . . . I think she and Easton still slipped off occasionally and she must’ve gotten pregnant around the time she was seeing both him and Mason. But I don’t know for sure.”
“Did she say whether she was going to keep it or not?” I ask.
“Didn’t say. Just asked my advice. Talked about how she felt. And—”
“How’d she feel?”
“Torn. She wanted it but knew she didn’t have the bandwidth for it.”
“Do you know who all she had told?” I ask. “Had she told Mason and Easton?”
“I don’t think she’d told anyone else at that point. But that was about a week ago, so . . . She was dreading tellin’ you. Said she knew you’d be understanding and want to help, but she felt guilty, like y’all had helped her so much with John Paul and she had gone and gotten pregnant again without being in a stable relationship. And it may have even been by someone who was married to someone else.”
“Who do you think killed her?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “I have no idea. I can’t see either Mason or Easton doing it. I mean, I guess chances are it was one of them, right? But neither seems the type. I don’t know. Maybe it was someone she didn’t even know and didn’t have anything to do with, and she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. That’s what I’m hoping for.”
CHAPTER
FIFTY-SIX
“Very preliminary autopsy results are somewhat inconclusive,” Michelle is saying.
She has joined me, Arnie, and Darlene in Fred Miller’s office.
“Inconclusive?” Miller says.
“So far. Doesn’t mean they’ll end up that way.”
“But inconclusive between what?” he says.
“Manner and cause of death,” she says. “Whether it was homicide or suicide. Typically in a hanging the rope rides up on the neck in the shape of an inverted V. With strangulation, the rope marks around the neck are more level. Obviously, if strangulation was caused by hands then thumb and finger marks will often appear. A hanged neck is usually more damaged than a strangled neck. I’m talking about on an actual hanging. With an actual hanging the neck might be broken, or even stretched, but this isn’t a hanging. This is a strangulation. A hanging requires a drop to break the neck. This is a strangulation. The question is . . . did the victim do it herself or was it done to her. Suicide by self strangulation is only second to firearms, but homicide by hanging is extremely rare.”
“All of that’s true,” I say, “but . . . there’s a third option.”
She nods.
“Which is what?” Darlene asks.
“That she was strangled to death and then hung up in an attempt to cover it up.”
“Right,” Michelle says. “A strangled body will generally have petechiae and other marks in the face and eyes that a hanging doesn’t. Death by hanging shuts down blood in both directions, so there are usually fewer symptoms. The thing is . . . the condition of the body . . . given that it had been hanging out there in the elements for three days . . . is making it difficult to determine certain aspects of manner and cause of death with absolute certainty. We’ll eventually get a determination. They just wanted us to know where things stand in these early stages.”
“I think it’s a suicide,” Darlene says. “I think she was devastated to be left like that. Humiliated. But she didn’t want to do it right there where everybody would see, so she broke into the storage locker, grabbed the cables, swam across the river, and hung herself.”
“It wasn’t suicide,” I say.
“I think it was,” she says. “You’re too close to see it, but . . . and with her being pregnant and desperate and rejected.”
I glare at Michelle.
“It wasn’t suicide,” I say. “And her being pregnant supports that. No way she’d kill herself. She wouldn’t leave John Paul, and she wouldn’t do it over being pregnant.”
“Everybody who kills themselves leaves people behind,” Darlene says. “Children. Parents. Spouses. And everybody always thinks their loved one didn’t kill themselves, that they couldn’t.”
“We’re gonna follow the evidence,” Miller says. “No matter where it leads us.”
“The evidence says it wasn’t suicide,” I say. “She didn’t have her clothes on and they weren’t found at the scene.”
“Mason could’ve taken them,” she says. “Would’ve made her more embarrassed and desperate. He fucks her, then leaves her naked and alone.”
I shake my head. “It’s very likely her clothes were burned in the fire at the McDaniel place. That’s someone covering up a crime, destroying evidence. The rubber found in the fire is probably from the boots that made the prints found at the crime scene.”
“Someone could’ve come along and stolen her clothes and things,” she says. “After she was already dead. Her phone. Her jewelry. Her clothes. They could’ve left the bootprints.”
“Then there would’ve been footprints from where she walked up there to begin with. And you’d have to ignore the fire at the McDaniel’s. And . . . I don’t think she could’ve swum across the river naked carrying jumper cables, but even if she could . . . the current would’ve taken her a lot farther downstream. And none of this takes into account that her car was hidden, driven into the river. That was done by whoever killed her. She didn’t do it. No one else had a motive or would’ve had her keys.”
“You just don’t want to see the truth,”
“That’s all I want to see,” I say. “And everything I’ve said is based on the evidence. You have to ignore evidence for your theory to work.”
“Continue to investigate,” Miller says. “Follow the evidence. And for now keep her being pregnant to ourselves. Everybody keep an open mind and go where the evidence leads. Nowhere else.”
Arnie says, “We gonna ask Mason and Easton to take paternity tests?”
Miller nods. “Eventually. But we can’t make them, so we have to wait for the right time and frame it the right way. Hopefully we’ll get more helpful evidence back from FDLE and the ME’s office soon. Don’t jump to conclusions. Wait to see what they say. Okay . . . Where are we with Olivia Nelson?”
“Her ex has a credible alibi for the night she was attacked,” I say.
“Doesn’t mean he wasn’t involved,” Darlene says.
“No, it doesn’t. He could’ve hired someone to make himself look less suspicious.”
“I think that’s what he did,” Darlene says. “He’s gaslighting the shit out of her, preying on her vulnerabilities. Look at him hard.”
“We are,” I say.
Arnie says, “There’s nothing helpful from her attack. No prints. No DNA. No physical evidence of any kind.”
“Another suspect we need to consider is Easton Stevens,” I say. “He’s already a suspect in Carla’s murder. I think he could have something to do with what’s happening to Olivia Nelson also. He was out in the wooded lot the night we found Roy. Claims he saw the light and went to check it out, but he didn’t call 9-1-1 and he left the scene without identifying himself or even letting us know he was there. He also hit me on the back of the head before leaving.”
“Okay, let’s look at him closely, but . . . follow the evidence. Nothing else. Don’t force things to fit theories of who you want to be guilty.”
