Blood Trail, page 17
part #18 of John Jordan Mystery Series
But like before I can see no pattern, no similar victimology, no series these disparate woman can be a part of.
Leaving their physical descriptions and lifestyle details for the moment, I start examining their autopsy results, and that’s when, randomly, unrelatedly, I realize why the unknown phone number on the log looks familiar to me.
I pick up the call log and look at it again.
The number is just one digit different than a number my brother, Jake, used to have. In fact, it’s all the same numbers—it just has two of the digits transposed.
So I don’t know the number at all. It just reminds me of Jake’s old number.
This frustrates me even more than thinking I knew it but not being able to place it.
I stand to get some water and try to shake off the frustration and reset my mind, and that’s when the image shakes loose in my mind and floats up to my consciousness.
It’s an old snapshot of Jake sitting in an ancient Ford pickup he used to have. Over his shoulder, across the back window behind him, he has a gun rack, like nearly everyone in Pottersville did back then. The top two hooks hold a Browning 12 gauge with a beautiful woodgrain finish. The middle two hooks are empty. But the bottom two hooks hold an old-fashioned, narrow wooden Louisville Slugger bat like the blood-covered one found in the swamp not far from the blood trail where Chris had been beaten to death.
Jumping up, I quickly pen Anna a note and rush out the door into the night to look Jake in the eyes when I ask him about his bat.
“Figured you’d be by here long before now,” Jake says when he opens the door.
“Oh, yeah? Why’s that?”
“You know why.”
“You gonna invite me in?” I say.
“Why don’t we have a seat out here beneath the stars?”
He joins me on the little wooden porch in front of his single-wide, closing the door behind him.
“Have a seat,” he says, gesturing toward one of the two wooden rocking chairs on either side of the whiskey barrel table.
We each ease down into a rocker and begin slowly rocking back and forth a bit.
I realize again just what a lonely little life Jake is living, and it makes me sad anew.
Since dad lost the election for sheriff of Potter County and Jake lost his job as deputy, he had mostly just floundered, working odd jobs, watching as the rest of the world seemed to keep moving—mostly away from him. I had married Anna and moved to Wewa. Dad now had Verna. Our lives were full and busy, but Jake had no one and not much to do.
I feel a pang of guilt that I haven’t done more to try to help Jake and recommit to doing just that if I get the opportunity.
“Where’s that skinny old Louisville Slugger you used to have?” I say.
“I’m gonna tell you what every criminal you’ve ever asked about something like this has told you,” he says.
“It was stolen?” I say.
He smiles. “It was stolen.”
“And I’m gonna ask you what every cop always asks next,” I say.
“Did you fill out a police report?” he says. “Oldies but goodies.”
“Why’d you do it?” I ask. “First, why’d you leave the bat out there?”
“Always best to leave the weapon behind,” he says. “’Sides . . . figured you’d see it and know it was mine and might look out for me.”
“Might?”
“You know what I mean,” he says. “I wouldn’t expect you to tamper with evidence or setup an innocent man or anything, but I thought you might not have too much heartburn with maybe sort of directing the investigation into who fucked up Anna’s ex with a baseball bat away from your baby brother.”
“Why’d you do it?” I ask.
“Needed to be done,” he says. “Nothing else seemed to be working. He broke into your home and held your family hostage, John. Put a goddamn gun up to Johanna’s little head.”
“I know. I was there.”
“If anyone ever needed a Louisville Slugger taken to them it was that bastard.”
“Sure, but—”
“Remember that trouble I got into a while back with the search and rescue boys?” he says.
I nod.
“You saved my life in more ways than one,” he says. “Kept me from gettin’ fuckin’ raped and kept me out of prison. Mom’s gone. Nancy’s in New York and not coming back. Dad’s getting old and has his health issues. ’Fore long it’ll just be the two of us. I knew you weren’t gonna get physical with him—or that you wouldn’t want to and you’d feel guilty as fuck if you did, so I . . . pinch hit for you.”
“Jake . . .”
“I know we ain’t close like some brothers are,” he says. “But . . . you’re. . . my big brother and . . . I . . . love . . .”
“I love you,” I say. “And I . . . thank you for what you did.”
“I wasn’t the only one,” he says. “Merrill beat the shit out of him too. And Dad had already gotten in a few good licks on his sorry ass earlier that day.”
“How did—” I begin, but my phone starts vibrating.
I pull it out to see that Reggie is calling, which given the hour means I need to take it.
“Hey,” I say.
“Where are you?” she asks, her voice stressed, breathless.
“Pottersville. What’s up?”
“Cody Faircloth is holding Melissa and Channing Tate at gunpoint in their RV. How fast can you get to the campground?”
45
“I’m not a bad guy,” Cody is saying.
“I know that,” I say, though I know nothing of the sort.
I’m in the open doorway of Channing and Melissa Tate’s RV, my hands up showing I don’t have a weapon.
Cody is facing Melissa, pressing the barrel of his .40 caliber Glock into the side of her head, his own forehead leaning into hers. She is wearing a thin, pale yellow tank top and white cotton panties and nothing else. She has an end-of-summer tan, more beige and bronze, but all the color has drained from her face, and it appears anemic and clammy.
A few feet away Channing sits in his recliner, pressing his palms into the gunshot wound in his abdomen, his wife beater as red as his suspenders, the once-white fabric soaked through and dripping blood.
“I’m not crazy,” Cody says. “I didn’t imagine what we have.”
“No,” Melissa says, “you didn’t. We have something so . . . unique.”
I can’t tell if she’s being sincere or just saying what she thinks he wants her to.
“You’re singing a different tune now that that old fat fuck over there is gut shot, and I’m holding a gun to your head,” he says.
Instead of Cody’s eyes being wide and wild like I’d expect, they’re actually sleepy hooded slits which I suspect means he’s drunk or on some form of downer.
“I . . . You know I couldn’t be honest before,” she says. “Channing was standing right there.”
“And now he’s sitting right here.”
Cody’s hands are shaking, and though the air conditioner is running and the RV is frigid, he’s sweating profusely.
“It’s different now.”
“Yeah,” he says. “There’s a .40 caliber Glock pressed against your temple.”
Though the front of my body is cool, the back, with the door open out onto the summer night behind me, is hot, and I can feel beads of sweat trickling down my back.
“No, I mean I can be honest now,” she says. “I am being honest. I love you. I want to be with you.”
“Prove it,” he says.
Channing’s head is hanging down now, and he’s emitting soft, low moaning sounds.
“You prove you’re not a bad guy,” I say, “by letting me get Channing some help before he bleeds out. Put the gun down.”
“How can I prove it?” Melissa says to him when he doesn’t respond to me.
“Tell me to finish him off and leave with me now,” Cody says.
“I’ll leave with you,” she says. “Let’s go. But there’s no need to kill silly old Channing. You kill him, and they’ll always be hunting us. Let him live, and we can be together. Let him live for us.”
“You’re just saying that ’cause you want him and not me,” Cody says. “You want me to let him live so you can get back with him.”
“That’s not it, I swear,” she says.
“Then prove it.”
Cody seems so unhinged that I suspect he will fire his weapon whether he means to or not.
“I can’t.”
“Think about all I’ve done for you,” she says. “What I’ve given up, what I’ve sacrificed, what I’ve done.”
“Cody,” I say, “prove you’re not a bad guy. It’s not too late. We can still fix this. But that gets a lot a more challenging if someone dies. Let me get the EMTs in here to help Channing.”
“Look, John Jordan, all this is your fault anyway. Coming at me the way you have been. So why don’t you just do everyone a favor and shut the fuck up.”
“I thought you wanted a life with Melissa,” I say. “A future.”
“I’ve got no fuckin’ life left. You saw to that. Now I’ll just settle for no one else having a life with her.”
“Even if that’s true,” I say. “Don’t you want some more time with her first? You can buy more time with Channing. Let the EMTs come in and get him. You can keep me if you want, but let him go.”
“Would you please shut the fuck up,” he says.
“I thought you let me in here so I could help,” I say. “That’s all I want to do. Make it so everyone gets out of here alive—including you. You can have your life back. It’s just a few good decisions.”
“I swear to fuckin’ Christ Almighty if you say another word I’m gonna shoot you in the fuckin’ face just to get you to shut the fuck up.”
Jake
He would be dead or in prison right now if it weren’t for John.
Instead, he’s outside the Tate’s RV at the Dead Lakes Campground with Reggie, the EMTs, and a few other Gulf County cops, while John tries to get the dumbass deputy to put his gun down and not kill anyone else.
John didn’t hesitate when Reggie told him Cody would only talk to him and only inside the RV. No weapon. No vest. No hesitation.
He had always respected his older brother. Even when he didn’t understand him, even when he was so jealous of him he couldn’t see straight, he respected him. And that had only grown in the last few years. Now he liked him, loved him, and respected him.
Of course, he was gonna come to his defense. Of course, he was gonna help protect John and his family from the mental motherfucker tryin’ to destroy them. There was never any question.
He’d always liked Anna and felt bad for her. He knew how humiliated she had been by Chris—as if it had anything to do with her, as if it was her fault somehow.
He saw firsthand the toll it had taken on both of them, John and Anna, and he had watched it long enough, stood by and done nothing far too long.
Besides, when you really thought about it, what did he have to lose?
When he asked himself that at the time, he thought, Got no family—besides Dad and Verna, John and Anna and my two nieces—got no career, got no girlfriend, got nothing going on really and no damn prospects, so of course, it has to be me.
He had to be the one to step up to the plate. It was when he had that thought he knew he had to take the bat to Chris.
He had beaten the fuck out of that sorry piece of shit who had held a gun up to his little niece’s head. He had enjoyed every second of it. He doesn’t regret anything he did. He’d gladly do it all again.
Channing only has moments—unless it’s already too late—and Cody doesn’t seem like he’s going to put down his weapon voluntarily.
I’m close enough to tackle him, but there’s no way he wouldn’t be able to squeeze the trigger and open Melissa’s skull before I even got a hand on him.
“We coulda been so happy together,” Cody is saying to her.
“We still can, baby. We can. You gotta give us that chance.”
I can’t tell for sure, but I believe she’s lying, just saying anything she can think of to try to keep Cody from killing her.
“You’re such a practiced whore,” he says. “You’ll say anything right now—and hell, you’re halfway believable.”
“What do you have to lose?” she says. “If you’re gonna kill us all anyway, what do you have to lose to see if I’m telling the truth? You could give us a try, you and me. You could always kill us later?”
He seems to think about that.
It’s a good argument, and at first, it seems like he’s convinced.
“I don’t know . . .” he says. “I don’t know.”
“Remember what you said to me the last time you were inside me,” she says. “Remember that? What was the line from that poem? Don’t tell me we don’t ever get to feel that way again.”
He shakes his head as if a bee is buzzing around it. “Goddamn it, you’re good. You’re the damn devil. How could I have been so fuckin’ stupid?”
He shoves her away, and she falls back over the table and onto the bench beside it.
As he does, he’s no longer pointing the gun at her, so I dive in his direction.
He turns, bringing up the gun.
Quick. No hesitation. No thought. Just action.
At first, I think he’s bringing the gun up to fire it at me, but quickly realize he intends to shoot himself.
Which he does. Without hesitation. Without flinching. One quick, fluid motion.
Under the chin. One shot. The back of his head exploding as I tackle him to the floor.
Melissa screams. Loudly. But it’s barely perceptible against the ringing in my ears the discharge of the weapon in the small space has caused.
I roll off of Cody Faircloth as EMTs rush in to work on him, and I continue to lie there a moment as they realize there’s absolutely nothing they can do for him and turn their attention to Channing Tate.
One of the EMTs says something to me. Reggie is at the door asking me questions. I have yet to move. And I can’t hear either of them, which at the moment is just fine with me.
46
I crawl into bed beside Anna, head aching, ears ringing, exhausted, but wired.
She rolls over and backs up to me, and we spoon in the cool darkness, the soft sounds of the girls breathing and occasionally stirring coming through the baby monitor, the digitization of the noises transformed into something hollow and tinny.
I try to sleep. I need to sleep. Soon I find I am unable to sleep.
Every time I close my eyes I see Cody’s head exploding.
When I’m not seeing that, I’m seeing Chris’s head bashed in by a long, thin old-fashioned Louisville Slugger.
Of course, Chris’s head wasn’t bashed in. But that didn’t prevent me from seeing it.
In my mind, I see Dad, Merrill, and Jake brutally beating Chris, see them and Anna and Reggie and Sylvia taking turns stabbing his dead body.
And then I realize the significance of the twelve stab wounds. Agatha Christie used twelve stab wounds for the victim, a Mr. Samuel Ratchett, in Murder on the Orient Express because twelve is the number of people on a jury.
Does it mean what I think it means? I’ll have to give it some more thought, but right now I’m still in shock, too wound up and wired to think about it.
Eventually, I slip out of bed and pad down the hallway to the kitchen table and the copies of case files Captain Jack gave me.
Anna had punched holes in the papers and placed them in a binder for me. I pick up the binder and walk around the kitchen and living room looking at its contents.
The binder feels like a book in my hands, my actions of walking around with it and flipping through it reminding me of reading, and there is something comforting and inspiring about it.
I flip from victim to victim, searching for similarities, looking for patterns, trying to find Rebecca’s killer hiding behind them.
But they’re too different, too disparate in their ages, hair and eye colors, body types, races, and backgrounds.
Apart from being shot in a similar manner—execution style—and being buried in shallow graves in Florida state parks and campgrounds, I can see nothing that connects them.
And then I take a closer look.
I discard all the victims that were shot with a different caliber weapon, shot in another part of the body, or shot more than once.
I now have a much smaller group of mostly young female victims—ones that match Rebecca almost identically regarding manner of death and body disposal.
These are cold killings. Not the passionate murders of obsessed and jealous and mentally unstable boyfriends.
I look to their autopsy results for additional evidence, searching for signs of rape or torture.
There are none.
The killings just grew even colder.
These are executions like the ones often seen by contract killers.
It’s rare to see young women so dispassionately dispatched from their lives.
Who is the iceman who’s doing this?
You’re a cold bastard, aren’t you?
I then see two things almost simultaneously that together roll the fog back for me and give me a glimpse of this sociopathic serial killer.
All the young women on this more narrowly defined list were killed and buried in campgrounds like the Dead Lakes Recreational Center where Rebecca Blackburn was found. Not state parks. Not hiking trails. Not national parks. All were killed and buried in small, private or county-run campgrounds.
The second thing I see at nearly the same moment is all the young women’s autopsies reveal scarring to the backside of the pubic ramus bone and changes in the uterine musculature and the breast tissues. Just like Rebecca.
“That’s it,” I say aloud.
“What’s it?”
I spin around to see Anna squinting at me from the hallway.
“Did I wake you?”
“No. Well, maybe, but only by not being beside me. What’s up? You couldn’t sleep? You look like you’re officiating a wedding or a funeral standing there with the binder like that. Though you usually don’t do those in your underwear.”
