Blood Trail, page 7
part #18 of John Jordan Mystery Series
“It doesn’t necessarily have to be one of us,” he says. “I’m sure Chris was mixed up in all kind of criminal activities—before he was arrested the first time and since.”
“We’ll look into that too.”
“So you’re gonna be involved?”
I nod.
“That’s good,” he says. “That’s good.”
“Officially I’ll be working the murder of the young woman, but unofficially . . .”
The night is hot and humid, the air thick and still and moist. The bright moon casts faint shadows and shimmers on the unmoving surface of Julia’s face. From down by the lake a loud cacophony of crickets and frogs and other nocturnal critters drowns out all the other sounds save our voices.
“A lot of people owe you,” he says. “Could’ve easily been one of them.”
Sylvia, Reggie’s mother comes to mind as do Daniel and Sam and others—including Verna, Dad’s new wife.
“I’m thinking even if one of them didn’t do it,” he adds, “they might confess to it if they thought you or Anna did.”
I haven’t thought of that. He could be right. Actually, he could be considering doing it if it comes to that.
Did he punch a wall to bruise and swell his knuckles to setup a future confession if it looks like his son or daughter in-law are going to be charged in the case?
“What about Randa Raffield?” he says. “She said she was going to do it. Maybe she did.”
“We’ll look at her hard,” I say, “though it’s hard to see how she could’ve done it.”
“Be nice if she did somehow,” he says. “She’s already in custody. Probably going to spend a lot of time in prison anyway. Lot easier for one person to serve the same time for two different crimes than ruining two different lives.”
I’ve never heard Dad talk quite like this before. He sounds less like a lifelong lawman than a few ex-cons I know.
“Wish this would’ve happened in Pottersville a couple of years back,” he says.
I think about the advantages and disadvantages of that. If it appears a local agency is corrupt or covering something up—even in a single investigation—the governor can task FDLE with investigating both the crime and the coverup. Something far worse than inviting an agent in to assist with the investigation in the first place. Reggie is being smart and she knows it.
“You sound different now than when you were in office,” I say. “Or maybe it’s just different about this particular case.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. I’ve just seen so much over the years and . . . know that justice is at best a very elusive concept.”
“I don’t disagree,” I say, “but doesn’t that mean we have to be even more careful not to apply what we do arbitrarily?”
“You’ve always been more idealistic than me,” he says.
Is that what it comes down to? Idealism versus realism or even nihilism.
“Did you ever intentionally not solve a case?” I ask.
He nods. “Of course. Remember Miss Iris?”
I nod.
“She killed her husband,” he says. “But only after years of him battering her. Something like that . . . I wasn’t going to take the chance that a jury would acquit her. Juries are unpredictable and too often stupid. Another time I did it was when a teen killed the man who molested him as a kid. Unsolveds aren’t always bad. And sometimes the colder a case is . . . the better.”
In some ways he’s talking about a very different era than the one we’re living in now, but in others things haven’t changed as much as they seem to have.
“Remember the first night he showed up over here?” Dad says. “I knew then it was going to end up something like this. I just wanted it to be him instead of you or your wife or girls—or even one of us. Then when he broke into your home and held a gun on you, on Johanna . . .”
I let that one hang in the atmosphere between us.
“Man like that . . . that would do that . . . not gonna stop, never gonna change. Only thing for them is to be put down like a rabid dog. Been better for everyone if it had been done sooner, but . . . got there eventually.”
Jack
Driving home from John’s with Verna, after spending time with his granddaughters, he thinks about the threat Chris has posed to his family and how hard it had been for him not to put him down sooner.
Jack Jordan is or at least was, for most of his life, an old school, small town, Deep South sheriff—something that’s about as all-powerful as an American citizen can get. Or at least it used to be. He’s accustomed to doing things a certain way. His way.
To the best of his ability to recollect and to evaluate such matters, he doesn’t think he ever abused or misused his power. At least not in any meaningful way. He had never taken any kind of kickback, never played politics, never allowed favors from rich or poor, powerful or powerless. But he had also never felt the need to strictly color within the lines when common sense and good judgement dictated otherwise.
He still felt guilty for how he had handled John’s transition from submissive teenage son to young man making his own way in the world. Was still trying to make it up to him every chance he got.
He had not supported John’s move to Atlanta, his spiritual pursuits, his inexplicable need to be a minister and an investigator. It had been among other things a failure of imagination on his part—that and stubbornness and pride. He full well expected John to fail, to come back home and ask his dad for a job as an investigator in the Pottersville Sheriff’s department.
But it wasn’t just that he didn’t support him, he actually abandoned him, acted as if John had betrayed him somehow. During that time Frank Morgan had been far more a father to John than he had. Of course what frightens and shames him even more is he might still be.
That’s why he knew he couldn’t allow a piece of shit like Chris Taunton to try to kill his son, to stalk and threaten his family, to actually break into their home and hold a gun to his granddaughter’s little head without doing something about it.
There’s nothing he wouldn’t do for his son. He and Verna are alike in that.
He thinks about what she had done for her own son and concludes she would understand what he had done for his.
He tries to push away such thoughts, but it’s all he can think about now.
He wants to talk to her about it, but he’s not going to put that on her. It wouldn’t be fair, wouldn’t be right. And that’s something he’s going to do. Whether it agrees with or contradicts the law, Jack Jordan is going to do what he thinks is right.
18
After Dad and Verna leave, I sit down in one of the outdoor metal chairs beneath the pergola on the side of our house and call the jail administrator back.
I had expected to hear from him earlier in the day, and it worries me that I haven’t.
The Gulf County jail is not part of the sheriff’s department. It is owned and operated by the board of county commissioners and is run by an administrator hired by the board to do so.
Though the guards are certified like state correctional officers, the security of the jail is lax and laid back to an extreme that makes all of us in the sheriff’s department perpetually uneasy. For most of those arrested in our small county—on charges like violation of probation, DUIs, various drug charges—it’s not much of an issue, but for someone like Randa Raffield it’s a huge problem—something we warned the jailer about.
Unlike the prison where I work part-time, the jail has no sallyport, no dual locking doors with a holding area between them. A single door separates the inmates from freedom—and it is often not secured like it should be. We routinely observe it open, one of the inmate cooks, hanging out of it smoking, as we come and go from the sheriff’s department.
Though the jail has a few two-person cells and a holding cell up front, the vast majority of inmates are in an open bay dorm in the back.
Recently, an inmate in one of the cells was able to climb up through the ceiling, across the catwalk into the courthouse, and down into the judge’s office to use his computer. Supposedly that’s not possible any longer, but with an old jail built in the 1960s run the way this one is, there’s no telling what other security breaches there are just waiting for someone like Randa to exploit.
Fortunately, female inmates are housed at the Liberty County jail, which has far tighter security procedures in place, but even Gulf County’s female inmates pass through the Gulf County jail on their way to and from court. They’re housed in a special holding cell up front designated to do so.
Patch McMyers, the jail administrator, doesn’t answer until the fifth ring.
“John, sorry I didn’t get back with you today,” he says, his voice sounding dry and sleepy. “I’ve still got a few details to track down.”
“Is there an issue?” I ask. “Should’ve just been a simple verification, right?”
“Well . . . yeah, but I wanted to be absolutely sure about everything, be able to say with certainty where the inmate was at all times.”
“And you’re not able to so far?”
“We’re almost there,” he says. “Just crossing t’s and dotting i’s.”
“Have you verified she’s still in custody?” I ask.
“Yes,” he says. “I had a correctional officer not only put eyes on her earlier today, but actually physically touch her and take her fingerprints.”
“And you confirmed it was her?”
“Sure did. So we’re all good there.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“Verifying her exact whereabouts at the time the murder was committed.”
“You haven’t been able to do that yet?” I ask. “What’s the holdup?”
“Well, she was actually up here in our jail at the time—or on her way, depending on what time the murder took place.”
“Really? Why?”
“She had a court appearance first thing the next morning and the Liberty County jail was going to be shorthanded the next day, so they asked if they could bring her the night before and have her stay in the holding cell overnight?”
“And that’s what she did?”
“Seems so. There’re a few little anomalies with the paperwork I wanted to clear up before I called you back. Should have them straightened out before long. I’ll call you as soon as I have everything in order and know for certainty.”
“But at this point you believe Randa Rafffield was in a Gulf County jail holding cell when the murder took place?” I ask.
“Most likely yes—there or on her way to it.”
The route between Liberty County and Gulf County jails takes Randa directly by the Dead Lakes Campgrounds where Chris was murdered. Whether she was en route or in the holding cell, she can’t be ruled out as a prime suspect.
I’m sitting thinking about that when Anna opens the door.
“Everything okay?” she asks.
“Guess it depends on how you look at it,” I say and tell her what Patch McMyers has just told me.
“So it’s at least possible Randa could’ve done it?” she says. “How is that anything but great news?”
“Just makes the investigation more complicated,” I say.
“Exactly.”
“If she didn’t do it, it’s the kind of thing a defense attorney can use to sow seeds of reasonable doubt.”
“Exactly,” she says. “Like I said, I don’t see how this is anything but really good news.”
19
Days pass while we wait for autopsy results and work to gather more information.
We compile witness statements, chase down leads, catalog evidence, and coordinate the various activities each of us is undertaking.
Once an investigation gathers momentum it can speed along with a great deal of velocity, but getting it to that point, actually getting it moving at all in the early stages can take a while and requires a tremendous amount of both energy and patience.
On the third day since the bodies were discovered we have gathered into Reggie’s office for a conference call with the ME.
Her office is not exactly small, but it wasn’t designed to accommodate so many people—me, Arnie Ward, Darlene Weatherly, Tony Ford, and Jessica Young—so it feels crowded and a little awkward.
From what we can tell so far, it appears the murders aren’t connected, but rather than going over them separately and only including the investigators working that case in the calls, Reggie has summoned us all in and is going to have the ME go over both preliminary autopsies at the same time. And though she hasn’t said so explicitly, my guess is she’s doing it in this manner as a way of allowing me to hear the evidence associated with Chris’s murder.
The call comes and after a few formalities and a little small talk, we jump into the exchange of information we as investigators most need.
“Which one do you want to start with?” Hanlon asks.
“Let’s take them in the order they were discovered,” Reggie says.
She’s doing this to ensure I’ll get to hear everything he says about Chris, and I wonder if it’s obvious to the others, especially Ford.
“I know you all know this,” Hanlon says, “but I’m going to remind you anyway because it’s important that you remember. The results I’m sharing with you are very preliminary and are still subject to change. Please don’t forget that.”
“Got it,” Reggie says. “And I’ll remind them often.”
“Don’t have a lot to add to what I told you at the scene,” Hanlon says. “Preliminary autopsy results confirmed most of what I felt comfortable enough hypothesizing initially. The victim underwent a significant amount of trauma over three distinct periods. The majority of the blunt force trauma—the assault, the beating—was antemortem. We were able to confirm that the bat found in the woods near the scene did contain the victim’s blood and is consistent with some of the wounds found on the body. But not all of them. Hands and fists were used as well as another tool—a hammer or mallet of some kind. As I suspected, the stab wounds were inflicted post mortem and there were twelve of them and they were made with the weapon that was left inside the victim.”
“Which we’ve confirmed came from HC’s RV that was broken into,” Reggie says. “That, the phone used to call dispatch, the pillowcase used for the hood, and the rope used to cinch it around the neck.”
It’s significant the killer didn’t come to the park prepared to do what he did, but we’ve already covered that so no one brings it up again now.
“According to HC,” Ford says, “that’s all that’s missing, so the bat and the hammer or whatever the other implement used was came from somewhere else.”
Perhaps the killer did bring some of what he needed but not everything. Or maybe he stole those other items from a different location in the park. Or perhaps he didn’t bring them at all because he’s staying in the park.
“So given all that,” Darlene says, speaking in the general direction of the speaker phone, “what’s the cause of death?”
“Afraid I don’t have one yet. We’re gonna have to wait until we get all the results back—particularly toxicology.”
“Tox takes time,” Ford says.
He’s right. It can take weeks for the toxicology test results to be completed.
“Can you give us anything to work with in the meantime?” Ford continues. “Even if it’s subject to change later?”
Darlene says, “I figured it was down to blunt force trauma or blood loss since the stab wounds happened post mortem.”
“It could be, but our findings don’t lead us to be able to definitively conclude that it has to be one of them. He suffered a lot of trauma and he lost a lot of blood, and either one of them may be what led to his death—probably did—but until I have all the information and since there’s nothing absolutely convincing that it was one or the other . . . I’m going to leave cause of death as undetermined for now.”
“We understand,” Reggie says. “How about time of death? Were you able to narrow it down any?”
“Unfortunately not. There were no stomach contents to go on. It had been a while since he had eaten. So same range—ten to three.”
“Anything else?” Reggie asks.
“Think that’s it for now.”
“Okay, how about the female victim?”
“Biggest thing to tell you is we still have no ID. We rolled the prints. Sent them to FDLE. They’ve searched both state and national databases . . . and nothing. This young woman has never been printed before. So we’re gonna have to ID her in a different way.”
Our best bet will be by searching through missing persons until we get a match, then using DNA to confirm. Usually we use something like the missing person’s hairbrush to pull DNA from. If we can find nothing with her DNA on it, we can use a parent if we have to. All of which takes time.
It’s gonna take time . . . A whole lot of precious time.
Random and unbidden the line from the George Harrison song pops into my mind and I’m taken back to the old rented farm house where Susan and I lived for a time on Flakes Mill Road in Atlanta and waking up to it back when I first began working on the Stone Cold Killer case.
“We’ll have DNA ready for when you have a possible match,” Hanlon is saying. “We’ll also have a way to match ballistics when you locate a murder weapon. We removed a .38 caliber projectile from inside her skull. She was shot in the back of the head but it wasn’t at pointblank range. Bullet is in pretty good shape.”
“That’ll help us nail him,” Arnie says. “That’s great.”
“I’d say she is on the younger end of the spectrum I gave you at the scene. Probably between sixteen and nineteen. She was in good health, took good care of herself. No signs of injuries or surgical procedures. Not a lot for you to go on except . . . some scarring on the backside of the pubic ramus bone indicates she has given birth, which could be connected to a tattoo on the top of her left foot—the only tattoo she has. It’s of an infant’s footprint and has the name Brandon above it.”
