Blood Ties (John Jordan Mysteries Book 16) Read online

  Blood Ties

  a John Jordan Mystery Book 16

  Michael Lister

  Pulpwood Press

  Copyright © 2017 by Michael Lister

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Print ISBNs:

  ISBN-10:1-947606-02-6

  ISBN-13:978-1-947606-02-9

  Join Michael’s Readers’ Group and receive 4 FREE Books!

  Books by Michael Lister

  (John Jordan Novels)

  Power in the Blood

  Blood of the Lamb

  Flesh and Blood

  (Special Introduction by Margaret Coel)

  The Body and the Blood

  Double Exposure

  Blood Sacrifice

  Rivers to Blood

  Burnt Offerings

  Innocent Blood

  (Special Introduction by Michael Connelly)

  Separation Anxiety

  Blood Money Blood Moon

  Thunder Beach

  Blood Cries

  A Certain Retribution

  Blood Oath

  Blood Work

  Cold Blood

  Blood Betrayal

  Blood Shot

  Blood Ties

  Blood Stone

  Blood Trail

  (Jimmy “Soldier” Riley Novels)

  The Big Goodbye

  The Big Beyond

  The Big Hello

  The Big Bout

  The Big Blast

  In a Spider’s Web (short story)

  The Big Book of Noir

  (Merrick McKnight / Reggie Summers Novels)

  Thunder Beach

  A Certain Retribution

  Blood Oath

  Blood Shot

  (Remington James Novels)

  Double Exposure

  (includes intro by Michael Connelly)

  Separation Anxiety

  Blood Shot

  (Sam Michaels / Daniel Davis Novels)

  Burnt Offerings

  Blood Oath

  Cold Blood

  Blood Shot

  (Love Stories)

  Carrie’s Gift

  (Short Story Collections)

  North Florida Noir

  Florida Heat Wave

  Delta Blues

  Another Quiet Night in Desperation

  (The Meaning Series)

  Meaning Every Moment

  The Meaning of Life in Movies

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  www.MichaelLister.com and receive a free book.

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  How to read the John Jordan Blood Series

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Start Blood Stone now!

  Blood Stone Chapter 1

  Blood Stone Chapter 2

  Blood Stone Chapter 3

  Also by Michael Lister

  How to read the John Jordan Blood Series

  The Blood Series

  This New York Times bestselling and award-winning series features a conflicted detective—a cop with ties to Atlanta who also works as a prison chaplain in Florida. He’s a man of mercy and justice, compassion, open-mindedness. He’s also a smart, relentless detective.

  The John Jordan mystery series is character-driven and realistic—thoughtful mystery thrillers involving the hero’s journey of a good man trying to be even better, as he helps others along the way.

  Like John Jordan, the author, Michael Lister, was a prison chaplain with the state of Florida before leaving to write full-time.

  If you’re new to the John Jordan series, you can begin with any book, but we recommend one of these 3: Power in the Blood, Innocent Blood, or Blood Oath.

  Power in the Blood, the first fiction the author ever wrote, was published over 20 years ago, and though it’s recommended, the books in the John Jordan series don’t have to be read in order.

  All the books in the series are novels—mystery, thrillers, whodunits—except for the 3rd book in the series, Flesh and Blood, which is a collection of short stories featuring temporal and metaphysical mysteries. If you don’t care for short stories, feel free to skip Flesh and Blood and continue with the fourth novel The Body and the Blood.

  If you decided to skip the short stories and continue on with the novels, we recommend that you read the short story “A Taint in the Blood” in the book Flesh and Blood to find out what happened to Laura Matthers from Power in the Blood.

  The 7th book in the series, Innocent Blood, is a prequel going back to John’s very first investigation. Though the 7th in the series, it can be read 1st or 7th since it’s a prequel.

  The 10th book in the series, Blood Cries, is the second in the “Atlanta Years” series within a series following the 7th book Innocent Blood. It can be read 2nd or 10th.

  The 17th book in the seres, Blood Stone, is the 3rd book in the “Atlanta Years” series within the series following the 10th book Blood Cries. It can be read 3rd or 17th.

  John Jordan is an ex-cop in books 1-10, but once again carries a gun and a badge beginning with book 11, Blood Oath.

  All of the John Jordan novels are available in high quality hardback, paperback, ebook, and audio editions.

  Interspersed throughout the “Blood” books there are other related books that are part of the John Jordan universe. These books are extremely important to the series and provide essential backstory for characters, connections, and locations of series regulars. Most of all they answer the questions most readers want to know. They include Double Exposure, Burnt Offerings, Separation Anxiety, Thunder Beach, and A Certain Retribution. These are “Blood Series” books without being John Jordan Mysteries.

  We hope you will enjoy all the books in the John Jordan series and eagerly await each new entry.

  Be sure to join Michael Lister's Readers' Group for news, updates, and special deals on the John Jordan series.

  1

  In the early mo
rning hours of July 4th 2017, an unimaginable murder took place in a rented Gulf-front mansion in a gated subdivision of Cape San Blas in Gulf County, Florida.

  There were no signs of forced entry and only six people were known to be in the house at the time—nine-year-old Mariah Evers, Mariah’s dad, the Atlanta rapper Trace “Evidence” Evers, his girlfriend, Ashley Howard, Ashley’s ten-year-old son, Brett, their nanny, Nadine Wade, and Trace’s best friend, manager, and Mariah’s godfather, Irvin Hunter.

  While this unsettling and disturbing deed was taking place, being discovered, and being investigated, I was away for my wedding, as happy as I’ve ever been.

  And I wasn’t the only member of the Gulf County Sheriff’s Department away at the time.

  Sheriff Reggie Summers was out on medical leave.

  From the initial 911 call, our depleted department mishandled the critical early hours of what would become one of the most shocking and perplexing cases in our county’s history.

  Every step and misstep was seen and shared, seen and shared, by the world’s interconnected web of audio, video, and pictures, as the media, both reputable and not, descended onto our unprepared and ill-equipped little area like a swarm of black flies, exploiting both Trace’s newfound fame and the shock and sensationalism of the murder for something as hollow and transitory as ratings.

  Trace wasn’t yet a household name like certain rappers who had been gunned down or featured in films or married musical royalty, but he had a couple of solid hits and had appeared on the first season of Donald Glover’s popular and critically-acclaimed FX TV series Atlanta in a not insignificant four-episode arc that had elevated the once-regional rapper into a promising and possibly bankable entertainer.

  In what seemed like hours, local, regional, national, and even a few international news outlets were reporting, often inaccurately, about the most bizarre and salacious elements of the surreal and unsettling case as clips of Trace’s concerts, TV appearances, and a music video featuring Mariah ran in loops beneath them.

  Mariah had been featured in his latest music video for a song he had written for her—and the footage from the shoot turned out to be the final ever filmed of the nine-year-old who was murdered in a locked house in a gated community while on vacation with her family in Florida.

  The talented and happy Mariah Elizabeth Evers, who seemed to have her entire life ahead of her, wouldn’t even get to see her tenth birthday.

  For these and other reasons, including some remarkable similarities, the murder of Mariah Evers became almost immediately and indelibly linked to the disquieting death of another young girl whose disturbing and haunting unsolved case had earlier this year reached the heartbreaking milestone of its twentieth anniversary.

  2

  I find Reggie alone on this dark, rainy night in her living room, recuperating on the couch. And I’m grateful I didn’t have to see her mom when I arrived.

  Since moving back to Wewa with her son, Rain, Reggie has lived with her mom in a mobile home on the Apalachicola River—a mobile home modified because of where it sits so the entire back wall of the living room is nothing but windows that look out onto the wide river.

  I know I will eventually encounter Sylvia Summers, but I am not looking forward to what I know will be an awkward and intense interaction.

  “I can’t believe this happened when we were both out,” she says.

  “How are you feeling?”

  “Better before this happened,” she says. “I’m actually meant to be returning to work in another day or two.”

  Reggie and I were both shot during the same river swamp shootout a while back, but she was shot far more and far worse than I was and then had to deal with a wicked infection as the result of her wounds.

  She adds, “That means we get to clean up this mess together.”

  “Look forward to it,” I say. “What do you want me to do between now and when you return?”

  “I want you to go home and get a good night’s sleep. Then in the morning I want you to review the entire case, everything that has been done so far, all the evidence, look at it with a fresh set of eyes.”

  “Arnie won’t like that.”

  Arnie Ward is the investigator who caught the case.

  “I don’t care what Arnie Ward likes,” she says. “No way I’m not gonna have my best investigator working a case like this. Besides . . . he shouldn’t have bungled the case.”

  Arnie was called in by the on-call deputy who was first dispatched to the scene. And though he immediately phoned Reggie and began to get her input on what to do and how to proceed, he made a few costly investigative mistakes during the first crucial moments.

  “Would we say bungled?” I ask.

  “Don’t know about we, but I might,” she says. “What were you thinking?”

  “Mismanaged maybe?”

  “Don’t know yet, do we? We’ll have to see what we see, but from where I’m laying, I think mismanaged might be just a bit too generous.”

  I shrug and glance down the dark hallway leading to the bedrooms at the other end of the trailer.

  “She’s asleep,” Reggie says.

  “Who?”

  “Mom.”

  I nod.

  “You dreading seeing her?” she asks. “Regretting your decision?”

  Though the answer to both questions is yes, I shake my head. “Just too tired for it tonight.”

  She nods her understanding. “She won’t get up.”

  I had recently agreed to keep a secret for Reggie and her mom that now I wasn’t sure I could.

  “We haven’t really talked about it,” she says, “about your decision and —”

  “We will,” I say. “Just not tonight.”

  Through Reggie’s back windows lightning flashes, illuminating the rain falling on the river, and the river in the rain, backlit by the lightning, appearing even more mysterious than it normally does at night.

  “Still can’t believe what was done to that beautiful little girl,” I say, shaking my head, continuing to look out into the rainy night.

  “It’s the most disturbing and shocking murder I’ve ever been this close to, and I don’t want you to think I’m losing sight of that—I mean by talking about the case itself. I don’t want you to think that that’s all I’m thinking about.”

  “I don’t. Never would. Know you too well.”

  “Thing is,” she says, “it’s because of what happened to her and my desire to get the sick fuck who did it that I’m so bothered by how badly the case has been handled.”

  “I know.”

  “My biggest concern is that it has been fucked up beyond repair. I’m wondering if we’ll be able to salvage the case and get a conviction at this point. The thought of the guy getting away with it because of what we did or did not do is just too . . .”

  “We’ll get it sorted out. Won’t stop until we do.”

  “I’m not just talking about figuring out with a reasonable certainty who did this to her, I mean being able to make a case and punish the prick.”

  “I know. We’ll get there.”

  Neither of us says anything and the rain on the roof seems to grow louder.

  “How are Daniel and Sam?” she asks.

  “Going home to find out now. Merrill and Za stayed with them while we were away. I dropped Anna off at my Dad’s place in Pottersville to get the kids and her car and came straight here.”

  “Oh shit. Forgot to ask. How was your wedding? Sorry I wasn’t able to be there.”

  “It was . . . everything we wanted it to be. It was . . . It’s hard to imagine it being any better.”

  “I knew it would be. Just like the marriage. I’m so happy for you, John.”

  “Thank you. When are you going to make an honest man out of Merrick? Where is he, by the way?”

  “Where do you think? Workin’ on a podcast about Mariah. Pretty sure he wants Daniel to help with it soon as he’s able. They’ll be part of the media feeding frenzy w
e’re having to deal with on this one. Means I’ll be sleeping with the enemy.”

  I smile.

  Before Daniel Davis went missing, he and Merrick, Reggie’s significant other, hosted a true crime podcast together called In Search of. They were working on In Search of Randa Raffield when Daniel vanished. During Daniel’s absence, Merrick has continued the podcast, which has grown even more popular—though some of the podcast’s most vicious trolls have accused Daniel’s disappearance of being something the two men staged as a ratings stunt.

  “You think he will be?” she asks.

  “The enemy or sleeping with you?”

  “Meant Daniel. Think he’ll be up for that kind of thing again?”

  “I’m about to go find out.”

  3

  As I had hoped, I get home in time to help Anna put the girls to bed—something we linger in doing because we’ve missed them so much during our short time away.

  In an ironic role reversal, it is us trying to get them to stay up a little longer and them wanting to be left alone to drift off into peaceful sleep.