The Blood-Dimmed Tide (John Joran Mysteries Book 22) Read online

  The Blood-Dimmed Tide

  Michael Lister

  Pulpwood Press

  Contents

  Thank you!

  The Blood-Dimmed Tide

  News Herald Special Report

  Tampa Bay Times Daily Dispatch

  Florida Storm Watch

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Tampa Bay Times Daily Dispatch

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  News Herald Special Report

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Tampa Bay Times Daily Dispatch

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Tampa Bay Times Daily Dispatch

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  News Herald Special Report

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Tampa Bay Times Daily Dispatch

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  News Herald Special Report

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Tampa Bay Times Daily Dispatch

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Tampa Bay Times Daily Dispatch

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Also by Michael Lister

  Copyright © 2019 by Michael Lister

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  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.

  Paperback ISBN: 978-1-947606-48-7

  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

  Bloodshed

  Blue Blood

  And the Sea Became Blood

  The Blood-Dimmed Tide

  (Jimmy Riley Novels)

  The Girl Who Said Goodbye

  The Girl in the Grave

  The Girl at the End of the Long Dark Night

  The Girl Who Cried Blood Tears

  The Girl Who Blew Up the World

  (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

  For Aimee Walsh

  My first best friend and the best little sister anyone could ever have!

  Thank you!

  Dawn Lister, Aaron Bearden, Jill Mueller, Tim Flanagan, Micah Lister, Bryan Mayhann, Sheriff Mike Harrison, Dr, D.P. Lyle, Judge Terry Lewis, Lexi Street, Bill Peterson, Michael Connelly, and the many, many friends, family, and Good Samaritans who helped us during the storm and its aftermath.

  Thanks for all your invaluable contributions!

  The Blood-Dimmed Tide

  News Herald Special Report

  Hurricane Michael Devastates Florida’s Gulf Coast from Panama City to Apalachicola

  By Merrick McKnight, News Herald Reporter

  Hurricane Michael first made landfall on October 10, 2018 at approximately 1pm CDT near Mexico Beach, Florida, a coastal town of just over 1000 people, known for its quiet, laidback, small-town charm and its picturesque and pristine beaches.

  First there was the wind—howling, shrieking, angry winds of over 155 mph. Then there was the rain—pelting, slanting, sideways, blinding rain. And there was the storm surge—a massive water monster of a storm surge that swallowed its prey whole.

  Though much of the Panhandle has been affected, particularly from Panama City to Apalachicola and over 70 miles inland, Mexico Beach was struck by the notorious front right quadrant of the eye of the storm, and you can tell.

  The destruction and devastation were quick and pitiless and nearly total.

  Buildings blew down as if made of papier-mâché, leaving little but floating piles of splintered lumber behind.

  What the wind didn’t destroy, the tidal surge washed away.

  This is the first time in recorded history that such an intense storm reached landfall this late in the year. But that’s not nearly all that is unique about Hurricane Michael.

  Hurricane Michael is one of the strongest storms to ever hit the United States and the strongest ever on record in October.

  Michael intensified quickly, fueling itself with the Gulf of Mexico’s unseasonably warm waters as it tracked from the coast of the Yucatan into the Gulf of Mexico.

  And the superstorm didn’t give Floridians much time to prepare. Just a few days before it made landfall on Wednesday afternoon, the storm was a loosely organized system. It wasn’t until the Saturday before the Wednesday that it hit that forecasters even mentioned that the system had a good chance of forming into a major storm, but none came anywhere close to predicting what it became.

  By Wednesday evening, ov
er 388,000 homes and business were without power. The cleanup will be considerable, the rebuild daunting.

  Tampa Bay Times Daily Dispatch

  Hurricane Michael in Real Time

  By Tim Jonas, Times Reporter

  Hurricane Michael slammed the Florida Panhandle on Wednesday with 155-mph winds and a 10- to 14-foot storm surge. Flooding is already taking place in much of the area and more is expected as the system makes its way into Georgia. Be cautious. Even after hurricanes move out of an area, they often leave rivers rising and streams overflowing in their wake, and flood waters can take weeks to recede.

  Florida Storm Watch

  The Miami Herald’s hourly coverage of Hurricane Michael

  By Gabriella Gonzalez, Herald Reporter

  Flames lick at the dark sky as fires burn in the coastal town of Mexico Beach, Florida. And they will continue to. There is no one to put them out. Mexico Beach is ground zero for Hurricane Michael. Vehicles are stacked on top of each other like a child’s toys. Wooden steps lead up to beach houses on stilts that are no longer there. The beaches are flat, their dunes all washed away.

  The death toll is rising and officials warn they expect the fatality count to continue climbing as search-and-rescue efforts dig deeper into the rubble left in the wake of Michael. An untold number of residents defied orders to evacuate, and for now we’re left to wonder how many of them lie lifeless beneath the obliterated seaside community.

  Prologue

  The swelling, roiling sea rises above its appointed rim.

  A tsunami-like torrent rolling in.

  The sea rushing ashore.

  Beach cottages and seaside mansions washing away like sandcastles at high tide.

  Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

  The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

  The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

  The angry, menacing wind roars in, and with it decimation and destruction.

  The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

  Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

  Toppling enormous oaks like ancient watchtowers in the pitilessness of time.

  Shearing, splintering, and bifurcating tall two-decades-old slash pines like dry twigs.

  Slinging steel and stone structures like wet cardboard boxes containing the stored accumulation of a lifetime.

  Tossing vehicles like toys.

  Turning and turning in the widening gyre;

  Crushing mobile homes like empty soda cans.

  Cutting a bloody path through North Florida, leaving everything leveled in its wake.

  Snapping power poles. Severing electric lines. Leaving the mutilated landscape shrouded in the utter lightlessness of outer darkness.

  Completely cut off from the world outside this mortally wounded one, an apocalyptic nightmare comes to fruition.

  Soundless. Sightless. Unmoving. Dying in the dark.

  Surely some revelation is at hand;

  What will rise out of this chaos and confusion? What evil is drawn to feast on the battered remains of the reeling and vulnerable?

  When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

  Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert

  A shape with lion body and the head of a man,

  A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,

  A predator pulled by the pain and injury of distressed prey to storm-ravaged killing fields.

  The darkness drops again; but now I know

  That twenty centuries of stony sleep

  Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

  And what rough beast, its hour come round at last.

  1

  Judge Wheata Pearl Whitehurst looks like what she is—an aging lightered knot of a Southern hardwood hippy. In that way she not only resembles the historic Potter County courthouse we’re in but is better suited to it and it to her than any other judge in the area. She is a tough, stubborn, feisty, mostly genial, slightly scattered grandmother in her mid-sixties. Her round-through-the-middle, bird-like figure is mostly hidden beneath her black judicial robe, but a few rolls can be seen within the folds. Wispy strands of her strawberry-blond-fading-to-gray hair have escaped her headband to wiggle in the wind from the air-conditioning vent on the ceiling directly above her.

  She looks down on her courtroom from an unusually high bench, a light dusting of powder visible on her pale face.

  Though she eventually takes in the entire courtroom, she starts with the jury.

  The jury, eight women and four men, are mostly middle-aged and white, except for one black man and two black women, and though they all know me to varying degrees, they have thus far largely avoided making eye contact with me.

  “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,” the judge is saying in her characteristic husky smoker’s voice, “now that you have taken an oath to serve as jurors in this trial, permit me a few moments to share a few Wheata Pearls of wisdom that will get us off on the right foot, so to speak. Let me first say that though our town and county weren’t really affected by the hurricane, much of the area around us was—and I’m sure we all know someone, a friend or family member, who was. This is a difficult and trying time for this region. We will be mindful of that, but because it is possible that some of the cases from the affected area might be tried in our courthouse, we must move forward, and we must do the best job we all can. It’s more important in times like these than at any other.

  “Now, it is my intention to instruct you on most of the rules of law, but it might be that I will not know for sure all of the law that will apply in this case until all of the evidence is presented. However, I can anticipate most of the relevant law and give it to you at the beginning of the trial so that you will better understand what to be looking for while the evidence is presented. If I later decide that different or additional law applies to the case, I will tell you. In any event, at the end of the presentation of the evidence, I will give you the final instructions upon which you must base your verdict. At that time, you will have a complete written set of these instructions, so you do not have to memorize what I am about to tell you.”

  Though she only mentions the jury, the penetrating gaze of her small green eyes scans the entire courtroom, pausing especially on counsel, plaintiffs, and defendant, making it clear that her pearls are intended for everyone.

  The grand old courtroom is all polished dark woods, maybe walnut or mahogany, and smells like an old well-worn saddle—the result of Old Joe, the janitor known equally for his devotion to this hallowed hall and his devotion to Murphy’s Oil Soap.

  The large, echoey courtroom takes up the entire second floor of the red-brick and white-columned building that occupies the very end of South Main Street. Built back when form was elevated above or at least equal to function, the courtroom, like the courthouse and even the town, is like something out of To Kill a Mocking Bird. So is Wheata Pearl Whitehurst, come to that.

  As the judge goes over the laws that apply to this case, I reflect again on what it’s like to be on trial. I would be uncomfortable with this much attention no matter the circumstances, but for it to be so negative, so critical of my every action and the motives behind them is without question the most awkward, uncomfortable, and sustained emotional unease I’ve ever experienced.

  In most civil cases where a cop is sued for wrongful death, the agency or department he or she works for is also sued, but for some reason—one that will no doubt come out in trial—Derek Burrell’s parents chose to sue me and me alone. So in addition to my feelings of severe self-consciousness, I also feel an equally intense sense of isolation.

  As difficult as it is for me to be here for all the obvious reasons, there’s the added issues of the Hurricane Michael aftermath. It has only been two weeks since landfall. My hometown of Wewahitchka, the county I serve as a sheriff’s investigator, and the prison where I serve as part-time chaplain all lie in ruins, in various degrees of devastation and decimation, and I want to be there helping with the
recovery effort and investigating the multitude of missing persons cases we have as well as the increased crime occurring with the influx of transient and itinerant workers flooding the area. Instead, I’m here on trial in Pottersville, which was just outside the storm’s path and missed most of the damage.

  “I know a lot of judges frown on a lot of pre-trial instructions, but I’ve always found you can’t go wrong giving people as much information as possible and letting them know exactly what you expect. It works with raising kids and grand-parenting grandkids, so why not with all God’s children? Since I’m the ringmaster of this particular circus, let me start by telling you what I’m like and what I expect. I’m like your eccentric old grandmother who has lived long enough to become set in her ways and not give a damn what anybody thinks of her or her ways. Like your kindly old granny, I’m mostly agreeable, and I’m genuinely pulling for you to be and do your best, but . . . I can become very cantankerous if you mess with me or get on my bad side.”