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  Blue Blood

  A John Jordan Mystery Thriller Book 20

  Michael Lister

  Pulpwood Press

  Copyright © 2018 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.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, business, events and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Paperback ISBN: 978-1-947606-33-3

  For Dave Lloyd

  My brother and best friend.

  My life was greatly enhanced by your presence in it. My life has been greatly diminished by your absence from it.

  I miss you everyday.

  Every. Single. Day.

  Thank You

  Thank you Dawn Lister, Michael Connelly, Aaron Bearden, Mike Harrison, Tim Flanagan, D.P. Lyle, Micah Lister, Meleah Lister Smith, Dave Lloyd, and Jill Mueller for your support and assistance with this work.

  Contents

  Blue Blood

  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

  Don’t miss AND THE SEA BECAME BLOOD

  Also by Michael Lister

  Blue Blood

  1

  “I’m not trying to be a martyr,” Malia Goodman says. “I’d much rather live for the cause than die for it.”

  Author and activist Malia Goodman is a forty-something African-American woman with cinnamon skin so flawless it looks to have been airbrushed on by a skilled and careful artist who takes great pride in his work.

  She is tall and athletic and attractive—exceptionally so, though her allure is as much the result of her bearing and her bruised soul as her big, bright, black eyes and the features of her heart-shaped face.

  Merrill and I are in her hotel room at the Holiday Inn on MLK across from the mall in Panama City. Her handler, Rodney Livingston, a tall, bony, older black man, and her assistant, Tana Kay, a small, pale, plain-looking black woman in her late twenties, are also present.

  The remodeled room is light and airy—a stark contrast to the dark, dramatic, Victorian whorehouse-looking decor with blood-red drapes it had once flaunted.

  “I’m not particularly brave or heroic,” she says.

  She is both, and it speaks well of her that her self-deprecation seems genuine.

  A social justice activist specializing in police-civilian relations and a New York Times bestselling author of books on the same subject, she is in a particularly poignant and unique position to speak about policing procedures and the criminal justice system.

  Her new book, Shots Fired, is an in-depth look at police and policing techniques, including a look at the alarming number of shootings of unarmed citizens by law enforcement.

  On an extended book tour that involves marches, protests, and rallies, she typically stays anywhere from two days to two weeks in each city she visits and attempts to expose injustice while there. Two police shootings—one out in Panama City Beach and one in Downtown Panama City—have brought her to town.

  Though not officially associated with any other groups or movements, Malia’s work often parallels and occasionally intersects them.

  “Don’t get me wrong, there are days when joining Graham and Malik is far more appealing than anything this world has to offer, but . . . I’m enough of a coward to want to die peacefully in my sleep of old age.”

  In separate and unrelated incidents, both Malia’s husband, Graham, and her son, Malik, had been shot and killed.

  Graham Goodman had been a detective with the LAPD who was killed in the line of duty by a drug dealer high on bath salts as he was attempted to question about the death of his girlfriend. Malik Jackson, an up-and-coming young rapper and aspiring actor, had been gunned down by police during a routine traffic stop. Malik, who was unarmed and happened to be black, was shot and killed by a white cop. Graham, who was a highly respected and decorated cop who happened to be white, was shot and killed by a black drug dealer.

  At times Malia’s writings and speeches sound like she’s the staunchest defender and apologist for law enforcement. At others she sounds like the angry mother of an unarmed son who was executed by those very same police. The truth is she is both, with both supporters and detractors on both sides—and recently someone from the second group has made both threats and attempts on her life.

  That’s why we’re here. Well, that’s why Merrill is here. He’s interviewing to provide security for her while she’s in the area for a series of speeches, protests, and book signings. I’m here because I’m on administrative leave and not in a good way, and Merrill has been taking every chance he can to get me out of the house and away from the alcohol and self-loathing I have stockpiled there.

  “Anyway . . .” Malia says to Merrill. “You look like you’d be good for the job. Hell, you look like you could stop a scud missile, let alone a crazy with a gun, but . . . well . . . would you? Would you really put yourself in harm’s way to protect me?”

  Merrill nods, but doesn’t say anything.

  “That’s it?” she says. “That’s all I get? A nod?”

  “I can verbalize it if you like,” he says.

  “I would like.”

  “I would,” he says.

  “Why?” she asks, trying to suppress an amused smile.

  “Because I said I would,” he says.

  She nods as if she understands. “You’ll risk your life to keep your word,” she says.

  He nods.

  She waits for him to elaborate but he doesn’t, and there is an awkward silence.

  Like the colorful carpeted hallway, the room smells of commercial cleaning products and an air freshener questioning its identity. Does it want to be citrus or floral? It has so far been unable to decide.

  “Your code includes death before dishonor?” she asks.

  “That’s not the way I would put it, but . . . something like that.”

  “And that’s it?”

  He shakes his head.

  “Then what else?” she asks.

  “In your case,” he says, “there’s more to it than just my word.”

  “Like what? Do you mind explaining it to me?”

  “If I said I’d protect a white supremacist, I would,” he says. “Even if it costs me my life to do it. But with you . . . Let’s just say your views are far more in line with mine than a white supremacist’s would be.”

  “All my views?” she asks.

  “Most of them.”

  “On both sides of the issue—my support and defense of cops and my calls for reforms that would keep unarmed citizens from getting killed?”

  He nods. “Some of my best friends are cops.”

  She gives him a radiant smile and something passes between them—something indefinable that includes both appreciation and attraction.

  “And,” Merrill adds, “though I am rarely unarmed, I am a black man.”

  “So you’ll protect me more than you would the white supremacists?”

  He shakes his head. “The same. I was just trying to reassure you, let you know what my answer to Marley’s question is.”

  “Which question is that?”

  “How long will they kill our prophets while we stand aside and look?”

  She is visibly moved that he regards her as one of our social prophets.

  “And your answer is?” she asks, her voice thick with emotion.

  “No longer.”

  She nods. “You’re hired. Rodney will handle all the details. I’ve got a conference call I need to be on, but you’re most certainly hired. And I’d like you to start as soon as possible.”

  Merrill nods.

  When Malia stands, Tana and Rodney jump to their feet as well. Merrill and I also stand—just not as quickly or enthusiastically.

  Malia shakes Merrill’s hand and then mine, and then Rodney leads us out of her room. Before the door clo
ses, she and Tana are already going over the talking points for the conference call.

  As soon as Malia’s hotel door is closed behind us, Rodney’s demeanor changes. “Okay,” he says, “now that we’ve got that out of the way we can have the real interview. And I’d really like to meet with Merrill alone.”

  Merrill starts to protest, but I cut him off.

  “Sure,” I say. “I have somewhere I need to be anyway.”

  “Cool,” Rodney says. “It’s nothing personal, just . . . you know.”

  “Don’t go far,” Merrill says. “I’ll hit you up soon as I’m done.”

  2

  While Merrill meets with Rodney in his room upstairs, I meet with Merrick McKnight downstairs in the bar.

  Like the rest of the hotel, the bar has been remodeled. It’s lighter and brighter and more open.

  I liked it better before.

  Merrick and I were meant to get together later in the evening, but when I called him and told him my schedule had unexpectedly freed up sooner than I had thought it would, he said he was both close by and available to meet now.

  “Cheers,” I say, holding up my vodka and cranberry.

  “Cheers,” he says, clinking his bottle of Bud Light against my glass.

  We both sip our drinks as an uncomfortable silence creeps in around us.

  Merrick had asked to meet with me and had not said why, so I drink as I wait for him to introduce a topic of conversation, glancing occasionally at the basketball game on the muted TV monitor mounted above the bar.

  It’s my first drink of the day and it’s all a first drink should be.

  “I’ve never seen you drink before,” Merrick says.

  “Is that why things just got awkward?”

  He shakes his head. “Well, maybe,” he says. “But if it is, it’s only part of the reason. The biggest is what I need to talk to you about.”

  I nod and wait and drink.

  Near the open entrance of the bar, beyond which the mostly empty lobby can be seen, a balding black man with a too thick beard softly plays a grand piano.

  “There’re actually two things I wanted to talk to you about,” he says.

  “Is one any easier than the other?” I ask.

  He nods. “A little.”

  “Well, why not start with it?”

  He nods again, takes a long pull on his Bud and sits the bottle on the beige bar top in front of him.

  “I’m worried about you,” he says. “We all are.”

  I nod again slowly and say, “I can see why you would be and I appreciate it.”

  “That’s not the first thing I wanted to talk to you about but it sort of sets it up,” he says.

  I take another drink.

  A loud burst of laughter erupts from the lobby as three inebriated women in their late twenties pitch forward through the sliding glass doors, holding on to each other for support.

  Please don’t come into the bar. Please don’t come into the bar. Please don’t—

  “Oooh, piano,” one of them says. “Let’s go into the bar. Let’s ’o to . . . bar. Come on. Just one ’ore ’ittle drink.”

  “Tiff,” one of her friends says with great emphasis, “you promised. Nightcap in the room then straight to bed.”

  “Er’ry par’y has a pooper an’ at this par’y . . . and at ’is . . . You are it. Hey, Mr. Pia’o Man.”

  Her voice grows even louder and the piano player stops mid-note on the chorus of “Walking in Memphis” and starts playing Billy Joel’s “Piano Man.”

  The abrupt transition into the new tune is lost on Tiff.

  “Hey, Mr. Piano Man,” she says again. “My lame friends’re makin’ me go up ’o ’ed. See you ’nother time for some tic . . . tickle . . . ticklin’ ’ose ivories.”

  The three young women stumble out of view and eventually out of earshot.

  “How are you?” Merrick asks.

  “I thought we just covered that. Probably about how I seem,” I say.

  He frowns. “Sorry to hear that.”

  He pauses a moment and looks around the bar. I follow his gaze.

  Besides us, there are only five other people in the spacious bar—the bartender, the piano player, a middle-aged man in a business suit at the other end of the bar, and a couple at a table in the far back corner whispering intimately between kissing intensely.

  “You’ve always been there for me,” he says. “Always so understanding and accepting and positive. I really appreciate the way you’ve always been with me and my kids.”

  The bartender looks down our way and asks if we’re ready for another yet. Merrick shakes his head though his bottle is almost empty, so I assume he’s only having one.

  “Thing is . . .” he continues, “you do so much for so many . . . I wanna make sure somebody is doing something for you. I wish I could, but . . . I’m no counselor or sponsor or whatever, but . . . I know someone who is. A friend of mine happens to be a really great counselor. You two have a lot in common. I’ve often thought—even before . . . now . . .before what you’re dealing with—that I should introduce you two because I know you’ll hit it off. He works out of the country and is only here for a few weeks every three months. I’ve told him about you and . . . I think it’d really do you good to talk to him.”

  “Thank you,” I say. “That means a lot. I really appreciate you thinking about me.”

  The pianist is now playing a rousing rendition of “Sweet Caroline,” really banging the bamp bamp bams.

  “Will you talk to him?” he asks.

  I start to shrug, but stop.

  “As a favor to me,” he adds. “Will you? Please.”

  I nod.

  “You will?”

  I nod again. “I will.”

  “Ah man, you don’t know how happy that makes me,” he says. “How relieved it makes me feel.”

  His genuine delight at my willingness to talk to his friend on top of the kindness he is showing me stings my eyes and makes my throat constrict. I glance away, blinking and trying hard to swallow.

  When I am able to look back at him, I say, “That was the easier of the two things you needed to talk to me about?”

  He nods and smiles, but the smile quickly fades into a frown.

  “No easy way to say it,” he says. “So I guess I’ll just . . . Reggie and I broke up.”

  “Really?”

  I’m completely caught off guard. Based on the occasional offhanded comment made by Reggie, I guess I’ve known they’ve had issues—but what couple doesn’t? I never suspected anything like this, had no idea they had already pronounced time of death.

  “She hasn’t said anything to you?” he asks.

  I shake my head.

  “That’s so like her,” he says. “Probably part of the reason we broke up—she buries most everything. Not really willing to talk about much of anything.”

  “I’m so sorry to hear that y’all are—”

  “It’s been comin’ a while. Everything started so good between us—so damn good. Best ever, but then . . . I don’t know . . . our differences started showing more, became more pronounced. We drifted apart. Started arguing more. And no matter what I tried she . . . she just wasn’t willing to talk about it. It’s so funny . . . you think it’ll be the big things—somebody having an affair or going through some sort of crisis or you’ll have some big issue related to sex or kids or money, but . . . and then it’s just a million little things. You get so far apart you can’t figure out how to get back together—or why you ever were in the first place.”