And the Sea Became Blood Read online

  And the Sea Became Blood

  A John Jordan Mystery Thriller Book 21

  Michael Lister

  Pulpwood Press

  Contents

  Thank you!

  And the Sea Became Blood

  Untitled

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Untitled

  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

  Untitled

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Epilogue

  Also by Michael Lister

  Copyright © 2019 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.

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-947606-35-7

  Paperback ISBN-13: 978-1-947606-34-0

  Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-947606-36-4

  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

  (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 Brad Price

  I cherish our early adventures and appreciate your dedication, service, and friendship.

  Thank you!

  Dawn Lister, Aaron Bearden, Jill Mueller, Tim Flanagan, Bryan Mayhann, Sheriff Mike Harrison, Dr, D.P. Lyle, Adam Ake (the Kinard not the California one), 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!

  And the Sea Became Blood

  Dear Diary,

  I’ve decided to kill somebody.

  I haven’t decided who yet, but I’ve definitely decided to do it, and that’s progress.

  I’ve been going back and forth about it for a while—should I? Shouldn’t I? And those thoughts have been mostly subconscious or at least not at the forefront of my shattered mind. But something changed today.

  Today is the day. Mark it down. Today is the day I decided to try my hand at death.

  Because I could not stop for Death,

  He kindly stopped for me;

  The carriage held but just ourselves

  And Immortality.

  I am that carriage, a horse-drawn hearse—delivering death to some unsuspecting bastard.

  I’m not completely sure why I’m doing it, not even when I’m lucid like now. I just know I want to. I want to try it. Try something new and different. Why not?

  I don’t think it will be particularly fun or especially exciting exactly, but it could be very instructive.

  Is there a God? Or if not, is there any moral order to the universe? Will any force attempt to intervene to stop me?

  Here’s a hint, Diary, God or the universe or whatever SOB is in charge didn’t ever stop any bad shit from happening to me, so . . . I think I already have my answer, but I’ll know for sure soon. Very soon.

  I suspect that the inmates are running the asylum. And this inmate right here is about to take another inmate off the board.

  Now to figure out who.

  Who shall I kill?

  The perfect murder needs the perfect victim.

  Shouldn’t be too hard to find.

  1

  I am standing at the water’s edge at sunrise, gazing out over the horizon.

  In the east, the last streaks of pale bubblegum pink are giving way to a bright ripe tangerine orange as dawn turns to day.

  The early October morning is still and serene and nearly silent, the cool currents of its briny air fresh as the newness of the day itself.

  Below the glass bowl sky, the undulating surface of the green Gulf is hazy and hypnotic, its ancient rhythms as mysterious as the moon still visible overhead.

  Beneath the beauty and serenity of sky and sea and the peace and comfort they evoke within me, a slight sense of dreadful foreboding scratches at the edges of my subconscious, like an idle finger worrying the fraying fringe of a favorite garment.

  Without walking up, Dave Lloyd appears next to me.

  Without speaking, he says, Hark, now hear the sailor’s cry.

&nb
sp; I nod as I look back out at the vanishing point where sea and sky become one, and let myself float into the mystic.

  As if muted by distance, like music heard from a backyard party a neighborhood away, Dave’s acoustic performance of the haunting Van Morrison classic echoes through the empty halls of the abandoned mansion inside me.

  I think about how unexpectedly and shockingly early the foghorn had called Dave home, and I wonder how long it will be before I hear it.

  I don’t fear that inevitable foghorn, but I’m not ready to set sail from this shore just yet.

  Thought leads to thought like way leads to way, and the foghorn becomes a clanging buoy bell.

  No man is an island, entire of itself. Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.

  Never send to know for whom the bell tolls.

  Suddenly I am forlorn, my previous peace flung far from me like a bird in a storm.

  Forlorn! the very word is like a bell to toll me back from thee to my sole self!

  There are so many things I want to say to Dave, so many questions I have for him, but I am unable.

  I miss our talks, the comfort of his compassion, the gentle challenge of his warm wisdom, the amusing, penetrative insight of his wit.

  I want to tell him how I’m doing, need to share with him the counterintuitive sense of dread as I gaze at the calm beauty and majesty of the morning before me.

  I’m about to turn toward Dave, to attempt to communicate with him in some way, but as I begin to, something on the horizon catches my eye.

  It’s so far away, so small from this distance, all I can make out is a flicker, some sort of shimmering disturbance like heatwaves around a mirage.

  Wondering what it is, I turn toward Dave just in time to see him dissolving into the day, ever tinier particles, being drained of solidity, disappearing completely.

  When I turn back toward the horizon, it is undergoing the same process.

  Glancing down at my hands I see that I am too.

  2

  I wake on Monday morning just a little over 48 hours before Hurricane Michael hits to find myself alone in bed, my phone vibrating on the table next to my badge.

  Still disturbed by witnessing the world dissolve around me, I’m disoriented, confused at first that Anna is not in bed with me.

  Had she shattered into a billion particles too?

  Then I remember she’s in court this morning, and a little of my disconcertion dissipates.

  Maybe she’s who’s calling.

  Reaching for my phone, I recall that Carla is keeping Taylor and that I have a meeting about the storm at the prison just before lunch.

  Anna, insisting I sleep in a little, had taken Taylor to Carla’s, our sometime sitter, and I suspect turned off my alarm.

  Squinting at the face on my phone at the end of my extended arm, I see that it is Reggie, the Gulf County sheriff and my boss.

  “Good morning, sunshine,” she says.

  “Morning,” I say, and it comes out not unlike a low guttural growl.

  “It’s a bitch, I know,” she says, “but suspicious death doesn’t honor days off.”

  “Which is why you’re smart enough to have three investigators in your department,” I say.

  “It’s true, I am smart, but Darlene is on vacation and Arnie is in court this morning—probably gettin’ his ass handed to him by your wife.”

  I kick off the covers. Early October in Florida is still summer and even with the central air on, a box fan, and a window unit running, I’m sweating a little.

  “But even if Darlene and Arnie were around,” she says, “you’d want this one anyway. We got a 911 call saying Father Andrew is dead inside his . . . home or church or whatever it is.”

  Andrew Irwin is a retired Catholic priest who I worked with at both Potter and Gulf Correctional Institutions. A gangly, emaciated, elderly man with wispy white hair, blue-blue eyes, bushy eyebrows, and the general unkempt appearance of an unmade bed, Father Andrew is a bit awkward and odd, but wise and kind too. Rarely not seen in the company of his beloved mastiff, Mary, Andrew’s black suits and clerical shirts are perpetually covered in the fine buckskin hairs of the enormous dog—often accompanied by some of her drool.

  “You haven’t confirmed anything yet?” I ask.

  “Wanted you to be the first one in,” she says. “Figured you’d want to be . . . and seeing’s how you live less than a mile away . . . figured you could be there about as fast as anybody.”

  “Who reported it?”

  “Wouldn’t leave his name. We’re trying to get a trace on the phone used now. Whole thing could be a hoax or the guy who called could’ve killed him. Just don’t know.”

  “Did the caller say something suspicious?” I ask. “Why would you jump to the possibility that—”

  “Yeah, he did,” she says. “I’ll get a copy of it for you, but not being willing to leave his name is pretty suspicious in itself.”

  “Okay, I’ll head over and check it out in a few,” I say. “I sure hope it’s a prank and he’s not actually dead.”

  “Let me know what you find and what you need.”

  Still disquieted by the dream, I shower quickly and get dressed, my sense of unease heightened by my isolation. I rarely ever wake up in an empty bed, let alone a vacant house.

  As I’m getting ready, I listen to the radio to get a storm coverage update. As of this morning Michael is still a tropical storm, its 70-mile-per-hour winds sitting just under hurricane strength. The female meteorologist on the CBS station I’m listening to predicts that Michael will become a hurricane later today and reach landfall as a Category 2 by midday on Wednesday. She is unable to say exactly where the storm will hit but has the entire Florida Panhandle in a cone of uncertainty.

  The storm coverage only intensifies my sense of dread and foreboding.

  I can still see Dave dissolving. Can still feel myself flying apart, my essence a million tiny pieces flung far by the morning breeze.

  I’m putting on my gun and badge when my phone vibrates.

  I lift it from the bedside table to see that it’s a text from Carla. He’s here again.

  On my way, I text back, and rush out.

  3

  When I pull onto Main Street, I head in the opposite direction of the crime scene.

  Carla’s text means the crime scene, if that’s what it is, will have to wait.

  He’s here again means that Rudy, Carla’s addict dad, has shown up unannounced at her apartment again where she is keeping her son, John Paul, and my and Anna’s daughter, Taylor—something he’s been doing with increasing regularity.

  Rudy raised Carla on his own—if you can call it that. She pretty much raised herself. He was an absentee father and an absentee diner owner. Carla had run the diner and parented herself and her dad. Shortly after becoming a mother, Carla moved out—leaving Rudy alone for the first time in his life. He has since closed the diner and spends his time on the road between Pottersville and Mexico Beach where his brother lives, often stopping by Carla’s place, which is about the halfway point.

  More a nuisance drunk than a mean one, Rudy’s unscheduled appearances are more disruptive than anything else, but even without meaning to be, an inebriated person is a potentially dangerous person—especially one as old and awkward and thoroughly pickled as Rudy.

  When I turn in to Moss Creek Apartments, I see Rudy’s giant old red Cadillac parked at an odd angle nowhere close to a parking spot.

  Finding an open spot near the antique automobile, I park and get out.

  Moss Creek is a small government-assisted apartment complex on the south edge of town. As a single mom with a very low income, Carla qualifies, but it is thanks to Anna’s tireless efforts on her behalf that she was able to secure one of the coveted units here.

  Moss Creek has many rules—especially about visitors. If Rudy continues showing up here drunk and causing a disturbance or passing out in the parking lot, he’s going to get Carla kicke
d out.

  I find Rudy sprawled out on the front porch of Carla’s apartment, snoring loudly.

  Stepping over him, I tap on the door and walk inside when Carla opens it.

  “Daddy,” Taylor squeals, and runs over to me.

  My core is reduced to uncooked cookie dough.

  She hasn’t been calling me daddy for long—only starting it recently after her own father died—and though it still catches me by surprise, I’m absolutely adoring the process of growing accustomed to it.

  “Morning, angel,” I say, picking her up and pulling her into an intense hug. “How are you?”

  Looking like a little Anna, Taylor has huge brown eyes, smooth olive-tinted skin, and thickening light brown hair. She looks remarkably like my daughter, Johanna—something that shouldn’t be surprising given that everyone has always said how much Anna and I look alike. The four of us look like what we are—a family.