Blood and Sand Read online

  “You sure you don’t want to stay here tonight?” Keith asks.

  She shakes her head. “Hard enough just coming in here. I could never sleep here.”

  “Text us when you get home safe,” Christopher says.

  “Will do,” she says. “And thank you all again for all y’all are doing for Magdalene and our family.”

  “I’ll walk you out,” Henrique says, slowly pushing himself up. “I too can hear my own bed calling.”

  Beside me, Charis yawns. “Sounds like you’re ready for your bed too,” I say.

  “That may be,” she says, “but wild, wild horses couldn’t drag me away from here tonight. I have to hear what Mr. Brandt says.”

  “It has to be him, doesn’t it?” Vic Frankford is saying.

  He’s looking up at the ceiling, and it’s clear he’s talking about Hal Raphael.

  “I mean, if it’s not,” he continues, “it’s one of us, and there’s no way it’s one of us.”

  “It’s him,” Clarence Samuelson says. “I can’t believe he’s back here. Can’t believe y’all are letting him stay here.”

  “If it’s him,” Keith says, “this is exactly where we want him to be.”

  “I feel like between us, we could get him to confess,” Clarence says.

  Keith glances over at me. I shake my head.

  “For now, let’s wait to see what Roderick has to say,” Keith says.

  “It’s not just that a coerced confession wouldn’t be admissible in court,” I say. “It’s that you can’t trust them. Apply the right amount of torture and you can get anybody to say anything.”

  Christopher nods vigorously.

  “I get it,” Clarence says. “It’s just hard to do nothing.”

  “Things are happening,” I say. “We have a potentially hugely significant clue. It just takes time. And lots of it. I know how trying it can be, but unfortunately there’s no way around it, no shortcut that leads to anything good.”

  “It’s not anything good I want it to lead to,” Clarence says.

  “By good I meant anything approximating justice.”

  A little while later, the front door buzzer sounds and several people jump.

  Keith steps over behind the desk and looks at the monitor. “It’s Roderick,” he says as he buzzes him in.

  27

  Roderick Brandt, looking exhausted and on edge, enters the room with a female deputy named Haskins.

  She is a tall, large woman with a blond ponytail and a pale, puffy face with roundish, red smudges like natural rouge on her cheeks.

  Christopher stands and Keith moves back over to stand beside him, putting his arm around him as he does.

  “Y’all look like you could use some food and something to drink,” Charis says to the two cops. “What can I get you?”

  “Got any coffee?” Roderick asks.

  “Just made a fresh pot,” she says, and crosses the room to get it. “Two coffees coming up.”

  “You sure we can’t get you anything to eat?” Sarah Samuelson asks. “We have a lot of different things and a ton of it.”

  Roderick glances at Haskins.

  She nods and says, “I missed dinner.”

  “Well, go help yourself,” he says. “Everybody, this is Deputy Haskins.” He looks over at Keith and Christopher. “If it’s okay with y’all I’d like her to stay here tonight.”

  “Okay?” Keith says. “You kiddin’? We’d love to have her.”

  “Welcome,” Christopher says to her.

  Sarah takes Haskins into the dining room and begins to uncover the various dishes. “Have a seat and just tell me what you’d like. I’ll fix your plate.”

  Rake Sabin comes down the stairs and into the parlor. “Everything’s quiet up there,” he says. “Just gonna grab a cup of coffee and head back up to keep watch.”

  Roderick shoots me a quizzical look. “Hal Raphael showed up tonight. He’s in a room upstairs.”

  “What?”

  “Rake’s keeping an eye on his room,” I say.

  Charis hands Haskins a cup of coffee and points to the cream and sugar on the table, then brings Brandt’s back into the parlor.

  “Cream or sugar?” she asks.

  “Just black, thanks.”

  He takes the coffee and sips it.

  Everyone in the room is looking at him expectantly.

  “Come on, Rake,” Charis says, “let’s get you taken care of. Would you like some food?”

  She leads him into the dining room.

  Roderick looks at Keith and Christopher and says, “There somewhere we could talk?”

  “Here is fine,” Christopher says. “We’d tell them what you said afterward anyway, so . . .”

  Roderick nods and takes another sip of his coffee. “Mind if we sit down?”

  “Of course not, sorry,” Christopher says. “Sit here.”

  He indicates a chair next to the couch he and Keith had been on before and the three men take a seat.

  “Obviously, there’s not much I can tell you at this point,” Roderick says, “but I wanted to come by and give you an update so you know what’s going on. We called in FDLE and their crime scene has processed the scene, but they’re coming back out in the morning to extend it outwards and start a more thorough search of the area. The pajamas have been taken to their lab for processing. In the morning a team will come by and process Magdalene’s room for DNA samples again to compare to the pajamas we found.”

  “But they already did that,” Keith says. “Don’t you still have her DNA on file?”

  Roderick nods. “We do. And we will compare it too, but we’re going to retest it as well.”

  “Do you think they’re hers?” Christopher asks. “They have to be, right?”

  “Honestly, we just don’t know,” he says. “They match the description of what she was wearing that night, but . . . they look relatively new. They certainly haven’t been out there in the elements since Magdalene was abducted, so . . .”

  “That’s good, right?” Christopher says. “Means she’s alive.”

  “The truth is we have no idea what it means. If they are hers, then it doesn’t make any sense at all. Like I said, it’s just too early to tell. The good news is FDLE has a great lab and they’ve agreed to rush everything for us. We could know something as soon as tomorrow afternoon. Then we can work on what it means. For now, try to get some rest. Sleep will help you more than anything to cope with whatever we face the next few days.”

  They both nod, but Christopher says, “I’ll never be able to sleep tonight.”

  “The other thing I wanted you to know is that our sheriff has okayed it with the Gulf County sheriff for John to work with me on this.”

  They look over at me in surprise. I nod.

  “That’s great,” Keith says.

  “We’re gonna do everything we can do,” Roderick says. “And we’re going to do it as quickly as we can, but it’s not going to be fast. I know you’re frustrated and I’m afraid you’ve got a lot more of that coming, but just know that all of us—me, John, our department, FDLE—all of us will be giving it our all.”

  “Why would they take her pajamas off?” Christopher says. “Why now? Why leave them out there like that? Has she been somewhere close by all this time?”

  “Hopefully, we’ll be able to find answers to all those questions and much more,” Roderick says.

  “Our poor little baby,” Christopher says. “Is she somewhere close by right now? What’s she wearing? Is she cold? Hungry? Hurt?”

  Continuing to rub Christopher’s back, Keith looks at Roderick. “Shouldn’t we be out there looking for her right now? Why are they waiting until morning to—”

  From up in our room Anna begins screaming frantically. Between shrieks she yells for Taylor and for me.

  I turn and begin running toward the screams.

  Dropping his coffee and following me, Roderick yells, “Everyone stay here. Haskins, keep them here!”

 
28

  Our room door is closed and locked, and I use my key card to get in.

  I fling open the door to find Anna alone, searching for Taylor.

  “Do you have her?” she yells. “Is she with you?”

  “No. She was here just a few minutes ago when I checked on y’all.”

  “I woke up to find her gone.”

  I turn to Roderick. “Can you and Haskins cover the doors to make sure nobody leaves while we look for her inside?”

  “Yeah,” he says, turning to leave immediately. “I’ll call for backup. As soon as they get here I’ll be back in to help search the house.”

  He starts running toward the stairs but I call after him.

  He pauses and turns back toward me.

  Behind me, Anna is calling out for Taylor and continuing to search the room.

  “Check the security camera feeds first,” I say. “Make sure she hasn’t already been taken from the house. You can still see the front door from the check-in desk where they are, so you can watch it and scan the footage at the same time.”

  “Got it,” he says, and takes off again.

  When I turn back toward Anna, she is on her hands and knees looking under the bed.

  I rush into the bathroom and look around, opening the cabinet doors under the sink and pulling back the shower curtain.

  I run back into the room and open the door to the small closet. I then pull up the top of the unzipped suitcase on the aluminum luggage rack, and as I do a thought tries to form but is quickly gone.

  “I’ve already looked in there,” Anna says. “I’ve looked everywhere. She’s not here.”

  “I’m just double-checking,” I say. “I’m gonna go over every inch of the house this way.”

  “I can’t believe you let this happen,” she says.

  I don’t respond. Instead, I open and look inside each drawer of the dresser.

  As I do, my phone vibrates. I pull it out and see that it’s Roderick and answer it.

  “Somebody disabled the recorder,” he says. “The cameras are still hooked up but they haven’t been recording since earlier tonight. We have no way of knowing if she’s already out of the house or not.”

  I slam my hand down on the dresser as expletives explode from my mouth.

  “I’ve got roadblocks being set up on the three roads out of here and backup should be here in about two more minutes. Everybody down here wants to help. Keith called his mom and she is headed back, but he hasn’t been able to get Henrique yet. Everyone is down here with me except you, Anna, and Haskins, who is on the back door.”

  “And Hal Raphael,” I say, stepping to the landing and looking at his door. “Who even with all the screams and commotion hasn’t even opened his door to see what’s going on?”

  I step across the landing and begin banging on Raphael’s door.

  After getting no response from calling for him and beating on the door, I step back and kick it near the handle.

  I could run downstairs and get a key from Keith, but not only do I not want to waste that much time, if Raphael has his door bolted it wouldn’t do any good anyway.

  At the first kick the door gives a little and begins to splinter, but it is not until the third one that the door swings open and slams into the wall behind it.

  The room is dark and cool, and I can hear heavy snoring.

  I flip on the lights and see that Raphael appears sound asleep in his bed. I do a quick sweep of the room to ensure no one else is in here, then try to wake him up.

  No amount of shaking him does any good, but as I yell for him to wake up while slapping his face some, he begins to rouse.

  His eyes open a little then close again. Several times.

  He’s either extremely groggy or an immensely talented actor.

  It takes a little while and some water from the tap, but I manage to wake him and get him to sit up.

  “What . . . What’s going on? What is it?”

  I tell him and ask him where Taylor is.

  “Huh?” he says. “Who?”

  “My daughter,” I say. “The little girl in the room across the hallway.”

  “I . . . I have no idea. I took a sleeping pill and have been asleep since my head hit the pillow—just a few moments after coming into my room. I have no idea what’s happening. I . . . I can’t . . . even hold my eyes open.”

  29

  Anna, Raphael, and I have joined everyone else in the parlor.

  Anna is dressed—something she must have done when I was talking to Raphael. Raphael is still in his pajamas.

  The room is filled with tension and adrenaline-fueled excitement that hums like electricity running along a transmission line.

  The buzzer sounds and after a quick glance Roderick buzzes the front door open.

  Derinda, Henrique, and two deputies rush in.

  “Oh, John, I’m so sorry,” Derinda says. “This can’t be happening again. It’s . . . it’s too much.”

  “The deputies searched us and our car,” Henrique says. “I told them we left together and everyone saw us, and we didn’t have a little girl with us, but . . .”

  “Search everything we have,” Derinda says. “Hell, you can strip search me if you want. Just find Taylor fast.”

  “I want one of you in here,” Roderick is saying to the deputies. “One outside on the front door. And the other four searching the neighborhood and going door to door.”

  One deputy stays and one turns to leave.

  “And you and Haskins watch the side yards too, not just the front and back doors,” Roderick says to the exiting deputy.

  “You got it,” he says, and is gone.

  “How can we help?” Rake asks.

  “I know you all want to help,” Roderick says, “but the biggest help you can be right now is by staying here so we know where everybody is.”

  He turns to me.

  “Let’s form two search teams so we can get through the entire house faster,” I say. “Be thorough. Check every room, every space inside every room. Everything. Keith and Christopher, do you each have a master key that works on every door in the house?”

  They nod.

  “Would you each go with one of the search teams, unlock every door and lead us methodically through the entire house?”

  They nod again.

  Christopher says, “Absolutely.”

  “Of course,” Keith says.

  “Why do you think she’s still in the house?” Anna asks me.

  “We can’t be sure that she is,” I say, “but no one has left—except Henrique and Derinda earlier, and we all saw them and know they didn’t have her—and it doesn’t seem like there’s been enough time to get her out.”

  “We’ve got roadblocks set up,” Roderick says. “And deputies in the yard and going around the neighborhood.”

  “Somebody needs to search the woods behind the house,” Vic says. “Don’t forget that’s where I found the pajamas today.”

  “I’ll lead a team out there,” Anna says, her voice conveying her anger and sadness and frustration and fatigue. “I just feel like she’s not in the house any longer. Do y’all have some bright flashlights?”

  When I turn toward Anna and start to say something she narrows her eyes and shakes her head, her expression forbidding me from saying anything to her.

  “It’s dark and dangerous out there,” Roderick says. “We should—”

  “We’re talking about my little girl,” Anna says. “There’s no place too dark or too dangerous. And there’s nobody who’s gonna stop me.”

  “Why not let the two deputies guarding the doors go with her?” Derinda says. “And we can watch the doors. You can put two or three of us on each door so we can watch the doors and each other. That way everything is watched and searched and everyone is accounted for.”

  Roderick nods. “I like that. That’s a great idea.”

  “Just put this sleepy ass bastard in my group,” Rake says, nodding toward Raphael, who is slumped i
n the high-back chair by the fireplace dozing. I ain’t buyin’ his Sleeping Beauty alibi.”

  Day 173

  Day 173

  I’ve given up on understanding people. I really have. What makes them say the things they say? It has to be because of the things they think, but why would people be thinking these things? And even if they were, why would they say them? Today Brooke told me that we could just adopt again. That it wasn’t like losing our own child. We had only had her for a short time and losing her wasn’t the same as if we had given birth to her or had raised her her entire life. She went on to ask if we knew she was well taken care of and in good hands and happy, couldn’t we just adopt again and be just as happy as we were before. I was speechless. I literally couldn’t respond. It’s like my little girl is replaceable, like we can just plug another child into her spot and be fine about it. What the actual fuck? How could she ask me something like that?

  30

  With Brooke, Wren, Derinda, and Vic watching the back door and Clarence, Sarah, Charis, Rake, Henrique, and Raphael watching the front door, Keith and I begin searching up on the third floor, while Christopher and Roderick start on the second.

  All the third-floor rooms are unoccupied right now. Keith and Christopher usually block off the week of the fall lecture series for a thorough cleaning of the house and making needed repairs, so until Raphael’s arrival, Anna, Taylor, and I were the only guests.

  Just thinking about Taylor makes my heart pound and sets off a panic inside me, but realizing I’ll be no good to her if I let that happen, I’m trying to place who she is to me and how I feel about her inside a vault deep inside me and lock it up tightly. Unless I approach this like I would any other missing child case, work it the way I would if she were a stranger—some random plumber’s daughter—I might as well be a plumber.

  I’ve got to find her. I’ve got to focus. I’ve got to let everything else go. I’ve got to compartmentalize. I’ve got to stop being her dad, at least psychologically, and just be the investigator hunting for her.