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

  “No, but you can certainly make inferences,” he says. “Draw conclusions based on the evidence.”

  “So you’re saying you can tell by where a bullet enters and exits a body what the shooter meant to do?”

  “In most cases.”

  “What if the shooter is a bad shot?” she asks. “Just misses what he aims for?”

  “That’s possible,” he says, “though not often with well-trained professional law enforcement officers like the defendant.”

  “You’re saying that professionals usually hit what they’re aiming for?” she says.

  “Generally, yes,” he says. “I’m not saying they don’t miss . . . Just that if they’re aiming for the leg they don’t hit the head.”

  “Ever?”

  “I’m not saying that,” he says. “The extreme cases are the exceptions that prove the rule.”

  “In this case,” she says, “we have a round that enters the victim’s lower left leg. What, if anything, do you conclude from that?”

  “I think the other round is far more telling,” he says.

  “Really?” she asks. “You can tell which bullet matters most?”

  “Yes,” he says.

  “Are you sure it’s not just that one bullet proves your theory and the other contradicts it?”

  “No, that’s not it.”

  “Doesn’t the round in Derek’s leg back up John’s story that he was trying to stop him from shooting and not kill him?”

  “I don’t believe so.”

  “Really? Why is that?”

  “I believe this is simply evidence of the defendant missing what he was aiming for,” he says.

  “Why can’t the other round be that?”

  “Well . . .”

  “You can’t know for sure it’s not, can you?” she says. “You can’t know that to a scientific certainty can you?”

  “Well, that’s a relative term, but I’m convinced, again based on the evidence, that the victim was being executed.”

  “Executed? Wow. That’s a very strong and prejudicial word. Not at all a word that an unbiased scientist would use, is it? It’s the word of someone who’s willing to prove his worth to the plaintiff, isn’t it? Speaking of . . . How many times have you testified as a so-called ‘expert witness’?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “What if I told you it was over three hundred?” she says. “Would you take issue with that number?”

  He shrugs. “Probably not.”

  “It is, in fact, how you make a living, isn’t it? Being an expert witness?”

  “I have books and—”

  “Well, then let me ask it this way . . . what pays your bills? Your books or testifying as a guns and gunshot wounds expert?”

  “Using my expertise in important trials to get to the truth probably makes more than my books.”

  “Is that what you try to do when you testify in trials?” she asks. “Get to the truth?”

  “It is.”

  “Then the truth must always be on one side,” she says. “In every single case. Is it true that you are always an expert witness for the plaintiff?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’ve never once in your life testified on behalf of a defendant?”

  “Experts typically specialize.”

  “You’ve certainly done that,” she says.

  “A lot of reputable experts do,” he says. “We live in a specialists society.”

  “That may be, but you can’t say that truth is limited to one specialty, to one side every single time. Now, as you know, John’s statement under oath is that he was attempting to subdue the person shooting at him and the school resource officer, not to kill him. He has consistently maintained that he attempted to shoot Derek in the leg and in the hip just to bring him down, to stop him before he killed an officer who was already injured and couldn’t move. Is it possible . . . Is it possible that John’s first round went into Derek’s leg like he claimed shooting and that though he aimed at Derek’s hip when he shot, that Derek was moving, already falling from the shot to the leg? And so instead of the round hitting Derek’s hip, it hit where his hip was a moment before—his abdomen area. Is that possible?”

  News Herald Special Report

  Hurricane Michael Hits Region’s Tupelo Producers Hard

  By Merrick McKnight, News Herald Reporter

  Massive amounts of white tupelo gum trees in the Apalachicola and Chipola river basin areas of Gulf and Liberty counties were destroyed by Hurricane Michael, removing the main source required for bees to produce tupelo honey.

  According to many area beekeepers, the bees are mostly alive and well, but the storm’s impact on the environment is going to have a huge impact on them—particularly when it comes to the production of tupelo.

  According the University of Florida, the Panhandle is home to nearly 500 commercial beekeepers and more than 1.2 billion honeybees—bees that not only produce honey but play a crucial role in the pollination of other crops in the area, such as blueberry, cucumber, and watermelon.

  The Florida State Beekeepers Association has set up a GoFundMe campaign to assist beekeepers in the affected areas.

  27

  That afternoon after court I drive over to the Bay County Sheriff’s Office to meet with an investigator named Pamela Garmon.

  Because I have to go by my office in Port St. Joe first, I travel Highway 98 along the coast into Panama City, which takes me through the areas hit hardest by the hurricane.

  Before I left the courthouse, I encountered Rick Urich who seemed to be waiting in the back to talk to me.

  “I’m surprised to see you here,” I say. “I didn’t think you guys took breaks.”

  The forty-something African-American cell phone salesman who looks more like a professional athlete gives me a big, warm smile worthy of a Good Samaritan, his eyes sparkling, his teeth gleaming.

  “I just wanted to come and say thank you again for looking for me yesterday and to apologize for wasting your time. I know how busy you are right now.”

  “You drove all the way out here to Pottersville to tell me that?”

  “We were working at a little home in the woods back off the highway not too far from here,” he says, “and I . . . I just . . . I wanted to ask you a couple of things.”

  “Okay.”

  “I just feel so bad for Betty. It’s a real sacrifice for us to come here and do what we do. It takes a special person, you know? I want to help get her back. And I was wondering if maybe the person who picked me up yesterday is the same one who took her. What if he planned to kill or abduct me or something but decided at some point that he’d have his hands full with me.”

  I don’t know how Rick is in a fight but he certainly looks formidable.

  “That’s an interesting idea,” I say. “Did he act suspicious or do anything that would make you think—”

  “No, not really. It’s a farfetched idea. I . . . I just want to help if I can. Is there anything I can do to help find her?”

  “The way you all are helping those in need with their homes is helping us all more than you can know. Let us focus on finding Betty and—”

  “But I want to help find Betty. I just still can’t believe she was really taken like that. There’s got to be something we can do.”

  “We’re working on it, and won’t give up until we find her. But if there’s anything you can help us with, I’ll certainly let you know. And if you give me the contact info of the man you helped yesterday, we’ll follow up with him.”

  “I didn’t get anything like that from him,” he says. “I don’t even know the address of his place, but I could probably take you there.”

  “Okay,” I say. “I have somewhere I have to be right now, but maybe tomorrow or . . . I’ll come by the church and pick you up when I can.”

  “But what if he’s got her there?” he says. “Shouldn’t we go now?”

  “I just can’t right now,” I say, “but I can have a c
ouple of deputies go with you.”

  “I’d rather it be just us,” he says.

  “I would take a deputy or two with us when we go anyway,” I say. “Even if there’s a chance he could have Betty.”

  “Oh, gotcha,” he says and shrugs, his demeanor changing, and he suddenly seems disinterested. “Well, okay then. Either way.”

  “I’ll call them,” I say. “Can you go now?”

  He purses his lips and nods noncommittally. “Yeah, sure. I can go. It’s just . . . I wanted to talk to you. I heard some people talkin’ about you and . . . well . . . I was wanting to become a police officer—but not just that. I really want to be a police chaplain and I thought I could ask you some questions on the way out to the place.”

  “Why don’t you go with the deputies now,” I say. “And I’ll swing by the church sometime and talk to you about being a police officer and a chaplain?”

  So as I’m driving toward PC two of Gulf County’s finest are taking the Good Samaritan to talk to the man he helped yesterday.

  My journey is slow and difficult with many dead stops along the way. There are several detours and spots where the traffic is one lane because part of the highway has been destroyed—either washed away by tidal surge or crushed with the rubble of crumbling hotels and restaurants.

  Beginning at the east end of St. Joe Beach and continuing to the very west end of Mexico Beach, the coastline has been demolished.

  Where once were sea oats–dotted dunes of pure, clean sand so white it looked like sugar, there is only a storm-flattened beach with dirty, wet compressed sand, veins of black running through it. The water is brown instead of green, the environment foreign instead of familiar, and I mourn for what have before now always been to me the most beautiful beaches in the world.

  The buildings on both sides of the highway, the small cottages, the colorful condos, the excessive mansions, the touristy shops, the gulfside dining establishments, and the last of the old fishing shacks are all gone to one degree or another.

  Lifted by the tide, flung apart by the wind, the structures left even partially standing are detached from their foundations, out of square and leaning like at any moment they will finish their fall to the battered earth below.

  Entire intact homes have been washed across the highway, coming to rest among other structures, vehicles, and debris like limbs and street trash caught on the steel bars of a storm water runoff drainage grate.

  As if the remnants of a post-war province a world away, piles of rubble from what looks like bombed-out buildings litter the landscape.

  As if an abandoned civilization in a post-apocalyptic desert world, sand drifts cover large swaths of the highway.

  This is the first time I’ve been back to Mexico Beach since the day the storm hit, and I’m haunted by the echoes of that ordeal.

  Landmarks that have been here for as long back as I can remember are no more.

  The Lookout Lounge is a mound of broken cinderblocks.

  What’s left of Toucans restaurant blocks part of the highway, still sitting where it landed after Michael lifted it off its cement pilings and washed it away.

  Though still standing, the massive concrete and steel structure of the El Governor Motel is in tatters, the large back window of its rooms with the gorgeous Gulf view shattered, the contents of the rooms sucked out, some of it hanging from mangled balcony railings, some of it on the beach below.

  The boats of the marina are capsized and tossed to the side, stacked on top of each other like a child’s bathtub toys after the last of the water has drained out. The marina itself is filled with such an extreme amount of debris that it will never be clean again—houses and parts of houses and household goods, appliances and furniture, construction materials, vehicles, and what looks like enough 2x4s to frame the homes and businesses of an entire town.

  As the debris field of what once was Mexico Beach ends, I enter the decimated pine forest flats that serve as the natural barrier of Tyndall Air Force Base. Tens of thousands of trees blown down, broken off, bent over, turned, twisted, toppled.

  As the wounded woods recede, I’m not prepared for what I witness next.

  Tyndall Air Force Base looks to have been ground zero of a massive successful terrorist attack. Perimeter fences down. Airplane hangars crushed like an old tin breadbox in a scrap metal compactor. Everywhere—in trees, on knotted and jumbled power lines, on bent steel frames—twisted and tangled sheets of tin flutter like ribbons in the wind.

  Exposed military aircraft, from aging bombers to the latest fighter jets, can be seen in the wreckage and ruin, the damage extensive, permanently grounding.

  Base housing, training and operational buildings, officers and enlisted clubs—either gone entirely or damaged beyond repair.

  Coming down off the bridge near Tyndall into Callaway, I can see that the town has been hit every bit as hard as Mexico Beach and the air force base—businesses gone or boarded up, houses destroyed or damaged. Nothing open. Nothing operational. Rubble and debris everywhere, on every lot, lining every street, the untacked tarp corners of blue roofs flapping in the breeze.

  The devastation is overwhelming. Depressing. Anxiety inducing. Difficult to comprehend.

  The chaos of the environment, the mounds and mounds of debris, the piles and piles of trash make me feel anxious, angry, irritable, and claustrophobic.

  Continuing into Panama City, I see that the low-income housing on 15th Street has been destroyed, its apartments vacant, the items left behind by those who’d been evacuated lie molding and mildewing.

  All major chain restaurants and most of the smaller independently owned ones are closed—as are all but a few grocery stores and gas stations.

  The Panama City Mall is so severely damaged that it can’t reopen—now and probably ever—wind and water damage leaves two of the three anchor stores and all the interior stores, restaurants, and kiosks ruined. Across the street from the mall, the Holiday Inn where Merrill and I recently worked on the Malia Goodman case looks as if an IED exploded inside, its glass windows shattered, wet sheets and drapes hanging out, waving in the wind.

  When I finally arrive at the Bay County Sheriff’s Office I am depleted, drained, depressed.

  Inside I find Pamela Garmon, a middle-aged black woman who worked her way up from dispatch to patrol to now investigations, at the large table in the conference room looking through case files.

  “I had about given up on you,” she says.

  “Sorry,” I say. “That trip takes a lot, lot longer than it used to.”

  “Yeah, but at least it’s got a beautiful view.”

  I try to laugh as I sit down across from her with my briefcase full of files, but nothing quite comes out. “Too soon,” I say. “Too soon.”

  “Yeah, I guess it is, but better to laugh and cry than just cry. Hope you don’t mind that I started without you.”

  “Not at all.”

  “You can double-check but I think I about got it all sorted.”

  “I certainly don’t need to double-check,” I say. “You know what we’re looking for.”

  “Appears to me we got two deaths determined to be accidental that deserve a closer look in the light of what you’ve found over your way. And they’re both in Mexico Beach. We got nothing in any other part of Bay County that’s even questionable—they’re either obvious homicides, suicides, or accidents.”

  “So Mexico Beach is as far west as he goes,” I say.

  “You think one perp’s behind all these?”

  “I think it’s possible,” I say. “And maybe for some missing persons we haven’t found yet. Especially if the two in Mexico Beach have a bone broken post-mortem.”

  Her eyes widen. “They do.”

  “Mind if we take a look at them?”

  “That’s what we’re here for,” she says.

  She slides all but two file folders to the side, then opens the two, turns them toward me, and pushes them across the table.

  �
��David Cleary and Ellen Lucado,” she says.

  I examine Cleary’s file first.

  “Cleary was found in the rubble of the Gulfside Seafood Restaurant and Lounge,” she says. “His body was in bad shape, but it seemed consistent with a building crashing down on top of him. The investigator who caught the case theorized that Cleary stayed during the storm instead of evacuating. When his house was destroyed he sought shelter in the downstairs bar of the Gulfside, and eventually it fell down on top of him.”

  I flip through the thin file.

  “I’m’a be honest with you,” she says. “We’re workin’ in emergency mode over here.”

  “We are too,” I say. “Our entire area is.”

  “I won’t be surprised if we missed something,” she says. “Way things are right now . . . if it looks like an accident and quacks like an accident, we gonna call it an accident.”

  I nod. “I understand. Pretty much triage in every agency right now.”

  “But if we missed something I want to fix it,” she says. “Don’t want no sick bastard takin’ advantage of our depleted state right now to get away with killin’ our people when they already suffering the way we are.”

  The file depicts what she had described, and the autopsy reveals that the radius bone of his right arm was broken after death.

  I put down Cleary’s file and pick up Lucado’s.

  “Not much in there, I know,” she says. “Ellen Lucado’s body was found floating in the Mexico Beach marina. And even though she didn’t drown, her death was ruled accidental because we figured she got struck in the head by debris flying around or falling before she went into the water.”

  According to her autopsy, the fourth toe on her left foot was broken after she was already dead.

  I study the autopsy photo of her feet.

  She has a tattoo on the top left side of her left foot—a simple black Chinese symbol that I think I’ve seen before but can’t recall for sure and don’t know what it means. She has attractive, well-manicured feet and her toenails are painted an electric blue that makes her seem both more human and more vulnerable somehow. From the photo alone I can’t tell that her toe is broken.