The Blood-Dimmed Tide (John Joran Mysteries Book 22) Page 17

  “You were wrong not to do it?”

  “I was.”

  “And it’s possible if you had, that Derek wouldn’t have fired at you and would still be alive today?”

  I nod. “Yes, sir,” I say. “That’s possible.”

  “So this wasn’t an accident as you and your attorney keep saying,” he says. “It’s negligence, isn’t it? You were negligent in your duties and a young man lost his life.”

  36

  “He’s right,” I say. “I was negligent. This whole thing was far more a mistake on my part than some kind of tragic accident.”

  Anna and I are in the small room in the front left side of the courthouse during the lunch break.

  “I didn’t realize it until he asked me about it,” I say, “but failing to identify myself may very well be the reason Derek is dead. Probably is. No wonder I feel so guilty. My subconscious knew I was to blame.”

  She says several things to try to contradict what I’m saying and comfort me, but none of them gets through.

  I am devastated.

  As horrible as I felt before, I feel even worse now. As responsible as I felt before, I feel even more responsible now.

  I didn’t just accidentally kill a kid. I failed to do something that might have kept us out of the situation in the first place.

  “Can I just go back in and make a statement to the judge?”

  “No,” she says. “What kind of statement?”

  “An apology and an admission of guilt.”

  “Baby, no,” she says, jumping up from the table, grabbing my arms, and locking her intense dark eyes onto mine. “Listen to me. You’ve got to trust me. Please. I promise you’ll get to say anything you want to before it’s over. Okay?”

  I nod but don’t say anything.

  She pulls me to her and holds me for a long moment.

  Eventually I say, “I know you have work you need to do. I’m okay. Go ahead and . . .”

  “You sure?” she asks. “I’m doing it for you, so if you’d rather talk or—”

  “I’m sure. Go ahead. I need to think anyway. I’m gonna go for a walk.”

  “As long as it’s not to the judge’s chambers,” she says. “Not that she would talk to you without me present anyway. Go clear your head. And . . . please just leave this to me. Let’s see this to the end. You can always say or do what you want to—if you still want to—then. But I promise you’ll get to in the trial itself. Just trust me.”

  “I do,” I say. “Without reservation.”

  I slip out of the side door of the courthouse and head north on Main Street.

  It’s an interesting experience to be back in the small town I grew up in for the reason I am.

  Main Street holds memories from my childhood like a magnolia holds its blossoms in early spring, and many of my memories here are not unlike those pink-tinged white flowers—graceful, delicate, and fragrant with the sweet smell of youth.

  Main Street in a small Southern town is Saturday morning haircuts with your dad, community sidewalk sales, Christmas parades on cool Saturday nights in December, high school homecoming parades on pleasant Friday afternoons in October. It’s driving around in beat-up clunkers as teenagers—often before being licensed—looking for your secret crush. It’s riding your new bike down the middle of the street on early Christmas mornings in total emptiness. It’s the main artery through which the life’s blood of the town courses.

  As I make my way along the cracked cement sidewalk, I’m overcome with a bittersweet sadness and longing that I associate with homesickness, but what I yearn for is not so much a time or a place but a state of existence. What I ache for is the hope and innocence and joy of an earlier time—the time before I knew there were such things as child killers and compulsive murderers and obsessive stalkers and school shooters.

  Suddenly I am overtaken by anger—my hot blood seething with rage, and I wonder how it’s possible to want to do so much good and do so little, how to hurt while trying to help, how to be one of the good guys and do something so bad.

  “That really got to you, didn’t it?”

  I turn to see Randa walking up behind me, her pale skin looking odd and out of place in the sunlight.

  “I could tell,” she says. “The things Gary Scott was saying, the questions he was asking you . . . really upset you, didn’t they?”

  “I can’t talk right now, Randa,” I say. “I’m sorry. I need to get back to the courthouse.”

  “Just keep your head up, John,” she says. “That’s all I wanted to say—hang in there. And just know that even if no one else in that courtroom knows what it’s like to be in such a desperate situation with no choices, I do.”

  Though I’m fairly certain she has followed me from the courthouse and only came to talk to me, when I turn to head back toward the courthouse she continues in the direction we had both just been headed.

  “Don’t let it get to you,” she says as I move away from her. “Very little justice happens in our halls of injustice, but . . . sometimes . . . outside of those courthouse doors, out here in the street, something just occasionally happens. Who knows, maybe that little prick in the three-piece suit will learn what justice means.”

  I continue walking without responding.

  As I make my way back I try to do something to dissipate my anger. I control and focus on my breathing, say a prayer, take in the clear but hot afternoon. But nothing I try does much good.

  I’m about halfway back when my phone rings.

  Figuring it’s Anna calling to check on me, I quickly withdraw it from my pocket. But when I do I see that it’s the ME’s investigator, Leno Mullally.

  “So,” he says, with food in his mouth, “you were right. I went back and took a look at PTSD, ah, Tom Willis’s—the, ah, tattoo on his ankle. His is the only body that hasn’t been buried or burned.”

  I would expect someone in his position to say interned or cremated instead of buried and especially burned. Of course, I’d also expect them to say it without food in their mouths.

  “And you were right. It’s drawn on—I’d say with a Sharpie or something like it.”

  “Thanks.”

  “But . . . now that we know there’s a killer behind these deaths . . . and not the storm . . . changes . . . I mean, breaking some of the bones he has would require incredible strength. It’d be extremely difficult to do. Probably looking for a very large, strong, and powerful man. Some of these big badasses who’ve come in to work cleanup and construction wouldn’t be a bad place to begin.”

  Tampa Bay Times Daily Dispatch

  Hurricane Michael in Real Time

  By Tim Jonas, Times Reporter

  Among the many businesses affected by Hurricane Michael, perhaps no industry has been hit harder after the timber industry than the fishing industry.

  Oystering in the Apalachicola Bay and shrimping in the Gulf of Mexico have been devastated and are at historic lows. This has also been the lowest monthly Gulf of Mexico shrimp haul since records began.

  Hurricane Michael wiped out oyster houses, destroyed boats, its storm surge washed away docks and disrupted the Gulf and bay’s ecosystem.

  And Hurricane Michael is only one factor in that. These industries were already struggling from environmental pressures, including the lingering impacts of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Many in the industry are increasingly transitioning to farming because things in the Gulf and bay are so bad. A decade ago, the industry was pulling in three million pounds of wild oysters a year. Today that number is down to a few hundred thousand.

  37

  “John, are you sorry that you shot, Derek?” Anna asks me.

  “Profoundly,” I say. “More than anyone can know. If I could undo one thing in my entire life . . . it would be that.”

  Court is back in session. I am back on the witness stand. And it’s Anna’s turn to question me.

  “Do you feel bad about it?” she asks.

  �
�Horrible.”

  “Guilty?”

  “Extremely,” I say.

  “How about negligent?” she asks.

  “That’s not something I thought I was until Mr. Scott asked me if I identified myself to Derek this morning.”

  “And since then . . .”

  “I have, yes.”

  “These aren’t the usual questions an attorney would ask her client, are they?” she says.

  “I wouldn’t think so, no,” I say.

  “Do you know why I’m asking you them?”

  “I think so,” I say.

  “Why?”

  “You know how I’m feeling, what I’m going through,” I say. “I tell you things a client wouldn’t ordinarily tell his attorney.”

  “But even then . . .” she says. “Just because I’m in a position to know these things about you doesn’t mean I necessarily need to ask you them under oath in a trial for which you are being accused of the wrongful death of a teenage boy.”

  “You know that being honest and open, expressing these things, is far more important to me than the trial.”

  “What is it you want to express—especially to the Burrells?”

  “That I’m so, so sorry. That my heart is broken—and not just for what I’ve done but for them. It’s hard for me to live with knowing that my actions mean Derek will never grow fully into manhood. Never experience a long-term relationship, children, adult life.”

  “Even though Ms. Burrell has made it clear that they don’t accept your apology?”

  “Yes. Of course. I don’t blame them for not accepting my apology. For anything. But it doesn’t make me any less sorry.”

  “Now that we’ve covered that and you’ve gotten to say what you wanted to, I have some other questions for you. Okay?”

  “Okay. And thank you.”

  “Do you know what constitutes negligence in a case like this?” she asks.

  I shake my head. “No, not really.”

  “It means not acting as a reasonable person would act under the circumstances,” she says. Did you act reasonably under the circumstances in Potter High School on April 23, 2018? Perhaps not perfectly, but reasonably?”

  I nod. “Yes, I believe I did.”

  “And it’s not just you who believes you did, is it?” she says. “A thorough and unbiased investigation by an outside agency—the Florida Department of Law Enforcement—concluded the same thing, didn’t they?”

  “They did.”

  “Professional law enforcement officers who investigate other professional law enforcement officers determined that you acted reasonably,” she says. “That reasonable officers in the situation you were in would have acted as you did, didn’t they?”

  “Yes.”

  “And yet you feel horrible and guilty and responsible and would take it back if you could?”

  “Yes,” I say. “I do. I would.”

  “But feeling bad or even guilty and wishing you could take it back doesn’t necessarily make you in fact guilty as far as the law is concerned, does it?”

  “I guess not,” I say. “Not necessarily.”

  “It’s pretty simple,” she says. “Did you mean to kill Derek or not?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “And doesn’t the fact that you kicked his gun away and cuffed him mean even afterwards you thought he was the school shooter, not just someone in the school shooting, no matter how noble or heroic his intentions were?”

  “Yes, I thought he was the school shooter,” I say.

  “And still you just tried to disarm him—even after he had already shot at you twice?”

  “Yes,” I say, “that’s true.”

  “Why did you think he was the school shooter?” she asks.

  “When I arrived on the scene he was shooting at the wounded school resource officer,” I say, “and she told me he was.”

  “He was shooting at a deputy who was already down from being shot, she told you he was, and when you approached him he fired at you twice?”

  I nod. “That’s right.”

  “And still you shot to wound and disarm, to stop him and save lives, not to kill?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re certain of all those things and they are the truth and nothing but the truth so help you God?”

  “Yes,” I say. “I’m certain.”

  “Okay . . . now . . . let me ask you this,” she says. “Are you absolutely certain you didn’t identify yourself or give Derek the lawful order to drop his weapon?”

  I think about it for a long moment. “No, I can’t be positive I didn’t,” I say, “but I can say I honestly don’t remember.”

  “Don’t remember saying it or don’t remember if you did or not?”

  “I don’t remember saying it.”

  “But with your training and experience it could very well be so second nature that you said it and now just can’t remember whether you did or not?”

  “That’s possible.”

  “Was your badge displayed like it is supposed to be?”

  “Yes, it was on my belt.”

  “And you weren’t dressed like a student or anything, right? You looked like a professional, plainclothes police officer, badge on your belt, service revolver drawn?”

  “That’s right.”

  “You didn’t have a rifle or a shotgun or any other of the weapons school shooters use?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Weren’t wearing a Pottersville Pirates hat or anything that could’ve made anyone think you were a student?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “So you round the corner and are shot at—more than once—and you return fire. And you can’t be certain, but if right before that or during being shot at, if you didn’t verbally identify yourself as a police officer, you don’t think your badge and appearance was enough to identify you as such?”

  “I just wish I had,” I say. “Or wish I could remember for sure whether I had or not. That’s all. It’s possible I did. It’s possible that it wouldn’t make a difference anyway—there was so much smoke and it was so loud from the explosions and the gunfire and the fire alarm that had just stopped. My ears were ringing and I couldn’t hear very well, and Derek had been in the hall longer than I had. And in the same way, he might not have heard me—even if I had yelled it. And given all the smoke and our movement, there’s every chance that he didn’t see my badge.”

  “Wow,” she says, and just looks at me for a moment. “You’re actually defending the actions of the young man who tried to kill you.”

  “A heroic young man who was trying to help save his classmates,” I say, “who made a mistake. And what I’m trying to do is explain what it was like in that hallway—it felt like an urban warfare zone. The explosions. The gunfire. The alarms. The screams. And the not knowing what’s going on or who’s behind it or where they are. Only a few people know what it was like to actually be in that hallway that day, how bad it really was, and many of them are dead.”

  “Derek shot at you, could have killed you,” she says. “Now his parents are suing you for, among other things, your character, integrity, and reputation, and you sit here defending him, justifying his actions. That’s incredibly gracious of you.”

  I shake my head. “It’s just the truth. I’m just trying to tell the truth about everything—including the Burrells’ brave son.”

  38

  “Thank you,” I say.

  Anna and I are on our afternoon drive back to Wewa. The commute has become both routine and ritual, giving us the opportunity to process what has happened and decompress from the day. It has become one of my favorite parts of day, the obliteration of the world outside our car unable to take away from what we’re experiencing inside it.

  “I was right that getting to say what you did is more important to you than winning the case, right?”

  I nod. “There is no winning in this case.”

  She nods slowly and frowns. “I just wanted to g
et the best possible result for you—for your reputation, your future career, and to a lesser extent our financial future. If we lose it’s going to a big hit. It’s not like we have any extra money lying around. We can’t cover their lawyer fees let alone the damages they’re asking for. And there’s another thing . . .”

  “What’s that?”

  “The jury could always award them more than they’re asking for,” she says.

  “Oh,” I say. “Really? I hadn’t thought of that, but still . . .”

  “Even if the jury awards them a huge settlement and it ruins us, you’d rather have done what you did, today, right? Rather do what’s right for your soul than the case?”

  “Yeah. Sometimes when you lose you win.”

  Another Derek comes to mind, and I see British athlete Derek Redmond in the 400-meter sprint at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics when in the middle of the race he tore his hamstring but got back up in intense agony and tried to limp to the finish—something he was able to do with the help of his father who ran out of the stands to assist him. Derek lost the race that day, but he lost it in the right way and won all that matters most.

  “Sorry,” I add. “I just can’t even care about—”

  “I’m asking because I want to make sure the malpractice I committed today was at my client’s request.”

  “It was,” I say. “And thank you for what you did. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it—especially knowing what you thought about it and what it does to your case.”

  “I know what you mean, but it really is your case,” she says. “Far more so now. It’s a reflection of you—your priorities, what matters most to you.”

  “Could we divorce?” I say. “Stay together, of course, but legally divorce so you, Taylor, and Johanna will be protected financially if this leads to my financial ruin?”