The Blood-Dimmed Tide (John Joran Mysteries Book 22) Page 18

She takes my hand. “That’s the sweetest request for a divorce ever, but I’d rather be with you in ruin.”

  “You’d still be with me,” I say. “I’m not going anywhere. But you’d be—”

  “End of discussion,” she says. “Don’t mention it again. Case closed. I’ve never been more proud or loved you more than I did in court today. I am a full partner in this and am honored to be. If they take all we have I’ll help pack it up and load it for them.”

  Tears sting my eyes and the only response I can muster is to squeeze her hand.

  We continue along in silence for a few minutes, during which I am able to compose myself.

  Eventually, the slow-moving traffic on the rural route comes to a dead stop as grappling truck rigs like the one PTSD Jerry was found in block the highway in the process of gathering debris.

  As we sit here something Anna said a few moments ago starts a chain reaction in my thinking.

  “When you mentioned me having to play the Burrells’ attorney’s fees—”

  “Us,” she says.

  “Huh?”

  “Us. I mentioned us having to pay their attorney’s fees. You’re not alone in this. It’s all us.”

  “Oh. Well, thank you. Thank you so much for saying that—and meaning it.”

  “I do.”

  “It reminded me of something Randa said today.”

  “You spoke to Randa today?”

  “When I went for my little walk,” I say. “She alluded to something bad befalling Gary Scott. It was an offhand comment about how I might get lucky and win the case or something, but it made me think . . . You know how we can’t connect our victims in the chaos killings?”

  “Because the killer’s MO is randomness,” she says. “Chaos theory. Yeah?”

  “What if I’m wrong about them and they’re not as random as they appear? What if the killer is picking people he thinks deserve punishing?”

  Her eyebrows arch above her widening eyes. “He could see the hurricane itself as punishment and is taking out those he believes should have been killed but somehow escaped their fate.”

  “Exactly,” I say. “Of course, that could be giving him way too much credit. It could truly be random and that’s his point, but it sure would help us if we could find some sort of link between the victims.”

  “You will,” she says. “If there’s one there to find.”

  As I start to respond my phone vibrates, and I pull it out and glance at it.

  “It’s Reggie,” I say. “Mind if I take it?”

  “Of course not. Answer it.”

  39

  “I guess you heard from Mullally,” Reggie says.

  “Yeah.”

  “So we have confirmation that the killer marks his victims with these symbols after he kills them.”

  Anna and I are still sitting in traffic on Highway 71 as the huge hydraulic arm of the grapple truck is loading large piles of trees, limbs, and debris into its heavy-duty dump bed and the attached identical trailer, and I wonder if a year from now these big rigs will still be here, running up and down the rural roads between town and the laydown yard.

  Next to me, Anna has opened her leather portfolio and is working on her trial notes for tomorrow—probably trying to figure out a way to attempt to mitigate the damage I did today.

  “So now the question is,” Reggie is saying, “how do we catch him?”

  “I have absolutely no idea,” I say. “Think about it . . . his MO is chaos, his choice of victim seems random, his method of murder flexible. We’ve got no pattern to follow, no victim profile to pursue, no evidence to test—”

  “Until he strikes again,” she says. “Sadly.”

  “Maybe not even then—or at least it might not be much. He keeps it so simple, keeps his work so subtle. He may not leave anything behind—except a psychological signature we’re unable to identify or interpret.”

  “Damn,” she says. “Doesn’t leave much to—”

  “There’s a chance the victims are connected in some obscure way that’s there if we look hard enough,” I say. “Best place—maybe our only place—to start is with them. We need to interview the families and friends, learn as much as we can about them, compare it, and hope we come up with something. Anna and I were just talking about the possibility of the killer believing the victims needed to be punished. Since there are none of the other usual or obvious connections, it’ll probably be one like this unless there isn’t one at all, which is still probably the most likely. They probably are truly random.”

  “I hope not,” she says. “I hope we can find something. Right now we have absolutely nothing. Hell, if it weren’t for you we wouldn’t even know he exists.”

  “I know how short staffed and stretched thin we are but . . . we need to increase patrols.”

  “I know,” she says. “I just don’t know how.”

  “We’ve got a lot of cops here from other counties because of the storm,” I say. “I think we’re gonna have to use them.”

  “That’s a good idea. And I think I’ll request even more.”

  “That would be great,” I say. “If we can’t catch him at least we can try to protect our people from him.”

  “Speaking of . . . what’re your thoughts about going to the media with this?”

  “We have to let the public know,” I say. “Especially since we’re not sure how long it’s going to take to catch him. Merrick helped me at the Boatman and I promised him the chance to break it when it came time. I’m sure he’ll help us, do us right. Especially if you ask him nicely.”

  “Hey, you’re the one who promised him something exclusive,” she says. “His and my exclusive days are done.”

  “Doesn’t mean they can’t be undone—or whatever that would be.”

  “Quit talkin’ shit like that and makin’ me awkward around him and you and I can meet with him this evening about releasing a story.”

  “Can’t promise anything,” I say. “Only sure way to keep it from being awkward is to get back together.”

  “Hey, he could be staying with me now but he’s too busy with his new big town reporter buddies. I wouldn’t be surprised if he winds up moving to Tampa and working for the Times before it’s all over.”

  “All the more reason to step up your game.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with my game,” she says. “Next subject.”

  “Moving on,” I say. “We’ve already got a curfew in effect because of the storm. We should keep it as long as we can, maybe even move it up some, and really enforce it. That, notifying the public, and increasing patrols should help save lives.”

  “The curfew begs the question how’s he doing all this?” she says. “Between the curfew and conditions and—”

  “I think he’s using them,” I say. “He thrives on chaos—uses it and our vulnerability against us. He’s the kind of predator attracted to blood in the water or the cries of the wounded. Calls for help draw him, get him juiced.”

  “Given what we’ve been through,” she says, “what we’re still going through . . . It takes a special kind of sickness to—”

  “Distress, disorientation, disability . . . are like mating calls to marauders.”

  “True.”

  “But don’t forget, he’s only done the two groupings of killings,” I say. “At least that we know of. He did a few, stopped, then did more. And it has been a while since he has done any others, so maybe the curfew is helping. Certainly can’t hurt. We add patrols and a well-informed public to the mix and we may shut him down altogether.”

  “We’ve still got three missing persons,” she says. “Wonder if they’re victims of his we haven’t found? If they are . . . I wonder where they are?”

  And then, as the grappler arms open and it drops its last load into the trailer below, an idea occurs to me.

  “What if the grappler truck operator hadn’t seen Jerry when he lifted that pile of debris?” I ask.

  “Huh?” Reggie asks.

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sp; Next to me, Anna stops what’s she’s doing and looks over, her eyes seeming to grow bigger.

  “If the body would’ve been positioned just a little differently,” I say, “he wouldn’t have seen him.”

  “You think the operator wanted us to find him?” she asks. “Is it him?”

  “What? No. If he hadn’t seen the body it would have wound up in the truck or the trailer,” I say.

  “Okay.”

  “And from there . . .”

  “To the laydown yard,” Reggie and Anna say at the same time.

  “What if that’s where his other victims are?”

  40

  “I got somethin’,” a deputy yells from somewhere in the back.

  I begin to move toward him, my muddy shoes sloshing in the water of the wet ground beneath my feet.

  There are three laydown yards in Gulf County—one on Overstreet near Mexico Beach, one at the old dump near Port St. Joe, and one outside Wewa on Highway 71 not far from the prison.

  We have search teams at all three. Darlene Weatherly is supervising the one on Overstreet. Arnie Ward is supervising the one near Port St. Joe. I’m with the team at the one outside Wewa.

  Each search time is comprised of deputies from our department as well as some of the out-of-town officers from other agencies here to assist with protecting and serving the public in this post-storm world. I was lucky enough to get Raymond Blunt on my team. His partner Phillip Dean is on Arnie’s team—though how he will notify anyone without speaking if he finds any evidence is a mystery to me.

  “I think it’s a foot,” the deputy adds.

  We have a six-member crew and have been searching for nearly an hour. This is our first find.

  Often associated with construction sites, a laydown yard is an area outside at a worksite where materials, trash, debris, tools, equipment, vehicles, and other items are stored until they are needed or hauled off.

  Our hurricane cleanup laydown yards are where the grapple trucks bring their loads of debris and trash and rubble and unload them.

  Eventually, the loads that are dumped will be sorted, the wood chipped and hauled off to paper mills, the metal crushed and hauled to metal scrap yards, and the trash hauled to incinerators. But because this process has just begun, the sorting hasn’t even started yet.

  This particular laydown yard is in a fifteen-acre field set back off the highway and hidden by a hedge of trees, now mostly leaning or down, along the fence next to the road.

  A little over a week into the cleanup and the fifteen-acre field is filling up fast.

  Huge stacks of debris are piled in long, wide rows that allow for trucks and tractors to maneuver around.

  As if a massive monument to a recently collapsed civilization, the laydown yard looks more like a burial ground for what used to be a once thriving community and the dense forest that surrounded it.

  The mountains of natural and manmade materials are several stories high—some many times higher than the tops of the tall pine tree forest and the homes, businesses, hotels, and condos they used to be.

  “Got somethin’ over here too,” another deputy yells. “Looks like the woman from the church.”

  “Everyone stay where you are,” I say into my radio. “Don’t touch anything.”

  When I reach the pile of mostly shingles and siding and household trash in the back where the first deputy yelled from, I see that he has indeed found a foot—and not just. It’s connected to the body of an elderly black man.

  Partially tangled in a torn blue tarp, the body is wedged sideways between the bent frame of an old futon and a small child’s red and yellow hard plastic slide. Above, beneath, and around it is a precarious pile of sheets of tin, chain-link fencing, plastic patio furniture, interior hollow core wooden doors, large sections of ripped and jaggedly cut carpet, mildewed and molding rugs, and beyond those, thousands of other damp and dirty household items and materials from homes destroyed by the hurricane.

  “Reeks like a son of a bitch,” the young deputy says. “I’m trying not to breathe through my nose but it’s like I can taste it in my mouth.”

  It appears the old man was wearing his pajamas when he was killed, and what’s inside them has definitely begun to decay.

  Though not visible from the little of him that’s exposed, I have no doubt that somewhere on his mortal remains is a symbol that in some culture somewhere in the world stands for chaos.

  “Okay,” I say. “Tape if off and let’s get forensics in here.”

  The second body, which is in a twisting and turning tangle of tree limbs, not unlike those PTSD Jerry was found in, is that of Betty Dorsey, the Samaritan’s Purse volunteer who went missing from the parking lot of the First Baptist Church in town.

  After cordoning off the two victims we found, we continue to search, but by the time the FDLE crime scene unit arrives we haven’t made any other grizzly discoveries.

  “It’s not a laydown yard,” Reggie says. “It’s a graveyard.”

  I nod and look out over the bleak landscape, backlit by the setting sun.

  The site looks like a post-apocalyptic trash city after the earth has been scorched and civil society is no more.

  “How the hell is this now our new reality?” she asks.

  I don’t answer. I have none to offer. And we stand there in silence, her question floating between us as the sun sets on another of our altered, surreal post-storm days.

  41

  As the FDLE crime scene unit processes the scene and the medical examiner’s office processes the body, all under the vigilant watchfulness of Raymond Blunt and Phillip Dean, Reggie and I step over to talk to Merrick, Tim, and Bucky.

  “Do what you need to do,” Ray says to Reggie as we’re walking away. “I’ll keep a close eye on the operation here.”

  The laydown graveyard is now bathed in the brilliant light of portable banks of LED work lamps, beyond which nothing is visible in the black night.

  After realizing there are too many onlookers, Randa and Rick Urich among them, who are not so subtly trying to hear what we have to say, we decide to all climb into Reggie’s SUV for privacy.

  “John,” Rick yells as we begin to move away. “John. You never came by. I thought you were going to come by and talk to me about—”

  “I am,” I say. “Just haven’t had time yet. But I haven’t forgotten.”

  “And what about this?” he asks nodding toward all the activity in the laydown yard. “Does this have anything to do with Betty?”

  “We’re just getting started,” I say. “Don’t really know anything yet, but as soon as we do we’ll put out a statement. I know it’s hard but please try to be patient. We will let you know as soon as we can.”

  He’s not mollified by this but before he can let me know just how much, I tell him I’ll be in touch and join the others already waiting for me in Reggie’s SUV.

  “This is me paying my debt,” I say.

  Reggie and I are up front, turned in the seats so we see each other and the three men in the middle seat—Merrick behind me, Bucky behind Reggie, and Tim in the middle.

  “But this is a huge overpayment for letting me use your hotel room for half an hour, so we expect continued help and major cooperation.”

  “Of course,” Merrick says.

  “See those TV news crews over there,” Reggie says, jerking her head toward the reporters and camera crews still among the gathered crowd on the other side of the crime scene tape. “They’d love to trade places with you right now, and they’d do anything we asked them to.”

  “We get it,” Tim says. “We know how it works. And we appreciate this more than you know. We’ll do you right. I swear.”

  “I’m not even sure how y’all can help us,” Reggie says to Tim and Bucky. “This is a local story. How’d y’all get invited to this party?”

  “It was our room,” Tim says. “And because of our coverage of the storm and what’s happened since—everybody in the state is reading us, inclu
ding locals. I promise you we can be a big help. No matter what it is. Our dispatches about the storm go live online immediately and they get tons of views instantly. Our regional following on social media is higher than anyone’s. We can put out a story that will be seen by a huge percentage of the people you’re trying to reach in a matter of minutes.”

  “Okay,” she says. “Well, just remember this . . . this story is just getting started. It’ll be far better for you to be on my good side later than it is now, so don’t screw me—”

  “That go for Merrick too?” Bucky asks, snickering to himself.

  “Nice,” she says. “Very mature. Inspires a ton of confidence.”

  “He’s an idiot,” Tim says. “It’s why he just takes pictures. But he’s good at that and I’ll guarantee he won’t say anything else stupid, because he won’t say anything at all. And I promise you can trust us. We work with TPD all the time. You can call Sergeant Gibson or Lieutenant Silverman. They’ll tell you.”

  “Sorry,” Bucky says. “Didn’t mean to be . . . I was just kidding, but it won’t happen again.”

  “Okay,” Reggie says. “As far as I’m concerned it’s already forgotten.”

  “Thanks.”

  Since the storm, it has been unseasonably warm here, and tonight is particularly humid and muggy. With all five of us in the vehicle, the air becomes stale and hot very quickly, and Reggie turns in her seat, cranks the SUV, and taps the AC temperature down and the fan up.

  She then nods toward me to talk.

  “Okay, guys,” I say. “What we’ve got . . . we believe . . . is a killer who has, since the storm, been murdering people in the area in such a way as to make it look like accidents.”

  “What?” Merrick says. “Seriously?”

  “More than one?” Tim says. “How many?”

  “Seven so far,” I say.

  “Seven?” Tim says.

  “Oh my God,” Bucky says.

  “A storm serial killer,” Merrick says.

  “Technically, not a serial killer,” I say, “and we certainly don’t want to use language like that in the coverage.”