Blood and Sand Read online

  Please, God, make it stop. Please forgive me if I ever did anything to deserve this. I’m sorry. I repent. I take it back. Please.

  Unless . . . Don’t stop it if Magdalene is still suffering. I want to suffer as long as she does. Let me suffer instead of her. Heap it on me. I can take it. Just spare her.

  4

  “We really appreciate what you shared today,” Keith is saying. “It was a great talk and we look forward to your others, but . . .”

  After lunch, Keith and Christopher had asked to speak to me in private.

  We are in the small kitchen in the back part of their B&B that serves as their primary residence.

  “Well, we . . .” Keith continues. “The main reason we were so eager to have you speak at chapel this week and to stay here in our home is because we’d really like you to look into Magdalene’s case for us.”

  “We’ve heard about you from a few different people we trust,” Christopher says. “We read about some of the cases you worked on and listened to a few true crime podcasts about others.”

  “The truth is,” Keith says, “the reporter who has been the fairest to us, who seems to be an actual decent human being, Merrick McKnight, said if anyone could figure out what really happened to Magdalene, you could.”

  They’re telling me that one of the main reasons they asked me to come speak is they hoped I’d look into Magdalene’s disappearance. But what I can’t tell them—especially because of how strained my relationship with Anna is right now over this very thing—is that a big part of the reason I accepted the invitation is that I was hoping to get a chance to look into Magdalene’s disappearance for myself. In addition to welcoming the chance to speak on the topics selected and getting away from our hurricane-ravaged hometown for a much-needed family vacation, of course.“We made you this,” Christopher says, handing me a large binder that looks like a homemade murder book.

  I take the binder, touching the photograph of Magdalene glued to the front of it, then open it and begin to flip through its carefully constructed pages.

  “It’s got everything we’ve been able to get our hands on,” Keith adds. “Statements, interviews, evidence, theories, articles, suspects, everything—even Chris’s journal. There’s a lot the police won’t give us, but we’re hoping maybe you could get that.”

  It’s entirely possible the authorities don’t have nearly as much as he thinks.

  “This is impressive,” I say.

  Keith says, “Chris is a scrapbooker.”

  In the short time I’ve been here, I’ve noticed that Keith is the only one permitted to call Christopher Chris.

  “I’m so, so sorry that she was taken,” I say.

  “Thank you,” Christopher says.

  “Will you look into it for us?” Keith asks.

  “I’d really like to,” I say.

  “But?” Keith asks.

  “There’s no but like that,” I say. “Just a few caveats and explanations.”

  “Okay,” he says. “Let’s hear them.”

  “I take very seriously the talks I’m giving,” I say. “And part of the reason I’m here is to enjoy a little vacation time with my family. I won’t short shrift either of them.”

  “Understood,” Keith says.

  “I hope the talks weren’t just an excuse to get me here to talk to me about—”

  “Absolutely not,” Christopher says. “You were chosen by a committee. We only got one vote like everybody else. It was an enthusiastic vote, but we were just two of eight.”

  “And we weren’t even the ones who recommended you in the first place,” Keith says.

  I nod, then continue. “If I start this, I won’t stop until it’s solved to my satisfaction. I’m still investigating some of the Atlanta Child Murders from forty years ago.”

  “That’s what we want,” Christopher says. “I mean, we hope it doesn’t take that long, of course, but we wouldn’t want you to stop until it’s over.”

  “I will follow the evidence where it leads,” I say. “I don’t care where that is—including to either one of you. Magdalene can be my only concern.”

  Keith says, “We didn’t have anything to do with what happened to our sweet little girl, so look at us all you like.”

  “That’s the thing,” I say. “I’ll be looking at you and your families and your friends. I’ll be getting all up in your and their business, and that’s uncomfortable and embarrassing—even for the most innocent of people.”

  “We don’t care,” Christopher says.

  “Burn it all down for all we care,” Keith says. “Just find out what happened to our little girl.”

  I nod. “And you should know . . . there are no happy endings in a case like this. No matter what.”

  “We know that,” Keith says. “We know the chances of her being alive are minuscule. We just need to know what happened. We’re not expecting a miracle. We don’t expect you to bring our little girl back home to us and for life to return to normal.”

  “The horrific truth is,” I say, “and I hate to be the one to have to even say it—even if she is still alive, there’s no imagining what she has been through for the past year.”

  “We know,” Keith says.

  “I’d rather you found out that she is dead than that she has been abused and traumatized all this time,” Christopher says.

  “And finally,” I say, “even if I can find out what I think might have happened to her—and that’s a very, very big if—there’s every chance that I won’t be able to prove it. Not to the extent that a DA would file charges and prosecute.”

  “We realize that,” Keith says.

  “I won’t attempt to punish whoever I think might be the perpetrator—no matter what he or she may have done—and I won’t find and identify him or her for you or someone else to do that either.”

  “We’re not violent people,” Christopher says. “We’re not looking to take the law into our own hands.”

  Keith nods, though I’m not as convinced he feels the same way. “We just want to know,” he says. “We have to know what happened. We can’t live with not knowing what happened to her.”

  I nod and agree to look into Magdalene’s case, all the while thinking, You may not be able to live with knowing what happened to her either.

  Day 14

  Day 14

  The cops are making a big deal about a missing key card.

  Because of how seriously we take security (wow, that’s a joke now, isn’t it?) we have all the key cards numbered and inventoried.

  Two days before our solstice party one went missing.

  We didn’t misplace it or lose it. It was taken. Stolen.

  One moment it was on the check-in desk—not on top of the counter but down underneath where we keep everything—and the next it was gone.

  It takes a key card to get into our house. If someone doesn’t have one, they have to be buzzed in. So the cops are saying this is how the abductor got in. And nobody wants that to be the case more than me. I mean, if someone was able to break in, that means we didn’t do it. But here’s the thing—Magdalene was taken on the night of 12/22, or I guess more accurately the early morning hours of 12/23. But the key card was stolen on 12/20. And as an added safety feature of the added security we offer (again, something that is ironic and cruel now), we reprogram our doors every day. Every single day without fail. It’s automatic. We don’t even have to do it. The guests have to come to the front desk every day and have their key card reprogrammed or they won’t be able to get into the building, let alone their own room. So a key card stolen on 12/20 would be of no use on 12/22. And here’s the other thing (and I keep telling them this)—it wasn’t programmed at all. It hadn’t been yet. So it wouldn’t even have been any good on 12/20.

  Day 15

  Day 15

  It’s obvious the police suspect us.

  I guess I finally convinced them the stolen key card was useless and not how an intruder could’ve gotten in.

&nb
sp; They think it has to be me or Keith or one of our friends staying here that night.

  And I get it. Because of our security system. Because there is no sign of a break-in. Because the house was locked up tight when we woke up to find her gone . . . It has to be an inside job, right?

  But it can’t be one of us. Can it?

  None of us would harm a hair on her precious little head. Right?

  There are no other suspects but us. But does that mean it has to be us?

  And if one of us—who?

  I wouldn’t even begin to know who to suspect.

  None of us are vicious child killers—do I really think she’s dead?—or abductors, are we? Of course not. We’re talking about my family. No one in the world is closer to me than these people.

  But what if it was an accident? What if something happened—something the person didn’t intend—would he or she or they cover it up? No. None of our friends would put me and Keith through that. They would tell us. They would know we would be heartbroken—but we would know. They wouldn’t put us through the torture and agony of not knowing. They’d see how much it hurts, how mad it’s driving us.

  There’s a theory or rumor being circulated that we gave Magdalene sleeping medication so we could enjoy the party, and that we accidentally gave her too much and she died of an overdose and we’re covering it up with the help of some or all of our friends. They even say the cops found children’s sleeping medication in our medicine cabinet.

  We didn’t kill our daughter. And neither did our friends.

  But if not any of us, who? Somebody took my little girl. Somebody has her or knows where she is. Somebody, but who? And how’d they do it?

  5

  “What was that about?” Anna asks.

  I tell her.

  We are in our room, whispering to each other as Taylor naps on the enormous bed.

  Each room in the Florida House is named for and themed after a famous Floridian. So far I’ve seen the Zora Neale Hurston, Henry Morrison Flagler, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Thomas Alva Edison, and Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings.

  We’re in the Ernest Hemingway room—inspired by his time in Key West. It’s a huge room filled with what I’m assuming are replicas and what “American Pickers” Mike and Frank would call repops, but each item looks and feels original, antique, real. There’s what looks like Spanish seventeenth-century furniture, a French chandelier, an Italian marble fireplace, hand-painted tiles, a white Chenille bedspread covering two full-size beds that have been strapped together in a manner similar to what Hemingway did, and an ornate wooden headboard that appears to have come from a Siglo de Oro Spanish monastery, just the way Hemingway’s had. The room is so classically tropical, so obviously from an earlier era, it feels like we could step outside the room and be in 1930s Havana.

  I quickly and quietly tell her about what happened to Magdalene and what Keith and Christopher asked me to do.

  “They want you to investigate the case?” she says, though I’ve already told her they did.

  “Look into it, yeah,” I say. “See if I can find anything that’s been missed.”

  “What’d you tell them?”

  “That my talks would require a lot of me and that we were on vacation . . .”

  “But?” she says. “And? I know that’s not all you said. What else did you tell them, John?”

  I start to say something, but she continues.

  “Did you tell them you’d investigate it?”

  “I told them—”

  “I really thought this was a yes or no kind of question.”

  I open my mouth but before any sound comes out, she is talking again.

  “What’s over there under your suit coat?” she asks, cutting her eyes momentarily in the direction of the desk and the chair behind it where my folded suit coat covers the case file scrapbook Christopher made me. “You tried to be slick, but I noticed. You brought it in like you were sneaking a bottle of booze.”

  I tell her what it is. “I wasn’t sneaking it in. I just wanted to talk to you about the case and my possible role in reexamining it before I brought out the book.”

  “Then do,” she says. “Talk to me.”

  “I’m committed to this vacation,” I say. “I’m going to spend as much quality time with you and the girls as I possibly can. But would you mind if I read over the case while y’all are sleeping? Maybe work on it a little as long as it doesn’t interfere with our vacation or my talks?”

  “Doesn’t sound unreasonable at all, does it?” she says. “But we both know that’s not all it will be, and even when it doesn’t seem like you’re working on it, you will be. You’ll be thinking about it and figuring on it and letting it distract you from . . . us.”

  “Okay,” I say. “I’ll see if they mind if I take the casebook home with me and . . .”

  “Answer me this,” she says. “Is the case the real reason we’re here?”

  I shake my head.

  “The main reason?”

  “No,” I say. “For me it’s the talks and the vacation we get to have because of them.”

  “But you knew about it,” she says. “You planned to investigate it all along?”

  “I knew about it and certainly hoped to look into it some while we were here. Nothing more.”

  “Did it factor into you accepting the invitation to speak?”

  I nod. “It did.”

  She nods as if this has confirmed for her what she knew all along.

  “But not as much as us being able to get away from everything for a while,” I say. “Not as much as it affording us the opportunity to have this nice vacation with the girls.”

  She doesn’t say anything else, just nods thoughtfully to herself, and becomes even more distant, opaque, implacable.

  “What?” I ask.

  She shakes her head and shrugs. “Nothing.”

  “Something,” I say. “And it has been something for a while now. What is it? What’s going on? What can I do? How can I help?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “For the past little while—since shortly after the trial—you’ve seemed withdrawn, distant, unhappy.”

  “I have?”

  “Come on, Anna. You know you have.”

  She twists her lips and they form a little frown. “I . . . I guess I . . . I’m not sure I have been. I certainly don’t know that I have.”

  “You’re saying nothing’s going on?” I say. “That you’re just the same.”

  Taylor stirs and we both turn to glance at her.

  “She’ll be up soon,” she says, “and I really need a nap so I’ll feel like taking her to the beach and entertaining her this evening.”

  “You won’t have to do it by yourself,” I say. “I’ll help.”

  “I’m gonna lie down,” she says. “Can we talk about all this later?”

  Day 21

  Day 21

  Where is the national or international media coverage? Why aren’t the major news outlets camping out in the street in front of our house?

  I don’t understand. I really don’t.

  Why doesn’t CNN want to cover our case? Or even the tabloids? I don’t care who. I just want more attention focused on my little girl’s disappearance.

  Is it that they just haven’t heard about it? Do I need to try to let them know somehow?

  I read an article a few years back that said that the only missing or murdered child cases to get all the national coverage are little white girls—usually with blond hair. That boys and minority girls are ignored for the most part in favor of little white blond-haired girls. It also said that poor kids of any gender, race, or hair color are usually not covered.

  But Magdalene is a little white girl with blond hair from an upper-middle-class family. She’s beautiful and sweet and photogenic. She’s everything JonBenet was without the creepy pageant videos. Is that it? Do we need video footage of Magdalene all dolled up and dancing?

  We don’t have creepy video, but we
have video. Tons of video and pictures and we would share it with the media if they’d just come cover our case.

  Or is it that she’s adopted? Have any adopted missing children made national or international news?

  That may be it.

  But it’s more likely that it’s because Keith and I are gay. Who cares if two faggots lose their child—they shouldn’t have had her in the first place. What’s wrong with the world that two fruits can adopt a little girl? No wonder she was taken from them. It’s God’s punishment.

  6

  “It happened at Christmas,” Keith is saying. “Christmas has always been Christopher’s favorite time of year. We used to really do it up big, you know? Decorations for days. Concerts. Parties. Get togethers. Even caroling and shit. I was never into it the way he was, but, like a lot of things, he made me love it more than I ever thought I could. He says the Christmas season is magic . . . and he had a point. And that Christmas seemed . . . especially . . . magical. Everything had finally come together for us. I mean thing after thing fell into place—after years of not working out and looking like it never would, suddenly we were having Christmas miracle after Christmas miracle. That’s what Chris called them. And I have to admit . . . it was . . . something else.”

  When Anna fell asleep next to Taylor on the giant bed, I had dug the casebook Christopher made for me out from beneath my suit coat and began to read it, feeling both guilty and excited to do so.

  But then I had the thought that the best time to read the casebook was at night when they were sleeping and I couldn’t do anything else. So I decided to take a look around the house and the property to not only get a sense of everything but also in hopes of running into Keith and Christopher. Hearing what happened from them—at least the first time through—would be far better than merely reading the reports and articles.

  I had found Keith replacing the wood screws of the handrail on the steps of the back porch with longer ones. He said he was trying to get a few things ticked off his to-do list while Christopher napped and asked if I minded him continuing to work while he answered my questions.