Blood Cries; Blood Oath; Blood Work Read online

  On June 9, twelve-year-old Christopher Richardson went missing on his way to an area swimming pool. He was wearing blue shorts, a light blue shirt, and blue tennis shoes. His body was found in a wooded area, in different shorts than the ones he had last been seen in.

  Two weeks later, on June 22, seven-year-old Latonya Wilson went missing, followed the very next day by ten-year-old Aaron Wyche.

  Authorities had yet to connect the victims and there was little cooperation between agencies or across county lines.

  The obvious crisis and the indifference and ineffectiveness of the police led three of the victims’ mothers—Camille Bell, Willie Mae Mathis, and Venus Taylor—to join with Reverend Earl Carroll to form the Committee to Stop Children’s Murders (STOP). This group along with private investigators put pressure on authorities, and soon a task force for Atlanta’s missing and murdered children was created.

  The next month, two more children were murdered—Anthony Carter and Earl Lee Terrell.

  Then, from August through November of that year, five more murders took place—Clifford Jones, Darron Glass, Charles Stephens, Aaron Jackson, and Patrick “Pat Man” Rogers.

  The first known victim of 1981 was Lubie Geter. He disappeared on January 3, and was found on February 5.

  Terry Pue, a friend of Lubie Geter, also went missing in January. An anonymous caller told the police where to find Pue’s body.

  Two more murders took place in February—Patrick Baltazar and Curtis Walker. Three more in March—Joseph “JoJo” Bell, Timothy Hill, and Eddie “Bubba” Duncan.

  Duncan was the first adult to make the list.

  Twenty-year-old “Little” Larry Rogers died in April.

  From this point forward all the victims were adults.

  Though not found until April, Michael McIntosh went missing in March. He left his job at the Milton Avenue Foundry on March 24, and never went back. Reportedly, he was seen alive by friends and family as late as April 1. Sometime around March 25, a man who ran an import shop on Bankhead Highway said McIntosh came into his shop crying, having been badly beaten. The man gave him twelve dollars and showed him where the nearest MARTA station was.

  Two other murders also took place in April—that of Larry Rogers and Jimmy Ray Payne.

  The next victim, William Barrett, went missing on May 16. His body was found close to his home.

  The final victim on the list was Nathaniel Cater, the twenty-seven-year-old whose body was fished out of the Chattahoochee two days after Wayne Williams was spotted near the James Jackson Parkway bridge in the middle of the night. A police team was set up on the bridge because of its proximity to the place where some of the previous victims had been found. Robert Campbell, a police recruit helping with surveillance, was beneath the bridge when he heard what he described as a big loud splash in the water and radioed the cops up top.

  Williams, who had just driven across the bridge, stopped and turned and headed back across it.

  He was pulled over by members of the task force in the chase car.

  When asked if he knew why he’d been stopped, he responded, “This about those kids?”

  “I take it you don’t think he’s guilty,” Susan said.

  “I don’t think all the cases were solved,” I said. “There’s a difference. And it wasn’t just one case. It was many. And Wayne Williams may have been responsible for some of them, but not all. The investigation and trial were so badly botched, it’s hard to know. It was a very big and important case for him to be convicted the way he was for killing who he did.”

  “You mean two adults.”

  I nodded.

  “You’re not here for school. You’re here to solve the case.”

  “Cases. And I’m here for both.”

  “Seems to me you’re doing more drinking than investigating these days.”

  “These cases will do that to you,” I said.

  Images of me and Jordan and Martin playing house, being an actual family, flashed inside my head.

  “What happened?”

  I shook my head. “Don’t want to talk about it.”

  Jordan rolling over to face me in the bed I had come to see as ours, her sweet, loving, longing smile, the quick glance at little Martin Fisher lying on the floor. The most happiness I had ever known.

  “You don’t have to,” Susan said. “But it involved a woman. I’d bet my life on it. I can tell by the way you drink. So what’s your theory?”

  “About the case?” I said. “Sloppy police work. Lack of coordination. Inane, incomplete list. Political motivations. Overeagerness to assign guilt to one suspect. Questions about Williams’s guilt. Unsolved homicides. Murderers walking free. Missing children still missing. An open wound that’s not healing.”

  “For you or the city?”

  “Both. Why is everything so either-or for you?”

  She smiled, but then it faded as her gaze drifted off into the far distance to something I couldn’t see.

  “I babysat one of the victims,” she said. “I guess he was a victim. Really don’t know for sure.”

  “Really? Who?”

  “Cedric Porter. His mom was young and . . . she wasn’t . . . she wouldn’t’ve won any Mother-of-the-Year competitions. She was one of Aunt Margaret’s best customers. This was when I first moved up here. I was eighteen at the time. Too young to work in the bar. So I . . .”

  I knew she was older than me, but until now I didn’t know how much.

  “What happened to Cedric?”

  “He just . . . vanished. Here one minute. Gone the next. And he stayed gone. Drove Ada crazy. Kinda like you.”

  “Ada?”

  “His mama. She says he’s okay. That he just ran away. Had his reasons. Says he still calls her. She won’t leave the house because of it. Just sits there like she’s in prison waiting for his next call.”

  “What do you think?” I asked.

  “That he’s dead like all the rest.”

  “You think someone’s really calling her or is she just imagining it—or making it up?”

  She shrugged. “There have been people around when the phone rang and she sounded like she was talking to her son. She swears it’s him, that she knows his voice and that he knows things only Cedric would, but . . . it’s not him. It can’t be.”

  6

  Safe Haven wasn’t safe and never had been, and now it was haunted.

  I hadn’t been back since the day Brandon Wright’s body had been found and the place closed down.

  The abandoned daycare center on Flat Shoals Road just down from Chapel Hill Harvester Church, where I occasionally attended and went to school, was in Ida Williams’s converted home—the very home her son, LaMarcus, had been abducted from and murdered. And that was just one of the many very bad things that had happened here.

  What was once a large front yard, and then a playground, was now a sad, tragic space where rusting, slanting swings squeaked eerily as they moved in the wind, and sandboxes surrounded by litter and tarnished toys were weed filled, splintering and splitting, spilling their sand out onto the grassless ground around them.

  I parked near the handful of other cars in the circular driveway, got out, and walked in.

  Haltingly making my way up the covered sidewalk, I could hear the echoes of children running, climbing, swinging, jumping, playing, talking, laughing, each and every one unaware how close a killer of children was to them.

  Pausing at the bench where Jordan and I had sat together on that first morning, I reached out as if to touch it, as if to make contact with an actual, tangible object that had made contact with her, but stopped short.

  This was where I first met Jordan, where we had spent so much time together, where we had fallen in love—sharing cookies from Willie’s German Bakery, sneaking glances, stealing kisses.

  Even more unsteadily than before, I continued walking.

  Miss Ida had joined STOP before her son was taken.

  She and others had continued mee
ting even after Wayne Williams was sentenced. They gathered to discuss the cases and what might still be done in attempt to find some sort of justice.

  Eventually, the group dwindled down to just a handful of mostly old, bored people with time and not much else.

  After Brandon had been killed here and Safe Haven closed, the group stopped meeting for a while.

  The first time I attended the small gathering in the back corner of Safe Haven, the group included Miss Ida, a large black man named Melvin Pryor, a tall, thin woman named Rose Lee, a squat, muscular, fireplug of a man named Preston Mailer, and Miss Ida’s stepdaughter Jordan Moore.

  Mailer was a retired cop. Melvin was a retired mail carrier. Miss Ida and Jordan had operated Safe Haven, and I had no idea what Rose Lee did.

  This time, as I passed through the dusty, disheveled daycare, where everything still lay where it was left when the place was evacuated, I could see the group had added a few new faces to replace the ones it had lost.

  Safe Haven was not just the sacred place where I fell in love, but the profane place where my world fell apart.

  I had truly believed I would never be back.

  The three new members were introduced. The first was a shy young reporter working on a book about the case. He was a white guy in his late twenties with glasses and a touch of red in his neatly trimmed beard. The second was a skinny thirty-something African-American woman with the Free Wayne Williams Project. Odd and awkward, she seemed to lack the social skills even for a group as small and laid-back as this one. The last was by far the most interesting—a forty-something blond-haired, brown-eyed psychic with the youthful bearing and body of a teenager, a casual, unassuming kindness, and a gentle, maternal nature that made me want her to hug me.

  The reporter, Mickey Davis, began by assuring everyone that everything said was off the record, that he was only here for background for his book.

  “I’ve got somethin’ to say,” Melvin Pryor said. “I started not to come tonight, but I thought I owed it to the group to explain why I won’t be back. I don’t understand why we doin’ this no more. Nobody’s gonna do anything—not the cops, the FBI, the DA, nobody. Nobody cares. They’ve moved on. And I just don’t see the use of what we’re doin’ here anymore. Sorry, but I don’t. So . . . this will be my last meeting.”

  “I’m very sorry to hear that,” Ida said, “but I understand. No one understands futility and frustration like we do.”

  “You’re quitting?” Rose Lee said. “After all we done been through. How can you just . . .”

  “What good we doin’?” Melvin said.

  “We found out who killed Miss Ida’s boy,” Rose Lee said.

  “We didn’t. He did,” Melvin said, nodding toward me.

  “We helped,” Rose Lee said, then looking at me, added, “Didn’t we?”

  I nodded.

  “It’s gettin’ embarrassin’,” Melvin said. “Bunch of old people meetin’, talkin’. Not doin’ shit.”

  “Why do you keep meeting?” Mickey Davis asked. “How long do you plan to? What do you hope to accomplish at this point?”

  “’Cause somebody should,” Ida said. “’Cause who else goin’ to? Even if we don’t do nothin’ but not forget.”

  “So you’re like a memorial group,” Davis said, “a—”

  Mailer cut him off. “Not just. We’re tryin’ to . . . by sharing information, by going over everything over and over again . . . we might just . . . uncover something new . . . make a connection that hasn’t been made before.”

  “So you’re still tryin’ to solve the case?” Davis said.

  “Cases,” I said. “It’s not just one.”

  Summer Grantham, the quiet psychic who had been gazing at me with concentrated intensity, nodded enthusiastically.

  “So you don’t think Wayne Williams is responsible for all the victims he’s said to have killed?” Davis said.

  “Wayne Williams,” Annie Bowers, the thin black woman with the Free Wayne Williams Project said, “was a scapegoat. The city was set to explode. The leaders knew if the Klan or a white man was arrested, what Sherman did to the city would be nothing compared to the fire set off by revealing those responsible for killing our kids.”

  “I know some people believe that,” Davis said, “but the investigation into the Klan didn’t turn up anything—and it was thorough. Do you all believe that it was––”

  “We don’t all believe anything,” Ida said. “It’s an open group for the exchange of ideas and information. This is Ms. Bowers first time attending. Her views are her own. No one else’s.”

  He nodded.

  I could feel myself beginning to panic. I needed to get out now.

  “I’d like to say how happy I am to have John back in the group,” Ida added. “He’s got a really good mind for this kind of thing, and his investigation into the case—cases—is exhaustive and ongoing. I’d like to hear from him tonight. What are you working on John?”

  “Connections,” I said. “I’m starting over. Going through everything again, anew, looking for connections—between the suspects, the witnesses, the victims—where they lived, where they were abducted, where they were found. I’m looking for patterns, coincidences, connections.”

  “Everything’s connected,” Summer Grantham observed. They were her only words during the entire meeting.

  “Maybe we could all work on finding connections between now and our next meeting,” Ida said. “That could be our focus. No tellin’ what we might come up with.”

  “There’s something else,” I said. “Something I could really use some help with too.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I’ve had a blind spot—so stupid on my part. The task force’s case was the Atlanta missing and murdered children case, but I’ve only focused on the murdered victims. What about the missing? I’m about to double down on my efforts to find out who went missing and see who still is. And I could really use some help.”

  “I’ve got a list,” Mailer said. “It’s incomplete, but it’s a place to start.”

  “Excellent.”

  “Darron Glass was never found,” Melvin said. “Went missing on September 14, 1980. Still hasn’t been found. Both his parents were dead. He was a ward of the state. Streetwise but immature.”

  “That’s great, Melvin,” Ida said. “What a memory you have. We really need you for this. I wish you would reconsider leaving our group.”

  “I’m also very interested in Cedric Porter,” I said.

  “His mom was a member of our group,” Rose Lee said. “Stopped coming when he started calling. Now she won’t leave the house for fear she’ll miss his call.”

  “I’d like to talk to her,” I said. “And—”

  “We could have our next meeting at her house,” Ida said. “She’s offered before. Said she couldn’t come to the meetin’ but if we wanted to bring the meeting to her, she’d still like to participate.”

  “Then it’s settled,” Rose Lee said. “Next meeting at Ada Baker’s house with a focus on connections and missing children.”

  7

  As the others ambled out toward their cars, I hung back, lingering, until they reached the parking lot, then I sat on the bench Jordan and I had first sat on together.

  I missed her so much, ached for her in ways I never had for anyone.

  Memories of her and Martin and our time together swirled around me, and for a moment I could actually feel their presence here with me. The grief was overwhelming.

  And then Summer Grantham suddenly appeared before me.

  “You okay?” she asked.

  I nodded.

  “Sorry to intrude. I was just worried about you.”

  I stood, but didn’t make a move toward my car.

  “Not ready to go home, are you?”

  I shook my head.

  “Me either. Wanna go somewhere?”

  “I know a great little bar,” I said.

  “I was thinking this little all-n
ight diner I know.”

  I thought about it.

  “I can sense how strongly you want a drink,” she said. “Please come with me to the diner instead. Coffee and conversation. It’d do you so good. I promise. We could even share a waffle.”

  “People are expecting me,” I said. “I should probably––”

  “Please,” she said. “Tell yourself you can always drink later.”

  I nodded and smiled—and told myself that very thing.

  “I’ll drive,” she said.

  She led me to a beige ’68 Volkswagen Beetle like the one Ted Bundy had driven. As I got in, I glanced in the backseat for crutches, plaster casts, and crowbars.

  To my surprise, the car was clean and uncluttered, though I wasn’t clear on why I thought it wouldn’t be.

  Still relatively new to Atlanta, there was much about it I was unaware of and unfamiliar with. She drove down dark, winding roads, most of them rural, none of them seeming to lead anywhere.

  There was something hypnotic about Summer, and everything associated with her and our journey had a dreamlike quality to it. There was no traffic on the back roads, only our dim headlights hewing out a small oblong cave we could drive toward but never into.

  It felt as if not only the road but the earth was empty.

  The windows were down, the car noisy with wind. We rode in silence, as if knowing any words uttered into the airy whirlwind swirling around us would be lost, never arriving at their intended destination.

  Eventually, we came out on a side street off of a bigger busier thoroughfare and into the back parking lot of a diner that could have been designed by Edward Hopper.

  The mostly empty diner, which was all jade green and cherrywood, had that hushed middle-of-the-night quiet that had a hypnotic quality all its own.

  We had coffee and conversation, and, as promised, a waffle.

  There were only three other patrons in the place—an old lady with a library book dozing more than reading, and a middle-aged bohemian couple whose comfortable companionship and easy conversation indicated they had been together quite a while. Of course, like me and Summer, they could have just met.