Family Ties (Flesh & Blood Trilogy Book 2) by Christina Morgan Page B
Authors: Christina Morgan
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around five and immediately headed upstairs. I couldn’t wait to pore over my father’s file. It had nothing to do with any eagerness on my part to work on his case; rather, a burning curiosity about the contents of the file. My whole life, I had been in the dark as to the details of my father’s case. The only thing I had known was that he was accused, arrested, confessed, pled guilty, and then was sent to prison. It wasn’t because my mother had hidden anything from me; she didn’t know much, either. It was because my father had purposefully shielded us from the gory details, ostensibly to spare us any further pain and humiliation. For that alone, I had been appreciative to Randy.
But if I was going to stand a snowball’s chance in hell of clearing his name, I had to know it all.
Harper sat down on the grey overstuffed loveseat I had found at a yard sale and I sat down at my desk. I opened the file and began to sift through the documents. At the top of the stack were all the final pleadings from the legal case—the signed plea deal, hearing notices, and Randy’s commitment papers. As I finished reading each one, I handed them to Harper and asked her to start organizing the documents by category and date.
Next came Mr. Hayes’s nearly illegible notes, written on sheet after sheet of yellow legal paper. I skimmed through them, but there was nothing in there I didn’t already know. Held together at the top with a large black binder clip was a stack of papers, and on the stack was a yellow Post-it note that read, ‘Police Investigation file’. I unclipped the stack and laid it on the desk. Slowly, I started to flip through the pages.
“What’s in there?” Harper asked without looking up, as she carefully organized everything I had given her so far.
“The investigation file from the police department. Some photos. Witness interviews. Wait…and his confession!”
“Oh, you have to read that out loud,” Harper said, looking up from her task.
“I, Randall Terrance McLanahan, do hereby make this confession of my own free will without coercion from police, my attorney, or any other individual. I hereby confess to the crime of murder against Linda McGovern, Sandy Williams, Lucy Culvert, Melinda Driver, Shalonda Johnson, Theresa Baker, Cindy Shoemaker, Bambi Walters, and Shiloh Blackwater. I strangled each one of them to the point of death and discarded their bodies in various locations along Interstate 75. Signed on this 1 st day of October, 1996, Randall Terrance McLanahan.”
I laid the page down and looked at Harper. “I just don’t get why he would sign this if he didn’t do any of it.”
“Doesn’t make sense to me, either.”
“But…”
“But what? What’s going on in that head of yours?” she asked.
“It’s awfully succinct, isn’t it? I mean, yes, he admits to the murders. Yes, he names them all. And yes, he specifically says he strangled them and disposed of their bodies. But that’s it. No more details than that. You would think for a case with nine murdered women, there would be a lot more detail than that. And it looks like it was typed up by someone else and he just put his signature at the bottom.”
“Well,” Harper said, seemingly pondering this thoroughly. “I don’t know anything about the law. That’s your department. But I’ve seen plenty of Law & Order: SVU episodes and they almost always type up the confession and have the suspect sign it. I’ve rarely seen them write it in their own hand. Have you?”
“Yes, I’ve seen it done both ways. But you’re right. It just strikes me as very odd that whoever typed this wasn’t more specific.”
“Probably because, like his attorney said, they really didn’t have much evidence. They probably didn’t know any more than that.”
“I need to read some more of this file. I’ve got to figure out why they suspected him in the first place. How did they go from no evidence to arresting Randy?”
“That’s what we
But if I was going to stand a snowball’s chance in hell of clearing his name, I had to know it all.
Harper sat down on the grey overstuffed loveseat I had found at a yard sale and I sat down at my desk. I opened the file and began to sift through the documents. At the top of the stack were all the final pleadings from the legal case—the signed plea deal, hearing notices, and Randy’s commitment papers. As I finished reading each one, I handed them to Harper and asked her to start organizing the documents by category and date.
Next came Mr. Hayes’s nearly illegible notes, written on sheet after sheet of yellow legal paper. I skimmed through them, but there was nothing in there I didn’t already know. Held together at the top with a large black binder clip was a stack of papers, and on the stack was a yellow Post-it note that read, ‘Police Investigation file’. I unclipped the stack and laid it on the desk. Slowly, I started to flip through the pages.
“What’s in there?” Harper asked without looking up, as she carefully organized everything I had given her so far.
“The investigation file from the police department. Some photos. Witness interviews. Wait…and his confession!”
“Oh, you have to read that out loud,” Harper said, looking up from her task.
“I, Randall Terrance McLanahan, do hereby make this confession of my own free will without coercion from police, my attorney, or any other individual. I hereby confess to the crime of murder against Linda McGovern, Sandy Williams, Lucy Culvert, Melinda Driver, Shalonda Johnson, Theresa Baker, Cindy Shoemaker, Bambi Walters, and Shiloh Blackwater. I strangled each one of them to the point of death and discarded their bodies in various locations along Interstate 75. Signed on this 1 st day of October, 1996, Randall Terrance McLanahan.”
I laid the page down and looked at Harper. “I just don’t get why he would sign this if he didn’t do any of it.”
“Doesn’t make sense to me, either.”
“But…”
“But what? What’s going on in that head of yours?” she asked.
“It’s awfully succinct, isn’t it? I mean, yes, he admits to the murders. Yes, he names them all. And yes, he specifically says he strangled them and disposed of their bodies. But that’s it. No more details than that. You would think for a case with nine murdered women, there would be a lot more detail than that. And it looks like it was typed up by someone else and he just put his signature at the bottom.”
“Well,” Harper said, seemingly pondering this thoroughly. “I don’t know anything about the law. That’s your department. But I’ve seen plenty of Law & Order: SVU episodes and they almost always type up the confession and have the suspect sign it. I’ve rarely seen them write it in their own hand. Have you?”
“Yes, I’ve seen it done both ways. But you’re right. It just strikes me as very odd that whoever typed this wasn’t more specific.”
“Probably because, like his attorney said, they really didn’t have much evidence. They probably didn’t know any more than that.”
“I need to read some more of this file. I’ve got to figure out why they suspected him in the first place. How did they go from no evidence to arresting Randy?”
“That’s what we
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