Six John Jordan Mysteries

by Michael Lister

  He didn’t flinch.

  “You dumb nigger motherfucker. You . . .”

  She swiped at his face with the scalpel, slicing his cheek open, his blood beginning to pour out and join Anna’s on the floor.

  And then it happened.

  In one quick motion, he wrapped his huge hands around her small throat and broke her neck.

  As her body went limp, he took the scalpel from her and stabbed her several times in the heart, then slit her throat.

  Her head fell to the side unnaturally, and as he let her go, she crumpled to the floor.

  Spinning around, he started to rush me.

  Just before he reached me, I snapped out a hard right jab square on his nose. It stunned him, and blood started pouring out of it.

  Staggering back a step or two, he righted himself and came again.

  This time ducking his head down and tackling me. As he did, the scalpel clanged on the floor a few feet away.

  Still sore and aching, my entire body screamed with pain as I hit the floor.

  Get to Anna. Hurry. You’ve got to hurry.

  On top of me now, he began to flail at me wildly, hitting my left eye and chin and shoulder and arm.

  I brought my midsection up, rocked forward, then back, and bucked him off. Jumping to my feet, I began to rush over to Anna’s bed, once white, now crimson.

  Climbing to his feet, Jones had the scalpel in his hand again.

  “Think what I gonna do to her after I gut you,” he hissed.

  I braced for his attack but it never came.

  About halfway to me, his feet flew out from underneath and he hit the floor hard. He had slipped on all the blood—Anna’s, his, Sandy’s.

  As he attempted to find purchase in the slippery fluid, Merrill rushed in the room, an officer’s baton in his hand.

  I ran over to Anna as Merrill went toward Jones.

  Jones reached his feet, his eyes wild and wide, and ran at Merrill.

  Scalpel extended, rabid expression on his face, Jones hurled himself toward Merrill.

  At first it looked as if Merrill wasn’t doing anything or had waited too late to defend himself, but just as Jones was on him, he brought the baton up into his chin then down on his falling head.

  The blows were fast and furious and Jones stopped dead, but didn’t go down.

  Merrill lifted the baton again and brought it back down across the left side of his face.

  His whole head jerked back and blood and teeth spewed out as he collapsed to the floor.

  “Anna’s cut,” I said. “Bleeding out. We’ve got to get her to a hospital.”

  “We in a hospital. I’ll grab some help.”

  He dashed out of the room.

  I pressed the wound on Anna’s neck, feeling for a pulse as I did.

  “Anna. Anna. Hey. Open your eyes. Anna, it’s John. I . . . Please wake up. Please open your eyes. Anna.”

  In a few moments Merrill rushed back in with medical personnel and a doctor.

  “She’s lost a lot of blood,” the doctor said.

  “We have the same blood type,” I said. “Give her mine.”

  “Are you absolutely positive?”

  “Yes,” I said, “and it’s disease free. I was just tested.”

  I climbed on the table beside her, her blood soaking into my clothes, and the doctor quickly found a vein, transferring my blood into her body as he worked on her wounds and called for an ambulance. Her blood had helped save me. Now my blood—my clean, virus-free, life-giving blood—would do the same for her. I was sure of it.

  41

  A few days later, I was seated on the edge of Anna’s hospital bed, the afternoon sun streaming in through the open blinds striping the bed and warming the room.

  The door was closed. We were alone.

  Anna was wearing an oversized cotton nightshirt with bouquets of violets against a soft yellow background. Her hair hung straight down to the smattering of dark freckles just above her breasts and had the fluffy look of having just been blown dry.

  The bandage on her neck was smaller than the one the day before, and when we had hugged, I had smelled the slightest hint of her perfume.

  “Your blood’s in my veins,” she said.

  I nodded. “I keep thinking about that.”

  “Me too.”

  We fell silent a moment.

  “You never told me what brought you to the infirmary,” she said.

  I told her.

  “Did you suspect Strickland before you saw the tape?”

  I nodded. “She was the first to appear at the scene that Tuesday morning in the sally port when Johnson was killed. She was there before Medical was called. I think she wanted to make sure Johnson actually got killed. If he’d just been injured, she could finish the job. And that’s exactly what she did. She smashed his windpipe. She was the only one who could have. She climbed onto the back of that truck not as a healer, but a killer.”

  “How’d she do it? Get him in the bag in the back of the truck in the first place.”

  “She had Hardy take Jacobson to Confinement so she could drug and dispose of Johnson. She put him in the caustic storage room, then locked it so Jones couldn’t get in. Then she spilled a urine sample in the exam room and had Anderson supervise Jones cleaning it up. When Shutt pulled up and knocked on the door, she didn’t answer it. When he walked over to Laundry, she carried the bags out and put them in his truck.”

  She nodded, squinting slightly. I could tell that she was picturing everything I was saying.

  “Of course, when I saw the video, I knew it had to be her and then I also knew why. And it doesn’t mean as much as it once did, but poison is historically a woman’s method of murder. Both of her victims were poisoned or drugged. The violence was never direct.”

  “Was for Anthony Thomas. What about him?”

  “I suspected Jones of being involved too. I knew he’d typed the letters to me and Johnson’s request threatening suicide or escape. I didn’t think Strickland had killed Anthony Thomas—and not only because she was in love with him but because it was direct, brutal violence.”

  “Yeah, she saved that shit for me.”

  “She was disintegrating fast by then. I think she had some torture planned for Maddox, had two of his knives ready for it after she drugged him, but Skipper banging on the door with Thomas made her cut things short.”

  “How about Molly Thomas? Who killed her?”

  “I think Skipper did it, but I can’t prove it.”

  “So Skipper had a prostitution ring, sold drugs, had you beaten up, and has maybe murdered someone, and he gets away with it?”

  “For a little while longer maybe,” I said. “He’s being investigated. Word’s out on the compound, so . . .”

  42

  I was standing at the gate of Potter Correctional Institution staring at him when he was killed.

  It was Monday morning of the following week.

  Thick clouds had rolled in during the night replacing the sunny skies of the weekend, the gray day matching the buildings of the institution.

  In the sally port, Merrill Monroe was stabbing trash bags with an iron rod on the back of a flatbed truck, his graceful, fluid motions a thing of beauty.

  Seeing me at the gate, he paused and waved.

  “Somebody say somethin’ ’bout me bein’ a spear-chucker . . . I’a show ’em why my ancestors called that.”

  I started to say something but stopped as the most powerful sense of déjà vu washed over me.

  When Merrill stabbed the next bag, the rod stuck and wouldn’t give as he attempted to withdraw it.

  On his second, more strenuous attempt, Merrill was able to snatch the weapon free, but it came out of his hands and went flying through the air.

  Striking the fence nearest me, it splattered the steel and concrete with blood.

  Merrill looked at me, slowly shaking his head in disbelief, as the officer in the control room buzzed me through the two gates that sep
arated us.

  I rushed over to the vehicle in what felt like a recurring nightmare and climbed onto it with Merrill.

  A small pool of blood was seeping outward from the bag.

  Bending over, I pulled open the bag, peeling back the sides, the wet plastic slipping from my grip, the warm blood bathing my fingers, as it opened to reveal the lifeless, bloody body of Captain Matthew Skipper, his vacant eyes filled with far more peace in death than they ever had been in life.

  I looked back at Merrill, wondering if he’d had anything to do with this beyond what I’d just witnessed.

  His opaque expression was implacable. “Kinda poetic, ain’t it?”

  I nodded.

  “Jacobson got out of Confinement over the weekend,” he said.

  I stood and turned to look down toward the compound.

  Beyond the medical and security personnel running in this direction, a small group of inmates had gathered in front of the center gate. There in the midst of them, straining to see along with the others, was Jacobson, a wide grin seeping across the wild expression on his pale face.

  Blood of the Lamb

  a John Jordan Mystery Book 2

  By Michael Lister

  1

  On the day Nicole Caldwell died, I awoke as if from a night of bad dreams with a nagging sense of dread, which only intensified as I arrived at Potter Correctional Institution and was told to report to the warden’s office.

  When I opened the door to the admin building, I saw long black cables snaking down the hallway and a bright swath of light, both of which spilled out of Edward Stone’s office. I was greeted by Betty Costin, Stone’s secretary, and a young, menacing-looking black man with an expensive suit and perfect teeth, both of whom held a finger to their lips signaling me to be quiet.

  I had never met him, but I recognized the young man as DeAndré Stone, the warden’s nephew. His thuggish posture, expression, and demeanor let everyone know he was hardcore—that no matter where he was or how he dressed, he was never far from the street. Though his designer suit was cut to conceal it, I was sure I detected a holster beneath his arm.

  When I took a closer look, he shifted his weight and turned slightly, but it was too late. I was certain now. DeAndré Stone had a firearm on state prison property—a felony punishable by fines and jail time.

  Beyond Betty’s office, and inside the inner sanctum of Edward Stone’s, a local TV news crew was busy recording an interview with Stone and three people who looked only vaguely familiar. As I listened, I learned that the man was Bobby Earl Caldwell, a televangelist from New Orleans, his wife, Bunny, and their adopted daughter Nicole.

  Bobby Earl and Bunny Caldwell looked like televangelists— flashy clothes, big, perfectly coifed hair, and liberally applied makeup, though that was the only thing liberal about them. They were also white. Nicole, like Stone, was black. Though not as overly made-up as her adoptive parents, it was obvious Nicole had been dressed to be seen, the bow on her ponytail coordinating with her preppy dress and the matching socks folded just above her patent leather shoes.

  I recalled flipping past Bobby Earl on more than one occasion in the solitude of sleepless nights. His message was one of guilt and shame, preached from a pulpit of fear and anger, which was why I was alarmed to hear the reporter announce that he would be conducting a crusade in my chapel later that night.

  Bobby Earl’s anti-intellectual religiosity and sentimental spirituality were shallow and filled with clichés. They were the first things most of the inmates gravitated toward and the last things they really needed.

  I shook my head as I thought these things. I was doing to Bobby Earl what bothered me most about what he did—passing judgement. Maybe we were far more alike than I wanted to believe.

  The reporter had to be mistaken. All religious programs performed at the prison had to be approved and scheduled by me. I had neither approved nor scheduled Bobby Earl Caldwell. And I would never even consider letting a child inside the institution—for any reason. Yet, according to him, Nicole was coming in with them.

  “Do you sing, Nicole?” Nancy Springfield, the reporter asked.

  Nicole was seated on Bunny’s lap, but Bunny barely touched her, and certainly not in any way that could be called nurturing. In fact, the whole family’s interaction looked staged and stilted, more like amateur actors rehearsing a scene than people who loved each other.

  Before Nicole could answer, Bobby Earl said, “Yes, she does. She’s got the voice of an angel. In fact, she and her mother will sing in our service tonight. We’ve found that the men really appreciate the fact that we have an African-American daughter. They appreciate the life we saved her from and can see we’re about breaking down racial walls and setting the captives free.”

  “Mr. Stone,” Springfield said, “tell me what a program like this does for your institution.”

  “Well, first, it gives the offenders something positive to do,” he said, leaning forward slightly, the vest of his three-piece suit gathering as he did, his deep voice and careful enunciation giving authority and weight to his words. “Inmate idleness is a serious concern. But it does far more than fill time. Bobby Earl also gives hope. The men will hear a powerful message of redemption and forgiveness and will see living proof of the real thing—a man of God who practices what he preaches.”

  Nancy thanked them and told her viewers one more time when Bobby Earl’s telecast aired in our area, then rushed out of the room, her crew trailing after her, equipment in tow.

  “Chaplain Jordan,” Stone said, his furrowed brow and squinting eyes parental and chastising. “Where have you been? I wanted you to take part in the interview.”

  “Traffic,” I said, though there wasn’t much to speak of in our little part of Florida’s forgotten coast.

  His brow furrowed even more deeply, his mouth twisting in disbelief, but he decided not to press it. Instead, he introduced me to Bobby Earl, Bunny, and Nicole, who had obviously captured his heart—proof at long last he had one.

  “I want to thank you for allowing this humble preacher and his family into your chapel tonight,” Bobby Earl said.

  I tried not to laugh at his use of the word humble while referring to himself in the third person. He reminded me of a pro athlete who does the same thing—taking all the credit while saying it was a team effort. It seemed my first impression of the man had been accurate.

  “Actually,” I said. “I didn’t know anything about it. In fact, I’d already scheduled a program for tonight—over a month ago.”

  I now had the full gaze of Bunny Caldwell as well, her blue eyes taking me in between the fluttering of her thickly-coated lashes. She moved into my space, which is probably all she usually had to do to get her way. “It would mean so much to the men,” she said, “if they could hear Bobby Earl preach.”

  “Cancel it,” Stone said simply to me, then looked at Bunny. “Excuse me for interrupting, Mrs. Caldwell,” then looking back at me, “but it’s not every day we can welcome the Reverend Bobby Earl Caldwell into our institution. Do you know how many places are on a waiting list to get him to preach?”

  “Speaking of which,” I said, “how can I get him in? It takes a minimum of two weeks to complete the FCIC/NCIC checks, obtain authorization, put the clearance paperwork in the control room, and brief security. Not to mention notifying the inmate population of the program. I didn’t know anything about this and haven’t done—”

  Edward Stone lifted his hand, signaling me to be quiet. “I’ve taken care of everything,” he said. “All of this will take place under my authorization. You don’t even have to be here during the program.”

  Nicole Caldwell, the five-year-old little brandy-eyed beauty, had wandered away from our small group and was staring at the crayon drawing hanging on the wall behind Stone’s desk. Her head tilted side to side as she closely examined the drawing of an African-American family. No one in the room seemed even vaguely aware of her, least of all her parents. When her examinatio
n of the picture was complete, she nodded her head as in approval.

  Watching Nicole made me again long to have children of my own. Early in our marriage, I had wanted children, but Susan hadn’t. Then when she finally decided she did, more as an attempt to save our marriage than anything else, I was still grieving the death of Martin Fisher (an unsolved that haunts more than any other) and could not imagine bringing a child into a world where such things happened. It wasn’t long before I reconsidered and we began trying to get pregnant. Thankfully, we weren’t successful, because within a year we were filing for divorce.

  “May I speak with you alone for a moment?” I asked.

  Stone shook his head. “Don’t have time. We have a meeting with the secretary, the regional director, and the governor in just a few minutes. Then a luncheon at central office.”

  I shook my head.

  “What is it, Chaplain?” Stone asked angrily.

  “During the interview it was mentioned that Nicole was coming into the institution as a part of the program tonight,” I said. “That can’t be—”

  “It’s all taken care of,” he said. “As soon as Mrs. Caldwell and Nicole have sung their songs, they will go into your office for the remainder of the program. They will stay in there with both doors locked until the inmates have been escorted from the building.”

  “I can’t—”

  “You have nothing to do with it,” Stone said and, turning his back to me, looked at the others. “We’ve got to get going. Can’t keep the governor waiting.”

  Only when it was time to go did Bunny look for Nicole; Bobby Earl not even then. As she gathered Nicole and her things, I noticed bruises on Bunny’s upper arms and wrists. It looked as if she had attempted to cover them with makeup and clothes, but the makeup was wearing off and the clothes shifted as she moved.

  I glanced back at Bobby Earl, wondering if he were responsible. Did he beat his wife?

  They made their way to the door before Stone turned around and said, “Have everything ready when we return. We’ll be on a very tight schedule and they have a plane to catch tonight.”