Six John Jordan Mysteries

by Michael Lister

  I didn’t say anything, only smiled at Nicole. When she smiled back, I knelt down beside her and said, “Hi. I’m John. Do you like that drawing?”

  “Uh huh,” she said, nodding her head vigorously. Her hair had been straightened and put up in a ponytail that bounced as she nodded. “Who drew it?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “But Mr. Stone can tell you. Do you draw?”

  “Uh huh.”

  “I’d like to see one of your drawings.” I said.

  “You would?”

  “Uh huh,” I said enthusiastically.

  Her face brightened into a large smile, her dark eyes sparkling as she said, “I’ll color one just for you. Do you want one of Jesus?”

  “I’d love one of Jesus,” I said.

  “Chaplain Jordan, I know we’ll be running on a very tight schedule this afternoon,” Stone said impatiently, “but if we happen to get back early, I want you to sit down with Bobby Earl and discuss some ideas he’s got for your chapel program.”

  I stood up and looked at them, stunned, bristling at even the suggestion.

  “I want to help in any way I can,” Bobby Earl said, then winked at me as they all walked out.

  2

  After unlocking the chapel and letting Officer Whitfield into the library to listen to some preaching tapes, I met briefly with my inmate orderly, Mr. Smith. Once in my office, I popped in a cassette of Gregorian chants and spent some time in thought and prayer.

  I felt frustrated and angry at my reaction to Bobby Earl and what I suspected his brand of religion would do to the inmate population. Many of the men who attended chapel teetered on the precipice between genuine faith and love, and irresponsibility and over-simplicity. I was afraid the apocalyptic excitement of Bobby Earl’s hellfire and brimstone preaching would cause them to plunge to their spiritual deaths.

  What was a man like Bobby Earl even doing here? There was nothing the inmates could do to expand his television empire.

  I picked up my phone and punched in Anna Rodden’s extension in Classification. It rang several times, but there was no answer. I hung up, and like the unexpected answer to a prayer, Anna walked into my office.

  “Hey, stranger,” she said, closing the door behind her.

  As I came around my desk, she dropped the envelopes and inmate requests she was carrying into a chair, and we embraced. She was tall and athletic, and our bodies fit together like they were made to. The hug was quick, but the connection immediate and intense, and I had to release her and step back while I still could.

  “I’ve missed you,” she said. “Doin’ time’s not nearly as much fun when you’re not around.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “It’s good to be back.”

  “How was training?”

  “I can think of more fun ways to waste time,” I said.

  And then, for a long moment, we stood there, neither of us seeming able to move.

  On the right side of Anna’s neck, a thin scar ran down at a jagged angle. Slowly, I reached up and gently traced it with my fingertip. I liked to feel the small rise of the scar tissue beneath the skin, the vulnerability of the wound, the power of healing. It was the wound that caused this scar, and the blood it shed, that had saved my life, and had given me the opportunity to save hers.

  She breathed in deeply and swallowed hard.

  “Sorry,” I said.

  She shook her head, waving off my apology, and I somehow made it back to my chair and sat down, while she took the empty chair across from my desk.

  After being away from the institution for two weeks in chaplaincy training, I had more to do than I could fathom, but all I wanted was to be with Anna.

  “I had a lot of people ask me about us while you were away this time,” she said.

  “Us?” I asked, instinctively glancing at her ring finger before I realized what I was doing.

  “If we’re having an affair,” she said. “They can’t understand us.”

  I said, “Neither can I.”

  She smiled and her dark brown eyes lit up.

  The faint chant of prayers rising from the chapel drifted through the air like incense—Muslim prayers, prayed to Allah in Arabic.

  Allaahu Akbar, Allaahu Akbar... Ash hadu allaa ilaaha ill Allah.

  Tossing back her shoulder-length brown hair, she pulled a small plastic bag from the pile of mail and inmate requests on the chair beside her. “I got you a little something. Two little somethings actually.”

  She handed me a small plastic bag with blue musical notes on it.

  I withdrew two CDs from the bag. The first one was Dan Fogelberg’s latest, which I had picked up along with Jann Arden’s to enjoy on my drive back from central Florida.

  “I wanted you to have them the moment you got back,” she said.

  “Thank you,” I said, as if I didn’t already have them.

  “The other one is Jann Arden, and you’re going to love her. She’s so honest and... well, melancholy, yet with an underlying optimism, or at least hope.”

  I couldn’t have described her better. “I can’t wait to listen to them,” I said. “Thanks again.”

  Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar... Laa ilaaha ill Allah.

  An inmate passed slowly by my office door, lingering near the narrow panel of glass, staring at Anna as he did. A moment later, when he walked back by, I could see that it was Harmless Harry, one of the most notorious rapists the state of Florida had ever known. My fists clenched involuntarily.

  Hayya’ alal Falaah... Qad qaamatis Salaah... Qad qaamatis Salaah.

  I heard the conversation of two Latino inmates from somewhere in the hall. Their Spanish, the Latin of the Gregorian chants, the English we spoke, and the Arabic of the Muslim prayers swirled together into a linguistic potpourri that permeated the air.

  “I did a lot of thinking while I was away,” I said.

  It sounded more ominous than I had intended.

  “Yeah?” she said, tilting her head and raising her thick brown eyebrows. I had her complete attention.

  “I’m not sure I can be an effective chaplain if I’m spending so much time investigating.”

  Her expression encouraged me to continue.“

  Things always get out of control,” I said. “I change... and if I have to choose...”

  “But—”

  “I came very close to taking a drink last summer when I was in the middle of the Ike Johnson case,” I said.

  Her face registered her surprise. “You should’ve said some thing.”

  I didn’t respond.

  Harmless appeared at the door again, and I waved him away. She turned, but he was gone.

  “How close did you come, really?” she asked when she turned back around.

  I shrugged. “The thing is, even though I maintained my sobriety,” I said, “I lost my serenity.”

  When Harmless appeared at the door again, I jumped up and rushed over to it. He pulled back from the door and started walking toward the sanctuary.

  “What are you doing, Harry?” I asked.

  He spun around and stepped back toward me, his dull eyes blinking rapidly behind his thick glasses. “Waiting to see you,” he said impatiently, the severe lisp only adding to his annoying tone. “I’ve been trying to see you for a long time.”

  Harry actually looked harmless with his small build, graying crewcut, and thick glasses, his speech impediment only adding to the facade.

  “I’m with someone right now,” I said. “If you want to see me, have a seat in the library. If I see you hanging outside my office door again, I’m going to have you locked up.”

  “For what?” he asked belligerently.

  “You hear that tick tock sound?” Anna asked, coming up behind me and staring Harry down. “That’s the gain time you’re losing. Like sands in the hourglass... I’m taking away days of your life outside.”

  He stalked away, muttering something under his breath, and we both made our way back to our seats, shaking our heads as we did.<
br />
  “Why do you do this?” she asked.

  “I was about to ask you the same thing.”

  When I moved back home to northwest Florida after being a cop and a cleric in Atlanta, I never would’ve imagined I’d become a prison chaplain. But God works in mysterious ways, and when I fell from grace in Atlanta, this is the grace I fell into.

  “I’ve thought about that a lot lately, too,” I said. “I became a chaplain at a time when I was scrambling to put my life back together, probably would’ve taken anything, and the combination of forensics and ministry seemed a natural. But now I really think this is exactly where I’m supposed to be—for now at least.”

  She started to say something, but the phone rang.

  When I answered, a friendly voice said, “Chaplain Jordan, this is Chuck in the warehouse. We have a special delivery for you and need to see you right away.”

  “I’m kind of busy right now. Can I come over after lunch?”

  “No, you have to personally sign for it and it’s here now.”

  “Okay, I’m on my way,” I said. “Thanks.”

  “I’ve got to go to the warehouse,” I said to Anna as I stood. “Can I drop by your office after lunch?”

  After sending the inmates back down on the compound, Anna and I walked over to the library where Bobby Earl Caldwell’s thunderous preaching could be heard.

  I wasn’t aware of it, but I must have been making my eating broccoli face.

  “Makes you cringe, doesn’t it?” Anna asked.

  “Doesn’t it you?”

  “Well, yeah, but I bet it bothers you more.”

  I tried to get Officer Whitfield’s attention, but his back was to us and the tape was so loud he couldn’t hear me.

  As soon as Bobby Earl Caldwell brought his message to a frenzied finish, Bunny came on and made a tearful appeal for money.

  I looked at Anna. She was laughing.

  Whitfield jumped when I tapped him on the shoulder, stopped the tape, and spun around to face me.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to startle you. I’ve got to go down to the warehouse, so I need to lock up.”

  “Sure,” he said. “No problem. The message is over anyway.”

  As we walked out of the chapel, and I paused to lock the door, Whitfield said, “I’m ready to face the enemy on his own territory now.” He nodded toward the compound. “I’ve got my shield of faith, helmet of salvation, breastplate of righteousness... ”

  When he finally finished, I said, “Well, go fight the good fight.”

  It sounded more sarcastic than I intended, and, as he walked away, Anna laughed. When I was sure he was too far away to hear me, I did too.

  “He should be the chaplain here,” I said. “Not me.”

  The great irony for a man in my position is how little use I have for organized religion. I am essentially a member of the unchurched. Yet, since high school I’ve felt a strong sense of vocation, a paradoxical longing and belonging which somehow resulted in my becoming a nonreligious religious leader. I was on the very fringe of religion, but so far prison chaplaincy had worked for me.

  Anna shot me a look. “I’m not saying he’s not a good, wellmeaning guy, but the last thing the repressed religious simpletons around here need is a repressed religious simpleton as a chaplain.”

  “Thanks,” I said, and let out a small ironic laugh at the madness of it all.

  “Don’t tell me you didn’t miss all this while you were in training,” she said.

  I looked at her for a long moment. “I missed some things more than others.”

  3

  Leaving Anna wasn’t easy. It had never been, and every time it got more difficult.

  The first time I left her after high school, I had fled to Atlanta, trying to escape the painful and nearly sobering reflection I saw in my mother’s glazed and unfocused eyes.

  It was almost two years before I came home again to visit, and having heard that Anna was married, I avoided her. But, just like the song, I ran into her in the grocery store on Christmas Eve, and we had our own bittersweet Same Old Lang Syne. I started listening to Dan Fogelberg then, and have been ever since.

  On my walk over to the warehouse, I was joined by Dexter Freeman, a young black inmate with closely shaven hair, a threeinch part cut into the front of it. He was thin, but muscular, and held himself in such a way that even the biggest predators left him alone. He had recently transferred to this institution and had been attending my Bible class and weekly worship service.

  “Chaplain, I’ve got a question for you,” he said, as he walked along beside me. “Can I walk with you?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  A loud burst of laughter erupted to my left, and I turned to see a small group of inmates seated behind the food service building, wearing soiled aprons and white plastic hair covers. The laughter came from a squat, balding black man leaning against the gray cinder block wall. I guessed he was attempting to entertain the others who were seated on over-turned plastic milk crates, but it was obvious that he found himself much more amusing than they did.

  “Is the Bible true?” Dexter asked.

  “How do you mean?”

  “Did all those things really happen?” he asked. “The flood, the tower of Babel, Jonah and the whale?”

  Unlike most of the inmates in this facility—or in any state facility—Dexter was well educated, and spoke with no discernable accent or dialect.

  I knew what he was asking. It’s what most people of faith ask themselves at one time or another—are our stories true?

  “The truth of a story isn’t contingent on its being a factual account of actual events,” I said. “Think about Jesus’ parables. Is there anything more true than them?”

  He squinted as he thought about it for a long moment. “It doesn’t have to have happened to be true?”

  “What is truth?” I said. “Is it the shallow assurance that something literally took place, or is it about something far deeper, something that is profoundly true—on all levels? Not just the literal one. It’s like poetry.”

  His face lit up, his eyes brightening. “Religion as poetry,” he said. “I like that.”

  “Why do you think sacred texts are filled with so much figurative language?” I said.

  “Yeah,” he said, nodding his head and smiling. He got it. Then, suddenly, he began to frown. “But so many people just take it literally. They’re missing so much.”

  “It’s how they can believe they have truth and everybody else has superstition.”

  He looked down and shook his head.

  At the end of the food service building, a rust-and-grime-covered green dumpster sat reeking of sour milk and rotting vegetables. It reminded me of grammar school. That same pungent smell had floated around the rear of the lunchroom like a tormented apparition—presumably one that died of food poisoning. From somewhere beneath the violated metal mass bled a thin milky substance, as if from an open wound.

  Dexter and I both carefully stepped over the sludge that seeped across the width of the asphalt street. It puddled like some primordial pool that would soon spawn a horrific new species.

  He started to say something, but hesitated, and I could tell he wanted to say more.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  He smiled. “Is it wrong? I mean does...,” he began, then trailed off.

  “Just spit it out,” I said, “I can guarantee I’ve heard it before.”

  “Does the Bible say masturbation’s a sin?” he asked quickly without looking at me. “All the brothers on the compound say it does. Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not a member of the gun club.”

  I smiled at Dexter’s reference to the PCI Gun Club. Gunners were inmates, usually sex offenders, who masturbated while looking at female officers in the dorms. They’d simply whip it out and get busy regardless of who was around. Each day the gun club received new members. It was getting out of hand (so to speak) and I felt sorry for the female officers who ha
d to endure such violations.

  “Actually, the Bible doesn’t say anything about masturbation,” I said, adding, “unless you count, ‘Whatever you find to do with your hand, verily I say, do it with all your might.’”

  He looked perplexed.

  I smiled. “It’s a joke. The Bible doesn’t say anything about it.”

  “What about the dude in Genesis they keep talking about? What’s his name?”

  I smiled. “Onan?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Not the same thing,” I said.

  The sounds of young men playing drifted over from the rec yard, mixing with gunshots from the firing range, creating an auditory paradox that otherwise only existed in war and inner-city housing projects.

  “So it’s not a sin?”

  I shrugged. “I guess it can be.”

  “They act like it’s really against God—sexual impurity and all.”

  I nodded as he spoke, thinking about the hypocrisy of rapists and child-molesters feeling righteous about themselves for abstaining while they were in prison, but didn’t respond when he finished.

  “Well, is it?”

  “What? Against God? I sure hope not.”

  His face filled with relief.

  “I think you’ll find that most of the ones saying how evil and sinful sex is are the very ones with the greatest sexual dysfunctions and addictions.”

  He was about to respond when we reached the gate. “Well, this is my stop. They won’t let me go any further.”

  I smiled. “Come up to my office when you can and we’ll talk about it some more.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Thanks.”

  When Dexter was gone, I proceeded through the south gate. Emerging on the other side, I noticed a large panel van with Bobby Earl Caldwell Ministries painted on it parked near the warehouse.

  I soon discovered that the truck was filled with an unsolicited shipment of Bobby Earl Caldwell preaching tapes and books for our chapel library. The tapes—both audio and video—were unedited recordings of his television program and crusades, the books, self-published transcripts of his sermons. The materials were in cardboard boxes stacked on pallets that had to be unloaded with our forklift.