Six John Jordan Mysteries

by Michael Lister

  The fresh air and the warm sunshine were healing, and I knew somehow that the beautiful day was not merely benign, but the evidence of the love, care, and concern of the creator. I closed my eyes and breathed deeply, and as I did the volume of the vibrating world all around me increased, and I realized again how much I missed as I rushed through my days.

  The crack of a wooden bat, the tink of an aluminum one, connecting with the softball, followed by shouts and running, and the clank of the bat falling on home plate. The bounce of the rubber basketball slapping the asphalt court to the beat inside the point guard’s head. The metal clank of a horseshoe striking and then spinning around the small stake in the sand boxes. The shouts of frustration, the obnoxious trash talk involved in the intimidation of an opponent, and the glorious laughter of men having fun, playing like children, oblivious to the world passing them by.

  When I opened my eyes, the vivid colors leapt out at me, the incredibly sharp sounds receding, muffled now by my inability to process all the stimuli life offered. I spotted Dexter on the opposite side of the field, walking around the dirt track encircling it. I waited for him to reach me, and then joined him as he went by, matching the pace he had already set.

  “How are you?” I asked.

  “Not too good,” he said, shaking his head slowly. His face clouded over, his mouth forming a deep, angry, tight-lipped frown. He looked more frustrated than angry.

  “What is it?”

  “I was disturbed by the class today.”

  “Really?” I asked, my voice full of sarcasm. “And you hid it so well.”

  His frown relaxed a little, but his mouth refused to make the leap into a smile.

  “I’ve been thinking about what you said the other day about the Bible not being true,” he said.

  “I never said that.”

  “Well, about the events not really happening,” he said.

  I smiled. I knew what was happening. He had been exposed to the new wine of unfamiliar concepts and the old wineskin of tradition and rigid religion was unable to hold it. I had been there many times myself. Soon he would have to make a choice—pour out the new wine or find new wineskins.

  “All I said was that it’s irrelevant whether they actually happened or not,” I said.

  “And what you were saying today,” he said. “I mean, I’m supposed to be a Christian, but not if what you said about grace is true.”

  Two effeminate black inmates in shorts and T-shirts that were several sizes too small jogged past us. They wore pink Keds tennis shoes with matching sweat bands around their heads and white athletic socks that were rolled down around their ankles. They were both extremely thin and ran like awkward prepubescent girls. One of them pulled slightly ahead of the other and began to wiggle his behind as he ran. “Work it, girl,” the other one said. “You’re looking too fine to dine. I’m gonna have to toss that salad, child.”

  “Do you remember the story Jesus told about the father and his two sons?”

  “The parable of the prodigal son?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Which is true, by the way, though it never happened. Remember when the younger son came home after wasting his father’s money on prostitutes and parties?”

  He nodded.

  “The older son was so furious with his dad he wouldn’t even go into the house. Not only did his dad not reject or punish his younger brother, but he even threw a party for him. The older son said that it was unjust... and he was right. His brother didn’t deserve the warm welcome and the extravagant party. But that’s what grace is—what we need... not what we deserve.”

  “So, God’s unjust?”

  “Thankfully,” I said. “None of us want justice—except for others.”

  “God’s not unjust,” he said. “I can’t accept that.”

  “Neither could the older brother,” I said. “He thought he had earned his father’s love... and he knew his younger brother definitely hadn’t... but so did the younger brother. He didn’t even try to earn his father’s love. And because he realized he couldn’t, he quit trying... and discovered, perhaps for the first time, what love really was. You have children, don’t you?”

  He nodded.

  The rec yard we were walking around was so enormous that the hundreds of inmates moving about the softball field, the weight pile, the basketball and volleyball courts, playing ping-pong and checkers under the pavilion looked more like ants than people— especially from Tower III, where an officer with one of the few loaded weapons on the compound stood watch, alert for inmates who wander over too close to the fence or low-flying planes or helicopters. Escape attempts by air most often occur on the rec yard because it has plenty of room for a helicopter to land and it’s more isolated than anywhere else on the compound.

  “Do you love them only when they’re perfect?”

  He shook his head, and a small smile crept across his face. “I’ve got a two-year-old son who’s a rascal,” he said, his whole countenance softening. “That boy stays in time-out. Sometimes his mama has to spank him ten times a day.”

  “And?”

  “And I love him all the time,” he said. “But... there’s a difference in a two-year-old who’s still learning right from wrong and these bastards.”

  He looked out at the other inmates on the rec field. “You don’t know... I live with these people...” he shook his head. “... Most of the time they don’t even act human.”

  I nodded.

  A group of about ten inmates, running the opposite way from everyone else, presumably so they could be seen, approached us. They seemed to glide along, as if not quite touching the ground as they moved in unison, in beauty and grace. They spent most of their time on the rec yard, lifting weights and running around the track, and their lean muscular bodies were rippled with hard knots that barely moved as they ran. Their shirts were off, and the slick layer of sweat covering their hard, black bodies made their smooth, hairless skin look like fine silk.

  “You’re telling me there’s not a difference between them and my son?”

  “Sure there is,” I said, “but not in the way God loves them.”

  He shook his head.

  “If God’s love is based on behavior... if it’s based on anything, it’s conditional,” I said. “Perfect love is not based upon whether the one being loved is lovable, but on the lover’s ability to love, and in the case of God, the love is perfect and complete.”

  “So why do we do all the things we do?”

  “Like what?” I asked.

  “Like praying, studying our Bibles, going to church or a class... doing what’s right.”

  “Not to earn something we’ve already got,” I said. “That’s what the father said to the older son when he said he had earned a party, but had never been given one. He told him that he could have had a party anytime... every day at the father’s house is a party...but not because he had earned the right. Because that’s just the way the father is.”

  “I’m trying so hard,” he said. “And it’s not like I wasn’t before I ever came here, but now I’m really bustin’ my behind to...”

  “To what? Earn God’s love?”

  “And they’re still playing the same tired old games,” he said, gesturing toward the other inmates. “And...”

  “And,” I said. “God loves them just as much as he does you.”

  When we reached the gate, we stopped. I turned back and looked at the activities on the rec yard once more before we continued walking through the first gate and waited for the second one to buzz open.

  “I’m going to be honest with you, Chaplain,” he said. “I understand what you’re saying... and you’ve made some convincing arguments. But I’m not there yet.”

  “Me either,” I said. “Me either.”

  We passed through the second gate and onto the compound framed by the enormous dorms on all sides.

  “It’s hard to believe,” I said, looking at him intently, “that God loves Nicole and her killer equally.
” He stopped walking abruptly, rage flaring in his eyes. “You don’t think so?” I asked. “I think there’s a special place in hell for him,” he said. “That may be,” I said. “But if he or she chooses that, it doesn’t change God’s love or the fact that it will break God’s heart any less than it’d break your heart if one of your children rejected you and did something so self-destructive.”

  “He should be tortured and killed as painfully and slowly as possible.”

  “Who?”

  “Her killer,” he said.

  “Who do you think it is?” I asked.

  He shrugged, then shook his head. “If I knew,” he said. “I’d...”

  As we talked, a steady stream of inmates passed by on their way to or from the rec yard. I thought about how few came to the chapel by comparison, and wondered if I was doing any good here at all.

  “You were out in the hallway that night for a while, weren’t you? Did you see anything?”

  “I just went to the bathroom,” he said. “I rushed in and out because I didn’t want to miss any more of the message than I had to.”

  “When was this?”

  “Near the end,” he said.

  “Someone said they thought maybe you and Bunny Caldwell had something going on.”

  Unable to respond, he stood there slack-jawed, stunned into wide-eyed speechlessness.

  “What?” he finally said. “No. No way. I would never. I’m married.”

  I could tell he was lying, but when it came to sex I expected most people to, so I filed it away as a fact that might become important when joined with other facts I had yet to gather.

  “Did you see anyone else out there?” I asked. “In the hallway or the bathroom?”

  He looked up and closed his eyes as if trying to remember. “Register,” he said.

  “Paul?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” he said. “And Porter.”

  “Cedric?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Had you ever seen the Caldwells before?” I asked. “I’ve heard they’ve been here for the last couple of years.”

  “I haven’t been in long,” he said, then hesitated before adding, “Sounds like you’re trying to find the killer.”

  I nodded.

  “Why bother if God loves him as much as Nicole?”

  “First of all, love doesn’t make allowance for lawlessness, doesn’t negate the need for justice—in fact, it demands it,” I said. “And...”

  “And what?” he asked.

  “And,” I said, “I didn’t say I loved him as much as Nicole—or as much as God loves either of them.”

  That evening I drove down to Mexico Beach for an AA meeting. As the small county road rose slightly to come to an abrupt stop at what seemed to be the end of the world, my breath caught at the beauty, and I felt, as I always did, that this ending was also the beginning, and I had come home somehow.

  Beyond the unpolished sunstone-colored sand of the pristine beaches, the Gulf rolled away toward the northwest coast of Cuba, its calm waters the color of uncut Columbian emerald. The setting sun was low in the sky, hanging just above the horizon, and cast a coral-colored shaft of light across the Gulf, as if illuminating a path to another dimension.

  I had driven down here to ensure my meeting would be truly anonymous, but already feeling the Gulf’s effect on me knew I had been drawn here in ways I could never fully understand.

  Pausing at the stop sign as long as I could, I breathed deeply, gazed carefully, felt fully, and once again let the mending begin.

  22

  The moment I walked through the chapel doors the next morning, Mr. Smith, my elderly inmate orderly, motioned me past the inmates waiting to see me and down the back hallway to the kitchen.

  Mr. Smith was not only the oldest clerk I had, but was the one who had been with me the longest, and the only one I trusted. Unlike most of the inmates in the institution, Mr. Smith was quiet and respectful, his thoughts and actions deliberate, and I wasn’t sure if it was his personality or a product of his age. Probably the latter—and the fact that he had been incarcerated for so long.

  When we were in the kitchen and the door was closed behind us, he slid the large gray garbage can out from the wall.

  The chapel kitchen was small and plain, functional, but not much else. The pine cabinets had been built by inmates and were thin and uneven, their earth-tone counter tops peeling up on the ends.

  “I’s goin’ through the trash, you know, for security purposes— ”

  I knew he didn’t have to go through the garbage, but that he took pride in the chapel and the work he did in it, and that he was constantly looking out for me.

  “—and I come across these,” he said.

  He lifted the clear plastic bag from the can and emptied its contents onto the floor. Withdrawing from his back pocket two of the plastic gloves we kept around for food preparation, he handed me one, and we each slipped a hand in one and knelt down to examine the trash.

  “They wrapped ’em in paper towels and shoved ’em down in the middle,” he continued, “but they didn’t fool nobody.”

  Beneath his closely cropped gray hair, Mr. Smith’s skin seemed dry and paper-thin like parchment, his half-closed eyes wise but weary, as if the one was the price for the other.

  “Well, I don’t know about that,” I said, “but they didn’t fool you.”

  I watched his long bony black fingers beneath the clear plastic glove sifting through the trash, raking it aside until he found what he was looking for.

  “When I saw ’em,” he said, “I left ’em where they was ’til you seen ’em.”

  “See what?” I asked.

  “There,” he said.

  Spreading apart the rough brown paper towel, he revealed the two used condoms it was meant to conceal. As he held the paper towel up in the palm of his gloved hand, the condoms unfurled like worms, their elongated forms revealing the moist residue still on them.

  “You have a lot better idea of what’s on the compound than me,” I said. “How available are condoms?”

  “They’s a lotsa sex, but no condoms,” he said. “I been down a long time and these the first I seen.” A small, self-amused smile danced across his lips and he added, “No one ’round here practice safe sex.”

  I nodded.

  “I’ve heard a few hardcore punks talk ’bout a officer usin’ a condom before, but they bring one in, use it, and take it out—or flush it.”

  “These the only ones?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “Seein’ these got me lookin’ closer ever’where, and I found one other in the visitor bathroom.”

  The visitor’s bathroom was in the same small side hallway, just closer to the main hallway door. Unlike the inmate bathroom, which couldn’t lock, the visitor’s bathroom stayed locked and was only used by staff or visitors during a special program.

  Turning around slowly, he opened the cabinet beneath the kitchen sink and pulled out a smaller clear plastic bag.

  “This was in the little trash can inside the visitor’s bathroom at the bottom of a bunch of tissues, paper towels, and a tampon.”

  “A tampon?” I asked.

  “Uh huh.”

  Unlike the other two condoms, this one was wrapped in toilet tissue instead of a paper towel.

  “It’s different from the others,” he said.

  And he was right. Whereas the others were amazingly clean, blood and fecal matter, judging by the smell of it, streaked this one.

  “That shit’s rank,” he said, jerking his head back when he had fully unwrapped the tissue. “Sorry,” he added, and I knew he was apologizing for his language, “but...” He shook his head, wrinkling up his face, beginning to breathe through his mouth.

  I reexamined all the condoms, studying them in relationship to each other, trying to account for their differences.

  “Why they so different?” he asked. “These used in a woman and this one in a man?”

  Vaginal versus anal use wo
uld certainly explain the differences, though the one seemingly used for anal intercourse in the visitor’s bathroom wouldn’t necessarily have had to have been used by two men.

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “We can’t really know until a lab processes them.”

  Just then the door behind us swung open quickly, and Abdul Muhummin said, “What the hell’re y’all doin’?”

  I turned to see him straining to see what we were looking at.

  “Go back in the library,” I said. “I’ll be in there in a minute.”

  “You need any help?” he asked, still not looking at me, but trying to see what was behind me. “No,” I said. “Go back in there now, and keep everybody else away from here until I get there.”

  “What did you find—a clue or somethin’?”

  “Muhummin, if you don’t go now I’m gonna have you locked up for disobeying a verbal order.”

  “I’m goin’, I’m goin’,” he said, holding his hands up in a placating gesture. “Just relax.”

  When he was gone, I turned back to Mr. Smith and asked, “When was the last time the trash was picked up?”

  “Not since we was cleanin’ for the program,” he said. “After what happened, we wasn’t able to get in here and clean.”

  My anger at Pete’s ineptness and Patterson’s obstruction flared as I thought about them not including the two bathrooms back here as part of the crime scene.

  “So you’re saying all of this is from the night of Nicole’s murder?” I asked.

  He frowned, the wrinkles snaking across his face like rivers deepening, and he suddenly looked even older. “I’m sayin’ that the only night they could be from.”

  “If the killer wore a condom to rape that little girl before he killed her,” Dad said, “how’d it get in the trash in the back of the chapel?”

  Though I genuinely believed in the afterlife, and believed Nicole to be in a safe, loving environment now, far from the carnal concerns we were left to deal with, I still shuddered inside when I considered what her last moments in this life had been like.

  I shrugged. “The two things may not be related,” I said. “Especially since there are three. He could’ve worn it or carried it into the back in order to dispose of it away from the crime scene. But Pete says the prelim’s inconclusive about whether or not she was sexually assaulted.”