Six John Jordan Mysteries

by Michael Lister

  Anna’s softly sweet scent filled the small room, and I breathed through my nose so I could take it in with every inhalation.

  “Good CD, isn’t it?” she said, nodding toward the CD player.

  I nodded.

  “You must really think so,” she said with a smile. “You have two.”

  I smiled.

  “How many copies of Dan’s new one do you have?”

  “Two, too,” I said. “But I like yours the best.”

  She laughed, and we listened to the rest of the song in silence.

  The couch we sat on had been left in the trailer by the previous tenants. It was uneven and uncomfortable and had one of those covers that bunched and gathered and slid around every time you moved. There was very little furniture besides it in the room—a small folding table that held a TV and other components, an old leather recliner, its back permanently caught between upright and recline, its leather splitting and tearing, a couple of overcrowded bookshelves that leaned into each other for support. Scattered throughout the room, along the walls mainly, were stacks of books in every shape, size, subject, and genre.

  When the song was over, she said, “What’s new in the investigation?”

  I told her.

  “I would think Bunny could get all the sex she wanted on the street,” she said. “Why run all the risks of having it with inmates inside?”

  “Perhaps the risks are what it’s about,” I said. “But you’re right, it’s probably not her. As far as I know the only time she left my office was to sing in the sanctuary.”

  “But then how do you explain the condoms and the tampon?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “The tampon could’ve belonged to a female volunteer from an earlier night. The condoms could’ve been brought in by a staff member or an officer.”

  She didn’t say anything and I could tell she was thinking about it, the light of intelligence bright in her dark eyes.

  Sitting so close to Anna, I found it hard to breathe. I so wanted to be a good man, to be God’s man, belonging fully and completely to her, but how could I when I felt the way I did about this woman? If my love for Anna wasn’t idolatry, it certainly bordered on obsession. And yet, paradoxically, I often experienced the passion I felt for her as a metaphor for how God loved me, and through Anna’s love, I couldn’t help but feel the desire of the God who is the allconsuming fire.

  “It’s unbelievable Bobby Earl gets that kind of money from our institution,” she said. “It might explain the condoms.”

  I nodded. “The clean ones especially,” I said. “If someone’s using them to mule drugs inside, the lab should be able to tell us.”

  “Even so,” she said, “it’s hard to see what it would have to do with Nicole’s death.”

  I nodded.

  “And frontrunners for that?” she asked.

  “Bobby Earl and Bunny are certainly still in the lead,” I said, “but Coel was in the best position to do something without being seen—and he’s the only witness we have who was able to see both doors.”

  “He could’ve gone in or be covering for whoever did,” she said.

  “Uh huh,” I said. “But I certainly can’t rule out Theo Malcolm. He’s working hard to cover up something, and then there’s Paul Register—his background alone’s enough to keep him near the front of the pack.”

  Talked out, we sat in silence and listened to the music and each other breathe some more.

  “I’ve had a lot of night classes lately,” she said. “And Chris’s had a lot of really big cases. Things haven’t been the same. It’s why what you said the other night did more than hurt me. It devastated me.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I’ve heard,” she said.

  “Really.”

  “I’m still mad at you.”

  “You should be.”

  “Sometimes I hate you,” she said, her words four staccato stabs of a serrated blade.

  I couldn’t respond to that. All I could do was sit there and bleed.

  She didn’t say anything else, and when I could, I said, “Sometimes I hate myself.”

  We were quiet for a long moment, Jann’s melancholy music holding us hostage, her sultry voice piercing the emptiness around and in us like arrows, the sad lyrics bittersweet poison on their tips.

  “Chris thinks we need counseling,” she said finally.

  “You and me?” I asked.

  She smiled. “Me and him.”

  I nodded.

  “What do you think we should do?”

  I shook my head. “I’m the last person you should ask,” I said, and I wanted to tell her about Susan, but knew it wasn’t the time.

  “Why?” she said. Her eyes looked big and sad, her face revealing her vulnerability.

  “Because,” I said, reaching out and sweeping a strand of her thick brown hair from her face, “when it comes to you, I could never be objective.”

  She smiled warmly. “Thanks,” she said. “That’s the nicest thing anyone’s said to me in a long time.”

  We sat there in the silence for a long while after Jann had finished her set, our breathing the only sound in the little trailer until the phone rang.

  When after a few rings I had made no move to answer it, Anna said, “You gonna get that?”

  I shook my head.

  Her face lit up again. “That’s the second nicest thing anyone’s done for me lately.”

  “I can’t tell you how much I’ve missed you,” I said.

  “You could try.”

  “Every time I’ve wanted to talk about the investigation or share something about my day, I’d pick up the phone and start to punch in your number, or start walking down toward Classification before remembering and...”

  “I’ve done the same things,” she said, adding with a wry smile, “except I punched in your number and started up to the chapel. I’ve wanted so badly to help you like I usually do—especially with this one.”

  “I’ve needed your help,” I said.

  “Well, I’m here now,” she said. “How can I help?”

  “Just so we’re clear,” I said, “you are talking about the case—how can you help with the case?”

  28

  When I arrived at the chapel the next morning, Dexter Freeman was waiting for me.

  “My mom’s dead,” he said.

  “I’m so sorry to hear that, Dexter,” I said.

  I unlocked the chapel, and eyes red and tired, tears still streaming down his cheeks, he followed me into the spare office and fell heavily into one of the chairs where he sat staring blankly, his body trembling, his head down.

  As I watched him, I felt a forceful reminder that before long I’d be experiencing the same thing, and I felt guilty for not spending more of my mom’s last days with her.

  “They should’ve called me back in last night,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

  He shook off my apology. “They didn’t know.”

  “How’d you find out?” I asked.

  “Called home,” he said, looking up. “I asked them why they didn’t call you... I guess they just forgot about me. She’s been dead three days. My wife would’ve told me, but they don’t talk to her, so she didn’t know either. The funeral’s this afternoon. I need your help getting a furlough.”

  “Sure,” I said. “How’re you holding up?”

  He shook his head. “I didn’t want her to die while I was inside. You know?”

  I nodded.

  “She raised me by herself,” he said. “She always sacrificed for me. Worked two jobs where I could play sports and have a car and go to college. She was so proud of me. Broke her heart when I was arrested. Knowing I was set up didn’t make it any easier for her.”

  I smiled in response to his smile as the warm thoughts of her flooded his memory. He was quiet for a moment, crying silently, wiping his nose with the back of his hand and the sleeve of his blue uniform.

  I handed him some of the cheap, thin, prison-issue tis
sues I kept in all the offices of the chapel. “Thanks,” he said, then rolled up one of the tissues and dabbed at his eyes with the corner. “I’m okay. I appreciate your time.”

  “You want to call your family?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” he said. “But the phones in the dorms—”

  “You can call from here,” I said. “That’ll give you more privacy anyway. Then we can talk some more afterwards if you need to.”

  “Thanks,” he said.

  I plugged in a phone for him to use in the room designed for that purpose and closed the door to give him privacy. While he talked, I looked through his file and pulled some more of the information I needed. When he was finished, he came back into the office looking like a different person.

  “That really helped,” he said. “Thanks a lot. I really appreciate it. Just making contact. Not being so isolated... it helps.”

  “You’re welcome,” I said. “I’m glad you were able to talk to them.”

  He hesitated for a moment, then said, “Can I talk to you about something else while I’m here?”

  “Of course.”

  “I’ve been wanting to talk to you anyway,” he said, and took a deep breath. “I believe I’m here for a reason.”

  “I do, too,” I said.

  “Good,” he said. “Because I think you’re part of it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I think I’ve been put here to learn from you,” he said. “And I wanted to see if we could set up a weekly counseling session.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  Though he sounded sincere enough, I distrusted the compliments of inmates. Too often, by which I mean nearly a hundred percent of the time, they are the manipulative part of an angle being worked. I wish it were otherwise, but it’s the reality of prison, and to forget it, to be vain or blinded by flattery is to invite danger, even disaster. The challenge is to maintain professionalism without developing paranoia, to have compassion without becoming a caretaker who’s constantly taken advantage of. It’s a precarious position and few of us ever succeed. You get used to the negativity, the hostility, the anger and aggression. It’s in the open. You see it coming. What you have to look out for is kindness, is gratitude, is civility.

  “Would you pull my file?” he asked. “I want you to see something.”

  “I already have,” I said, tapping one of the folders on the desk. “To arrange the furlough.”

  “So you know what I’m in here for?”

  I nodded. “L and L,” I said.

  “Yes,” he said. “Lewd and lascivious. But I didn’t rape or molest or do anything that was lewd or lascivious. You know what I did? I took a leak in a park at night. That’s it. I was jogging at night and had to go. So, I found a tree and went.”

  I picked up his record and glanced over it as he spoke.

  “I got sentenced to one year and one day,” he continued. “Just one day shorter and I’d’ve served my time in county jail. Judge probably saved my life. I was supposed to have an accident in their jail. I’m telling you this because I’m not a criminal. But since I’ve been in, I’ve had some serious time to evaluate my life, and I want to use this time—all this time I have on my hands—to make some changes. Some core kinds of changes.”

  “I think that’s exactly what you should do,” I said. “And I’d be happy to help you in any way I can.”

  “Exactly,” he said. “I want to leave this place in top physical, emotional, and spiritual condition.”

  “You can start by honestly answering a few questions,” I said.

  “Sure,” he said.

  “Are you having an affair with Bunny Caldwell?”

  His eyes grew wide. “No,” he said emphatically. “Where did you hear that?”

  “Have you ever?”

  “Never,” he said.

  “What were you doing in the hall that night?”

  “Going to the bathroom,” he said. “Honest. I mean, it’d’ve been all right with me if I got a closer look at her, but I really did have to use the bathroom.”

  “Like in the park?” I asked. “Seems like your bladder’s getting you in some sticky situations.”

  He let out a small ironic laugh and shook his head to himself.

  The banging of the heavy metal door of the chapel and loud conversations announced the arrival of the rest of the inmates, most of whom paused at the office door, straining to see who was in with me, attempting to ascertain the reason for his presence by his posture and body language. I knew the next stop for many of them was my office door. Chapel traffic had increased dramatically since Nicole had been killed, most of the new visitors, voyeurs driven by a morbid curiosity to see the crime scene.

  “Is there anything else about that night you can tell me?” I asked. “Anything? No matter how small it seems.”

  “Well, there is one thing that struck me as funny,” he said. “It’s probably nothing, but...”

  “But what?”

  “Remember when we were in the bathroom and Officer Whitfield said there were two convicts in the stalls?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And then he said ‘you convicts come out’ or something like that.”

  “And you came out,” I said. “And the other man said he wasn’t finished or something.”

  “Exactly,” he said.

  “What’s funny about that?” I asked.

  “Just that the man in the other stall wasn’t an inmate,” he said. “But Officer Whitfield called him one and he didn’t correct him.”

  “You sure he wasn’t an inmate?” I asked.

  “Positive,” he said. “I saw him.”

  “Who was it?”

  “That guy that’s supposed to help Bobby Earl with security,” he said. “The warden’s nephew.”

  “DeAndré Stone?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “DeAndré Stone.”

  29

  “So DeAndré Stone was in the chapel the night Nicole was murdered?” Anna asked.

  “According to an inmate,” Merrill said.

  “Actually, according to the control room logs,” I said.

  His eyes grew wide. “Oh, my damn.”

  It was lunchtime. Anna, Merrill, and I were at Rudy’s in a booth next to the front window.

  “And why exactly did Coel and Whitfield fail to mention this?” Anna asked.

  I followed her gaze across the diner to a table in the far corner where Coel and Whitfield sat together.

  “They say they never saw him,” I said. “Even after I showed them the logs.”

  “Is that possible?” Anna asked.

  “Just ask him,” Merrill said, jerking his head toward me. “Anything’s possible.”

  During the day, Rudy’s was the quintessential small town diner. Its lunch buffet was a Pottersville standard, evidenced by the trucks parked out front like horses tied to hitching posts. All the meals at Rudy’s, like the people who prepared them, were country-fried, and the smell of old grease hung in the air like heavy humidity. The smoking section in Rudy’s was flexible—it shifted with the pass of an ashtray—and most of his patrons smoked while they ate, probably because it killed the taste of the food. The waitresses were young girls with nice backsides poured into Levi’s jeans, both of which seemed to be job requirements.

  “Did he come in with the Caldwells?” Anna asked.

  “A good bit later.”

  “And you never saw him?”

  I shook my head.

  “So what was he doing inside?” she asked.

  “Not protecting Nicole,” Merrill said.

  “You gonna add him to your suspect list?” Anna said.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Near the top.”

  Rudy’s was filled with a variety of people ranging from the president of the local co-op to a couple of pulpwood truck drivers. Several staff members from PCI were at a table together and a smattering of brown correctional officer uniforms could be seen throughout. I wasn’t sure if Merrill felt it as fo
rcefully as I did, but he was the only African-American in the entire establishment.

  With Carla in school, our food was brought to us by Rudy himself—he was cook and waiter today. We had ordered off the menu rather than getting the buffet, in an attempt to be more healthy—a failed attempt, we realized, when the food was placed before us. We had ordered grilled chicken and baked potatoes. The chicken had been grilled in butter and the potato was filled with butter and sour cream.

  “Here’s to our arteries,” Merrill said after I asked the blessing. “Just like Mom used to make.”

  Anna and I both laughed as we raked the small mountain of sour cream from our potatoes. The diner was set up with booths against the plate glass windows in front and a bar with built-in stools wrapping around the open galley. In the corner, a jukebox came alive with a country song that made me feel like drinking.

  “I’ve looked at the files of the inmates in the hallway the night of the murder,” Anna said. “Abdul Muhammin’s a cold-blooded killer. What’s he doing working in the chapel?”

  “He’s the one they sent when I said I wanted a well-behaved, knowledgeable Muslim clerk.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t like him being up there so close to you,” she said. “Watch him closely.”

  “I will,” I said.

  “And now I will, too,” Merrill said.

  “The best of them is Dexter Freeman. Then it’s a toss up between Paul Register and Cedric Porter. But just because they’re not violent inmates doesn’t mean they couldn’t’ve done this.”

  The bell above the entrance door rang as Dad and Jake walked in. Dad waved, Jake nodded and they took the only open booth, which was on the opposite side of the diner from us.

  “Jake sure looked relieved when he saw a booth open in the white section,” Merrill said. “I reckon he rather starve than eat in the colored section.”

  “Me, too,” I said.

  “Well, me, too,” Merrill said.

  Anna looked confused.

  “We don’t want there to be no colored section,” Merrill explained.

  From various tables around the room, I could hear sound bytes of southern living.