Six John Jordan Mysteries

by Michael Lister

  “Yeah?”

  “Could’ve waited until later and slipped out of the dorm.”

  Daniels pulled back and considered Pete. “That’s not bad. You trying to make up for your earlier stupidity?” He looked at me. “Whatta you think?”

  I smiled at Pete. “It’s possible she’s still hiding in there right now. I’ll go check.”

  11

  Ducking beneath the crime scene tape, I entered the PM unit to find Merrill Monroe inventorying the property in each man’s cell. A light sheen of sweat covered his dark brown skin and glistened in the light when he moved. He held a clipboard with one hand and a pen in the other, and his massive biceps stretched the short sleeves of his light brown uniform as he worked.

  “‘S up?” he said, looking up from his clipboard.

  “Not the life-expectancy of PM inmates.”

  One of my favorite people on the planet, Merrill Monroe was the best friend I’d ever had. Our friendship had been forged over two decades of being outsiders in our own homes and town. Though we’d known each other nearly all our lives, and his mom had kept me for a while when I was a child, it wasn’t really until early adolescence that we gravitated toward each other—neither of us fitting in with the rednecks, thugs, geeks, or jocks.

  “You haven’t seen an exotic woman in civilian clothes hiding out down here have you?”

  “Exotic women don’t hide from me.”

  “What I’ve heard.”

  “What’s her story?” he asked.

  “Priest said he saw one last night.”

  “And you think she’s still down here?”

  “Not really. Mind if I look around?”

  “It’s your crime scene,” he said with a smile. “I just work here.”

  I walked slowly around the quad, the events of last night drifting up from my subconscious—fractured images, out of sync and sequence, flickering in the dark theater of my mind.

  I saw Justin Menge walk from the quad door to his cell. Heard the electronic buzz and metallic pop of the lock. Saw him walk in. Heard the cell door clang closed behind him. Saw his blood seeping out from beneath the cell door.

  How? How could I’ve seen and heard all that? But I had. I knew I had.

  Justin Menge had died alone in a locked cell. How could it be murder? But it was.

  I became aware of being stared at, and looked up through the inside glass wall of the quad and into the wicker beyond to see the day-shift officer eyeing me suspiciously.

  I waved to him.

  He returned my wave and went back to work.

  Michael Pitts had been up there—well, some of the time—with a better view than anyone involved. Had he seen more than he had let on?

  In addition to Pitts’ God’s-eye view, Potter, Daniels, Father McFadden, and I were right here in the quad. The killer took an awful chance committing the crime when he did. Why? Was it the risk that excited him? Was this crime as much about how he did it as who he killed?

  Walking over to Justin’s cell, I stood staring at the bloodstained floor. How had his blood wound up in one place and his body in another? Was there religious significance to the crime as the flyer suggested or was that just a cover?

  Glancing over at Chris Sobel’s cell, I thought again about how suspiciously he’d acted—coming to Mass late, shoeless, taking so long to get his shoes that he missed most of the service. Had Pitts really not unlocked his cell door? No one was closer to Justin—physically or emotionally.

  I became aware of Merrill standing beside me. At six feet, I wasn’t a small person, but standing next to Merrill I felt like one. And it wasn’t that he towered over me. He was only a few inches taller than I was. And it wasn’t his broad shoulders, narrow waist, and enormous muscles. It was his presence. His strength—not limited to his physique—was palpable.

  “Got it figured out yet?” he asked.

  I smiled and shook my head. “So many problems to work out.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like the procedures Pitts and Potter followed—well, failed to follow—are they involved or are they really that incompetent? Why do it when we’re all down here? Must’ve wanted an audience, but why? And how did Menge, Martinez, and Hawkins wind up in the same quad? Was that just an oversight? Not to mention I can’t figure out for sure how it was done.”

  “Whatta Martinez and Hawkins got to do with it?”

  I told him.

  “I’m surprised Daniels ain’t arranged for Martinez to slip in the shower and fall on a shank or something. Mike Hawkins is Howard’s son?”

  “You know the esteemed sheriff of Pine County?”

  He nodded. “Menge may’ve been innocent after all.”

  My eyebrows arched.

  “Just ‘cause it usually a person of color Howard be fuckin’ over, don’t mean he don’t know how to do it to a white boy.”

  Merrill’s speech patterns confounded most people. He was capable of nearly flawless formal register and pitch perfect rural South Ebonics, and he shifted between them effortlessly, often to punctuate a point or to be funny, but occasionally for no discernable reason at all.

  “So he’s not down with the brothers?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “More into keepin’ a brother down.”

  “How well you know him?”

  “We’ve had a run-in a time or two. Wouldn’t mind renewing our association. He’s got that whole absolute power, absolute corruption thing goin’. Small county. Do what the hell he want. Never been caught doin’ shit—how the hell he let his son get caught?”

  I shrugged.

  “To make sure when Menge got out it in a bag?”

  “Could be.”

  “How the hell they both wind up in PM?”

  “I’m trying to find out.”

  We were quiet a moment.

  “Why they got you searching the cells?” I asked.

  “You know,” he said with an elaborate shrug and an attempt at nonchalance.

  Because of an investigation he had helped me with last spring, Merrill’s correctional career had stalled. He was paying the price for something I did, but what bothered me even more was that Merrill not only accepted but expected it. Injustice was part of his existence. It was his world view, forged in the fires experience, hammered into him day after day by a nation that dared to affirm his equality with a straight face.

  “Sorry,” I said.

  He shook his head.

  I gestured toward the quad. “Found anything interesting yet? Anything out of the ordinary?”

  He looked down at his clipboard. “Sobel’s missing his boots and a shirt.”

  I nodded as I thought about it.

  “A clue?”

  “Just might be,” I said. “Menge missing anything?”

  “No, he got all his shit.’Course, don’t mean shit to him now.”

  12

  Beneath tall, twisting oak trees, their roots spreading out in all directions, disappearing into sandy soil, I sat on a wooden-slat bench eating shrimp creole out of a Styrofoam cup from the Cajun Café.

  Above me, the oaks’ enormous branches created a thick canopy, from which Spanish moss waved in the breeze.

  I was having a late lunch alone in the lakeside park near the center of town.

  Lunch options in Pottersville for a bachelor who didn’t cook were limited to a no-name café featuring traditional southern fried fare, Rudy’s, a cross between Waffle House and the no-name café, Sal’s Pizzeria, and now, the Cajun Café, a taste of New Orleans.

  Unlike the other restaurants in town, the Cajun Café could make it anywhere—not just in a small town with limited dining options, but, thank God for her mercies, the local lady who operated it only wanted to live in Pottersville.

  The midday sun had burned the chill off the morning air and heated up the day, but beneath the tree branch canopy it was cool and comfortable.

  Numb inside and weary even before Justin was murdered, I was now sleep deprived and fraye
d. Beside me on the bench was Thomas Moore’s book, Dark Nights of the Soul, which, not for the first time, I was rereading. I was in need of help, of spiritual nourishment, and few people had provided that for me over the years as much as Thomas Moore. His gentle approach was soothing, but like most things these days, it didn’t seem to be penetrating, getting past my mind, down to the deeper parts of my being.

  I had come to the park in search of silence and serenity. I had come to the right place. Now, if I could just let them in.

  Before me, beyond the swollen bases of the cypress trees encircling it, the water of the lake was still and smooth. Behind me, the slow-moving traffic on Main Street created a breezy resonance that sounded like the tide intermittently rolling to shore. To my right, stay-at-home moms watched their toddlers playing on the enormous jungle gym, their laughter and squeals rising to meet the twirps and songs of birds in the trees.

  I took in a deep breath, held it, then let it out very slowly.

  The creole was hot and spicy, thick with chunks of onion, tomato, bell peppers, and large Gulf shrimp, the sun-dappled park peaceful, the breeze cool and refreshing, the moment perfect in every way . . . until my dad and brother walked up.

  “Eating alone’s bad for the digestion,” Jake, my younger brother, said.

  “I’m not alone.”

  He rolled his eyes.

  He assumed I was talking about God, and, though I had been referring to the living Eden in which I sat, ultimately I didn’t see much difference, so I didn’t say anything.

  Two years my junior, Jake was a couple of inches shorter and about fifty pounds heavier. Though he was in his early thirties, his thinning hair and soft body gave him the hayseed in middle-age look so many of the guys around here had.

  “How’re you doin’, Son?” Dad asked.

  Jack Jordan, the sheriff of Potter County, had somehow managed to have a son as different from him as if I’d been adopted. Though it couldn’t have been easy, he’d been extremely understanding my whole life, but his recent verbal jabs let me know he was beginning to resent my differences and independence. He appreciated me as an investigator—though he couldn’t understand why I wouldn’t work for him, and I knew it hurt him—but he couldn’t understand me as a minister, a prison chaplain. To his practical way of thinking, I was a fanatic, a wishful thinker—a daydreamer who spent too much time on frivolous things that didn’t matter.

  As different as I was from dad, I was far more so from Jake.

  “I heard about the inmate who was killed last night,” he added.

  “Why didn’t you say anything to us?” Jake asked.

  Dad said, “FDLE notified us after they were well into the investigation. We always cooperate, and they would have processed the scene either way, but it seems like I’m always the last to know anytime there’s a crime committed in the prison. Any idea why?”

  I shrugged. “I honestly think it’s just lack of coordination. Not intentional. I should’ve called you, but this is the first time I’ve even paused since it happened, and I figured someone else already had.”

  He nodded and thought about it.

  As sheriff, Dad was the chief law enforcement officer of Potter county, and was normally the first called in when a crime was committed. Ordinarily, there was a lot of interdepartmental cooperation—crime scene and lab work was processed by FDLE, crimes on the river or in the woods always included the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, but the sheriff’s department was always involved, usually in charge.

  “FDLE’s letting Tom Daniels run with it,” I said.

  “Your other daddy?” Jake said.

  A redneck who could hold his liquor, and often did, Jake had always seen my addiction as a sign of my weakness, and I think a lot of his anger toward our alcoholic mother came out as disdain for me. It’d explain the rage he continually directed toward me much more adequately than sibling rivalry.

  “You helpin’ him with it?” Dad asked, ignoring Jake.

  I nodded.

  “Do me a favor and keep me informed. Seems like I’m the sheriff of this entire county except for the land the prison’s on.”

  I nodded again.

  “People’re beginning to talk. Election’s only a year away.”

  One of the things I had always most respected about Dad over the years was that very few of his decisions were dictated by political expediency, but lately that seemed to be changing, and I found myself looking at him differently, wondering if it were because he was getting older or the talk that he might have real competition for the first time in a couple of decades.

  “What’ve you got so far?”

  I told him.

  “You were there when it happened?”

  I nodded.

  “Any idea who did it?”

  “Don’t even know how it was done. Yet.”

  A loaded log truck raced by on Main Street, its enormous diesel engine protesting the grinding of its gears. The sun ducked behind a cloud, and the day turned dark, the wind coming off the water cold.

  To our right, a kid who looked big enough to be in school began banging on one of the metal support poles of the jungle gym with a stick. The noise was loud and annoying.

  Jake turned toward the playground. “Hey kid. Cut that shit out.”

  Dad winced, but ignored him. “You need to let us help you,” he said.

  “How?”

  “Starting with a little piece of information for background. My department would be a valuable resource for you and the prison if you’d just let us.”

  “I know. I do.”

  “We responded to a call from Michael Pitts’s house less than a week ago.”

  My raised eyebrows asked the question.

  “Call came from his wife. Nothing much came of it, though it should’ve—I didn’t know about it until after the fact.”

  “Happenin’ a lot lately,” Jake said.

  “They extending him a little law enforcement courtesy. Said it wasn’t nearly the worse case they’d seen, but there was no doubt that it was a case of domestic abuse.”

  13

  Michael Pitts was maybe one of five of the very best football players Pottersville had ever produced. A quarterback with an amazing arm who was even more dangerous on the run, it was Michael’s field generalship that most impressed the college scouts. He won the state championship for 1-A schools two years in a row with a team that shouldn’t have made it past the district playoffs.

  In high school, Michael Pitts was a living legend, the hero of every young boy—boys who had no doubt he would finally put their small town on the map.

  But all that seemed like a lifetime ago now.

  I found Michael Pitts where he spent every fall afternoon—sitting alone in the bleachers of the high school football field intently watching boys with a fraction of his talent practice half as hard as he had.

  He nodded at me when I walked up, but continued to focus on the practice without saying anything. Beside him, I sat in silence, waiting until he was ready to speak.

  On the field before us, six enthusiastic men tried to motivate twenty-six teenagers who were not. Only three of the men were coaches. The others—a hardware store owner, a banker, and a father—were merely attempting to be close to what the boys unknowingly had in abundance.

  Next to me, Michael Pitts shook his head.

  “All the talent in the world can’t make up for attitude,” he said. “But attitude go a long way in making up for talent.”

  I nodded.

  “As things get better for these kids, they get softer, attitudes gets worse. Got no motivation. Want the easy way outta everything. Everything’s somebody else’s fault. Everybody owe ‘em somethin’.”

  He was right of course, but I knew that much of the anger he expressed was at the injustice of his own unfulfilled promise, and not merely at the blatant lack of character in the boys before him.

  I studied him again sitting in this place that must be haunte
d for him. Did he hear the roar of the crowd? Smell the sweat and dirt and hamburger grease as it dripped down from the patties and sizzled on the charcoal? Did he taste the blood and bile and Gatorade? Was he thinking the best part of his life was over?

  “Try to talk to ‘em, but they won’t listen.”

  We didn’t either when we were their age, I thought.

  The last of the setting sun backlit the small figures in practice pants and old torn and ripped jerseys, the plastic smash of their helmets and pads reverberating through the stadium like cheers on game day.

  “You ever think about coaching?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “I can do it,” he said, continuing to stare straight ahead at the practice, “or could, but I can’t teach somebody else how to do it.”

  I nodded. “It wasn’t something you were taught.”

  He nodded.

  The something that he hadn’t learned—the gift—had been taken from him just as quickly as it had been given. Cruelly, it had been his just long enough to make him dream.

  During the last game of his last season, Michael Pitts had broken his ankle. One wrong step and the road less traveled was no longer his to choose.

  God created the world out of chaos, I thought, and sometimes the chaos shows through.

  “Do you like being a correctional officer?” I asked, though I knew of no one who did.

  He shook his head. “Hate it.”

  I didn’t ask the obvious question, but he answered it anyway with a question of his own.

  “What else’m I gonna do?”

  Most correctional officers I knew would ask the same question.

  “Before I started,” he continued, “I was roofing with my uncle. Minimum wage. No benefits. No security.”

  Limited options, I thought. Why they build prisons in rural areas.

  One of the coaches blew his whistle and the players lined up on the goal line and started running wind sprints. No one, not a single player nor any of the adults, had acknowledged Michael Pitts’ presence the entire time I had been here, and I wondered if it was that way every afternoon.