Six John Jordan Mysteries

by Michael Lister

  I waited, but there were no other shots.

  With all the strength I could gather, I hoisted Merrill into the truck, slammed the door behind him, and ran around to the other side, crouching as if that could keep me safe from a bullet.

  Back in the driver’s seat, I popped the emergency brake and punched the gas pedal, my back tires screeching as we sped away.

  Rounding the corner of the building, bouncing over sidewalks and cement parking lot curbs, I raced to the emergency room entrance.

  Horn honking, we slid to a stop. I jumped out, ran around the truck, and opened the passenger door.

  By the time I had Merrill out of the truck, two nurses and a young guy in pale green surgical scrubs were there with a gurney.

  “Gunshot wound,” I shouted. “Just happened.”

  After I helped get Merrill onboard, they quickly pushed him in, yelling various orders to the others waiting inside, one of them remembering to tell me I’d have to hang around because the police would want to talk to me.

  I spun around, searching the parking lot for Sobel. I didn’t see anything, but had to stop looking in order to move my truck for an incoming ambulance.

  I parked illegally next to the curb further down and ran back through the emergency room and around to the lobby to look for Susan and Daniels. There was every chance Sobel would try again once he realized he’d shot the wrong man. As I ran through the halls, everyone I passed stopped and stared in shock at the blood on my clothes.

  I found Susan in the lobby alone. She was crying as she strained to see through the plate glass window. She startled as she heard me running toward her and spun around in a defensive posture. When she saw the blood on my shirt, her eyes grew wide and she ran over to me.

  “Are you—what happened?”

  “It’s Merrill’s. Where’s your dad?”

  “Out there,” she said, jerking her head toward the door. “He went after him. Please go help him, John. Don’t let him get killed. Please. Don’t let anything happen to him.”

  “Call Dad and tell him what’s happened. Find a security guard and stay with him.”

  I then stepped on the mat that opened the automatic doors and ran through them.

  54

  Attempting to keep my gaze wide and unfocused, I scanned the area slowly looking for movement. Things were far more still and quiet than I had expected. There were no police or hospital personnel where Merrill had been shot, and only now could the sound of sirens be heard in the distance. The rifle had not been loud. Perhaps most people who heard it didn’t know what they were hearing. It probably wasn’t until Merrill reached the emergency room that anyone called the police.

  As I searched for any sign of Sobel or Daniels, I began with the staff parking lot to my left, panning slowly to the visitors’ lot directly in front of me, and finally toward the emergency room and doctors’ parking to my right. It was then that I saw him.

  Limping along, gun drawn, Tom Daniels moved down Bonita Avenue toward 98 in the direction of GlenCove Nursing Pavilion and the First Methodist Church in pursuit of someone I couldn’t see.

  I took off after him, noticing for the first time I wasn’t armed.

  Running across grass, jumping over hedges, and winding through parked cars, I reached the spot where I had seen Daniels just moments before. He was gone.

  I scanned the area again.

  Nothing.

  Continuing in the direction he had been headed when I saw him, I ran toward the quiet, mostly empty 98.

  I didn’t get very far.

  I actually ran past them, realized what I had seen, and had to come back.

  Down a slope in an overgrown vacant lot near a drainage ditch, Tom Daniels was on the ground, Chris Sobel standing over him holding a gun to his head.

  I walked slowly toward them, the tall weeds depositing small seeds and moisture onto my pants as I did.

  Daniels was seated on the ground, leaning against the base of a small oak tree, a welt on his left cheek, blood trickling from his right nostril, his right eye swollen nearly shut.

  As I neared them, I tripped over an empty beer bottle in a paper bag half hidden in the tall grass, accidentally kicking it forward. It almost costing Daniels his life.

  Without taking his eyes off Daniels, Chris said, “Don’t come any closer, Chaplain.”

  He seemed calm and in control. I wondered if he felt as though he had nothing left to lose and killing Daniels the only thing left to gain. If so, he was even more dangerous than usual.

  “Okay,” I said, and continued slowly easing toward them.

  “I didn’t mean to shoot Monroe. I actually liked him. It was this murdering motherfucker I was trying to hit.”

  Murder leads to murder, violence to more violence, a downward spiral, a widening gyre.

  “I know,” I said.

  “You know what he did?”

  “You visit Paula in Justin’s place?”

  He nodded. “Not so this piece of shit could kill him.”

  His shaved head gleamed in the faint light of a street lamp, its stubble looking like the five o’clock shadow on a weary man’s face. It was amazing how different it made him look. No wonder Paula didn’t realize he was the man she had thought was her brother the night of the murder.

  “I came back to the quad, went into his cell to exchange uniforms and ID’s with him and . . . I got his blood on the uniform I was wearing—his uniform—there was so much blood. I loved him so much and he was—and there was all that blood. I couldn’t just leave him like that. I put him on the bed and covered him up.”

  He jammed the barrel of the small .38 harder into Daniels’s head and pulled back the hammer.

  He closed his eyes, squeezing them hard against the horror, tears streaming out as he did. On 98, the occasional traffic produced an intermittent breezy noise that sounded like shifting wind in an open field. The sirens in the distance drew closer.

  I nodded toward Daniels. “He was having Justin accuse Martinez of one of your crimes?” I asked.

  On the ground, Daniels was motionless. He didn’t shake his head or give protest to anything we were saying, just sat there staring into the distance.

  “We had a deal . . . He was gonna get out when I did. We were going to leave everything behind and be happy. He would paint. I would take care of him.”

  “But Justin decided not to testify against Martinez.”

  “He just couldn’t do it. He was too honest, too good, too pure to lie—even against a fuckin’ rapist like Juan. He tells this piece of shit he’s not going to do it. This bastard tells him he understands. Just meet with him secretly one more time to give him a chance to convince him. If he’s still not comfortable, he won’t bother him again. All the while he’s planning to murder him. And I helped him by meeting with Justin’s sister, but I had no idea.”

  “I know.”

  “He wanted to see his sister so badly, but I told him, if we’re careful and we pull this off, he’ll be able to see her all the time.”

  I nodded.

  For a moment, no one said anything, and I could see that Chris was re-living something in his mind. He still held the gun on Daniels, hadn’t even shifted his weight, but his distant stare and faraway expression let me know he was somewhere else—probably with Justin.

  “Justin had changed his mind about me, too, though. Hearing the details of what I’d done to that dealer in Pensacola was just too much for him. We weren’t going to be together, but he was going to wait until I got out to turn this cocksucker in. He knew it would probably come out that I had been the one who had committed the crime, not Juan. But he’d have to do it soon, because once I was out, he’d be much more vulnerable.”

  We were all silent a moment, and things seemed to slow down, as if the world around us was creeping by at quarter speed.

  “How could you do it?” Chris asked. His tears were dripping down on Daniels. “To Justin? Sweet, innocent Justin.”

  “He was going to
take me away from my family,” Daniels said. He was answering Chris’s questions, but he was looking at me. “Take me away from Sarah when she needed me most. Sweet, innocent, Justin my ass. All he was doing was looking out for himself. He didn’t care what Martinez had done, that he would get out and do it again. He didn’t care about my wife or what I was trying to do to save her. All he cared about was Justin. Didn’t even care about you, did he?”

  I eased toward them some more.

  “Chaplain, I asked you not to come any closer. I’m gonna kill him for what he did. I don’t want to kill you, but I will if I have to. This’ll all be over in a minute. Please, just back away.”

  I thought about how easy it would be to just back away and allow him to avenge the death of his lover. I thought about how much Daniels deserved it, how easy it would be to pick up Sobel later, how less complicated and costly it would be for me, how easier my future would be if I’d just let it play out.

  “I can’t.”

  “But he deserves it.”

  “I know.”

  “Don’t really see any way you can stop me.”

  In my most reasonable, reassuring voice, I said, “Can’t we just talk about—”

  Judging I was close enough, I dove for him, tackling him to the ground. As I hit him, his gun went off, putting a round into Daniels’s right arm. As we hit the ground, my head struck something hard—a root or a rock or an anvil—and I felt dazed.

  With just a fraction of my faculties, I began to wrestle Chris for his gun. We both had a hand on it, but neither could get it away from the other—until he grabbed a handful of my hair, picked up my head, and slammed it down on whatever it had hit before.

  I could feel the world start to fade, blackness closing in on me quickly like an aperture, and I made one last effort to get the gun away from him. Instead of trying to get the gun, I merely tried to make him lose it—and it worked. I slammed his gun hand down on the ground as hard as I could, punching him in the stomach as I did, and he let go of the gun.

  Just as he did, Tom Daniels stepped into view and shot him, a single small caliber round in the back of the head. He was dead instantly, and, as I lost consciousness, I figured I was about to be too.

  55

  I spent a lot of time over the next week wondering what I could have done differently, how I could have solved the case sooner and prevented more bloodshed.

  At nearly every turn in this case I had gone for justice instead of mercy. I had achieved neither.

  On Halloween, just a week after we had moved back in together, I received divorce papers from Susan—signed this time in bright red ink. It looked like blood from the wounds of our relationship—fatal wounds this time.

  I had called her several times. She had not returned any of my messages, and the one time she actually answered the phone, she hung up on me. I had moved my stuff out of her house when she wasn’t home, so I hadn’t seen her since the morning her dad had killed Chris Sobel.

  I’d picked up the divorce papers when I checked the mail during my lunch break, and when I returned to the prison that afternoon, I went down to Anna’s office to show them to her. We hadn’t spoken in a while, and I hoped divorce papers from Susan would provide the excuse I’d been looking for.

  I tapped on the door and walked in as I normally did.

  The only thing in the office was the state-issued furniture—a desk, matching bookcase, and three chairs.

  Gone were the angels.

  Gone was the angel.

  The only thing of Anna that lingered was the faint hint of her perfume, which in time would fade and be gone, too.

  I sat down at her desk and spread the divorce papers out in front of me and began to think about all that might have been.

  I breathed deeply through my nose, trying to take in as much of her as I could, running my hands along the desktop where hers had rested so often. I sank back into the chair where she had sat day after day of our incarceration together. And I knew doin’ time would never be the same again.

  I don’t know how long I had been there when DeLisa Lopez came in and sat down across from me.

  “Not the same around here without her, is it?” she said.

  “No, it isn’t.”

  “I was looking forward to getting to know her.”

  I nodded.

  We sat in silence for a moment as time crawled past like prison time always does. Prison time is the slowest time there is, but when Anna was here it had always gone far too fast to suit me. Now I would be doin’ time like everyone else.

  “How are you?” she asked.

  “Been better.”

  “Anything I can do?”

  I shook my head.

  Our voices seemed small and lost in the empty office, their sound bouncing off the bare walls and tile floor with nothing to absorb them. Nothing warm, nothing personal. Now there were only cold, hard surfaces.

  “Carlos has been transferred to another institution,” she said, “and no one has come to reprimand me, to fire me.”

  “And they won’t.”

  “You had him moved rather than report me?”

  I nodded.

  “Thank you.”

  “I know how easily people in helping professions can cross the line. Usually a result of compassion or neediness.”

  “Or a combination of the two.”

  “If it happens again, I’ll have to report you.”

  “It won’t,” she said. “You won’t have to.”

  “You’re a bright, beautiful woman, and there are a lot of free guys out there to choose from.”

  She glanced down at the papers on the desk in front of me. “You one of them?”

  I shook my head. “Haven’t been for a very long time. Probably won’t ever be.”

  “Shame,” she said, stood up, and walked out of the room.

  56

  As usual, when I stopped by Merrill’s hospital room I found Sharon Hawkins beside his bed. As far as I knew, she hadn’t left him much since he came out of surgery.

  He was sleeping. She was flipping through the pages of a magazine. She turned the pages quickly and forcefully, scanning up and down, but not reading—the same thing over and over again: flip, scan, repeat. She seemed bored and restless.

  “I’ll be here for a while if you want to get out,” I said.

  “You won’t leave until I get back?”

  “I won’t.”

  She stood, stretched, and grabbed her purse. “I’m not with him because I’m rebelling against what I came from or he makes me feel secure or I don’t have anywhere else to go or anyone else to be with.”

  “I think far more of you both to think that.”

  She smiled. “Of course you get it. You know how amazing he is.”

  When she left, my mind went back to the same dark place it always did.

  A few minutes later, Merrill opened his eyes, looked at me, shook his head slightly and said, “It’s the gay divorcée.”

  “I came hoping to meet a nurse.”

  “Think most of them the other kind of gay.”

  I nodded and we fell silent for a while.

  When serious or reflective, Merrill was a man of few words. Often when we were alone, few words passed between us. We had been friends so long, so much went without saying, that just to be together did more for me than being with any other person in the world—with one exception. In fact, as I thought about it, Merrill and I shared something that words were inadequate to describe, and talking about it lessened it somehow.

  “Daniels been indicted yet?”

  I shook my head. “Doesn’t look like he’s going to be. He set up Sobel pretty good. Escaping, shooting you and Daniels makes him look even more guilty. It looks as if Daniels shot him in self-defense. The DA doesn’t think he can make a case. So, ‘while Tom Daniels remains under a cloud of suspicion he is not being charged with any crimes at this time.’ They suspect Sobel every bit as much or more than Daniels.”

 
Merrill nodded. “He was right about the case. Crime’s too complicated for most juries.”

  I nodded.

  “Too many other criminals around to create reasonable doubt.”

  “He’s no longer with the department. Resigned, citing his wife’s health problems.”

  “You gonna do anything about it?”

  “Did all I could.”

  “Well, his ass didn’t get away with it. Karma a bitch.”

  I shrugged.

  “You tell the sister?”

  I nodded.

  “Think she might do anything?”

  I shook my head.

  “Susan still hangin’ up on you?”

  I shook my head.

  Creases formed on his forehead as his eyebrows shot up.

  “I’ve stopped calling.”

  He smiled, and we fell silent again.

  In a little while, he said, “What about the baby?”

  “Talked to an attorney. Said no court had ever ruled in favor of a man trying to prevent a woman from aborting his child.”

  “Always a first time. Set a precedent and shit.”

  I smiled.

  We both fell silent again.

  “How are you feeling?” I asked.

  “Not,” he said, and held up the little button that controlled his pain meds.

  “I haven’t heard Sharon’s little futile laugh lately.”

  “I’m good for her.”

  “And vice versa?” I asked.

  He nodded and smiled.

  “You talk to Anna lately?”

  I shook my head.

  “I have.”

  I raised my eyebrows, trying not to beg him for information.

  “She loves her new job.”

  I nodded, trying, but unable to catch my breath.

  “Better hours, no commute, no criminals, big ass paycheck.”

  “She deserves it. I’m happy for her.”

  “You look it. Got that hit-in-the-gut happy look.”

  “It’s genuine.”

  “It’s the best career move she could’ve made. Plus, she’ll be able to finish her degree sooner.”

  I nodded.