Six John Jordan Mysteries

by Michael Lister

  “Who fell asleep first?”

  She shrugged. “I guess I did, but I’m not sure. Why?”

  “And when did you wake up?”

  “He woke me up because he thought he heard a scream,” she said.

  “So he could’ve left while you were asleep?” I asked.

  She nodded. “I guess he could have, but do you realize what that means?”

  I did, but wanted her say it. “What?”

  “That if he really was asleep like he claims,” she said, “I could have been the one to sneak out of the cabin.”

  18

  When I got back to my room, I found a leather rose-colored journal lying on my unmade bed. A small gold key tied to a short length of burgundy ribbon sat atop the small book. Carefully placing the key into the lock on the side, I popped open the latch and lifted the top cover. A name was scrawled in black ink across the first page. Tammy Taylor.

  Gently placing the journal on the floor, I fell into the bed, clothes, including my jacket, and shoes still on, and thought about what I should do.

  If I really wasn’t going to investigate, I didn’t need to read even one of the entries. Before I could think about it long, my eyelids fell shut and I drifted off. I woke a moment later and looked down at the little leather volume on the cold tile floor.

  One must play the part one’s assigned, I heard Kathryn say as clearly as if she were in the room with me.

  I reached over and pulled the book into bed with me and began to read. As I did, the bulb above me began to flicker and emit an electrical hum.

  Why do I keep doing the same stupid things over and over again? What’s wrong with me? I don’t set out to fuck up, but that seems to be what I always do. Why? What’s in me that’s so weak or wicked? I try to be good, I really do. And I am for a while, but it never lasts for very long. I want to get better for real this time. Not just come off the shit I’m on, but stay off it. And that includes Clyde. I’ve got to stay away from him if I’m going to make it. I love him so much, but we’re no good together. It’s like we’re self-destructive soul mates. Why does it have to be so damn hard? We should be able to be together without hurting each other so much. Why can’t we just be in love? Just spend our whole lives loving each other, making each other happy? Why does he have to be so restless? Why do I have to be so weak? I can’t think about that now. Maybe we can be together one day, but for now I’ve got to take care of me, work on me, get me better. Maybe Clyde will do the same thing. I begged him to. Told him if he loved me he would. Well, we’ll see, won’t we? Says he’ll die for me, die without me. I told him if he wants to be with me he’s got to be clean and sober and sweet. He can be so sweet sometimes, and not just when he wants to bone me, but mainly then. I wish he was here to make love to me right now. I’ve got to stop thinking about that, about him. I’ve got to really concentrate on getting better. It’s our only hope. I can do it. Can he?

  I fell asleep feeling sorry for Tammy Taylor, and thinking how much all of us addicts sound the same. When I woke a few hours later and read another entry, I felt less sympathetic.

  At St. Ann’s. God, could this place be any more boring? Not many people here, but more losers per capita than anywhere in the world. It’s a beautiful piece of property. Shame to waste it on a few frigid bitches and dickless pricks. Going out of my mind, biding my time until I can get back to living. Think I’ll fuck with these assholes for some fun. Seduce every last one of them, then make fun of their limp little dicks or the dykes for wanting but not having one. Scoring a couple of priests and nuns should be fun. Find out what they won’t do and figure out a way to get them to do it. Show them what real power is. The power of me. I’ve got more power between my legs than all their pathetic little prayers put together. This whole place will be pussy-whipped inside a week. And then I can get on with my real plan.

  Was someone trying to supply me with other suspects, or helping to build a case against Father Thomas? Was he one of her conquests? What was Tammy’s plan? I thought about it, but not for long. Soon I was asleep again and dreaming, but not for long. Soon I was awake again and reading.

  I don’t think Father Fuckup thinks I have a demon. He thinks I’m out of my mind. Mad as a hatter. Still wants to fuck me, though. I can tell. Well, we’ll see who’s mind is more warped when I get finished with him. Don’t see any real challenges. Maybe old Sister Abigail, but I couldn’t do her anyway ‘cause that’s just gross. I’m committed to my mission, but I’m not that committed. I’m crazy, but not that crazy.

  “John,” Tammy said from the hallway.

  I jumped up and ran to the door.

  Just as I put my hand on the knob, it turned.

  “John, let me in. Now. Help me. Please.”

  I tried to open the door, but couldn’t.

  Then someone began banging on the door so hard it shook, but a moment later when I was able to open it, no one was there.

  I stepped out into the hallway and looked up and down. It was empty and quiet and I was alone.

  Had I imagined all that? Was I still asleep? Was I so creeped out by all that had happened, so freaked out by Tammy’s diary, so bone-weary that I was hallucinating? Or was it something else entirely?

  I returned to bed and to the journal, Tammy’s voice from the hallway still in my head.

  I’m so sorry. Oh God. What’s wrong with me?

  I don’t know why I wrote those things. I don’t mean them. Sometimes I think mean things. Sometimes I feel so bad inside I want to hurt someone, but I’m not a bad person. I’m not. God, please forgive me. And help me. I’m so sick of this shit. I don’t want to live like this any longer. Help me. And be with Clyde wherever he is. Please protect him and let him get clean and bring him back to me. I miss him so much. Especially his cock. I wish he was inside me right now. God, I’m so fucking horny. Father Fuckup isn’t much of a substitute, but he’ll do. Kill two birds with one stone. Get off and knock him off his goddamn high horse. Of course, he’s probably got a pussy in his pants. Good thing I know what to do with one of those too. I was disturbed and a little uneasy, but more than anything else, I was so lonely I could hardly breathe––and reading Tammy’s diary only made me more so. Weary and sad, confused and adrift, I was in limbo between a restless sleep and a dreary waking world, my isolation an ice pick puncturing and deflating a lung.

  19

  “Were you having a sexual relationship with Tammy?” I asked.

  “I was about the only one who wasn’t.”

  Father Thomas and I were seated on the first pew of the chapel, dark figures amidst candlelight and weak illumination from the overcast morning streaming through the stained glass. He had been kneeling at the altar when I came in, dozing I suspected, his weary eyes falling shut as he had begun to pray. I had taken a seat on the first pew and when he awoke or finished he joined me.

  “I shouldn’t’ve said that,” he added. “It was childish and judgmental. You’ll have to forgive me. I’ve yet to grow accustomed to being thought of as a murderer.”

  I nodded.

  “You do think of me as a murderer, don’t you?”

  I shook my head. “No,” I said, “I really don’t. I do think of you as a suspect.”

  “You don’t really know me,” he said. “If you did, and you could think I was capable of doing what was done to her, I don’t know what I’d do.”

  We fell silent a moment, and I let my eyes wander around the small sanctuary as I thought about what I’d read and what he’d said.

  The deep colors of the stained glass along the sides and behind the pulpit in the front were far darker than usual, their rich burgundies and blues looking more like a tapestry than a window, and in the flickering candlelight the hand-carved furniture and statues looked not modern but medieval.

  “I’ve spent my entire life helping people,” he said. “Or trying to. It may be in small ways, but I’ve done some real good. Given my life to easing the suffering of others. But this is what I’ll be
remembered for.”

  If possible, he looked even more feeble this morning than he had last night, his wrinkled skin thinner, paler, his small, watery eyes more sunken and unfocused.

  “Do I look like someone she would have sex with?” he said. “Do I look like I am able?”

  His last comment made me wonder if he was trying to appear more feeble than he really was.

  “Her diary says she intended you to be one of her conquests.”

  “Oh, she propositioned me. Sure. But I didn’t take it seriously, and I certainly made no attempt to take her up on it. Does her diary say otherwise?”

  “Not through with it yet. Just got it. Someone left it in my room. Any idea who?”

  “None. No locks in this place. Be easy enough to take it from her room and put it in yours, but why would they?”

  “Because of what’s in it,” I said. “But are they trying to help or hinder the search for the truth?”

  “If it’s truly her journal, it can only help with the investigation, even if not everything she wrote in it is true.”

  “You don’t fear anything in it?”

  Hesitating a moment, he glanced at the confessional in the back. Following his gaze, I studied the large handmade wooden box. It was ornate and antique and I wondered how it had wound up here.

  “It’s good for the soul,” I said.

  “Can it stay between us?”

  “I’m not a priest,” I said. “I can’t absolve you.”

  “If it has nothing to do with her death, can it stay between us? If it’s not relevant to your investigation, will you hear my confession as a minister?”

  I nodded.

  He looked over his shoulder, then all around the chapel, before lowering his voice and saying, “I was attracted to her. She was so... There was something about her. I knew it was wrong—I think that was part of the appeal. I could tell she knew. She looked at me as if I was like every other man she had met and it infuriated me. She knew she had power over people and she enjoyed it. When I walked into the cabin last night and found her strapped to the bed without any clothes on I was more aroused than I’ve ever been. It was hard for me to concentrate. I think maybe that’s part of why things got so out of hand. I was distracted... I just needed to tell someone. I never did anything about the way I felt. Never broke any of my vows—except in my heart.”

  “And you’re sure nothing ever happened?”

  “The only place we ever had sex was in my mind. I swear it.”

  In the silence that followed, I thought about what he had said and how he had said it, running it through the filters in my head, sifting for lies, hoping for truth.

  “Don’t you want to chastise me?”

  “For having sexual thoughts about a highly sexualized girl?” I asked in surprise.

  “I know it sounds silly,” he said, “but I feel so guilty—especially in light of what happened.”

  “If you’re looking for condemnation, you confessed to the wrong sinner.”

  The back doors swung open loudly and we both turned to see who it was.

  “What’s this?” Ralph Reid said, walking down the aisle toward us. “I thought I made it clear I didn’t want my client questioned unless I was present.”

  “It’s okay, Ralph,” Father Thomas said. “We’re just talking.”

  “He wasn’t. He was interrogating you and the fact that you think it was just talking shows how good he is at it.”

  I laughed and shook my head. He was either one overzealous lawyer or he had something to hide. My money was on the latter. I doubted he was capable of looking out for anyone but himself and, because it was in his interest, the Gulf Coast Company, and his reaction was not commensurate with the threat I posed to his client.

  “What prompted this little chat?” Reid asked. “I thought Father had answered all your questions.”

  “Actually, he answered all Steve’s,” I said, “but what prompted our discussion was Tammy’s journal.”

  “Her journal?” he asked in surprise. “She kept one?”

  “I suggested that she did,” Father said. “It’s helpful in the healing process.”

  “Do we know where it is?” Reid said.

  “I have it,” I said.

  “How did you—”

  “Someone left it in my room.”

  “What does it say?”

  “I just started it.”

  “I need to see it as soon as possible. It could point to other possible suspects.”

  “I’m going to turn it over to Steve. I’m sure you’ll get to see it if there’s a trial.”

  “I want to see it now.”

  “Well, then,” I said, “you’re being given an opportunity to practice patience.”

  20

  “I really like Father Thomas,” I said.

  “But you think he killed Tammy?” Sister Abigail said.

  Did I? I wasn’t sure. I just didn’t know enough yet, but for the moment he was still the prime suspect.

  I was in her office again. As if our previous session had never ended, we were in nearly the exact same positions, she sitting upright in her recliner, I in the center of the love seat in front of her. On her desk, a single large candle burned, its gardenia fragrance filling the room.

  “What does that mean?” she asked.

  “What does what mean?”

  “Your expression.”

  “Wasn’t aware I was making one.”

  “Well, what were you thinking?”

  “That I don’t want to think he could’ve done it, but at the moment I have little choice.”

  “But you’re still investigating?” she asked.

  “Just beginning really.”

  “Good,” she said.

  “You don’t mind me looking into it?”

  “No. And not just because it suits my purposes. I’ve been thinking a lot about the things you’ve shared with me, and I think the key is not to choose between chaplaincy and criminology, but to figure out a way to do both.”

  I was sure her change of heart had more to do with helping Father Thomas than me finding balance between my disparate vocations. Regardless of her motives, the result was the same. I could be involved in the investigation with her blessings instead of her constant protests.

  “And have you?” I asked.

  “Have I what?”

  “Figured out a way to do both.”

  “I’m not the one who has to. And don’t be fooled into thinking you’ve got it figured out if things go well while you’re here. You’re on retreat. You’ll only really be tested when you’re back in prison and under pressure.”

  I laughed.

  “What is it?”

  “I tell inmates that all the time,” I said. “Doing well inside doesn’t ensure they will when they get out.”

  “Tell me about Susan.”

  “Who?” I asked in surprise, the sudden change in subject jolting.

  “Your two-time ex-wife,” she said, adding with a smile, “You do remember her, don’t you?”

  “She neglected to file the papers the first time. We’ve only really been divorced once.”

  “But how many times in your heart?”

  “Two.”

  “So what happened?”

  “The usual,” I said. “Dependency, co-dependency, anger, resentment, bitterness, faithlessness, recovery, breaking cycles, changing at different paces—and that was just the first time.”

  “And the second?”

  “Her dad and I had a falling out. She sided with him.”

  “You do a lot of counseling,” she said.

  I nodded.

  “What does it usually mean when someone becomes flippant over significant experiences in their lives?”

  I smiled and nodded.

  “I’m just saying there’s more to it than you had a falling out and she sided with her dad.”

  “He’s the inspector general for the department of corrections. We were working a case together at
my institution. It didn’t turn out well. It’s a long story. The short version is, a line was drawn in the sand and she chose to stand on his side of it.”

  She nodded and looked up as she considered what I had said, her eyes narrowing, her lips twisting. Very little of her face was visible through her habit, but when she looked up it covered more of her forehead and less of her neck. The part that had pulled up off her chin showed a faint sepia stain from a patina of makeup powder and perspiration.

  “Any chance of reconciliation?”

  “She didn’t fail to file the papers this time, but even if she had...”

  “Even if she had what?”

  “I’m in no condition for a rematch.”

  “So even if she wanted to be together, you do not?”

  I pretended to think about it for a moment, though I knew the answer, then nodded.

  “Then there’s something you’re not telling me,” she said.

  I smiled. “Lots.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Who?”

  “The woman. The one you’re not telling me about.”

  I shook my head and sighed heavily, the familiar mixture of guilt-tinged desire and joy, like a river, rising inside of me. “Anna.”

  “And I take it she’s unavailable?”

  “Married.”

  “So were you,” she said.

  “I used to work with her. It was difficult, but good. Sweet torture. I’ve loved her my whole life. When Susan and I got back together, I told Anna I needed to stay away from her if it was going to work with Susan.”

  “What happened?”

  “She transferred to Central Office and I haven’t talked to her since.”

  She nodded.

  We were quiet a long moment, everything receding as I tried to see myself clearly, honestly, objectively.

  “I think maybe my marriage failed in part because I always held a part of myself back—and not just for Anna. I don’t know. It probably wouldn’t’ve made a difference in the final outcome. It’s not what ultimately caused our demise, but I feel guilty for it.”

  “What do you mean not just for Anna? Why else did you hold back?”