Six John Jordan Mysteries

by Michael Lister

  “Oh, I’ll catch the convict,” Todd said. “Needn’t worry ’bout that. Never had one get away yet.”

  “You boys make some room for the chaplain,” Goodwin said.

  As Dad left and Todd finished what he was doing, the boys gathered up their duffle bags and dive gear, quickly shuffled it off the boat and into their jacked-up and bulldogged trucks.

  I shot them a quizzical look. “What if we need that?”

  “It’s just our empty tanks and some random dive gear,” Goodwin said. “There’s more on the boat.”

  The others rejoined us. Todd shoved us away from the dock and Goodwin gunned the engine. Within moments the bow of the boat was raised and we were racing down the river, the setting sun starting to streak the horizon with flamingo feathers.

  “Any idea where we should look?” Goodwin yelled over the wind and motor.

  I told him.

  For several hours, we searched the area the plane was most likely to have gone down—if it went down at all—while keeping an eye out for the escaped inmate.

  It was evening and the day had a cooling, gloaming, coming-to-rest quality. Subtle, desaturated, still.

  Long past the time when their strained patience became hostile impatience, the guys who had already spent most of their afternoon on the river running rescue drills in hard rain helped me look for what increasingly seemed to be something that wasn’t there.

  Eventually, we gave up—mostly because they insisted—and I caught a ride back over to the scene of the escape in full dark. Numerous deputies and COs, joined now by the K-9 unit, were still searching the area lit by the generator-powered light tower, but the escaped inmate was proving to be as elusive as my phantom plane.

  When Dad dropped me at my trailer well after midnight, I was wet, tired, and hungry. I had totaled my truck, failed to prevent an escape, and wasted a lot of time. As the fatigue and frustration set in, I felt angry and depressed, and, as usual, I was unable to find any solace in sleep.

  7

  “I think we’ve got a serial rapist here,” DeLisa Lopez said.

  “Actually,” I said, “we’ve got several.”

  It was the next morning and I was tired, on edge. We were sitting in my office in the chapel of Potter Correctional Institution, drinking coffee from paper cups.

  She frowned at me. “I mean one active now. And he’s not just raping other inmates.”

  Though most people on the outside seem to think that brutal rape is just a part of the prison experience, in actuality it doesn’t happen nearly as much as they think. There’s sex inside, and some of it is coercive, but very little of it is rape in the most violent sense of the word. Inmates are watched very closely. For two of them to have sex, it has to happen so quickly and so carefully, they both have to work together to find just the right place and time. The exception to this, of course, is when there is a lapse in security, when routine and complacency make an officer sloppy or careless, but for the most part sex in prison is in some sense consensual.

  That’s not to say that rape doesn’t still happen or that when it does it isn’t violent and brutal and horrible, just that it isn’t as much a part of prison as popular culture would have you believe.

  “You?” I asked, alarm in my voice.

  She shook her head. “Just men,” she said. “Inmates, officers, support staff, but just men.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I keep hearing the same story over and over,” she said.

  Nearly all day every day, Lisa sat and listened to and counseled with the inmates of PCI. Many would try to manipulate her for various reasons, but if she was hearing the same story over and over from different men, there may be something to it.

  DeLisa Lopez, the dark, nearly beautiful Hispanic woman from South Florida, was a relatively new psych specialist at PCI. As usual, she made me think of heat, her sensualness more suited for a sweltering South Beach club than a North Florida prison.

  A bad relationship had caused her to migrate to the Panhandle. I wasn’t sure what was making her stay.

  “They’re not reporting it because of how humiliating it is for them,” she said, “but many of them have confided in me.”

  “What’re they saying?” I asked.

  She hesitated. “If it gets out that it came from me . . .”

  “It won’t.”

  She nodded. “Somehow,” she said, “he’s making them rape themselves.”

  I thought about it, my mind reeling. No wonder they weren’t reporting it. This went beyond the usual violation and humiliation of rape into a whole new form of degradation.

  “Can you elaborate?” I asked.

  “Not really,” she said. “As you can imagine, they’re not very specific, but the thing they have in common is that he’s forcing them to sodomize themselves.”

  “You think any of them would be willing to talk to me?”

  “NO,” she said, raising her voice. “Absolutely not. If they ever found out I told anyone about it, my efficacy is over.”

  “It’s not a lot to go on,” I said.

  “It’s all I have,” she said. “All I can say.”

  “Why tell me at all then?” I asked.

  “The way you solved Justin Menge’s murder,” she said. “Not just your investigative skills. Your discretion.”

  While investigating the murder of Justin Menge last year, I discovered that Lisa had been having an affair with one of the suspects. An inmate. She assured me it was over and that it would never happen again, so I didn’t report her like I was supposed to. It was a judgment call. One I based on intuition and experience. One I had questioned several times since.

  “I’m not just talking about the way you handled my stupidity,” she said. “This is going to require a great deal of sensitivity.”

  I nodded and we fell silent a moment.

  The morning light spilling into my office caused Lisa’s bronze skin to shimmer, magnified her copper-colored highlights, and dappled the dark carpet with the distinctive design of razor wire.

  “Will you find out who’s doing it and stop him?”

  “With no suspects, no witnesses I can talk to, and nothing to go on?” I said. “Don’t see why I can’t have it cleared up by lunchtime.”

  “I better get back to my office,” she said. “The new warden’s out to get me.”

  “Everybody thinks that.”

  “Doesn’t mean it’s not true,” she said.

  “What’s not true?” Bat Matson, the new warden said, walking into my office without knocking.

  8

  Lisa tried to speak, but nothing came out.

  “A lot of things,” I said.

  “I know you two are probably discussing an inmate you’re both working with,” Matson said, “but I really need to talk to the chaplain.”

  “I was just about to leave,” Lisa said. “We were finished.”

  “Well, then,” he said, “my timing is even better than I thought.”

  Lisa left and Matson took her seat across the desk from me.

  Before coming to PCI a little less than a month ago, Bat Matson was the warden of the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola, the largest maximum security prison in the country. Known as the Farm, Angola was named after the home of African slaves who used to work its plantation. The site of a prison since the end of the Civil War, Angola’s 18,000 acres houses over 5,000 men, three-quarters of whom are black, 85 percent of whom will die within its fences.

  Matson had been brought to PCI by the new secretary of the department whom the governor had recruited from Texas as part of his crackdown on crime platform. He was a fleshy man in his early sixties with prominent jowls and thick gray hair swooped to the side. He had the reputation of being tough, straight shooting, and very religious.

  He was just one of many changes taking place at PCI, including the relocation of death row into a newly constructed facility that housed both the row and the chair.

  “Sorry I haven�
��t gotten by here sooner, Chaplain,” he said. “I’ve been tryin’ to meet with all the department heads individually but it’s taken longer than I would have liked.”

  “No problem,” I said, not sure what kind of response he was looking for.

  “I want you to know that the chapel program is very important to me,” he said. “Every man here could benefit from a good dose of old-time religion.”

  Uh oh. I was the last chaplain who could give them that.

  “I know you’ve been without a staff chaplain since you’ve been here,” he said, “and that’s one of the first things I’m gonna take care of. I can promise you that. I’m sure as soon as we get you some help in here a lot of the things that have gone undone will get squared away right away.”

  I wondered what he was talking about, but was afraid to ask. I often felt guilty for spending as much time as I did investigating, but never felt derelict in my duties as pastor of my parish.

  “I’ve got big plans for PCI,” he said.

  He wasn’t the only one. With a full-size institution, an annex, and two work camps, PCI was already the largest prison in the state, but having death row here would change everything in ways none of us could begin to imagine.

  “Things are going to be very different,” he said. “I’m a warden that backs up his staff, but I expect them to back me up as well—especially my department heads. All the changes will take some getting used to, but I expect it. I expect it or I expect your resignation.”

  He paused for a moment, his eyes narrowing as he considered me.

  I didn’t say anything.

  “I’m telling that to everybody,” he said, “not just you. What I will say to you is that I expect my chaplain to be a chaplain—nothing else. I understand your dad’s the current sheriff, that you were a cop in Atlanta, and that you sometimes help the institutional investigator. I’ve met him and I can see why. But he’s about to go back to coaching, and his replacement, a real investigator, won’t need any help from the chaplain to do his job. You got any questions for me?”

  “They found the inmate that escaped yet?”

  He shook his head, then frowned, and looked at me the way you would a stubborn child you pity for how hard he makes life for himself.

  “You see?” he said. “That’s the kind of thing I’m talking about right there. You shouldn’t be worrying about the convict that escaped—until you visit him in the infirmary or perform his funeral.”

  “Is he as likely to get killed as he is captured?” I asked.

  “Depends on him. But between you and me––and the inmate population––I ain’t afraid to kill a convict.”

  He stood up and looked down at me, his jowls more noticeable now.

  “There’s a new sheriff in town,” he said. “Things are gonna be different. You’ll probably have to visit more inmates in the infirmary, but I guarantee you’ll visit less officers in the hospital.”

  He walked over to the door.

  “Your new staff chaplain should be here by the end of the week,” he said.

  I was shocked. A position had to be advertised for at least two weeks and a committee that included the new employee’s supervisor—in this case me—had to conduct interviews and make a recommendation to the warden who, if he approved it, then forwarded it to regional office.

  “We haven’t even advertised it yet,” I said.

  “Don’t need to. It’s already filled. I’m bringing in my favorite chaplain from the Farm. He’s got a lot of experience. He’s very devout. Just what we need around here.”

  “But—” I began.

  “It’s a done deal, Chaplain,” he said. “Approved by the secretary.”

  I thought about it, my frustration rising at the absurdity and futility of the situation.

  “Why would he take a demotion to come here?” I asked, figuring I already knew the answer.

  He smiled and winked at me.

  It was obvious. If the new warden had anything to say about it, and he did, his favorite chaplain from the Farm would be moving up into my position in no time at all.

  “You have a blessed day, Chaplain Jordan,” he said. “Get out there and do some good.”

  9

  Michael Jensen, the inmate who had escaped, was a white man in his early forties with darkening blond hair, clear, kind blue eyes, and a dark complexion. He was probably somewhere between fifty and a hundred pounds overweight, but he carried it well.

  According to his file, he had never had a single discipline referral. He was a model inmate with good adjustment serving the last few weeks of a two-year sentence for a minor drug charge.

  His classification officer was as surprised as anyone that he ran.

  “Of all the inmates I ever worked with,” Ralph Jones, the thin, constantly moving African-American classification officer said, “Jensen would be the very last I’d ever expect to run. Dead last.”

  Having come from the work camp to meet with the warden, inspector, and classification supervisor about the case, Ralph had stopped in Classification to speak to a few of his friends. When I found him in the hallway and asked about Michael Jensen, he looked around nervously, grabbed my arm, and led me into an empty office.

  “The new warden told me not to talk to you,” he said, his small eyes wide behind his tinted glasses.

  “I won’t tell him.”

  We were standing in the empty office, the only light coming in from the window. Unable to be still, he shifted his weight often, jingling the change in his pockets and tapping his leg with the rolled-up papers in his hand.

  “You think of any reason he’d run?” I asked.

  He shook his head.

  “Nothing’s happened in the past few days? Problems with other inmates or staff?”

  Ralph had the annoying habit of nodding too vigorously and making little noises while you talked. This gave two impressions—that he wasn’t really listening, and that he was anxious for you to finish so he could say something he thought was more important.

  “Not a thing,” he said. “If I’d had any concerns I would have reported them to security.”

  “I know that,” I said, trying to sound as reassuring as possible. “I know you’re good at your job. I’m not looking for someone to blame. I’m just trying to understand why a model inmate with a few weeks left wanted to escape. That’s all.”

  “Nothing happened that I know of,” he said.

  “He get any bad news from home?” I asked.

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Who’s he got at home?”

  Ordinarily I wouldn’t expect him to know, but I was sure he had spent a lot of time with Michael Jensen’s file in the last several hours.

  “Ex-wife, two kids, sister, mom,” he said.

  Long hall, tile floors, and cinder block walls, Classification was hard surfaces and empty spaces, and our voices echoed in the office the way those in the hallway beyond the door did.

  “Where do they live?”

  “All in Apalach,” he said.

  “You think that’s where he’s headed?”

  His eyes narrowed behind his tinted glasses and he nodded slowly. It seemed an attempt to look thoughtful, but came off as contrived. “They always go home,” he said, pausing a moment before adding, “eventually.”

  “But why?” I said. “What happened? What was so bad, so urgent, that it couldn’t wait a few weeks?”

  He rubbed his chin, frowning and shaking his head as he thought about it. “We may never know. He may not even know.”

  “He was on his way back to the work camp from being here to see Medical,” I said.

  He nodded.

  “What for?”

  He shrugged. “You’d have to ask them about that.”

  10

  Terry Little’s nurse uniform was faded and slightly wrinkled. It fit loosely in a failed attempt to mask fat. It along with her melted-ice-cream figure gave her the shape of a snowman. She had short, odd-colored bottle-blond
hair, cut in a dated style. She had prescription glasses designed to darken in the sun and lighten inside, but always seemed stuck in a caramel-colored in-between position.

  We were standing at the back side of the medical building in the small designated smoking area where she was nervously puffing on a long skinny cigarette. When she wasn’t puffing, which wasn’t often, she scratched the polish off her fingernails. Always fidgety, her encounter with the new warden and her supervisor about Michael Jensen’s visit yesterday had kicked her nervous shakes into hyperactivity.

  When I was a kid and she was a teenager, Terry used to babysit for me, Jake, and Nancy, and though we weren’t close and had never been, we shared the connection of growing up together, which created a certain trust, an assurance born of familiarity. If she knew something about Jensen she would tell me.

  “Heard you got some quality time with the new warden,” I said.

  “What an asshole,” she said, blowing smoke out forcefully, then picking a small piece of tobacco from her tongue.

  “Did he tell you not to talk to me?”

  She nodded, cutting her eyes toward me momentarily. “Said not to talk to anyone. Then he singled you out.”

  I nodded.

  “So whatta you wanna know?”

  I smiled. “Thanks. How did he seem?”

  “Like an arrogant asshole,” she said. “Like a––”

  “Not Matson,” I said. “Jensen.”

  “Oh,” she said, her face flushing. “Sorry. He was more quiet than usual.”

  “You’d treated him before?”

  “Lots of times,” she said. “He was diabetic.”

  “That why he was here this time?”

  She nodded.

  The early afternoon sun was high in a cloudless sky. And blindingly bright. The light glinting off of the chain link and razor wire above us reflected up off the white concrete pad beneath us. But far worse than the bright light was the humid heat. It bore down on us with an incredible intensity, a heat that made people lethargic, ill, even homicidal.