Six John Jordan Mysteries

by Michael Lister

  “I’m so worried about him,” Carla said.

  I had been staring at the door, thinking, and didn’t realize she was standing beside me. I looked up at her and gave her a weak smile.

  “I’m worried about you,” I said.

  “He’s usually very good to me,” she said. “Something happened. Last week he was gone for three days—just disappeared. Nobody knew where he was—including his dad. When he showed up again, he wouldn’t say where’d he’d been or what he’d been doing, and he’s so different now. Something happened.”

  “Any idea what?” I asked.

  She thought about it for a minute, pursing her lips, then shook her head. “Would you talk to him?”

  “Me?”

  “Yeah. You’re so good at––”

  “He’s not a fan and it’ll probably make things worse, but if you want me to . . .”

  “It’s hard to imagine it being any worse.”

  “At what point will you walk away?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  I shook my head. “I know how––”

  The bell above the door sounded and we both turned to see Anna walk in.

  “Tell you what,” Carla said. “I’ll walk away from Cody when you walk away from her.”

  21

  Carla had compared her two-month relationship with her boyfriend to my over two-decade obsession with Anna. It was surprisingly teenage girlish of her, but I understood what she meant. The hopeless hope love inspires isn’t easy to surrender even after two minutes.

  Would I ever be able to walk away from Anna? Would I ever be free of the notion that the fates would finally relent and look with favor on us? Probably not, as long as the slightest wisp of hope remained.

  As Anna crossed the room toward me, I wondered how my life might be different if we were together. Circumstances—some of them far beyond my control—had ended my marriage twice, but I wondered if Susan and I might somehow still be together if I hadn’t held in reserve some small part of my heart for Anna.

  I hadn’t thought of Susan lately. Our marriage ended badly the first time—worse the second, but I wondered how she was doing. Was she remarried? She had never been good at being alone. Did she have kids? A pain of guilt and regret ran through me as I thought about our child that might have been.

  “You don’t look too happy to see me,” Anna said.

  “Actually, thoughts of just how happy I am to see you led to darker, troubling, unhappy thoughts.”

  “I can tell,” she said. “Wanna talk about it?”

  I shook my head.

  “Sure?”

  I nodded.

  She slid into the booth across from me, a clean, fresh, slightly fruity fragrance following her, filling the air around us, and before I realized what I was doing, I started breathing a little more deeply, as if trying to inhale her.

  As I gazed into her infinitely deep brown eyes, I wondered how much of my life I had spent doing that. I thought about all we had shared since childhood, all we knew about the other, all our eyes had witnessed of the other’s life, all the words our mouths had spoken, our ears had heard, all we had perceived of the other’s silence.

  Carla walked over with a pot of coffee and a couple of cups. As she filled my cup, she said, “Y’all want anything to eat?”

  I shook my head.

  “No thanks,” Anna said. “And can I just have water?”

  “Sure,” she said, then paused for a moment to consider her. “You look tired.”

  “I am,” Anna said.

  When Carla went to retrieve the glass of water, I said, “You still look great.”

  Her face lit up and her eyes moistened. “Only because you’re looking through the eyes of love.”

  “Without denying that’s what I’m doing,” I said, “I refuse to concede that what I said is anything but absolute and objective truth.”

  While getting Anna’s water, Carla had to stop to checkout Todd and Shane and the other group of correctional officers. When she brought the water to the table, only Anna and I and Jake and Fred remained in the restaurant.

  “Jake’s eating with the enemy, isn’t he?” Anna asked.

  “What are they talking about?” I asked Carla.

  “You know I can’t reveal what clients say,” she said with a smile. “And you of all people should be glad I can’t.”

  “Know his secrets, do you?” Anna asked.

  “Just the incriminating ones,” she said.

  “The only ones worth knowing,” Anna said.

  “Why don’t you go try to get some sleep,” I said to Carla. “I’ll take Jake’s money, and we can wait on anyone else who comes in.”

  Anna nodded vigorously. “John can’t even make coffee, but I’m hell in the kitchen. Get some rest.”

  “Y’all sure?”

  “I insist.”

  “Thanks,” she said. “Come get me if you need anything.”

  Carla lived with Rudy in the back of the diner in a small area she normally tried to avoid, but by this time Rudy would be passed out in front of the TV, a long since emptied bottle of vodka on the floor beside his chair.

  As Carla walked behind the counter, she took off her apron and hung it on a hook next to the back door. After saying something to Jake and pointing to the coffee pot, she turned back toward us. “And Anna.”

  “Yeah?”

  “John has something important he needs to tell you,” she said.

  She then smiled at me and disappeared into the back.

  “You do?” she said.

  I shook my head. “She’s trying to be funny.”

  We fell silent a moment. I drank my coffee. Anna sipped her water and made a face. “I always forget Rudy’s water comes straight from the tap.”

  “But it’s the chlorine-laced sulfur that gives it flavor,” I said.

  I slid my saucer and cup toward her.

  She shook her head. “No thanks.”

  “Try it,” I said. “Bitterness completely covers the sulfur and chlorine.”

  She smiled.

  I smiled.

  We were still smiling when Jake and Fred walked over.

  “I was just telling Jake the first thing I’m going to do when I’m sheriff is offer you a job,” Fred said in his deep, rich voice.

  Beneath his thick silver hair, Fred Goodwin’s ice-blue eyes were intense and bloodshot, etched with lines nearly as red as his fleshy sun-kissed face.

  “I told him you’d make a good dog catcher,” Jake said.

  I looked over at Jake in mock surprise. “When did your opinion of me increase so much?”

  “Guess it was the way you stopped that inmate from escaping,” he said.

  “You think we’ll catch him?” Fred asked.

  By far the oldest member of search and rescue, he was also the most polished, his suave manner making him well-suited for politics.

  I was reminded of the thought I had earlier because of what Shane had said, and wanted to mention it to Jake, but not in front of Fred. I decided to wait and mention it to Dad later.

  I nodded toward Jake. “We’ve got the best and the brightest working on it.”

  “You’re right about that,” he said. “Well you folks have a good night.”

  When they left and we were finally alone we both sighed simultaneously.

  “How long you think it’ll be before the next shift arrives?” she asked.

  “Not nearly long enough.”

  She frowned and nodded. “As much as I’d like to delay what I need to say, just so we could stay like this a little longer, I better go ahead and say it.”

  My heart started racing and I braced myself for what was coming. She sounded too ominous for it to be good.

  I waited.

  She took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I’ve been so unfair to you. I honestly didn’t realize just how unfair until recently.”

  “By withholding sex?” I said.

  She tr
ied to smile, but couldn’t. That’s when I knew I was in real trouble.

  “Sorry,” I said. “Defensive humor.”

  She nodded, her expression one of understanding.

  “You really haven’t been able to move on with your life because of me,” she said.

  “That’s hardly your fault,” I said, my throat constricting, my voice dry and pinched.

  “I haven’t wanted you to. And it’s not just that I haven’t encouraged you to. I’ve actually tried to prevent you from it. Waiting for . . . what? Something to happen to Chris? For you to give me an ultimatum?”

  Whatever it was she was waiting for, I had been waiting for the same thing, and now she was telling me what I was waiting for wasn’t going to come.

  “I’ve known all along what I was doing,” she said. “I just hadn’t realized until recently how spectacularly unfair it was of me.”

  There was a finality to her words and the way she was saying them. She had come here to release me, to cut the unseen strings that bound me to her, to give me what she believed she had withheld from me. It didn’t matter that I didn’t want to be free. It didn’t matter that I never felt she was being the slightest bit unfair to me.

  “What brought about this epiphany?” I asked.

  “Does it matter?” she asked. “It’s true, isn’t it? I’ve imprisoned you.”

  “I’ve imprisoned myself. But what was it?”

  She shook her head.

  “I want to know,” I said. “There’s got to be a reason for my release.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “For what?”

  “I’m pregnant.”

  22

  After the paper mill in Port St. Joe had closed and the largest private landholder in the state had become its biggest developer, the small community at the mouth of St. Joseph Bay began to change. With the pungent, acrid odor and thick smoky fog of the mill a thing of the past and land once reserved for slash pines released, wealthy people from Atlanta began to pay unimaginable sums of money for a sliver of sand close to the Gulf. The powers that be thought they had seen the future, and the future they saw was tourism.

  Gift shops, restaurants, real estate offices, and banks began to pop up downtown, and as many of the tags on the cars were from Alabama and Georgia as from Florida—most of them luxury SUVs.

  Lifelong residents had sold their family homes, quadrupling their money, and moved to areas with more reasonable property tax rates. Man had come to the forest and money had come to town, and nothing would ever be the same for the land or the people of what once was the forgotten coast.

  And then came the housing bubble bust, followed by the financial sector crash, then a full-on recession.

  Everything had slowed, even stopped for a while, but now, several years later, there were signs of life again.

  Next to the yachts and large fishing boats that filled the revitalized marina, Rachel Mills and I were in the Dockside Café sitting on high stools at a tall wooden table with a view of the bay. The window was open and through it blew the warm bay breeze and the soothing sounds of seagulls and sailboat riggings––all swirling around in a muffling din of waves and wind.

  I had the fried shrimp basket with fries, she had the oysters with onion rings, and we both had sweet tea with lime.

  Gazing at the setting sun sinking into the bay, she said, “No wonder people are paying small fortunes to have a place here.”

  “Never thought I’d miss the paper mill,” I said.

  “Don’t tell me you’re not in favor of progress.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Well?” she asked, her brows rising over her pale blue eyes.

  “You said not to tell you.”

  She smiled.

  “I can tell you that most of what people are sold as progress, isn’t,” I said.

  We were quiet a moment, our gazes drifting back out to the bay. A charter boat was pulling into the marina, its red-faced passengers windblown and weary.

  Anna is pregnant.

  I had tried so hard to put that out of my mind, to suppress it, hide it, bury it beneath even my subconscious, but nothing was working––at least not for very long.

  Push it back down. Now is not the time. Forget it. Let it go.

  But that’s it. All hope is gone––even the last tiny sliver I was holding in reserve.

  Her news had finally and completely ended us once and for all with a finality and certainty nothing else could.

  “This is nice,” she said.

  “Huh?” I said, coming back to the present moment, aware of sitting across from Rachel again.

  “Thanks for bringing me,” she said. “Can’t believe we haven’t talked about the case.”

  “We will.”

  “When?”

  “How about now?” I asked, pushing back my basket and thoughts of Anna.

  She laughed. “Fine by me. I know I’m expected to put out.”

  She ate one more onion ring and shoved her basket next to mine in the center of the table.

  “Still no ID?”

  She shook her head.

  “That mean there’s not going to be one?”

  “We could still get a hit. If we don’t have one by the first of next week, I’d say we’ll have to get it another way. We’ve already got people looking at missing persons reports. We’ll figure out who he is sooner or later.”

  “Dad only had very preliminary autopsy results,” I said. “Got anything to add?”

  “The victim had water in his lungs,” she said.

  I thought about that. In itself it didn’t mean anything.

  I said, “Cause of death the same?”

  She shrugged. “ME says the water could have gotten in the lungs after he was dead or while sustaining his other injuries. Just no way to know for sure.”

  I nodded.

  Our waitress came back, picked up our baskets and napkins, refilled our teas, and dropped off the check.

  “You think Jensen killed him?” she asked.

  I shrugged.

  “There’s just not enough in his file to go on,” she said. “And it’s always what’s not in there that tells us whether or not they’re even capable of it.”

  “Well,” I said, glancing up at the clock, “if you’re not opposed to mixing a little business with pleasure, let’s go find out.”

  23

  The Gulf/Franklin Center was an extension of Gulf Coast State College that saved students from Port St. Joe, Apalachicola, and Carrabelle from driving over an hour into Panama City to the main campus. Through the use of adjuncts, video, and professors willing to drive over, the center offered a wide variety of classes, though it would be difficult to complete a degree. Its two strongest programs were nursing and correctional officer training—professions in high demand in Florida and programs you could complete without traveling to the main campus.

  When we arrived at the center the students milling about the entrances let me know we had arrived during one of their breaks. Without checking in at the office, we went straight into Tracy Jensen’s classroom and found her talking to a student. They were the only two people in the room.

  The nervous student, who probably made straight As, was seeking clarification on a writing assignment. While we waited I glanced around the room. Based on the notes on the dry marker board, the introductory psyche class Tracy taught was covering psychological disorders and what the various approaches, such as humanistic, behavioral, and cognitive, said about their cause, diagnosis, and treatment. Both the front and back walls of the room were formed by folding partitions. Before rows of narrow tables and plastic chairs, a metal podium on wheels had a textbook opened on it.

  The student could tell Tracy Jensen was distracted by our presence and quickly stumbled over her words as she nervously finished up.

  “Can I help you?” Tracy asked the moment the student finished.

  She was an extremely thin white woman with wispy blond hair and
sunken cheeks. She wore a nice enough business suit but her well-worn shoes were poorly made and didn’t quite match the rest of her outfit.

  “Is there somewhere we can talk?” I asked.

  “I was just about to go get a Coke,” the student said, and made a quick exit.

  “I’m in the middle of a class,” Tracy said. “What’s this about?”

  “Your brother,” I said.

  She began shaking her head immediately, anger flaring in her pinched face. “I don’t want to—”

  “I’m the chaplain of PCI,” I said. “And I just—”

  “Did they kill him?” she asked. “Is he dead?”

  “No,” I said. “Who’s ‘they’?”

  “Why’re you here?”

  “I’m trying to find out why he ran,” I said, “where he might go, and how to get him back without anyone getting hurt.”

  “You’ve got to know that even if I knew something I wouldn’t tell you, but the truth is I don’t know.”

  The students beginning to trickle back into the room were a mixture of middle-aged women and college-aged coeds. With the exception of a few who had obviously come from work, they were all dressed very casually—shorts, T-shirts, and flip-flops, many of the young girls with extremely short shorts made of soft material that looked like pajama bottoms.

  “You know more than we do,” I said.

  “Obviously,” she said.

  I looked over at Rachel and smiled.

  “I mean I know enough not to barge into the middle of a professor’s lecture,” she said.

  “Oh, we know that,” I said. “We came during one of your breaks.”

  “I can’t do this right now,” she said. “You’ll have to excuse me.”

  “Why don’t you show a video and step out into the hall with us for a minute?”

  She glanced at the TV, then back at me, her eyes narrowed. Retrieving the remote from within the podium, she pointed it toward the TV and pressed a button.