Innocent Blood; Blood Money; Blood Moon

by Michael Lister

  “About a thousand other people, Sheriff,” Felix said. “Including you. What’s this all about?”

  “I mean since the event ended and your little after-party began.”

  No one said anything.

  “What time did everything outside end?” Dad asked. “What time did y’all move in here?”

  “But you were here.”

  “Pretend I wasn’t.”

  “I’d say around nine,” Felix said. “People left pretty quick after the food and booze ran out.”

  “Card game started about eight-thirty,” Stockton said. “There were still some people outside, but not many. They were gone by nine I’d say.”

  “I was one of the last to come in,” Felix added. “By that time there were only a handful of people left outside and they were leaving.”

  “I came in right after Felix,” Glenn said, looking at his phone. “It was three minutes after nine. I know because I called my wife to tell her I was going to stay. And when I came in, there was no one up around the house or barn, just a few people in the parking area, cranking up and pulling away.”

  “Who else has been here?” Dad said. “In here since, say, eight-thirty.”

  “There’ve been a handful or so wandering in and out,” Stockton said. “Especially early on. Coach from the high school played a hand or two. So did Neil Williams and Mark Smith. Ralph Long came in for a while. Played a hand or two. Hung out. The judge decided against driving and waited in here for his daughter to come get him. Deacon Jones came in, looked around, and went out again pretty damn fast. All of ’em were gone fairly early. The warden came in and had a cigar and told us how much better Louisiana is than Florida. John’s number one fan, Chris Taunton, was here. May still be. He tried to play a few hands but was too fucked up. Hell, even the high sheriff stuck his head in for a few.”

  “I know what I did,” Dad said. “I’m asking about everyone else.”

  “Just answering your questions, Jack. No need to get testy.”

  “How’d you two get here?” Dad asked the girls.

  They looked confused. “Where’s your friend?” I said.

  “Who?” Stockton said. “They drove themselves. It was just them. They partied a little too hard, so I wouldn’t let them drive. Was letting them sleep it off.”

  “Nobody saw a third girl?” I said. “Blonde. Older. Bigger. But dressed like these two.” No one had.

  “I seen another girl outside,” the girl to Jake’s left said. “But she wasn’t our friend though. And she didn’t come in or nothin’.”

  “What’d she look like?” I asked.

  “Like you said, I think. It was pretty dark.”

  “What was she doing?”

  “I didn’t pay her much mind. Nothin’. Just sort of hangin’. Like she’s waitin’ on somebody or somethin.”

  “I think she come inside,” the other girl said. “I came down to pee. She was standin’ at the back door. I opened it for her. I didn’t see her when I came out from peeing. Guess she could’ve not come in. Just figured she did.”

  “Who else saw her?” Dad said.

  Either no one had or was willing to admit they had. “I want statements and contact information from everyone before you leave. And tell the absolute truth. No matter what. Don’t lie to us. We’re gonna find the truth.”

  “About what?” Stockton said again. “What is this all about?”

  “The young lady that John described and this young lady opened the door for was found dead not far from here.”

  “Now wait just a minute,” Stockton said. “You should’ve told us that first. We didn’t have anything to do with that. We’re not––”

  “How old are these young ladies, Don?” Dad said.

  “Twenty something.”

  “I wanna see their driver’s licenses and I want to know everybody’s whereabouts and anything you can remember that went on last night, understand?”

  “Everything was pretty much like they said,” Jake was saying.

  He, Dad, and I were standing outside the farmhouse, the day beginning to break around us.

  Inside, Andrew and two other deputies were taking statements from everyone.

  “They left shit out,” he added, “but I didn’t hear any outright lies.”

  “Did the poker game last all night?” I said.

  “Yeah, but guys came and went. They’d play for a while, then go off, then come back later and be dealt back in.”

  “Where’d they go?” I asked.

  “You know.”

  “Say it anyway,” Dad said.

  “To dip their wicks.”

  “Do you know how young they are?” Dad said. “You tryin’ to sabotage my campaign or are you just that––”

  “Did you go back there with them?” I asked.

  “Just one.”

  “Did everybody?”

  “I think so. Some a few times I think.”

  “Did Hugh Glenn?” Dad asked.

  “Definitely.”

  “Were the girls drugged?” I asked.

  “Fuck no. They were drinkin’. I saw one of ’em pop a pill or two, but nobody gave ’em anything.”

  “That you know of,” I said.

  “Jake,” Dad said, “what the hell were you thinkin’?”

  “Wasn’t, I guess,” he said. “But hell, I was with the head of the Republican Party and a county commissioner. Hell, all the leaders of the county had been here . . . I just thought . . .”

  “You thought this group of men are untouchable,” I said.

  “Well, they are, aren’t they?”

  “Thought they do what they want.”

  “Well, they do, don’t they?”

  “Thought you were one of them,” I said. “A least for a night.”

  He hung his head. “Guess I did. I mean I didn’t. Not like that exactly, but I guess that’s what it comes down to.”

  “No way this doesn’t cost me my job,” Dad said. “No way.”

  Before either of us could respond, his phone rang. “Sheriff Jordan.”

  We waited while he took the call.

  Dad didn’t say anything, but based on his expressions and reactions, he was receiving some shocking news.

  “You’re not gonna believe this,” he said when he ended the call. “This night just keeps gettin’ better and better. The hearse from Kent Clark carrying the victim to the morgue was forced off the road and the body was stolen at gunpoint.”

  “Who the hell would steal a . . .” Jake said. “And why? The fuck they want with––”

  “The killer most likely,” I said. “Probably thought he left something incriminating behind.”

  “He probably did too,” Dad said. “Dammit. And now it’s gone.”

  “I’m sure there are other reasons too,” I said. “To conceal her identity . . . to . . .”

  “But why display her the way he did just to steal her back a little while later?”

  I thought about it. Nothing came to mind. “There had to be something––something he didn’t think of until later after he staged the body the way he did, something important, urgent enough to make him risk stealing it back, but I can’t think of what that would be.”

  “If we find him,” Dad said, “we can ask him.”

  Before we could respond or make a move toward finding the body thief, my phone vibrated in my pocket.

  I withdrew it to see that the prison was calling. “Chaplain Jordan,” I said.

  “Chaplain, it’s Nurse Stewart. We’ve had another suicide attempt. How soon can you get here?”

  “I’m on my way.”

  7

  The slackness in the rope pulled taut as the body dropped, his own weight tightening the noose around his neck.

  He kicked his feet, searching for purchase, flung his arms about, grabbing the air. Panic filled his wide eyes, and he flailed wildly as if falling from a great height.

  The short fall wasn’t long enough to snap his neck and crus
h his spinal cord.

  This wasn’t a hanging. It was death by strangulation.

  And it wouldn’t be quick.

  Thoughts sped through his mind in ever increasing rapidity, while everything around him moved in slow motion.

  Somebody screamed. Time passed.

  Nothing happened.

  A figure in white moved outside his cell like a series of still-frame photos being casually flipped through.

  The angel of death?

  Come to fly him away to heaven or fling him down to hell?

  He tried to inhale, but could not. The best he could do was small gasps of breath, none of which made it down to his lungs.

  The figure stopped at the door of the cell, unable to open it. Only a figure in brown would have a key.

  More footsteps clanged on the metal grate of the catwalk. Maybe they signaled the approach of someone who could unlock the door of this six-by-nine concrete-and-steel coffin.

  Maybe he’d survive this after all.

  But as the rope bit into his flesh and the ruby-red bruise necklace appeared around his neck, he feared they would not make it in time.

  Head pounding. Pressure building. Eyes bulging.

  A serpentine trickle of blood ran from his nose, slithered across his lips, and snaked down his chin.

  Can’t breathe. Can’t . . .

  More time passed. Time he didn’t have. It rushed past him like the final seconds in a midnight countdown on a death-chamber clock.

  This inhumane space he occupied was no longer just figuratively unbearable.

  Please, God. I don’t want to die. Not here. Not like this.

  More time.

  More passing. His passing.

  Where’re the keys? What’s taking so long?

  Light-headed. Sleepy.

  Sleep. Perchance to dream. Ay, there’s the rub. For in that sleep of death what dreams may come?

  Where had that come from? What class? Which teacher? Didn’t matter. Nothing did.

  Maybe they didn’t want to find the key fast enough.

  Maybe this was their idea of entertainment.

  Now he couldn’t breathe at all.

  The light in the cell began to dim, the figure in white beyond the door fading. As he lost consciousness, his head fell forward, his purplish face quickly becoming the color of his swollen, protruding tongue.

  Every thirteen minutes, someone in the United States commits suicide.

  Each year in this country there are over thirty-five thousand official suicides.

  Unofficially, many experts say the actual number could be three times that. Official suicide statistics are notoriously unreliable. Large numbers of suicides are never reported—often because of the lengths families will go to in order to hide the suicide of a loved one.

  Avoiding the social stigma or loss of life insurance benefits, many families hide suicide as if it were daddy’s empty booze bottles, mama’s pain pill addiction, or daughter’s eating disorder.

  Other suicides occur under such ambiguous circumstances that officials attribute them to accidents rather than the willful destruction of one’s own life.

  Actual suicides each year are more likely upwards of ninety-thousand—with attempts at eight to ten times that.

  Suicide accounts for more deaths each year than murder, and it ranks tenth among leading causes of death.

  Although women attempt suicide three times more often than men, men complete suicide three times more often than women.

  Suicide is self-murder. It’s different from any other death because those left behind cannot direct their anger at the unfairness of a random act or the brutality of a murderer. Instead, they grieve for the very person who has taken their loved one from them.

  Sometimes suicide makes a certain sense.

  Sometimes it’s the greatest mystery of all, more mysterious than death itself.

  And sometimes it isn’t suicide at all.

  8

  I didn’t try to kill myself, Chaplain,” Lance Phillips said from within the Suicide Observation Status cell. “I’m not suicidal. My life’s never been better.”

  “Statements like that undercut your credibility,” I said.

  “It’s true.”

  “Do you know where you are?”

  He was in an empty isolation cell in the infirmary of Potter Correctional Institution, wearing nothing but a heavy canvas shroud over his pale, thin frame. The cell was located in the medical department inside the infirmary, and it was designed to house inmates who represented a threat to themselves or others—everything from infectious disease to suicide.

  “Nothing the state of Florida can come up with compares to the prison of addiction,” he said.

  I was seated in an uncomfortable and wobbly folding chair outside the cell, a solid metal door with two large panels of steel-reinforced glass windows separated by a food tray slot between us. We communicated through the open food slot, which we would have done even if he had been isolated because of an infectious disease. The cell was equipped with a negative air flow system.

  “The nurse said you tried to hang yourself.”

  Lance Phillips’s height didn’t match his weight. He was probably three inches or so over six feet, but weighed around a hundred and thirty pounds, and his hands and feet were small and feminine. His skin was pale and so were his too-small blue eyes.

  “Well, I didn’t.”

  I glanced down at the large white bandage around his neck and he followed my gaze. He reached up and touched his throat with his small hand and caressed the bandage gently.

  “I know you think I’m crazy, but don’t you see?

  That’s the beauty of it.”

  “Of what?”

  “Killing someone and making it look like suicide.

  Someone like me. An inmate? Especially since . . .”

  “Since what?”

  “Since . . . I’ve attempted suicide before.” I nodded.

  He was right. If someone were trying to murder him, it’d be the perfect cover. And if someone were really trying to disguise a homicide as a suicide—especially in a locked confinement cell, then that someone was a creative and cunning killer.

  “See,” he said, “you don’t believe me.”

  “I don’t disbelieve you,” I said. “I’m just listening, taking everything in.”

  The tension left his face for the first time, and he pushed his light brown hair up off his forehead. “I need your help. No one else in here gives a damn—that’s another reason this guy’s never been caught.”

  “You’re saying you’re not the first. We’ve had murders made to look like suicides?”

  He nodded.

  “Who’s doing it?”

  “Don’t know. Wish to God I did. I’d . . .”

  “Who tried to kill you? Start there.”

  “I have no idea. I can’t remember much. I went to bed. Woke up strangling with a noose around my neck.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Look, either you’ll look into it or you won’t. And if you do you’ll either find out someone’s trying to kill me or I’m delusional as well as suicidal. You might even discover other murders disguised as suicides.”

  I thought about it.

  “Ask the psych specialist about me. She’ll tell you.

  I’m not like the other guys in here.”

  “Oh yeah?” I said, waiting for yet another insistence of innocence.

  “I’m actually guilty. I had a severe drug and alcohol addiction. But I’ve been clean for over four years. I work my program hard. I get out soon. I’ve got a great job lined up. Family and friends waiting on me. I have absolutely no reason to kill myself.”

  “But you think someone does?” I asked. “Must.”

  His young, unwrinkled face filled with worry lines as he frowned deeply.

  “Any idea who?”

  “None.

  “Or why?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Having problems wit
h anyone?”

  “Nothing major,” he said. “Just the normal bullshit.” I nodded.

  “Why don’t you believe me?” he said. “Why’re you so hesitant to help me? I thought you were different. I thought you––wait. There was a . . . in my . . . What if I can prove someone was trying to kill me?”

  “Can you?”

  “I just might,” he said. “I think the killer may’ve left a calling card.”

  9

  It’s gotta still be in my property,” he said. “Go get it and I’ll show you.”

  “Go get what?”

  “My property.”

  Everything an inmate owned or was issued, such as uniforms and boots, was known as his property—and it was how everyone inside, both staff and inmates, referred to it. We even had a property room and a property sergeant.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Whoever tried to kill me slipped somethin’ in my pocket,” he said. “I’m sure it’s still with my property now. Officers probably just thought it was mine.”

  “Thought what was?”

  “I felt it in my pocket but I can’t be sure what it was.”

  I walked over to Confinement and searched through Lance’s property.

  It took a while—not because he had so much. He didn’t. But I was thorough, carefully going over every inch of everything he owned.

  I wouldn’t call my search a complete waste of time, because now I knew, but it yielded nothing helpful. There was nothing unusual or suspicious in the modest possessions the state of Florida allowed Lance to call his.

  I walked back over to Medical angry and frustrated—and only partly at Phillips. I should’ve known better.

  I was past the infirmary and nearly back to the SOS cell when I realized Lance had only one uniform. It didn’t stand out because nearly all searches of inmate property involve only one uniform—the inmate was usually wearing the other. But all Lance had on at the moment was a canvas shroud—the only thing permitted in the SOS cell. So where was his other uniform? It was a good question.

  Worth asking.

  “Where’s Phillips’s uniform?” I asked the small woman at the nurses’ station. “The one he was wearing when he came in.”