“So I was thinking . . .” he said. “The killer had to leave to kill her and dump the body. That narrows it down to whoever left, right? So it’s got to be whoever left between the time Carla Jean let her in and when she was found at the prison. That was Don Stockton, Andrew Sullivan, Ronald Potter, and Felix Maxwell. I mean, everyone left the table throughout the night, but they’re the only ones that left the house. Sullivan was gone the longest. Then Stockton. But I think they were all gone long enough to do it.”
“That’s good thinking,” I said. “We need to go over everybody’s exact movements. Can you––”
My phone vibrated and I answered it.
“Chaplain Jordan?” the deep voice with the thick Southern accent said.
“Yeah?”
“I was asked by the OIC to call you in to the institution. An inmate in A-dorm’s dead. Looks like he committed suicide.”
When I ended the call, Jake said, “What’s up?”
“Emergency at the prison,” I said. “I have to go in.
Will you write down everybody’s movements through the night as best you can remember?”
“Will do.”
“Oh, and did I notice a cold-case deck on the poker table?”
“Dad asked me about that,” he said. “Got me thinkin’. There was a deck shuffled in by the end of the night but it wasn’t there when we started. I have no idea how it got in and who brought it. Is it important?”
15
A-dorm at Potter Correctional Institution is an open-bay, military barrack–style inmate housing unit that serves as the orientation and honor dorm. In the shape of airplane wings, A-1 houses new inmates during their initial week of orientation, and A-2 houses inmates with the best adjustment to prison, the ones who act honorably.
To be selected for the sixty-four coveted positions in the honor dorm, an inmate can have no disciplinary reports, or DRs, and must have achieved above satisfactory on his gain time evaluations in his work and housing areas.
Suicide did not seem likely for the honor dorm.
All the inmates from A-2 had been moved into other dorms, the yard was closed, and only a handful of officers and officials were near the crime scene. The still and quiet dorm with its rows and rows of empty bunks looked like an abandoned post-Cold War military base that had not survived down-sizing.
Buzzed into the dorm near the raised and enclosed officers’ station, I walked in between the row of double bunks against the wall to my right and the single bunks in the center of the dorm to my left, toward the back corner, which was the least visible in the dorm, especially at night.
When I arrived, a few of the officers milling around gestured toward me. Nearly all encouraged me to “have a look.”
I did.
On the back side of the last bunk—the point in the dorm that was furthermost from the officers’ station—an inmate was hanging on a small piece of rope, probably the kind used to crank the lawnmowers by the outside grounds crews. The small rope had been looped around the post at the top of the bed.
The body of the inmate fell forward against the rope, his pale face puffy, his dry, swollen tongue protruding. His head hung loosely, his arms dangling down toward the ground. The tops of his feet and bottoms of his shins lay against the cold tile floor.
He was wearing a pair of white boxers and a white T-shirt, both of which had his name and DC number stamped on them. Danny Jacobs. One of the most faithful members of the inmate chapel choir.
Beginning just beneath his thighs and culminating in plum-colored feet, his legs were a gradient of lighter to darker purple.
One of the officers standing nearby said, “They found him when they turned the lights on this morning.”
I wondered if the dorm officers had made rounds after lights out last night.
“He leave a note?” I asked.
“No,” he said. “Everything’s just like we found it.”
“Is someone assigned to the top bunk?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Phillips.”
“Lance Phillips?”
“Uh huh.”
“Jacobs has been sleeping in the top bunk since Phillips went to Medical,” another officer offered.
It was at that moment that I realized how close in size and build Danny Jacobs and Lance Phillips were.
If the officers knew that Phillips was in Medical for supposedly attempting the same thing, they didn’t say anything about it.
“Anybody see anything?”
“Say they didn’t,” the first officer said. “But if they did, we’ll know soon enough. God knows inmates can’t keep a secret.”
“Chaplain, what the hell’re you doin’ down here?” Mark Lawson, the interim institutional inspector asked as he walked up behind us. “This is a friggin’ crime scene.”
“I was called in by the OIC,” I said.
“I’m the one that told them to call you in,” he said. “Not to come pretend like you’re still a cop, but to act like a chaplain. To call this boy’s family and let them know what’s happened.”
Mark Lawson had been the inspector of Potter Correctional Institution for about two months. Here on special assignment, while Pete Fortner was on medical leave, he was an ex-offender who had received a full pardon from the governor, and the son of the woman who was dating the regional director.
He had the bulky build of an inmate and pea-green prison tattoos on his forearms, which according to the hype was supposed to make him more accepted and respected by the inmate population. So far I hadn’t seen any evidence that it was anything but hype.
“Nothing’s to say I can’t do both,” I said.
“Yes there is,” he said, stepping up a little too close. “Me. Not to mention the warden.”
He held his arms like someone who had worked out so much that his muscles were too tight to allow them to straighten.
“Listen,” he continued, “I know you used to be a cop. Pretty good one from what I hear. I know you used to help the other inspector ’cause . . . well, let’s face it, he needed help, but while I’m inspector, you’ll be a chaplain. Just a chaplain. I don’t need any help. I know what I’m doing. Understand?”
I didn’t say anything.
I was angry and embarrassed. My ego had flared up, and I had to get it under control.
I took a deep breath.
“Understand?” he said, his eyes wide and challenging.
“Yes,” I said. “I’m sorry. It’s your crime scene. When they called I just assumed they wanted me to—”
“If we need any help, we’ll call you.”
“What should I tell the family?” I asked. “Homicide or suicide?”
His eyes narrowed and his forehead seemed to cave in toward them in ridges like layers of a cavern. “What?” he asked. “You serious? Of course it’s a suicide. It’s obvious.”
As I was leaving the dorm, the FDLE crime scene team was entering.
“You’re headin’ the wrong way,” Sally said.
She was a tall tech with big blond hair, big glasses, and big teeth, who had played basketball in college. We had worked together on a few of these before.
“New sheriff,” I said. “I’m being kicked out.”
“His loss. Anything I need to know?”
“Check his pockets, will you? Let me know if you find anything.”
“Will do.”
16
My son didn’t kill himself,” Cheryl Jacobs said.
This after several minutes of sobbing uncontrollably. Was it normal reactionary denial or something else?
Was she saying what most do in the face of such news or, shocked mother or no, was she right, her son not both victim and murderer?
I had started to call her last night shortly after being kicked out of A-dorm, but decided to wait until morning.
It was early. I was back in my office after only a few hours’ sleep. But I didn’t want to take the risk of her finding out from one of Danny’s friends once the dorm phones
had been turned back on.
“I know my son . . . He’s been . . . doing good.
Finally getting a handle on everything and how it works in there. He’s been going to church, making a few friends. His letters have been so hopeful.”
I made a small noise to let her know I was listening. “I guess you just think I’m in denial, but I’m not. I know my son. I just spoke with him a few days ago.”
She paused for a moment, but I could tell she wasn’t finished.
Outside my window, inmates streamed by on their way to the property room in the early morning sun of what promised to be a bright, clear, warmish September day. “You probably think I’m just trailer trash,” she said. “No, ma’am. I—”
“What kind of woman raises a criminal? Right?
Well, let me tell you. I’m a school teacher. I have a master’s degree. Come from a good family. Danny just got mixed up in drugs and could never get out.”
“I understand,” I said. “Happens to a lot of people.
I’m not unfamiliar with addiction myself.”
There was complete silence on the line for a moment, and I thought she might have hung up, but eventually I heard her take a deep breath and let it out slowly.
“I’m sorry,” she said, beginning to sniffle again. “I’m just upset. I . . . I’m . . . He can’t be dead. It must be some sort of horrible mistake. Please let it be.”
“I wish I could.”
There was something about Cheryl Jacobs’s voice—a profound sadness that was there before I gave her the worst news a parent can ever be given. It was rich with loss and pain and raw-boned life—one that resonated with resignation and regret.
The intensity of her voice combined with the clear line created an intimacy between us, as if she were in the room, not a town or two away.
“I just can’t believe he’s . . . ” she continued. “Are you sure?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“My God,” she said slowly, sighing, and in her words I heard the echo of My God, my God. Why have you forsaken me?
Mr. Smith, my elderly African-American inmate clerk, had been at PCI since it opened and was one of the most well-regarded men on the compound—by officers and inmates alike. In my time as chaplain here, he had been one of the most honorable men I had met. It was fitting that he was assigned to the honor dorm. It was also helpful.
He shuffled into my office, head bowed, back bent, the round bald spot that crowned his large head showing. “You lookin’ into Danny Jacobs’s death?” he asked as he eased into the seat across from my desk.
“Very unofficially. New inspector and warden don’t welcome my involvement.”
“No, suh. Don’t imagine they do. They not gonna last long. They’a screw up somethin’ important and get a promotion.”
“You obviously know how the department works.”
“Whole world,” he said. “The whole world.”
We both sat in silence for a moment, thinking about, I assumed, the way of the world—I was. I was also admiring a man like Mr. Smith who could see so clearly.
“You know he’s sleepin’ in Lance Phillips bed last night,” he said.
I nodded.
“And Phillips try the same thing in Confinement just a few nights ago.”
“Coincidence?”
“Be a hell of one.”
“It would.”
He leaned forward in the chair because of his bent back and winced in pain—something he did every time he had to move. Over his left shoulder on the wall was a picture Susan, my ex-wife, had bought me. It was a black-and-white photo of a giant cathedral whose pews were city buildings and aisles were busy streets. It reminded her of what I often said quoting John Wesley, that the world was my parish. It was one of the few pieces of evidence that she was ever in my life. Call her. Stop procrastinating. Do it as soon as Smith leaves. do it.”
“They’s pretty tight,” he said. “Danny and Lance?” I asked. He nodded.
“They seem suicidal to you?”
He shook his head. “But they both try it before.”
“They have?”
He nodded. “Neither the type to finish it though.”
“Why you think?”
“Not serious. That somethin’ you wants to do, you I thought about what he was saying.
“Like so many punks around here, they use it to check in to a private cell for a weekend,” he continued. “Or spends time with one of the hot psych specialists.”
Inmates have a limited number of ways to exert any control over their lives.
“Problem with they bunks,” he said, “can’t see shit in that back corner, ’specially at night. Calls it lover’s lane and up-the-back-alley . . . It where some of the mens go to hook up after lights out.”
“Can you tell me who sleeps near there?”
He nodded. “I can have them come up here and see you.”
“Even better. Thanks.”
The front door of the chapel opened and inmates noisily rushed inside.
When the inmates didn’t find Mr. Smith at his desk, they came to my door and stared through the narrow pane of glass. Mr. Smith waved them toward the chapel library and told them he’d be with them in a minute.
“Last night in A-dorm,” I said. “What went on?”
“Ten o’clock, lights went out,” he said. “TV in the day room turned off. Weekends and holidays lights still go out at ten, but the TV stay on to about two.”
“How dark is it after lights out?”
“Pretty damn dim,” he said. “They gots a few lights with yellow bulbs in them they turn on, but it’s dim—’specially back in lover’s lane. Officers can’t see it from they station.”
“How quiet is it in A-dorm after lights out?”
“Very. We got mainly old cons, been around a while, know how to act, don’t be makin’ a bunch of racket like the jitterbugs. He was killed, had to be quiet.”
“Could’ve drugged him,” I said. “Or put him in a choke hold to put him to sleep—it’s easier than most people think. Or they could’ve acted as if they were helping him stage a fake suicide and told him they would call for security, and then when he passed out they let him die.
Who was on duty?”
“Foster and Davis.”
“They obviously didn’t make rounds,” I said. “Or they’d’ve seen him.”
He shrugged. “Don’t know what they do after I go to sleep. Usually they make rounds at ten and then a little before eleven. Then the new shift come on at eleven and they make rounds sometime after that. Few times I couldn’t sleep, I didn’t see any officer out on the floor between, say, eleven-fifteen and maybe four-thirty.”
“You think Jacobs committed suicide?” I asked.
He shrugged again. “Don’t seem like the type. I don’t know. My gut tellin’ me somethin’ might be wrong.”
I smiled. “Mine’s telling me the same thing.”
When Mr. Smith left, I reached for my receiver. With my hand on it, I paused for a moment, took a breath, said a prayer, then lifted it and punched in Susan’s number.
“Hello.”
“Susan?”
“Who?”
“Susan Jordan,” I said. “Daniels. Susan Daniels.”
“Must have the wrong number,” she said.
I repeated the number.
“Right number. Wrong person.”
“You mind if I ask how long you’ve had this number?” I said.
“Few months,” she said. “Six maybe.”
Makes sense. That was around the last time I had called her.
17
I take it this isn’t a social call,” Hahn Ling said.
We had dated briefly a few months back, so there was a time when a visit to her office was social.
She was an extremely petite young Asian-American woman of about five feet, with olive skin, shoulder-length straight, silky black hair, and big black eyes. She was one of three psych specialists at the institution,
and so pretty she made her parents an argument for interracial relationships even the most strident racist would have to consider.
She closed the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and returned it to the corner of her desk.
Sitting across from her reminded me just how young she looked. I had no idea how old she really was. She would never tell me her age.
“You here about the suicide last night?” she asked. I nodded.
“Well, don’t ask me. I’m clueless about human behavior. Though . . . if you’re gonna commit suicide in prison, that’s the way to do it. They just threaten to commit suicide or act suicidal, we’re gonna place them in an SOS cell for observation. It’s why we have so few suicides at this prison—that and the great mental health care I provide them. But if a guy really wants to do it, all he has to do is act normal and when no one’s looking do the deed.”
“So Jacobs hadn’t threatened anything?”
“Not a thing,” she said, shaking her head.
Unlike me, Hahn kept her entire library in her office at the prison. Mine was strung out over every room of my trailer. Her books were neatly stacked on nice bookshelves that stood against every wall of her office. She had works by Freud, Jung, Rogers, Fromm, Erickson, and Zimbardo, and titles like Social Psychology, Psychology and You, Short-Term Psychotherapies for Depression, Crime and Delinquency, and Child Sexual Abuse.
“He seeing you for anything?” I asked.
She shook her head again. “I think Dr. Baldwin was seeing him. I can ask her for you, but it’d probably be better if you saw her. She can tell you a whole lot more about this than I can. She’s worked inside prisons for over ten years. She teaches the suicide prevention class for the staff.”
I noticed that mixed in among her psychology textbooks and testing and diagnostic manuals, she had numerous modern pop psychology books as well: works by Peck, Bradshaw, and Moore, none of which surprised me. What did surprise me were all the self-help relationship books—new additions since my last visit. I smiled when I saw the spine for Ten Men Who Mess Up a Woman’s Life.
Following my gaze, she said, “What?”
Innocent Blood; Blood Money; Blood Moon Page 27
