“Am I one of the ten?”
“Huh?”
I pointed to the book.
“Of course not. You’re one in seven billion. Wish we could’ve given it a real go.”
“You think we didn’t?” I asked.
She laughed. “You kidding? Of course we didn’t.
Can’t when one’s heart already belongs to another.”
“Sorry about that.”
“No you’re not,” she said. “And now you’re with her and all is right with the world.”
“Are you . . . Do you want to talk about it?”
We hadn’t dated much and had never gotten serious in any way, but maybe I had missed something that she needed to process.
“Said everything I had to say,” she said. “Would you say it again?”
“Wish we’d’ve gotten a real go. That’s it. No big deal.
You wanna know about suicide or not?” I smiled at her.
She smiled back.
“I’m very cynical regarding suicide in general, but especially in prison,” she said. “It’s all about manipulation. About getting what they want. Most of the threats we get are from inmates in confinement, and every one of ’em are trying to get a transfer. That’s what it’s become—a way to get a transfer. It’s not even a cry for attention or help, just a way to beat the system. Some of them even scratch at their wrists a little, but it’s so superficial it’s laughable. And yet we have to treat everyone the same as if it were a genuine threat.”
I nodded.
“They’re placed in the isolation cell,” she continued. “Either by us or by Medical if it’s at night and we’re not here, in which case we have to see them within one hour of arriving at the institution the next morning. They get a complete physical, and we give them a complete mental status evaluation.”
“You mind walking me through the procedures?”
“We have two isolation cells. S-1 and S-2. S-1 is for those who’ve made an actual attempt. S-2 is for those who’ve just made verbal threats. In S-1 they are monitored every fifteen minutes, S-2, every thirty. In both cells, they’re in there naked and without any of their property. They’re given a canvas shroud sewn with nylon thread, a canvas blanket, and a plastic mat on the bare floor. Usually, within two days they realize we’re not going to transfer them and they’re begging us to put them back in confinement.”
“Which you do?”
“Which we do gladly. Even if they wanted to kill themselves in that situation it would be very difficult. They don’t have anything to kill themselves with and they’re being monitored so closely.”
Where there weren’t bookcases in Hahn’s office, there was Oriental art, reproductions of paintings mostly—lotus leaves, dragonflies, bamboo, garden walls, figures engaged in conversation, Chinese symbols in black and red. All in inexpensive Dollar Store frames.
“The ones who successfully commit suicide in prison never threaten it?”
“Those’re the more likely but there’re exceptions.”
“What about Jacobs?” I asked. “You think he committed suicide?”
A look of bewilderment crossed her face. “Don’t have any reason not to. Do you?”
I told her about Lance Phillips.
“You think someone’s trying to kill Phillips?”
“Finding the card gave his story a lot of credibility.
Having someone about his size, sleeping in his bunk, killed in the same manner gives it even more.”
Leaving Hahn’s, I let my mind drift back over why the body of the woman killed at Potter Farm and found at the prison was stolen.
We had immediately jumped to the conclusion that it was the killer attempting to hide evidence, but what if it wasn’t?
Why else steal a body?
Maybe it was about concealing the victim’s identity and had nothing to do with evidence.
Who was she? Why was she there? Why show up uninvited to such an event? Or, if she was invited, who invited her? Was it just for a rendezvous with the inviter or was the invitee there as part of some sort of sinister scheme? To derail a campaign? Embarrass a candidate? For revenge of some stripe or another? Maybe a setup. Could her role have been about blackmail? Maybe instead of discrediting, it was about controlling a candidate. Blackmail not to get a candidate to drop out of a race but to control him once he was in office.
But why steal the body?
If not because who she was or some evidence left behind could connect her to the killer . . . then what?
What about necrophilia? Why hadn’t that occurred to me before?
What if she was stolen for something unrelated to her murder at all?
It was a stretch. A big one. But the fact that I hadn’t even thought about it until now bothered me.
Was the driver involved?
What else wasn’t I thinking of ?
18
On my way to Medical I stopped by the property room to see if Sergeant Helms had found any other cards in the property of inmates whose deaths were deemed suicide.
“Any joy?” I asked.
“I’ve only found one so far,” she said. “The others must be further back than I thought—or just misfiled.”
“Anything in the one you found?”
She shook her head. “A whole deck. Not a single.
You find a link between Phillips and Morales?”
I shook my head. “Doesn’t look like there is one.”
“Sorry,” she said. “Maybe I’ll have better news for you later.”
“Mind if I look at the deck you found?”
“Sure,” she said. “Give me a sec. I’ll grab it.” I waited while she found it. It wasn’t quick.
Eventually she placed the deck on the counter. “Here ya go.”
It was a cold-case deck like the card I found in Lance’s pants pocket, but an earlier edition. Same concept. Same agencies. Different cases.
As Helms moved about sifting through the stacks of inmate property, I took out the deck and began to sort it according to suit.
When I had all the cold-case cards in order, I could see that none were missing. But I could see something else besides.
None of the cards were missing, true, but there was an extra one.
“What is it?” Helms asked. “Extra card.”
“Really?” she asked in surprise. “I should’ve looked closer. You think the killer . . . what?”
“If he put it in the victim’s pocket or cell—anywhere in his property, whoever gathered his things could’ve stuck it with the other cards.”
“What is it?”
“King of hearts,” I said. “But a different crime. Murder of a white female in Naples. Which probably means the card is what’s significant, not Miguel Morales. Morales just happened to be the king of hearts in the other deck.” said.
“Unless there’s a connection between them,” she said.
“This is a much older edition,” I said. “The case on this one is ten years older than Morales. And what are the chances they’d be on the same card? But you’re right, we need to look into it.”
She nodded. “But it’s probably the card, not who’s on it. We’ve got an honest to God murderer here.”
“Lots of them, actually,” I said.
She laughed. “You’re right. Forgot where I was for a minute.”
Before she could say anything else, her phone rang. As she turned to get it, I looked at the card again, and began to get that little buzz, that addictive sensation somewhere inside, I always do at moments like these, when possibility turns into probability.
Helms thrust the receiver at me. “For you.” I took it. “Chaplain Jordan.”
“Guess what I found in Jacobs’s pocket?” Sally said. “King of hearts playing card.”
“I wish you were on this one, John, I really do,” she said. “Interim inspector’s an arrogant asshole.”
According to a recent article I had read, most men in America don’t have close male friends.
They have co-workers, or golf buddies, or hunting or fishing or ball game partners, but they don’t have friends—and certainly not a best friend.
That was most men. I was different. I had Merrill.
Merrill Monroe was my best friend—and had been for over twenty years.
I ran into him as I was entering the medical building. I was on my way to question one of the inmates who slept near Danny Jacobs the night of his death.
“How’s your mom?”
I shook my head and frowned.
He said, “Anything I can do . . .”
“I know,” I said. “Thank you.”
As usual, Merrill’s correctional officer uniform was neat and pressed and stretched tautly over his enormous muscular bulk. His dark black face glistened under a small patina of sweat in the mid-morning sun and his eyes were wide and had that wild look that made most people uncomfortable, especially if they were white.
“How you holdin’ up?” he asked.
“Okay,” I said, nodding. “I’m okay.”
All around us, inmates were entering the medical building for sick call and morning meds and exiting to go back to their dorms or to work. Most of them were noisy—laughing loudly or yelling to one of their boys, until they saw Merrill. Then without his even looking at them, they grew quiet and respectful and either nodded or spoke as they walked by. He didn’t acknowledge any of them.
We stood there for a while longer, neither of us with much to say, enjoying one another’s company, and I thought how much more pleasant the prison was, my life was, because he was here.
“I . . . I just—” I began, but broke off. “What is it?”
I had the urge to tell him just how much I loved and appreciated him, but resisted because of the environment we found ourselves in and how uncomfortable it would make him feel.
I hoped it wouldn’t one day be an addition to a long list of things left unsaid I’d deeply regret.
I walked down the gleaming tile floor of the medical corridor, past the SOS cells and the infirmary, to the medical conference and break room. It was empty. After buying a Cherry Coke from the vending machine, I walked down the other hallway leading to the back exit and found Walter Williams rinsing a mop out in the caustic storage closet.
“’Sup, Preach?” he said when he saw me.
“Got a few questions for you,” I said. “About Danny Jacobs.”
“Don’t know nothin’ about no Danny Jacobs or anything else, and if I did, I ain’t fool enough to be tellin’ you.”
“You sleep in the bunk right next to Jacobs, don’t you?”
“Not anymore. Motherfucker checked himself outta here.”
“You see anything?”
“That’s all I’m sayin’,” he said. “So don’t waste my time.”
Time’s all he had. Prison time. The slowest moving, most elongated, most excruciating time humans had yet to create.
He switched off the spigot, slung the clean mop back down in the bucket of dirty water, and walked past me into the hallway.
“Anything you say’ll stay between us.”
He jerked around toward me. “I told you. Ain’t sayin’ shit. And you can’t make me. Why don’t you just leave shit the fuck alone? You gonna get your ass shanked.”
He turned around quickly and bumped into Merrill, who had just walked up.
Merrill slapped him across the face with his open hand. It was a hard slap, and Williams stumbled back, clutching his cheek as he did.
“What the fuck?” he said, bowing up, but then quickly backing down and lowering his voice as Merrill came into focus.
I knew he would be helpful now and it made me once again question my convictions. I didn’t believe in violence. At least I didn’t want to. I didn’t want the world to be a place of violence and dominance and the use and abuse of power. I believed in the noble tradition of non-violence that included Jesus and Gandhi and Martin Luther King, but I lived and worked in a world where in certain circumstances the use of force seemed the only option, the only solution.
“Chaplain’s got some questions for you,” he said. “You don’t mind answering a few questions, do you?”
“No, Serg. ’Course not. What you wanna know?” Merrill looked at him and shook his head. “About Jacobs, right,” Williams said. “He didn’t seem suicidal to me. I mean, hell, he was always a little out there, but not all sad and shit. Night was pretty normal. We all went to bed. He woke up dead. That’s all I know. I’m a heavy sleeper––you can ask the doc. I’m on medication that makes me sleep hard.”
“He say goodbye to anyone or give any of his stuff away?” I asked.
“Don’t think so. Didn’t give shit to me. Somebody say he give his stuff away? Who got it?”
“Who else was around his bunk that night?” I asked. “Brent Allen,” he said. “He sleeps above me. So he was up there across from Jacobs. Jacobs was in Phillips’s bunk. Lance come in real late from Medical, Jacobs was asleep, so he just get in Jacobs’s bunk. Emile Rollins was on the other side on the top. No one was on the bottom of that one.”
“Did Jacobs hang out with anyone that night?
Anyone come to his bunk to talk to him?”
He closed his eyes, his face scrunching into what I assume was supposed to be deep thought. Finally, he shook his head and reopened his eyes. “Pretty much stuck to himself—’cept for the psych lady and the nurse.”
“Which ones?”
“Nurse Lee seen him a lot. ’Specially since he got out of confinement, but no one saw him more than the psych lady. Doctor. What’s her name?”
“Hahn?”
He shook his head. “Lopez?”
“No, sir,” he said. “The old ugly one.”
“Baldwin?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said. “She was with him all the time. He always going up to her office. She always coming down to the dorm.”
“They both came down the night of his death?”
“Yeah.”
“Anyone else go near him that night?”
“Yeah,” he said. “The serg in the dorm. Foster. He did rounds that night.”
“He doesn’t usually?”
He shook his head. “CO usually do it while the sergeant sit in the officers’ station. Seem like he stop by Danny’s bunk a time or two.”
“Anyone else?”
“May’ve been. I didn’t pay much attention to his life.
Living my own.”
“And doin’ a damn fine job of it too,” Merrill said.
“Anyway,” Williams said, “Baldwin who you wanna talk to. She the one that always with him. She act like his damn mother or girlfriend or some shit like that.”
19
It’s the policy of the Florida Department of Corrections to do all we can to prevent suicides,” Bailey Baldwin said, beginning her suicide prevention class in the training building. “That means we all have to pay close attention to threats, gestures, and actual attempts. We have to take them seriously, even if we don’t think they are. If you ever have any doubts, act on them. Refer them to us.”
Bailey Baldwin, PhD, was the senior psychologist and the head of psychological services at PCI. She was DeLisa Lopez and Hahn Ling’s supervisor, so I probably knew more about her than most. I knew, for instance, that she was moody and slightly paranoid and practiced CYA like a religion. I also knew she constantly had tumultuous, troubled relationships, and had probably been involved with every one of the Ten Men Who Mess Up a Woman’s Life from Hahn’s book. Many of them more than once.
“How can you know if an inmate is thinking of taking his own life?” she asked rhetorically. “Some of the most common indicators are: saying goodbye, giving away his things, writing letters to friends and loved ones. In essence, wrapping up his affairs. If you see any of these key indicators, call me.”
She sounded to me as if she liked to hear herself talk, and she did it with certain flair, but her hands shook slightly, and she didn’t seem to know where to put t
hem, and her searching eyes betrayed the fragility of the persona she was projecting.
She was standing behind a podium in the large, dull, utilitarian room, her voice echoing off the tile floor and white windowed walls. In front of her, correctional officers and a few assorted support staff personnel sat at rows of narrow tables––very few of them seeming to be paying attention to anything she was saying.
“Now let’s talk about depression, the leading cause of actual suicide,” she said, removing the red jacket that matched her skirt and unsteadily draping it over a nearby chair.
“Depression equals loss,” she said. “Loss of interest, loss of energy, loss of concentration, loss of appetite—physical or sexual.” A streak of crimson crawled up her neck when she said sexual, and the correctional officers, who had been nodding off, came to life, smiling and snickering.
It was obvious that, among other things, Bailey Baldwin was insecure and suffered from feelings of inferiority, something working in such close proximity to the sultry Lisa Lopez and the alluring Hahn Ling had to heighten.
“Sometimes,” she continued, “a suicidal inmate will be agitated or restless, sometimes he’ll be sluggish, and almost always he’ll be pessimistic and hopeless.
“What I’ve just described is a dangerous time in the life of an inmate, but the most dangerous time is when he seems to feel better. It’s when he gets a little better that he has the energy to kill himself.”
She paused and looked around the room nervously.
“Any questions so far?” she asked when she seemed to lose her place in her notes.
The officers who comprised the majority of the class, sitting with their arms folded in front of them, many with their heads down, others whispering or laughing, didn’t even acknowledge she had said anything.
“Okay,” she said, still looking down at her notes. “Like I said, most threats or even attempts of suicide in prison are attempts at manipulating the system, usually in hopes of getting a transfer. However, others are cries for help, and all are dangerous. I can’t tell you how many people kill themselves each year who don’t actually mean to succeed at suicide. Self-injury and injury to staff is a serious matter, and if you observe any inmate displaying any of the characteristics I’ve mentioned, please, for God’s sake, refer them to me.”
Innocent Blood; Blood Money; Blood Moon Page 28
