“If you were trying to qualify yourself as an expert on the subject,” I said, “you’ve succeeded.”
“I’ve also tried pills, poison, carbon monoxide, plastic bag, cyanide, self-starvation, and gunshot,” he said, pushing his hair back to reveal an old gunshot scar over his ear. “And it’s all still a mystery to me. Like death or life or God. It’s a mystery. People think if they could just know what the guy was thinking . . . But all they have to do is ask us and we could tell them. We don’t know. We can’t tell you. Those who’ve done it couldn’t tell you if they were here.”
I nodded, but didn’t say anything.
“The number of suicides each year is probably five times greater than what we think,” he said. “Most anybody is capable of it under the right circumstances. And the decision to do it is usually a cumulative one. So when someone takes his life, it’s because of a buildup of several factors, none of which by themselves would cause him to do it. You’ve heard of the straw that broke the camel’s back, well, that’s how it happens. You have all this shit and it just keeps piling up on you and then maybe it levels out. Maybe for a long time. But then this one tiny little thing comes along, and maybe it’s nothing. Maybe it doesn’t amount to a tiny piece of straw, but it’s the final straw and it’s just too much to handle, so you go for it.”
“And you don’t see evidence of that in Lance’s or Danny’s lives?”
He shook his head. “But all sorts of people commit suicide. There’s no profile. Think about the difference between Hitler and Hemingway or Judas and Juliet and yet they all did it.”
“You know so much,” Merrill said, “why you so unsuccessful at it?”
“What I do is about luck, not skill. Everything to do with chance. The universe is such a random place, I . . . my attempts contain the possibility for intervention. I let fate decide.”
“Sheeit,” Merrill said. “You really think fate wants your sorry ass around?”
24
The killer’s calling card didn’t make you think you should tell me about your little club?”
I’d found Lance Phillips in line at the barbershop and called him over away from the other inmates waiting for a bad buzz cut.
“Huh?” Lance said.
He looked around constantly, scanning the compound. He was obviously nervous, distracted, scared.
It was a brilliant, beautiful September day, and the compound was abuzz, inmates swarming about like bees at the height of tupelo season.
“I felt it in my pocket,” he said. “Tried to look at it, but couldn’t make it out. I was nearly unconscious.”
“It was a playing card.”
“Oh.”
“From the cold-case deck. Had a missing person on it.”
All around us, inmates were moving—in and out of dorms, in and out of canteen lines, in and out of the barbershop. A steady stream of them flowed toward the center gate and a steady stream flowed back. Cigarettes were being rolled, trash was being talked, deals were being made, and everywhere seen and unseen, intentional and not, threats, slights, disses were being both issued and noted.
“Miguel what’s-his-name you mentioned?”
“Morales. Yeah. What’s your connection with him?”
“None. I mean, that I know of. I’ve never—”
“Card was a king of hearts. That mean anything to you?”
He shook his head. “Should it? You know who tried to kill me?”
“Forget about the cold-case deck for a minute,” I said. “In a regular deck the king of hearts is also known as—”
“Oh fuck me,” he said, his eyes growing wide and even more fearful. “You think this has something to do with the Suicide Kings?”
“Whatta you think?”
“But why not put a suicide king in my pocket? Why the one with Miguel Morales?”
“Maybe that’s all he had at the time,” I said. “He put a regular suicide king in Danny’s pocket.”
He looked down and frowned, his eyes busy blinking back tears, but only for a moment, then he was back to scanning the passing inmates, looking over his shoulder.
“They tell you I found him?”
I shook my head. Not telling me much of anything. “I got out of Medical very late. He was already in my bunk asleep. He got in it a lot. I’ve got a thicker roll, more comfortable—guys always trying to sleep in my rack, but Danny just always felt safer up there. I didn’t mind. I left him in it—just got in his. Did that get him killed? That would be . . . I don’t know, ironic. Man that’s . . . I didn’t sleep well. Got up first and found him. Still can’t believe it.”
I nodded. “He was a Suicide King too?”
He nodded. “Poor Danny. The Kings are active now? I haven’t even thought about it in . . . a long time.”
“Why’d you guys do it in the first place?” I said.
He shrugged.
“Why give other inmates a motive to kill you?” I asked. “Why—”
“We’re not those kind of inmates,” he said. “We were all nerds, not thugs. The only person any of us ever thought about hurting was ourselves. It was just something to do. We were bored. Brent said it’d be cool.”
“You don’t think nerds kill for money?”
“Not us, I’m telling you, but that was part of the fun. It was exciting—for a while, then it became boring like everything else around here and we let the whole thing drop—including the policies. Now there’s no motivation.”
I didn’t say anything, just thought about what he had said. If the policies were no longer in effect there would be no money motive.
“I can’t believe you figured out the killer’s message about suicide kings from the Miguel Morales cold-case card,” he said.
“If I’m right.”
“I’m impressed, Chaplain. And I’m not easily impressed. Wow. You live up to the hype.”
As we talked, nearly every inmate who passed us strained to hear what we were saying or asked me for something. It happened everywhere I went—Chaplain, when you gonna hook me up with a phone call? Chaplain, I need to come see you? Chaplain, help a brother out with some extra greeting cards? Chaplain, I need some extra time in the library? Chaplain, I need to come practice my music. Chaplain, Chaplain, Chaplain.
“Does the fact that the killer’s leaving suicide kings let you know who it is?”
He shook his head. “You think it’s one of the club?”
“Who else?”
“But why? That was so long ago. Nothing to gain.”
“Not necessarily.”
“I guarantee the policies have lapsed. And if the others are like me, they’ll think you can’t collect if it’s suicide.”
“Which might be why he’s leaving the cards—let us know it’s not.”
“Then he’s risking getting caught.”
“Probably figures he’s too smart for that.”
“Against you? He’d be crazy. I still can’t get over how you—”
“Anybody outside the club know about it? Anybody have anything against the members?”
He started to shake his head, then stopped. “There was one guy who went through with it back then . . . Ralph Meeks. Think someone could be retaliating for him? Club didn’t kill him, didn’t do anything, but someone might blame us.”
“Worth looking into.”
“How long you think I’ll last out here?” he asked. “I can get you put in Protective Management or Confinement.”
“As vulnerable as I am out here, I think it’s safer than being locked in a cell. I know you’ll figure out who the killer is. Just do it before he kills me and not after, okay?”
I was walking back to the upper compound with a list of all the members of the Suicide Kings when I ran into Hahn.
“Any thoughts on why inmates would form a suicide club and put each other in their wills and make each other the beneficiaries of their life insurance policies? You’ve worked closely with these guys. What motivates them to do something like t
hat?”
“Who in particular?” I told her.
She shook her head. “Not just one thing. A few of them are—or were—genuinely clinically depressed.
Don’t care about anything, can be talked into anything. A few of the others are so grandiose, so . . . They truly feel invincible.”
“Like Brent Allen.” She nodded.
As usual, Hahn drew the attention of the entire compound. A few of the caged animals made an attempt at subtlety, but most leered and sneered and stared and ogled. There were catcalls and lewd comments, though none quite loud enough for us to make out what was being said or by whom.
And as usual, I couldn’t help but imagine how it must make her feel. She didn’t react, didn’t respond—at least not in any overt way they could see—but I sensed her tensing, saw the subtle tightness in her body, the slight awkwardness of her gait.
We walked past the last canteen and dorms and were less than a hundred yards from the center gate. The inmates around us thinned out, and so did the unpleasant and unwanted attention my young, attractive coworker was receiving.
“They’re so out of touch with reality, they feel like superheroes or something. They don’t think they can die, but if they do they think they’ll transcend death, come back somehow. Others are looking for excitement, a rush, a high, and don’t care how they get it. It’s like playing Russian Roulette. All of them are different, but nearly all of them are self-destructive in some way. It’s no different from risky behavior of any kind.”
25
Jamie Lee’s face lit up when she saw me, and in doing so, lit up the room. And I couldn’t help but smile. She was one of the most pleasant people at the institution and was quickly becoming one of my favorite coworkers.
“Hello handsome,” she said.
I turned and looked over my shoulder to make sure she was talking to me.
“Yeah, you,” she said. “You get better looking every time I see you. If I were straight . . .”
“You’d still be old enough to be my mother.”
“What’s your point?” she said with a wicked, bare-lipped smile.
She was not a lipstick lesbian.
Jamie Lee looked like what she was—an overweight, middle-aged gay woman. She had short hair shaved in the back, a certain soft androgyny, and the build of a linebacker who’d stopped working out a decade ago.
Of course, middle-aged gay women, like middle-aged straight women, had an infinite variety of looks, and generalizing was wrong, but Jamie Lee had the look that most people associate with lesbianism, her loose-fitting green nurse uniform adding to the effect.
“I’m about to take a cancer break,” she said. “Wanna join me?”
“You bet.”
We walked through the side door of Medical and out into the bright afternoon sun.
“You know what they say about second-hand smoke,” she said.
“The pleasure of your company makes it worth the risk.”
She carefully withdrew one of the slim cigarettes from the pack, placed it in her mouth, and lit it. After inhaling deeply with obvious pleasure, she withdrew the cigarette from her mouth and held it between her two fingers in a dainty manner.
Smoking was by far the most feminine thing she did.
Across from us the inmates assigned to inside grounds were sweeping the sidewalk and street that ran down the center of the compound. The blue uniforms the inmates wore were big and baggy and hung off them the way kids wore their jeans on the street. The plastic bags hanging from their back pockets were filled with the tiny bits of trash they had picked up, and because there were so many workers and so little trash, the bags fluttered in the breeze.
“Unfortunately, this cigarette won’t last long,” she said. “So . . . let the interrogation begin.”
“No interrogation. Just a little chat about Danny Jacobs.”
“You heard I spent a lot of time with him and wondered if I killed him?”
“I know you killed him. I want to know why.”
“Danny and I were having an affair,” she said. “I know it’s against the rules and that I shouldn’t have, but God, the rod on that man.”
As she talked, she moved her hands about, the cigarette making small smoke signals in the air around them.
“You ever even seen one?”
“I’m a nurse for fuck sake,” she said. “Besides, I’ve got a couple of special . . . ah . . . objects that look just like ’em. Or so the package said.”
“I know this is gonna make me sound like one of the homophobes around here, but can I get a straight answer about Jacobs?”
“That’s a hell of a thing to say to me.” I laughed.
“Okay, I’ve had my fun. The truth is, Dr. Alvarez asked me to watch Danny closely after he got out of the infirmary. But I would’ve anyway because I liked him. He was a good kid. Troubled. Tormented. But good.”
“You saw him the night he died?”
“Yeah, I did. I wasn’t supposed to. I mean, I’d just seen him, but he seemed really down. I thought I might cheer him up. In fact, I thought I did, but . . . I feel bad about it. It’s not like we were close or anything. I just liked the kid. Sorry, but that’s it. All I know. Didn’t see anything suspicious, no one lurking around with a noose.”
“This would be so much easier if you had.”
She nodded and we were quiet a moment, but when I saw how little of her cigarette was left, I pressed on.
“What about Lance Phillips?”
“Same way,” she said. “Got to know him in the infirmary. Cared for him while he recuperated.”
“Danny was in Lance’s bunk when he died.”
“That significant?”
“If Phillips didn’t try to kill himself,” I said. “You don’t think he did?”
I shook my head. “I don’t.”
“Well, that may be true, but I was there. I saw what he tried to do. And he was in a locked confinement cell by himself. So how could someone . . . I came up shortly after it started. I saw him swinging from the rope. No one else was around. Seemed like a suicide attempt to me.”
“Maybe,” I said, “but if so, where’d he get the rope?”
Emile Rollins worked on an outside grounds crew cleaning and caring for the parks of Potter County. I caught up with him at the south gate as he was being patted down to reenter the institution. Unlike the other inmates around him, he stood perfectly still and kept quiet throughout the procedure. When he did move, it was in smooth, economic motions. He wasted no energy, and there was a certain fluidity to everything he did, a physical grace.
It was evening, everything lit softly. The setting sun ducking behind the slash pines to the west etched their tops with fire and ignited the horizon beyond, streaking the bottoms of the cirrus clouds with swaths of Spanish orange and salmon.
But it wasn’t just the quality of light, sound too had a softness I associated with the transition of day into night.
After the officers had finished with Emile, I motioned him over and he moved toward me without hesitation or expression.
Standing before me, I could see how deceptive his build was. He was tall and thin, but very muscular. Every inch of him looked cut and ripped, pure muscle pressing out against the skin—not something easily achieved with the long muscles of a tall person.
His uniform was loose, and at a glance he looked to be anorexic, but it was an illusion. Huge veins popped out of the skin on the undersides of his forearms, and the well-defined muscles beneath them turned and twisted like steel cords as he moved his arms. “Rollins?” I asked. “Yes, sir.”
His voice was soft and slightly higher than I expected but bore no Southern accent.
“I’d like to ask you a few questions.”
“Of course.”
“Tell me about Lance Phillips, Brent Allen, and Danny Jacobs.”
“Whatta you wanna know? We all sleep next to each other in the dorm—or did. I knew Danny the best. Still can’t believe he did it.�
��
He looked down, but there was no sign of sadness on his face.
The officers checking in the inmates were tired and ready to go home, but the inmates were not cooperating. They were mouthing off, getting out of line, and moving slowly—seemingly on purpose, and the more the officers showed they didn’t like it, the more the inmates did it.
“What about Lance? He tried to—”
“Says he didn’t. I don’t know. You can never tell with Lance, he probably just wanted to get out of Confinement, but I thought Danny was doing good—well, good for him.”
“Do you know of anyone who would want to hurt either of them?” I asked.
He shook his head.
“You a member of their club?”
“What club? Gunners?”
Gunners were inmates who masturbated in front of female officers.
“Suicide Kings.”
“Don’t think so. They may’ve made me an honorary member or something ’cause we hang out, but I told ’em I ain’t ever gonna kill myself.”
I nodded. “What can you tell me about Danny’s death?”
“Nothing,” he said. “Just a normal night. We all went to bed. When we woke up he was dead.”
He said it with no feeling. Just stating the facts.
Perhaps like so many of the men in here, he was incapable of attachment. Or maybe all associations inside were ones of need and convenience, and didn’t involve anything like empathy.
“Anybody out of the ordinary in the dorm that night?”
“It’d be quicker to tell you who wasn’t there. We had more traffic than we’ve ever had before. By a long shot. A nurse came by. And the doctor, but not at the same time.”
“Baldwin?” I asked.
“She was there too, at some point, but I was talking about the medical doctor.”
“Alvarez?”
He nodded. “And the psych lady.”
“You already said her.”
“Not Dr. Baldwin. That other one. What’s her name?”
“Ling?”
“Yeah. Small, black-haired Asian chick. They all talked to Danny. Every one of ’em. All at different times. All pretty late. Before lights out, but . . .”
Innocent Blood; Blood Money; Blood Moon Page 31
