JJ08 - Blood Money

by Michael Lister

  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 se
rg 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.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  “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 them, 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.”

  When she dismissed the class, everyone scattered more quickly than at quitting time, and I walked up to where she was gathering her things.

  “Hey, Chaplain,” she said. “How’re you?”

  “Good, thanks,” I said. “I enjoyed your presentation.

  Very informative. But I was surprised you didn’t mention the suicide we had here last night.”

  She nodded as if she could see why I would wonder that. “I felt that it was too soon. And the truth is, we don’t know enough about it yet. Perhaps with some time and distance . . . healing and objectivity will allow me to use it as an example, but that’s a good question.”

  I wondered if she was going to pat me on the head. “Was Jacobs undergoing psychological care?”

  “Some,” she said. “He tested well and didn’t seem to be much of a threat to himself or anyone else. Sometimes that’s the best we can do. It’s a mystery. Death always is.

  Anyway, there will be a psychological autopsy to determine what happened and why . . . see if there was anything else we could’ve done. I doubt they’ll find anything. I saw him as often as I could—more often than his case required.”

  A psychological autopsy is a procedure for investigating an inmate’s death by reconstructing as much as possible what the person thought, felt, and did prior to taking his life. The reconstruction is based on information gathered from classification, medical, and psych documents, the institutional inspector’s report, the ME’s report, and interviews with staff and inmates who had contact with him leading up to his death.

  “Did you see him last night before he died?” I asked. She shook her head. “I don’t believe I did.”

  “You sure?” I asked, trying not to sound accusatory. “You were down in his dorm, weren’t you?”

  She looked up, seeming to concentrate all her mental energies on remembering. “That’s right. I was called in for an emergency. And I did go to A-dorm, but I didn’t see Danny.”

  “You didn’t?”

  “I mean, I may have seen him, but I didn’t speak to him. I didn’t see him as in having an appointment with him or anything. Now that you mention it, I did see him talking with Jamie Lee. Seemed fine at the time.”

  “What do you think happened?” I asked.

  Tears filled her eyes. “We let him down. Just like his family and society, we failed him. His blood’s on our hands.”

  Her maudlin sentiments came across as inauthentic, even spurious. Was she merely saying what she thought she should or trying to cover up something far more sinister than insincerity?

  After leaving training, I searched the institution unsuccessfully for Donnie Foster, the sergeant on duty in A-dorm the night Jacobs was killed.

  When I called his home, his wife said he couldn’t come to the phone. I left my number, though I knew he wouldn’t call.

  “He ain’t done nothin’,” his wife said.

  “I just need to ask him some questions.”

  “What you need to do is leave him alone.”

  Chapter Twenty

  After work I stopped by the courthouse.

  Because there was a county commissioners meeting later in the evening, I might just be able to talk to several of the men from the farmhouse the night of the party, including Don Stockton, Ralph Long, Andrew Sullivan, Richard Cox, and Dad.

  Built in the 70s, the Potter County Courthouse was bright and boxy, with light wood-paneled walls and white tile floors with black and brown and gold specks in them.

  A 70s-style staircase behind which was a fountain that no longer worked rose out of the lobby, leading to the second-floor courtroom.

  The square box of a building had four equal hallways with offices off each side, and the sheriff ’s department and jail w
ere located directly behind it in another, smaller square box.

  I stopped by the property appraiser’s office first.

  I probably suspected Ralph Long as little as anyone. Not only was he harmless and effeminate with no interest in girls, but I doubted he had enough testosterone in his body required to beat someone to death.

  “I was shocked to hear about that girl gettin’ killed,” he said. “Just couldn’t believe it. And then somebody said her body was stolen out of the hearse. That’s crazy.”

  “Did you see her?” I asked.

  “When?”

  I was a little surprised by his question. “I meant that night, but anytime.”

  “You know, I think I did but I can’t remember where. You know how your mind plays tricks on you. Memory’s a funny thing. I thought I saw a glimpse of her in the house when I went to pee but I also think I remember seeing her outside as I was leaving. May not have been her. May not have been anyone. There wasn’t much moon. Thought I saw her across the field a ways. Seemed to be stumbling. Thought she was drunk. What if she was injured?”

  “Which direction was she headed in?”

  “Toward the woods I think.”

  “Any idea what time it was?”

  “Sorry man, I don’t. Don’t even know if I really saw it. She couldn’t’ve been in the house and outside at the same time.”

  “It wasn’t different times?”

  “Well, not really. I went and peed and then left.

  Don’t think she could’ve gotten across the field by then.

  Let alone gotten beaten up.”

  “Unless,” I said, “it happened while she was in the house.”

  I made my way up the stairs and into the judge’s chambers next.

  Judge Cox was preparing to leave for the day but agreed to stay and talk to me––though not before asking me to close the door.

  “I have to be so careful,” he said. “And not just because of my position but my convictions. I do my very best to be an example of integrity and honesty, to truly live above reproach. Sometimes I’m too careful. This was one of those times. I could’ve driven. I wasn’t drunk, wasn’t even over the limit, but I rarely drink and I didn’t want to take even the slightest chance that I was even close to the limit, so I called my kids. I wish I would’ve never even gone into the little farmhouse to wait. I wish my name wasn’t even associated with any of this. Even so, I was long gone before any of it happened. Diane and Richie drove back out to get me. I felt bad. They hadn’t been home long after takin’ you, but . . .”