JJ08 - Blood Money

by Michael Lister

  I shook my head. “Lot of that going on.”

  He smiled. “’Course, bein’ in the next confinement cell like being in the next state. Not like he could do anything.”

  “Not without help.”

  “You think maybe the cell defective?”

  “Worth checking out,” I said. “Thanks.”

  Lance Phillips waved at us as he passed by in the line of inmates heading for the chow hall. I waved back. Merrill did not.

  Merrill cleared his throat as a slight flicker appeared in his eyes, and I slid the copies of the logs into the pocket of my coat. When I turned around, I saw Mark Lawson approaching us.

  “Chaplain,” he said as he walked up. “Lot of people ’round here say what a good man you are, but I keep on hearing you’re asking questions about my investigation.

  I don’t wanna get off on the wrong foot, but seems like that’s what’s happenin’.”

  “I’ve been asking a few questions,” I said, “but not about the way you’re investigating.”

  Lawson’s white short-sleeve shirt, clip-on tie, and gray cotton pants were wrinkled, a size too small, and his pea-green prison tattoos glowed in the morning sun.

  “I don’t mean about me as an investigator,” he said, stepping forward, putting his face a little too close to mine. “I mean you been conducting your own investigation.”

  I nodded.

  “Well, don’t. This is my first big investigation here and I don’t want the integrity of it compromised.”

  “I won’t get in your investigation,” I said. “And I won’t get in your way, but I will continue to ask questions. And if I come across anything that might be helpful, I’ll pass it along.”

  “No,” he said, shaking his head. “I’ve already talked to the warden. If I have to, I’ll go to the regional director.”

  He then turned and walked away.

  I saw Lance Phillips come out of the chow hall and start to approach us, but when he saw Lawson standing nearby, he turned and went back in.

  “Nobody want you workin’ this thing, do they?” Merrill said. “Almost as if they’s somethin’ at stake and they have somethin’ to hide or protect. Speakin’ of . . . seen the Hispanic cowboy again?” Merrill asked.

  I shook my head.

  “Hope I’m around the next time he ride into town.”

  “Dad’s running his prints,” I said. “Maybe we’ll ride into his.”

  “Even better.”

  Chapter Thirty-one

  After leaving Merrill, I walked over to Confinement and asked to inspect the cells Phillips and Allen occupied the night of Lance’s supposed suicide attempt.

  I was told by the nervous young officer that he didn’t have the authority for anything like that.

  There were inmates in both cells, and it would’ve been a hassle to cuff them, pull them, and place them in other cells while I had my little look around—which, I suspected, was the real reason he wasn’t willing.

  “Why not get the warden, colonel, or inspector to do it?” he asked. “Seems more like their job anyway. But, truth is, I can save you the trouble. We done inspections of both cells and there ain’t a thing in the world wrong with either of ’em.”

  Back in my office, I made a few calls about the life insurance policies taken out by the Suicide Kings. Each was designed to pay in cases of suicide after two years, but they had all long since lapsed for nonpayment. Because Ralph Meeks’s death had been ruled a suicide and because it was less than two years since the policy had been taken out, the company, Florida Farm Mutual, had refused to pay, instead refunding the price of the premiums.

  Lapsed policies meant no money motive. And would make it far, far more challenging to find out what was going on and why.

  Next, I checked their general financial situations.

  In addition to having been each other’s life insurance beneficiaries, the Kings were also in each other’s wills, but as all of them were destitute, that too provided no motive or insight.

  Next, I attempted to obtain information about Ralph Meeks’s death, but after several calls found nothing helpful. Everyone involved treated it like a suicide, so even if there had been evidence to the contrary, it had gone unnoticed, unrecognized, unrecorded.

  According to those involved, there was nothing suspicious, no signs of foul play, and no playing cards on his person or in his property.

  Every investigation had dead-ends, and you never knew what they would be until you reached them. Over the years, I had followed far more than my fair share of them, so I was used to them, part of the process, but that didn’t make them any less frustrating.

  I took a deep breath, rolled my shoulders, and was about to call Dad when my phone rang.

  It was Dad.

  “I was just about to call you,” I said. “How are you?”

  “Okay. How about you?”

  “Can’t complain.”

  We were quiet for a moment.

  “I was calling to thank you,” he said. “For?”

  “All that you do for your mom.”

  I instantly felt guilty for how little I had done recently.

  “I went by to see her this morning,” he said. “It’s obvious you’re helping her in so many ways. And I really appreciate it.”

  Even after being divorced longer than they were married, Dad kept tabs on Mom, mostly through me. Since she’d gotten sick and sober, he’d done it more directly.

  “I should do more. Haven’t done even what I normally do lately.”

  “You’re doing a lot––and not just for her.”

  I didn’t say anything, and we were quiet another moment.

  Dad and I were so different, our relationship so pragmatic—like everything in his life—that it was often awkward between us.

  “Well,” he said, “that’s all I wanted to say.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You were about to call me,” he said. “What’d you need?”

  “Wondered if you were makin’ any progress on the case?”

  “Not a lick,” he said. “Town talk is it’s the nail in my coffin. It is embarrassing. And I can’t figure it out to save my life––my political one anyway. Did you read the paper this morning? If it’s not about making me look bad, hell, if it’s not about making all of us lose our damn jobs, I don’t know what it could be.”

  “Maybe it is,” I said. “I think we need to consider that as a real possibility.”

  “So take a closer look at Hugh,” he said. “But I do that and it just looks like I’m playing politics, trying to bully him out of the race.”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” I said.

  “Thanks. I really do think this thing could cost all of us our jobs. Me and Judge Cox for sure. Stockton is safe.

  Not sure about Ralph.”

  “I talked to Carla Jean last night,” I said. “She says she never let the victim in the house.”

  “You believe her?”

  “I’m inclined to.”

  “What does it mean if she didn’t? How does that change anything as far as what might have happened? This thing is going to make me lose my mind.”

  “We’ll figure it out,” I said. “Hang in there. Hey, the inmate I told you about who supposedly committed suicide . . . Interim inspector’s shutting me out of the investigation.

  Think you could find out what the ME’s report says?”

  “I’ll do what I can.”

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Hahn’s small frame was wrapped up in a black cropped cable sweater, her narrow hips in a loose-fitting black skirt with a draw-string waist, which reached down to black lace-up boots. The skirt was shiny like her hair, and her outfit and complexion made her dark, dazzling eyes pop all the more.

  We were walking through the pine forest toward the small pond between the prison and Potter Farm on our lunch break, the tall slash pines above us giving way to shorter pond pines and finally to cypress trees as we drew closer to the water’s edge.


  Hahn moved like she did everything, with energy and enthusiasm, often jumping out in front of me, turning to face me as we walked.

  “Ready to hear my confession?”

  I nodded. “Why now and not before?”

  She shrugged. “It felt like such betrayal. Still does, but I don’t . . . I know you’ll . . . I trust you.”

  I wasn’t sure I believed her, but I nodded and smiled as if I did.

  “Father forgive me for I have sinned. It’s been forever since my last confession . . .”

  The grass beneath our feet was still mostly green, thick like expensive carpet, and white and gold flowers were sprinkled throughout the thick foliage on either side of the path.

  “I went down to A-dorm the night Danny Jacobs was killed to check on him.”

  “Because . . .”

  “I was worried about him.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m not sure exactly. It was just a feeling—and it was right.”

  I nodded. “Yes it was.”

  “I can’t really explain it, but . . . I just think something’s going on in Medical. Something not right. And don’t ask . . . it’s just a lot of little things. I wouldn’t even mention this to someone else. And all the boys on your list have been in and out of there a lot lately.”

  “The Suicide Kings?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “I’m not sure what it is . . . but, well, I probably shouldn’t say anything until I know something.”

  “If you can’t tell me what you know, tell me what you feel.”

  She stopped walking, and we stood there for a moment in the middle of the quiet forest beneath the thin pines.

  Finally, she shook her head. “It’s just off.

  Something’s going on that’s not . . .”

  She started walking again, and I followed.

  When we reached the pond, we paused to take in its beauty. The small body of water sat in the bowl of gentle slope, rimmed by cypress trees, surrounded by pine flats on every side.

  I breathed in deeply, taking it in.

  We walked down to the edge of the pond and sat down on a thick pad of grass.

  “I can narrow it down a bit,” she said. “It’s not all of Medical. It’s . . . Dr. Alvarez and . . .”

  “And?”

  “Dr. Baldwin.” I nodded.

  “She’s my supervisor, and I like her. I really do, but when she’s around him . . . I don’t know . . .”

  “They were both in the dorm the night Jacobs was killed,” I said.

  “I know.”

  “And in Confinement the night Lance was supposed to have attempted suicide.”

  “So was I.”

  “I know.”

  The midday sun shimmered on the still surface of the small pond. Spanish moss draped across the branches of the cypress trees surrounding it, waving in the wind like fresh laundry on the line.

  “I’d have Bailey help me unlock it if she wasn’t one of the ones making me feel so—”

  “Unlock it?”

  “Unpack it. You know. Help me think it through.

  Maybe even use hypnotherapy.”

  “Hypnotherapy?”

  “She does it a lot. She’s very good at it. She’s taught me so much.”

  “You do it too?”

  “I’m just learning.”

  I thought about it for a moment, and she let me. “If someone were suicidal—or had been—could you use hypnotherapy to give them a little nudge?”

  “You could suggest it, but I don’t think it would—”

  “What is it?”

  “She’d been using it on Danny, supposedly for addiction recov—Oh, my God.”

  “What?”

  “That night. I . . . I was across the dorm, so I can’t be sure. I couldn’t hear them, but . . .”

  “But what?”

  “It looked like she was hypnotizing him.”

  I leaned in toward her, energy jangling through me. “Maybe if he was already suicidal, she could’ve gotten him to do it when she wasn’t there.”

  “And,” I added, “gotten Lance Phillips to do it inside a locked cell.”

  Merrill and I found Baldwin and Alvarez together in his office.

  They stopped talking abruptly when we walked in, and didn’t offer us a seat.

  “I was just leaving,” Baldwin said. “I’ll let you all talk.”

  Merrill moved in front of the door.

  “We came to see you,” I said, “but we’d like to talk to both of you.”

  She glared at Merrill, then looked at Alvarez for support, but found none. Finally, she sat down again. “What’s this about?”

  “Hypnosis, Confinement visits, murder.”

  “Murder? I thought he committed suicide.”

  “Who?”

  “Don’t play games with me, Chaplain. We all know you mean Danny Jacobs.”

  “What has that got to do with us?” Alvarez said.

  They were the first words he had spoken, and they came out in a heavily accented rhythm uncommon to English.

  “That what we want to know,” Merrill said. “What?” Baldwin said in outrage, but it lacked conviction.

  “We’re talking to everyone who was in the dorm the night Jacobs was killed and in Confinement the night the attempt was made on Lance Phillips. You two were in both places.”

  “One cannot practice medicine from a desk,” Alvarez said. “I—how do you say it?—make the house call. I am very dedicated to my medicine. I make the rounds constantly.”

  Juan Alvarez was a middle-aged Hispanic man with a light complexion and coarse, black hair going gray. He wasn’t fat exactly, but overweight, soft, fleshy. His eyes protruded out of his head, as if too much was stuffed into his skull, and when he widened them, which was often, they seemed to pop out.

  “You do,” Bailey said to him. Then to us, “He does.”

  “But what were you doing in those particular places at those particular times?”

  “Checking on patients I had discharged from the infirmary,” he said. “My care of them does not end when they walk out of this building.”

  “Same thing with me,” Baldwin said. “I keep telling Hahn if you want to be effective, you’ve got to go where the patients are. Meet them on their turf, in their world. It’s amazing what that can teach you about their needs. Know what I mean?”

  “You know what she mean?” Merrill asked. I shrugged.

  “So y’all’s just down there checkin’ on patients,” he added. “Doing no harm, shit like that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Eleven-thirty at night?” Merrill said. “Get the fuck outta here.”

  “It is true,” Alvarez said. “We are very dedicated.

  Our patients are our lives. We practice giving help because we want to help others, we want to make a difference in the world.”

  “Do you have any other patients?”

  “What?”

  “Do either of you practice medicine or psychiatry anywhere else?” I asked.

  Bailey looked at Alvarez.

  “No,” Alvarez said. “I am a physician for the state of Florida only. That is all. Florida has been very good to me. I love America. I own many things. Rental property. Clinic. Restaurant. But the only patients I have are here. In here I am doctor. Out there I am businessman.”

  “Do either of you have any idea who might have tried to kill Lance?” I asked.

  They both shook their heads.

  Baldwin said, “I’d look at those Suicide Kings.”

  “You know about them?”

  “Well . . . yeah. And they’re bonkers.”

  “Bonkers?”

  Merrill said, “Can you put that in terms we can understand? Just speak English.” He looked at Alvarez. “No offense.”

  Alvarez didn’t get it, just shook his head in confusion and gave a small smile.

  “Sorry we could not help more,” Alvarez said. “But we really must return to work now. If we think of anyt
hing other we call you.”

  Ignoring him, I looked at Baldwin. “Whatta you use hypnotherapy for?”

  She winced and shuttered slightly, but recovered quickly. “Ah, well, all sorts of things—treatment of pain, depression, anxiety, phobias, stress, habit disorders, gastro-intestinal disorders, skin conditions, post—all sorts of things. Why?”

  “Ever use it on Lance or Danny?”

  “Not as I recall, but I may have. I use it on all my patients.”

  “They were your patients, weren’t they?”

  “Lance still is.”

  “So you’ve used it on them.”

  “Oh, well, yes. I thought you meant . . . Yes, I guess I have.”

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Passing through the waiting room for Medical, Classification, and Psychology on my way to Hahn’s office, the desk sergeant held up the phone. “For you.”

  “Thanks,” I said as I took it from him.

  “I’m not supposed to be talking to you about this.”

  It took me a minute, but I recognized the voice as that of Hank Sproul, the forensic pathologist who had performed the autopsy on Danny Jacobs.

  “I realize that,” I said. “And I really appreciate it.”

  “I’m doing it for your dad. He’s good people. I owe him. Just keep it between us.”

  The waiting room was overflowing with hostile inmates seeking relief from the state workers behind the two locked doors on either side of the room. Many of them suffered from paranoia and narcissism and a sense of victimhood that their daily interactions with the mammoth immovable machine of the DOC only served to confirm.

  “I found nothing to contradict it was anything but self-strangulation.”

  I thought about it.

  “However, since there was no note and this method is very rarely used in suicide . . .”

  “It could be murder?”

  “I can’t say that. I checked everything very carefully.

  When your dad called, I checked everything again.”

  “Can you say it wasn’t murder?”

  “Not definitively.”

  “Anything you can’t account for?” I said. “Anything at all?”

  He hesitated and there was nothing but static on the line for a long moment.

  “Only one thing,” he said slowly. “There’s usually way more than that. This was a very clean death and autopsy. There were some small pinpricks on the decedent’s left hand fingertips.”