Outside, the fresh air was far too hot and humid to be refreshing, but it did restore Nurse Strickland’s color. Or perhaps it was the super slim Capri cigarette she was inhaling the way underwater swimmers take in air when they finally reach the surface again. We were standing at the back right of the medical building where the smokers normally congregated, but, for now, we had it all to ourselves.
“I’m really sorry about that. Are you okay?” I said.
“Oh, yeah, don’t worry about it. It was no big deal and any other time would have been funny. It’s just . . .”
“I know. Did you know him very well?” I asked.
“Who?” she asked as if I had just awakened her.
“Johnson.”
“Yeah, I guess. I mean, as well as you can know any of these men, I guess.”
“Was he in the infirmary a lot?”
“Not a lot, but still a lot more than most of the other men,” she said.
“What can you tell me about him?” I asked.
“Why so many questions? What are you, an undercover cop?”
“No, nothing like that. It’s just that I was involved and I’m curious,” I lied.
“Well, let’s see,” she said, looking at me only for a moment and then back down again. “He was kind of small, so he got picked on a lot. He was a little effeminate. I don’t think he liked girls very much. Probably hated them.”
“Really, what makes you say that?”
“Oh, don’t pay any attention to me. I’ve had a few psych courses, and I like to see if I can read people, but I don’t really know.”
“You may be right. I’ve heard that he had a pimp.”
“Really, who?”
“An inmate named Jacobson. Do you know him?”
“Not very well, I’m happy to say. He’s been in to see us a few times, but I try to avoid him. He’s crazy. That really pisses me off,” she said bitterly and then looked up at me in shock. “Oh, shit, Chaplain. I did it again. Excuse my French, please. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it. What were you saying? I want to know what makes a pretty lady like yourself that angry.”
“It’s just what this place does to people. People like Jacobson turn sweet little boys like Johnson into monsters, you know. I’m sick of it. If you’re not a criminal when you get here, you’ll damn sure be one when you leave.” A single tear cut a path through the thick makeup on her right cheek.
I was moved with compassion for her. She was right. Oftentimes, the merely misguided became the cunningly criminal inside facilities like these. “It sounds to me like you really care,” I said.
“I do.”
We were silent for a few minutes. She puffed away, and I waited for the silence to pass while a single drop of sweat trickled down the center of my back, tickling as it did.
“What happened Monday night?” I asked finally. “How did Jacobson get thrown in the hole and Johnson in the back of that truck?”
“I really don’t know. It was a relatively quiet night. They were the only two we had in the infirmary. In the early morning hours of Tuesday—five maybe, they started yelling at each other and, before too long, Jacobson was on top of Johnson punching him in the face. The officer on duty, Officer Hardy, wasn’t at his desk, so Captain Skipper and I broke them up and separated them. He told them to go back to bed and he would forget about it. I’ve never seen Skipper do anything like that before. I figured he was up to something. He told them if they did it again, he was going to write them a disciplinary report and send them to confinement.”
“Where was Officer Hardy?” I asked.
She shrugged. Her expression said he was often away from his assigned post. “I really don’t know. Could’ve been anywhere. He was not where he was supposed to be.”
“Really?” I said. “I’ve heard he’s an excellent officer.”
She shrugged. “Don’t believe everything you hear around here, Chaplain.”
I smiled. “What days does he work?” I asked.
“Hardy? Thursday through Monday, but Monday night was his last night for two weeks. He’s on annual leave now. Pretty convenient, huh?”
“Why was Captain Skipper here that night?”
“I think he came to take a statement from one of the inmates involved in an incident earlier that night, but he wasn’t here.”
“Which inmate?”
“Thomas, I believe.”
“Anthony Thomas?”
“Yeah,” she said defensively. “Why?”
“I’ve worked with he and his wife some,” I explained. “Where did he find him?”
“I really don’t know, but he did find him eventually and locked him up for not being where he was supposed to be.”
“How long did he stay?” I asked.
“Not long at all,” she said. “He left when he couldn’t find Thomas.”
“What happened next?”
She gave an elaborate shrug and a took a deep drag on her cigarette. “They must have started fighting again. Obviously, Officer Hardy had Jacobson locked up. I went back up to my desk to finish some paperwork, and that was the last I saw of either one of them. Until the truck,” she said, turning pale again.
“Who else was in the building at that time?”
“Well, let’s see. There was Nurse Anderson, and our inmate orderly, Allen Jones, was gathering the trash and cleaning the exam rooms.”
“What about the trash? When is it picked up?”
“Early in the morning usually. I’m not really sure. Our orderly always gets it ready and puts it out here to be picked up.”
“Is that orderly here now?” I asked.
“Yeah, I think so,” she said.
“Can I talk with him?” I asked.
“Sure. Let’s go back inside,” she said taking a long final draw on the stub of her cigarette and tossing it into the ashtray.
We found her orderly, the same old black man that I had denied a phone call to earlier this morning, in one of the storage closets near the back. She told him that I wanted to talk to him and that we could go into the staff break room, which was just around the corner.
I could tell he didn’t want to talk to me, but he swaggered toward the break room nonetheless.
“This won’t take long,” I said when we were finally seated at the table in the break room. “I’m sorry I couldn’t let you use the phone this morning.”
He shrugged as if he didn’t care, but didn’t say anything. I continued.
“I just want to know how you normally gather and take out the trash down here and if you did it any differently on Monday night or Tuesday morning.”
Without facial or verbal expression he said, “I gather it all up before I leaves every night and puts it near the back door were you’s just standing. Then, in the morning I picks up any new trash and sets them outside the door. The officer and inmate who pick up the trash then come around and pick it up.”
“Is that how it happened Tuesday morning?” I asked.
He shook his head slowly. “I already told the inspector. I gathered it all up and put the bag in the back hall, then Miss Anderson come say she need me to clean up a spill in the exam room. When I come back to load it on the truck, the bag was gone. Miss Anderson was with me. She can tell you. The trash wasn’t outside the door neither, and the truck was gone.”
“Did you see the inmates in the infirmary that morning?” I asked.
“Yes, sir,” he said nodding his head. Each time his head went down I wondered if it would come up again. In addition to seeming old, Allen Jones seemed weary, as if every year he had lived was a hard one.
When he didn’t elaborate, I added, “Anything unusual about them?”
“No, sir. All three were lying there in they beds sleepin’.”
“All three?” I asked, the surprise in my voice obvious. “Who else was there?”
He wondered if he had said something wrong. Then after a long pause, he said, “Johnson, Jacobson, and Thom
as.”
“You saw Thomas in an infirmary bed that morning?”
“Yes, sir. Well, I thought I did. I could’ve been . . . maybe I didn’t see him. I don’t know,” he said.
“What time were you in there?”
“Can’t say, sir. Don’t wear a watch. But I come in at four. It wasn’t too long after that,” he said.
“Did you see Jacobson and Johnson fighting around five?” I asked.
“No, sir. I’s still gathering up the trash and cleaning up. I’s all over the building.”
I walked back to the nurses’ station and called the trash officer, Officer Shutt, whose acquaintance I had briefly made the day before.
“How are you doing?” I asked.
“Better,” he said. “Thanks. And thanks for your help yesterday. I just freaked.”
“I understand,” I said. “It was an awful thing you had to experience. I’m surprised you’re back at work so soon.”
His voice became slightly defensive as if I had made an accusation. “Whata you mean? I’m just trying to do my job, to stay busy so I don’t have to think about it. That’s all. It wasn’t my fault, just an awful accident I was involved in.”
“Of course,” I said. “How do you think Johnson got into that trash bag to begin with?”
“Johnson? Who’s Johnson?” he asked, but it was unconvincing. He knew who Johnson was.
“The inmate who was killed,” I said. “The one in the trash bag.”
“Oh,” he said. “Well, that’s a good question. You see, usually I pick up the trash from every department early in the morning. They set it outside their back door, and me and an inmate pick it up. But yesterday, there was no trash outside of medical.”
“So what did you do?” I asked.
“I had already parked the truck between medical and laundry. So I walked over with the inmate, and we picked up the bags from laundry. When we got back to the truck, medical had already put theirs in.”
“Have they ever done that before?” I asked.
“Sure,” he said. “But not very often. And usually we see that old black inmate ’cause he’s so slow, but we didn’t see anybody put it in the truck. Why all the questions?”
“I’m just trying to figure out exactly what happened.”
“I can tell you what happened. A dumb inmate tried to escape and became a dark meat shish kebab. Everybody’s saying what a great job I did. Hell, I’ll probably get Officer of the Month. And, if anybody has anything else to say about it, they can say it to my lawyer.”
“You have a lawyer?” I asked. It was the most surprising thing I had heard all day.
“Hell, yes,” he said. “I been grieved and sued so many damn times by these dumb nigger sons a bitches I had to get one. What kind of world do we live in? A bunch of stinkin’ inmates can make me need a lawyer.”
“So you think Johnson was trying to escape,” I said. “How do you think he got into the bag and into the back of the truck?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I really don’t. All I know is that I didn’t put him back there.”
If they were telling the truth, neither Shutt nor Jones had put medical’s bags in the truck. But, somebody had, and there was a good reason why that somebody had, and I intended to find out who that somebody was. But, first, there was something more pressing on my mind.
Chapter 7
Every eleven minutes, someone in the U.S. died of AIDS.
In Florida state prisons, those with HIV outnumbered those in Florida’s free population two to one. In fact, HIV and AIDS was spreading throughout both federal and state prisons at extraordinary rates. Many inmates came to prison already infected with HIV—the result of illicit drug use and unprotected sex. And in prison, it spread. Tattooing, drug use, and especially unprotected sex caused HIV to spread inside prison nearly as quickly as the latest rumor—and only six prison systems in the U.S. distributed condoms. Florida’s was not one of them.
“Can I talk to you for a minute?” I asked Nurse Strickland when I had found her again. This time, she was in exam room two looking through some supplies.
“Sure,” she said as she turned around to face me, her blue eyes sparkling even under the dull fluorescent lights. She was really beautiful, and so delicate. Laura and Anna were beautiful, but they seemed to be as strong as they were pretty, but this woman was pretty in a fragile, vulnerable way, like a ceramic figurine. “Come in,” she continued.
I did. And, when I had closed the door, she looked a little surprised.
“What is it? Are you okay?” she asked, and I sensed her genuine concern. She was a good nurse, I could tell. I had come to the right place.
“I need some help,” I said, “and I really don’t know where to turn.”
“Sure. Anything. What is it?” she asked.
“I don’t really quite know how to say this.”
“Take your time. It’s okay. Whatever it is, we’ll figure it out. Okay?”
“Okay, here it goes. I found out today that the inmate that was killed yesterday had AIDS.”
She nodded her head slowly. “Yes, I know,” she said.
“His blood got all over me. I can’t quit thinking about it. I can’t concentrate on anything else because I think I might have gotten AIDS through his infected blood.”
“Oh, you poor man,” she said, sounding like the kind mother I never had. She was a mother—a caretaker, which I was glad of because I needed taking care of just then. “I know how you feel. Blood is such a scary thing these days. I come in contact with bad blood all the time. It scares the hell out of me, too.”
“Should I be scared?” I asked.
“Well, he did have AIDS. That’s true enough, but unless it penetrated your skin or splashed into your eyes or mouth, you probably have nothing to worry about. And even then you’d have to have an open sore or wound. It’s not likely.”
“Officer Shutt splashed it everywhere. It could’ve gotten into my eyes or mouth. I just don’t know. I haven’t found any cuts or sores, but eyes and mouth I’m just not sure about. What should I do?”
“To be certain, I can give you an AIDS test. That’ll clear it up for you and let you know one way or another. But I wouldn’t worry. Chances are, you didn’t get it, okay?”
I nodded.
She smiled at me reassuringly. “Tell you what,” she said. “I’ll go ahead and give you the test down here now, and it can be our little secret. Nobody else has to know. How does that sound?”
“That sounds great,” I said. “Thank you.”
She motioned for me to have a seat on the exam table.
“Stone might ask you to go on leave until you know for certain, and that would just be a hassle. You shouldn’t be punished because that little black bastard had bad blood. It’s not right. There’s no justice in this world when people like you and me have to risk our lives just to do our jobs.”
I didn’t respond.
She moved around the room quickly and efficiently preparing to take some of my blood out of the place where I most wished it to stay, my body. All the while she spoke of how high the number of inmates with AIDS had become. And how we were all paying the price for their sins.
While she continued to talk about the same things, my mind drifted. I began to think of how ironic it was that I might have AIDS. Not only had I been monogamous and careful even then, but I was extremely careful in daily life as well. My daily routine in prison involved washing my hands so many times as to be almost compulsive. I didn’t take chances with AIDS, hepatitis B, and the like. I had visited enough hospital rooms to minister to someone in the last stages of AIDS to know that I wanted to avoid it at all costs. If I had it, I would not let it get the best of me. I’ll kill myself first, I thought.
When she was finally ready to draw my blood, she put her delicate hands on me: patting, squeezing, caressing, comforting. She even held my hand as she withdrew the blood. And, after she had finished, she gave me a hug. It was, hands down, the
best nursing care I’d ever received.
“How long does it take?” I asked. I remained seated on the exam table, not in a hurry to leave. She busied herself labeling the vile of blood and disposing of the needle.
“About a week, give or take a little. I’ll have to sneak it in with some other tests. I’ll call you the minute I know, okay?”
“Okay. Listen, thanks a lot. You’ve been wonderful. Truly an angel of mercy.”
“You’re very welcome. You’re a special man. I want to take good care of you.”
“Thanks.”
“It’s funny that you called me an angel of mercy,” she said, turning to face me. “I wanted to be a nun when I was a kid. I was raised in a Catholic orphanage.”
“Really?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she said. “But . . .” She made a sheepish grin.
“What?”
“I like men too much,” she said. She walked over to the table and stood between my knees, her face just inches from mine. “Sister said I should become a nurse.”
I nodded my agreement. “Forced celibacy is wrong. It’s going to do nothing but cause increasingly more problems for the Catholic Church, I’m afraid.”
She nodded. “Anyway, I wanted to help people, so I became a nurse.”
“You became an excellent nurse,” I said.
She smiled warmly as tears filled her eyes. “Thank you,” she whispered and leaned in and kissed me on the cheek. I could feel her tears.
“Thank you,” I said.
She turned, pulled some tissues from the flower-covered box on the counter, and dabbed at her eyes. I hopped off the table.
When she had finished wiping her eyes, I asked, “How did you wind up here?”
“In prison, you mean?” She smiled. “Old sour Sister Mary Margaret said I’d wind up in prison one day. I worked for a doctor in Tallahassee that I needed to get away from, and this came open, so here I am.” She backed away from me slightly.
“You needed to get away from the doctor you worked for?” I asked.
“Yes, well, it’s a long story,” she said. “Bottom line is that we had a relationship. He had a wife . . . and kids. And . . . it was a bad scene.”
MICHAEL LISTER'S FIRST THREE SERIES NOVELS: POWER IN THE BLOOD, THE BIG GOODBYE, THUNDER BEACH Page 6
