“How could God ask for the sacrifice of this innocent lamb whose very life was the heartbeat of his father?
“How could Abraham do it? Was he mad? Or was he, as the three world religions that sprang from him claim, the most faithfilled and faithful man ever to live?
“These questions are as old as mankind, and they’ve been asked by so many of us at one time or another in one way or another. And in the deepest part of our hearts, I think we’ve all come to the same terrifying conclusion: We don’t know.”
Anna’s intense eyes rested heavily upon me, her head nodding agreement and support. I looked at her often.
“Just as we don’t know why God allows bad things to happen to good people. We don’t know why God lets children suffer and die. We don’t know.
“I’m not saying there aren’t answers to these questions. In fact, there are some pretty convincing ones, but none of the answers, no matter how logical or convincing, can ever remove that wordless darkness from the corners of our hearts and minds that says we don’t know. Not really.
“Let me ask you the real question in my heart and on my mind. Why did God allow little Nicole be murdered?
“I don’t know. I wish to God I did. She knows I’ve asked that question a thousand times.
“But I’ve been thinking more and more that perhaps that’s not the right question anyway. God didn’t kill Nicole. God didn’t ask for the blood of this little lamb to be shed. So, really, shouldn’t the question be: why did you kill Nicole?”
Time seemed to stand still. No one moved. No one made a sound. No one looked directly at me.
Unfortunately, no one answered my question either.
“Whoever killed Nicole,” I continued. “That’s who we need to ask. Why’d you do it? How could you? We can ask God, ‘Why’d you let them do it?’ but only the murderer can answer ‘Why’d you do it?’”
As I spoke, I thought about Susan and how often she had sat in a church and listened to me preach. She had been a good wife in so many ways, and now that there was a possibility that we might have a future together, I found myself missing her.
“So why was Nicole taken from us?
“I don’t know.
“I do know that God was the first one to grieve. Tears fell from the eyes of God long before they fell from anyone else’s.
“Abraham, the madman of faith, lifted his knife to plunge it into the heart of his son, Isaac, and God said: ‘NO! Don’t touch him. It was just a test. I just wanted to see how much you loved me. How much you trusted me.’ Then Abraham looked, and there in a thicket was a ram. God had provided a lamb.
“One of the names of the place where Abraham did this unspeakable thing means: ‘the Lord shall see.’ God saw Abraham’s heart. And that was the whole point. Not the sacrifice of innocence. Not murder. God provided a lamb. Not Abraham. God.
“The blood of the lamb shed in this building was not for God. Not because God wanted it, but because of the evil in her murderer’s heart. And just like on Mount Moriah, God sees. Sees that heart of hate and darkness. Sees the heart that has rejected the lamb God has provided.
“I don’t understand. I don’t have the answers. But I trust in love. Trust in God. Trust that if my heart breaks for Nicole then God’s breaks all the more.
“What can I offer you today?
“What Christianity, my religion, offers. ‘Christianity,’ in the words of Frederick Buechner, ‘points to the cross and says that, practically speaking, there is no evil so dark and so obscene—not even this—but that God cannot turn it to good.’
“What do we do then? Let me tell you what I’m going to do. I’m still going to question, still going to doubt, still going to struggle, but I’m also going to hang on, to hold on, to have faith, to trust. Because…
“I believe. In spite of myself—in spite of all I’ve seen, I still believe. I trust. I choose love. Choose to believe that God is love.
“God asked for Abraham’s trust. Not his son. Today she asks us for the same thing. To trust. To trust that her heart is broken even more than ours. To trust that Nicole is with her, in the warm embrace of her love.
“Trust God.
“Jesus did,” I said.
And look what happened to him, a voice responded inside my head.
“Nicole did,” I said.
“And I’m trying to.”
CHAPTER 50
“I’ve been trying to get up here and see you,” Dexter said, walking up to me as soon as the service had ended. “They said you were gone.”
“I have been,” I said. “Just got back today.”
Most of the other inmates, staff, and visitors seemed to be getting out of the chapel as quickly as they could, including the Caldwells, though I had asked to speak with them when the service had concluded.
“I’m glad you’re back,” he said. “I’ve been needin’ to talk to you.”
“How have you been?” I asked, motioning for him to walk with me toward the back.
“I’m all right,” he said. “I really appreciate you coming to Mom’s funeral. It meant more than you’ll ever know.”
“I was glad I could,” I said. “Would you mind waiting in here for me? I need to see the Caldwells before they—”
“Your dad’s arresting Bunny Caldwell,” Pete said, running up to us.
“What?”
“They’re in your office.”
Without waiting for Dexter’s response, I ran across the sanctuary and into my office, Pete following right behind me.
Inside, Dad and Jake were cuffing Bunny Caldwell as Daniels read her rights. Bobby Earl stood behind them, demanding to know why they were doing it. Beyond Bobby Earl, next to the door, DeAndré Stone looked on without obvious emotion.
“What’re you doin’?” I asked Dad.
“What’s it look like?” Jake said.
“We’re arresting her for the murder of her natural daughter, Nicole Ann Caldwell,” Daniels said. “She—”
“Didn’t do it,” I said. “Don’t—”
“I told you to stay the hell out of my way, boy,” Daniels said, but Dad stopped what he was doing and looked over at me, eye brows raised.
“I’m telling you,” I said. “She didn’t do it.”
He nodded, his expression signifying his trust in me.
“Well, one of them did,” Daniels said. “And—”
“No,” I said. “They didn’t.”
“No one else could have,” he said. “Hell, I’ll arrest them both and let the courts decide—”
“And I guarantee my testimony would create enough reasonable doubt so they’d be acquitted.”
As Daniels began to protest, Dad started taking the cuffs off Bunny.
“What the hell are you doin’?” Daniels yelled at him.
“Thank you,” Bunny said to me.
“Yeah, thanks,” Bobby Earl said.
“He’s the one you need to arrest,” I said, nodding toward DeAndré Stone. “He’s the one behind virtually every crime the Caldwells have been accused of.”
As if untouchable, DeAndré let out a little laugh, but his eyes remained hard and flat as a shark’s.
“Aside from all his criminal activity in New Orleans and the abuse Bunny has suffered from him, he’s been supplying the inmate population with drugs.”
Bobby Earl put his arm around Bunny protectively.
A smile spread across DeAndré’s face, but didn’t reach his eyes. “I’d like to see you try to prove that,” he said.
I turned to Daniels, Pete, and Dad. “Inmates send money to a post office box in New Orleans—supposedly to one of Bobby Earl’s ministries, but it really goes to DeAndré for the drugs he brings in. That’s why it’s sent prior to Bobby Earl’s coming in and not afterwards like all the others.”
Though obviously still feeling invincible, DeAndré’s smile begin to fade a little, the first cracks in the seemingly secure foundation of his crime fortress beginning to show.
�
�The two condoms we found with saliva and vomitus on them were not from someone having oral sex, but from DeAndré muling the drugs in to Officer Whitfield. He puts the drugs in the condoms and swallows them, then vomits them up once he’s in the chapel. That’s what he was doing with Whitfield in the bathroom the night of the murder.”
Bobby Earl looked at DeAndré with contempt and disbelief, saying his name the way people have said that of Judas for the past two millennia.
The cold, hard, blank expression on DeAndré’s face didn’t change, his emotionless affect revealing the years of repression and hardening that had resulted in his current soullessness.
“The money found in here that night was Whitfield’s cut,” I continued. “For helping with distribution, he gets a shiny new sports car and stacks of tax-free contributions. Between the prints on the money and the DNA of the saliva on the condoms, there should be enough to bring charges, but in case they aren’t, I had Pete arrest Whitfield ahead of time so he couldn’t be here to receive the delivery. DeAndré’s probably got a couple of condoms full of crack or heroin inside him right now.”
Turning toward DeAndré, Jake started reaching for his cuffs, but before he could get them out, DeAndré pulled a 9mm from beneath his coat and pressed the barrel to Jake’s forehead.
Dropping the cuffs, Jake raised his hands. “It’s cool, man,” he said, though his voice told a different story. “Just relax.”
Having checked their weapons at the control station, Dad and Jake weren’t armed. In fact, except for the shotguns in the towers and the weapons locked in the arsenal, DeAndré Stone had the only firearm inside the prison.
“DeAndré,” Bobby Earl said, “don’t—”
“Shut your stupid mouth, Bobby Earl,” he said.
“But—” Bobby Earl began, then suddenly stopped as DeAndré pointed the pistol at him.
“I’m ‘bout to walk outta this motherfucker,” DeAndré said. “Any y’all follow me gonna get capped.”
He eased out of the door into the hallway, turned to head out of the chapel, and saw Merrill coming in, .38 drawn. Before Merrill could say or do anything, DeAndré fired a round, missing Merrill and shattering the glass of the outer chapel doors, then ran into the sanctuary.
“Figured we might need this,” Merrill said, holding up the revolver as we met in the hall.
Still shaken, Jake had yet to move, but Dad and Daniels weren’t far behind behind us as Merrill and I rushed toward the sanctuary.
CHAPTER 51
“Black men not dying fast enough for you?” Merrill yelled to Stone.
DeAndré fired a round toward the back of the sanctuary for his response.
“I guess it’s unthinkable for the control room to pat down the warden’s nephew when he come in,” Merrill said, as we ran toward the sanctuary doors.
A few inmates who had been hanging around after the service began pouring out of the doors in a panic and suddenly Merrill and I were running upstream.
We each pulled open one of the double doors, ducked in the sanctuary, and crouched behind the back pew.
“Don’t fuck with me,” DeAndré shouted from the front of the sanctuary.
I dropped all the way down to the floor and looked beneath the pews. I could see the black pant legs of his suit and the expensive black shoes beneath them, but I also saw another pair of legs on which were blue pants above inmate boots.
I edged to the end of the pew and glanced down the center aisle. DeAndré was holding Dexter Freeman in front of him, his gun jammed against Dexter’s right temple.
“Come out where I can see you right now,” DeAndré said, “or I’ll splatter this nigga’s brains all over the frontta your church house.”
All I could think about was Dexter’s family, of how Trish, Moriah, and Dexter Jr. were just about to get him back. I recalled his son’s little navy-blue suit, his daughter’s white lace collar and imagined seeing them wearing them again for their father’s funeral.
When we didn’t get up, DeAndré yelled, “NOW, GOD DAMMIT.”
I glanced back at Merrill, and when I did, I saw Daniels edging toward the sanctuary door. As he stepped inside the sanctuary, a round fired from DeAndré’s gun shattered the glass of the door beside him and he jumped back into the hall.
“I got nothing to lose,” DeAndré said. “I’m probably gonna die anyway, so whoever gets close to me is going with me. Get my uncle in here.”
Standing up very slowly, I walked over to the center aisle and faced DeAndré.
“What the fuck you doin’?” Merrill asked.
Dexter’s eyes were wide with fright and moist with tears. The tendons in his neck were stretched taut under his shiny, sweat-covered skin, and when he swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple rose and fell slowly.
As Merrill stood up, DeAndré loosened his grip on Dexter and turned his gun toward him. When he did, I took several running steps and dove, tackling both men to the ground.
As we went down, DeAndré fired his gun and I took a bullet in the right shoulder. My skin and muscle felt as though they had been branded, a searing pain arcing out in every direction like the phosphorescent tails of Fourth of July fireworks.
As we hit the floor, DeAndré fired again. The side of Dexter’s head exploded and the pain in my shoulder was sucked into the vacuum in my soul. Suddenly, all the fight was out of me and I lay there on the floor, unable to move. Dexter was dead. I had failed again.
Merrill kicked the gun out of DeAndré’s hand and it bounced across the floor. He then rushed forward and grabbed it.
Merrill said, “How’s the arm?”
I shook my head. “I can’t feel anything.”
He glanced over at Dexter’s body and shook his head. “He was dead before we got here.”
We would never know—I would never know if I had done something differently, just one little thing, if the outcome would have been different and Dexter would have been spared.
After helping me to my feet, Merrill handed me the two guns. A violent wave of nausea swept over me as I realized I was holding the instrument of Dexter’s death in my hand and I dropped both guns on the pew.
Merrill then grabbed DeAndré and jerked him up.
“We got unfinished business,” he said. “Show me whatcha got, dog.”
DeAndré lunged for him before he even finished saying it.
Grabbing Merrill by the throat with both hands, DeAndré did exactly what Merrill wanted him to do—leave himself open to body shots.
With the hand speed of a fast light heavyweight, Merrill threw a barrage of punches into DeAndré’s abdomen. Unaware that Merrill was attempting to burst one of the condoms, DeAndré saw it as a challenge to keep choking him. As he did, Merrill continued to drive uppercuts into his gut, drilling them with such frequency and force that by the time he finally let go, DeAndré was coughing up blood.
Dad and Daniels ran up, Edward Stone on their heels.
“You all right?” Dad asked.
I shook my head and nodded toward Dexter.
“What the hell’s going on here?” Stone asked when he saw Merrill using his nephew as a heavy bag.
“If he’s still alive when Merrill gets finished, I’m arresting him,” Dad said.
“What’s the charge?” he asked.
“Narcotics possession with intent,” he said. “Bringing a firearm into a state prison facility, and murder.”
“Murder?” he asked, just as he caught sight of Dexter’s body on the floor.
“And I’m sure NOPD’ll have a lot of other charges to add before it’s over,” I said.
“He sure as hell didn’t do that,” Stone said. He looked at Daniels who nodded, then looked at me. “Is this your doing? Have you been shot? What’re these weapons doing in here?”
“Your nephew brought one of them in and killed Dexter Freeman with it,” I said.
“He did no such thing,” he said. “And he’s obviously not in possession of drugs, let alone trying to distribute the
m.”
As if on cue, Merrill drove one final punch into DeAndré’s gut and he doubled over, falling to his knees and beginning to vomit.
Among the contents emptying from his stomach were three condoms filled with what looked to be small crack rocks.
Stone’s eyes grew nearly to the size of his glasses as he saw them.
“Looks like one of those has a hole in it,” Merrill said. “Get enough straight in your blood stream and you’ll save the taxpayers some money.” He smiled broadly. “Not to mention how poetic it’d be.”
“Inspector,” Stone said to Daniels. “Secure this crime scene. The rest of you get the hell out of here.”
“But—” I began.
“NOW,” he shouted. “Get the hell out of my institution right now.”
“Come on, Son,” Dad said. “We need to get you to a hospital anyway.”
CHAPTER 52
Three days later, I stopped by Anna’s office to get some information.
“How are you?” she asked.
“The pain in my shoulder is manageable.”
She frowned and gave me an understanding look, but didn’t say anything, which I appreciated.
Vividly expressing her duality, Anna’s office was both hard and soft, tough and tender. Like the other institutional offices, pale painted cinder block and tile floor conducted cold and enhanced echoes. However, Anna’s warmth radiated from her large collection of porcelain, painted and cloth angels, and it was the soothing sounds of soft rock that echoed through the small room when her laughter did not.
“Can you tell me what kind of time Cedric Porter has left?” I asked.
“Sure,” she said, immediately typing his name into her computer. “Why?”
“Because he killed his daughter,” I said. “And I want to make sure he’ll be around for a very long time.”
She stopped typing. “He killed Nicole?”
I nodded.
“Can you prove it?”
I shook my head. “That’s why I want to make sure he’ll be around for a while.”
“I’ll check,” she said. “But wait, he works outside the—”
Blood of the Lamb (a John Jordan Mystery) Page 23
