“Of course.”
“I’ve been wanting to talk to you anyway,” he said, and took a deep breath. “I believe I’m here for a reason.”
“I do, too,” I said.
“Good,” he said. “Because I think you’re part of it.”
“What do you mean?”
“I think I’ve been put here to learn from you,” he said. “And I wanted to see if we could set up a weekly counseling session.”
“Sure,” I said.
Though he sounded sincere enough, I distrusted the compliments of inmates. Too often, by which I mean nearly a hundred percent of the time, they are the manipulative part of an angle being worked. I wish it were otherwise, but it’s the reality of prison, and to forget it, to be vain or blinded by flattery is to invite danger, even disaster. The challenge is to maintain professionalism without developing paranoia, to have compassion without becoming a caretaker who’s constantly taken advantage of. It’s a precarious position and few of us ever succeed. You get used to the negativity, the hostility, the anger and aggression. It’s in the open. You see it coming. What you have to look out for is kindness, is gratitude, is civility.
“Would you pull my file?” he asked. “I want you to see something.”
“I already have,” I said, tapping one of the folders on the desk. “To arrange the furlough.”
“So you know what I’m in here for?”
I nodded. “L and L,” I said.
“Yes,” he said. “Lewd and lascivious. But I didn’t rape or molest or do anything that was lewd or lascivious. You know what I did? I took a leak in a park at night. That’s it. I was jogging at night and had to go. So, I found a tree and went.”
I picked up his record and glanced over it as he spoke.
“I got sentenced to one year and one day,” he continued. “Just one day shorter and I’d’ve served my time in county jail. Judge probably saved my life. I was supposed to have an accident in their jail. I’m telling you this because I’m not a criminal. But since I’ve been in, I’ve had some serious time to evaluate my life, and I want to use this time-all this time I have on my hands-to make some changes. Some core kinds of changes.”
“I think that’s exactly what you should do,” I said. “And I’d be happy to help you in any way I can.”
“Exactly,” he said. “I want to leave this place in top physical, emotional, and spiritual condition.”
“You can start by honestly answering a few questions,” I said.
“Sure,” he said.
“Are you having an affair with Bunny Caldwell?”
His eyes grew wide. “No,” he said emphatically. “Where did you hear that?”
“Have you ever?”
“Never,” he said.
“What were you doing in the hall that night?”
“Going to the bathroom,” he said. “Honest. I mean, it’d’ve been all right with me if I got a closer look at her, but I really did have to use the bathroom.”
“Like in the park?” I asked. “Seems like your bladder’s getting you in some sticky situations.”
He let out a small ironic laugh and shook his head to himself.
The banging of the heavy metal door of the chapel and loud conversations announced the arrival of the rest of the inmates, most of whom paused at the office door, straining to see who was in with me, attempting to ascertain the reason for his presence by his posture and body language. I knew the next stop for many of them was my office door. Chapel traffic had increased dramatically since Nicole had been killed, most of the new visitors, voyeurs driven by a morbid curiosity to see the crime scene.
“Is there anything else about that night you can tell me?” I asked. “Anything? No matter how small it seems.”
“Well, there is one thing that struck me as funny,” he said. “It’s probably nothing, but…”
“But what?”
“Remember when we were in the bathroom and Officer Whitfield said there were two convicts in the stalls?”
“Yeah.”
“And then he said ‘you convicts come out’ or something like that.”
“And you came out,” I said. “And the other man said he wasn’t finished or something.”
“Exactly,” he said.
“What’s funny about that?” I asked.
“Just that the man in the other stall wasn’t an inmate,” he said. “But Officer Whitfield called him one and he didn’t correct him.”
“You sure he wasn’t an inmate?” I asked.
“Positive,” he said. “I saw him.”
“Who was it?”
“That guy that’s supposed to help Bobby Earl with security,” he said. “The warden’s nephew.”
“DeAndré Stone?”
“Yeah,” he said. “DeAndré Stone.”
CHAPTER 29
“So DeAndré Stone was in the chapel the night Nicole was murdered?” Anna asked.
“According to an inmate,” Merrill said.
“Actually, according to the control room logs,” I said.
His eyes grew wide. “Oh, my damn.”
It was lunchtime. Anna, Merrill, and I were at Rudy’s in a booth next to the front window.
“And why exactly did Coel and Whitfield fail to mention this?” Anna asked.
I followed her gaze across the diner to a table in the far corner where Coel and Whitfield sat together.
“They say they never saw him,” I said. “Even after I showed them the logs.”
“Is that possible?” Anna asked.
“Just ask him,” Merrill said, jerking his head toward me. “Anything’s possible.”
During the day, Rudy’s was the quintessential small town diner. Its lunch buffet was a Pottersville standard, evidenced by the trucks parked out front like horses tied to hitching posts. All the meals at Rudy’s, like the people who prepared them, were country-fried, and the smell of old grease hung in the air like heavy humidity. The smoking section in Rudy’s was flexible-it shifted with the pass of an ashtray-and most of his patrons smoked while they ate, probably because it killed the taste of the food. The waitresses were young girls with nice backsides poured into Levi’s jeans, both of which seemed to be job requirements.
“Did he come in with the Caldwells?” Anna asked.
“A good bit later.”
“And you never saw him?”
I shook my head.
“So what was he doing inside?” she asked.
“Not protecting Nicole,” Merrill said.
“You gonna add him to your suspect list?” Anna said.
“Yeah,” I said. “Near the top.”
Rudy’s was filled with a variety of people ranging from the president of the local co-op to a couple of pulpwood truck drivers. Several staff members from PCI were at a table together and a smattering of brown correctional officer uniforms could be seen throughout. I wasn’t sure if Merrill felt it as forcefully as I did, but he was the only African-American in the entire establishment.
With Carla in school, our food was brought to us by Rudy himself-he was cook and waiter today. We had ordered off the menu rather than getting the buffet, in an attempt to be more healthy-a failed attempt, we realized, when the food was placed before us. We had ordered grilled chicken and baked potatoes. The chicken had been grilled in butter and the potato was filled with butter and sour cream.
“Here’s to our arteries,” Merrill said after I asked the blessing. “Just like Mom used to make.”
Anna and I both laughed as we raked the small mountain of sour cream from our potatoes. The diner was set up with booths against the plate glass windows in front and a bar with built-in stools wrapping around the open galley. In the corner, a jukebox came alive with a country song that made me feel like drinking.
“I’ve looked at the files of the inmates in the hallway the night of the murder,” Anna said. “Abdul Muhammin’s a cold-blooded killer. What’s he doing working in the chapel?”
“He’s the one t
hey sent when I said I wanted a well-behaved, knowledgeable Muslim clerk.”
She shook her head. “I don’t like him being up there so close to you,” she said. “Watch him closely.”
“I will,” I said.
“And now I will, too,” Merrill said.
“The best of them is Dexter Freeman. Then it’s a toss up between Paul Register and Cedric Porter. But just because they’re not violent inmates doesn’t mean they couldn’t’ve done this.”
The bell above the entrance door rang as Dad and Jake walked in. Dad waved, Jake nodded and they took the only open booth, which was on the opposite side of the diner from us.
“Jake sure looked relieved when he saw a booth open in the white section,” Merrill said. “I reckon he rather starve than eat in the colored section.”
“Me, too,” I said.
“Well, me, too,” Merrill said.
Anna looked confused.
“We don’t want there to be no colored section,” Merrill explained.
From various tables around the room, I could hear sound bytes of southern living.
“They say that every year,” one of the truckers said of the paper mill in Panama City closing.
“But it’s just to make us grateful for our jobs and make sure we don’t ask for a raise. It’s not gonna shut down. It’s just a rumor.”
The other trucker shook his head. “You used to say the same thing about the one in Port St. Joe, and look what happened.”
At another table someone in a suit was saying, “Affirmative action is just unconstitutional. There’s no two ways about it. I’m for fairness. Give the job to the person who deserves it. It’s unfair to do anything else.”
The most amusing conversation came from the booth just over my shoulder where a man in blue jeans was trying to convince another man in a telephone company uniform to take out his exwife. “I know the two of you would hit it off. She’s really great.… Really.”
“I don’t know,” Telephone Company Man said.
“Just tell me you’ll think about it,” Blue Jeans said. “She really is great. And this alimony shit is killin’ me.”
As I scanned the room, I felt someone staring at me, and I turned to see Colonel Patterson glaring at me from a stool at the counter. Our eyes locked briefly, but then from shame and embarrassment over how I had behaved following Nicole’s murder, I looked away. I hadn’t told anybody what had happened-not even Merrill and Anna. It was just too humiliating.
Unable to bring myself to take another bite, I dropped my fork onto my plate.
“That’s about all of that I can take,” I said, pushing my plate toward the center of the table.
“You don’t need to eat that shit anyway,” Merrill said. “Your body’s the temple of the Holy Spirit.”
“So is your-”
“I’m not so sure about mine,” he said.
I smiled.
“Any headway with the Caldwells yet?” Anna asked.
“Dad’s working with NOPD on it,” I said. “And I’ve asked to meet with them.”
“That’s it?”
“Except for rumors on the compound,” I said. “And you know how reliable those are. But I have heard one over and over.”
“Yeah?” Merrill said. “What’s that?”
“That Bunny has a thing for black men,” I said.
“Well, who doesn’t?” Anna asked, winking at Merrill.
Vigorously nodding his agreement, Merrill said to her, “He’ll get to them. He’s got a secret weapon.”
“Oh yeah, what’s that?” she asked.
“Me,” he said with a broad smile. “I a brother. And Bunny love herself a brother.”
As I walked out of Rudy’s, I spotted Tim Whitfield heading toward his new sports car parked in a pasture across the street.
Jogging to catch up with him, I noticed there were plenty of spaces in Rudy’s lot.
“Nice,” I said, nodding toward his new car.
“Thanks,” he said. “It was a gift.”
“A gift?” I asked.
“From God,” he said.
Directly? I wondered, or through Bobby Earl?
“He wants his children to have the best.”
The lonely old highway running in front of Rudy’s was straight and flat and empty, stretching away for several miles in both directions. It was scarred and pocked and had deep ruts caused by loaded log trucks. I was surprised Tim would put his new car on it.
“How long have you had it?” I asked.
“Just got it,” he said.
Payment for a job well done?
Pulling a handkerchief out of his pocket, he wiped a speck of dust off the front quarter panel. “I wasn’t about to park it in front of Rudy’s and get oyster shell dust all over it.”
Glancing over at my old Chevy S-10, he said, “About time for you to get a new one, isn’t it?”
I smiled. “I haven’t gotten my other one broken in all the way yet,” I said.
“Seriously,” he said. “As a man of God, what you drive and where you live reflects on God. Brother Bobby has an eight-part teaching on prosperity that you need to hear. It’s in the chapel library. You should listen to it.”
“Speaking of Brother Bobby,” I said, “you sure you didn’t see his security guard that night? Maybe on the compound or-”
“I’ve told you,” he said. “I didn’t see him. You sure he was even there?”
“What about in the bathroom?” I asked. “Someone said he was in the bathroom the same time you were.”
“You were in there,” he said. “Did you see him?”
“They said he was in the stall.”
“Well, I didn’t look in any stalls,” he said. “Who’s they anyway? You talkin’ ’bout some inmate?”
I didn’t answer.
“I gotta go,” he said. “Colonel Patterson’ll chew my a-behind if I’m late getting back from lunch.”
He jumped in, cranked and revved the loud engine, and turned around. I smiled when I saw the little Jesus fish on his bumper, but stopped as I caught a glimpse of the Louisiana license plate beneath it. Was all his religiosity, like Malcolm’s extreme racism, just a cover?
I motioned for him, and he rolled down the window.
“You went all the way to Louisiana to get your car?” I asked.
He nodded. “It’s where I could get the best deal.”
As he peeled off and sped away, I said, “I bet.”
CHAPTER 30
I loved the intensity with which children played, though watching them had always been a disturbing mixture of pleasure and pain. As I stood near the fence and watched the raucous play of the wild angels of Pottersville Elementary School, I had to blink back tears.
For several years I had been unable to see a child without thinking of Martin Fisher, but today, as I watched the children on the playground, it was Nicole I thought I saw among the others playing with such wild and reckless abandon.
After watching for as long as I could, I turned and walked down the sidewalk toward the inmates from the public works squad. They were repairing a section of the fence under the watchful eye of city employees.
I was used to seeing inmates working around Pottersville. Each year public works squads saved the city tens of thousands of dollars in labor, and only offenders without violent crimes could participate in them. Now I looked on the scene of inmates working so close to children with fear and suspicion, each child becoming as trusting and vulnerable as Nicole. Technically, the work crew wasn’t at the school, and they were probably far enough away from the children to satisfy the regulation, but it was a lot closer than I would have liked.
“Did somebody die, Chaplain?” one of the inmates asked when I walked up.
I shook my head.
“Then what’re you doin’ here?” he asked.
I walked past them and over to Phillip Linton, the city employee in charge of maintenance.
“How’s it goin’, JJ?” he asked.<
br />
“Okay,” I said. “You?”
“I’m great,” he said. “Never better. If it got any better I wouldn’t know what to do.”
That was always Linton’s response, and it always sounded the same way to me-like he was trying to convince himself as much as me that what he was saying was true.
“What brings you out here?” he asked.
“I need to speak to one of your inmates for a few minutes,” I said.
“Sure,” he said. “Which one?”
“Porter,” I said.
“Cedric,” he yelled. “Chaplain needs a moment of your time.”
“Yes, sir,” he said.
I walked down the sidewalk next to the chainlink fence to meet him.
“You got out of the infirmary awfully quick,” I said. “I was surprised when they told me you were already back at work.”
He shrugged. “I just a convict. I can work with a headache.”
“Let’s move down this way a little,” I said, leading him away from the earshot of the others and further away from the children.
“You found Nicole’s killer yet?”
“No,” I said. “But we will. And again, I’m so sorry but I need to ask you a few more questions about the night she was killed.”
“I hope y’all catch him soon,” he said, “’fore he finally kill me.”
“Who?”
He shook his head at me in disbelief. “Bobby Earl.”
“You think he’s the one who tried to have you killed?” I asked.
He nodded. “More than once,” he said, pulling up his shirt to show me a jagged scar running down the side of his abdomen.
“Why haven’t you checked in?” I asked.
If an inmate felt his life was in danger-for any reason: gambling debts, refusing to perform sexual favors, retaliation from an officer-he could check himself into protective management, where he would be locked in a cell and watched closely while the inspector investigated the matter.
“’Cause,” he said. “If I in a cell, I can’t run or hide or fight back. Least out here I can see ’em comin’. Anyway, don’t worry about me. You just find out who killed my little girl. Then he better be the one lookin’ over his shoulder.”
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