In the kitchen an island composed of cabinets and a counter top was the only thing that blocked my view. I ran around behind it. When I did, an inmate scurried around the other side on his hands and knees. He was out of the kitchen and moving to the left before I could stop and turn around.
I ran out of the kitchen and followed him into the fellowship hall. When I ran through the door, he swung a metal chair like a baseball bat, two of its legs striking the top of my back and the base of my neck. For the second time within five minutes, I hit the floor. As I attempted to roll over, he hit me again, and sharp streaks of pain bolted along the nerve endings in my back and head, and splotches of bright yellow distorted my vision.
He swung again, and the chair connected with the back of my skull, causing my face to slam into the hard tile floor.
Without thinking, I began rolling toward the inmate. I had no idea where I was, but I rolled. And I rolled into him. Then I rolled through him, knocking his feet out from under him. He went down. I turned. I was face to face with Luther Albright, the inmate orderly who worked for Theo Malcolm.
He reached down into his pocket and brought out a shank, which had once been a toothbrush. The handle had been filed to a sharp point, the brush covered with putty, and two razor blades protruded from it.
He slashed at me. I flung myself back, but not far enough. He sliced both my shirt sleeve and the flesh beneath it with the razors. Then, with the flick of his wrist, he turned it and stabbed at my arm with the sharp spear of the handle. I screamed out as he plunged it into my shoulder.
Reflexively, I began kicking at him. I hit his boots at first, but as I continued, I landed a couple of solid blows to his shins. He then made the mistake of pulling his legs back so I couldn’t reach his shins, and I kicked him in the groin. His eyes widened, his face contorted, and, after a moment, he began to heave.
I stumbled to my feet as he began throwing up. I heard Anna scream from the sanctuary, and I turned to run, but then turned back and kicked Albright in the head. The blow was hard and knocked him out cold.
I ran back down the hallway and into the dark chapel, pausing to let my vision adjust. As soon as I could see, I scanned the entire sanctuary. I didn’t see anyone. And then, the split second of a heavy blow to the base of my skull and I was out, a black hole opening up before me and sucking me into it.
Later, when I opened my eyes, I saw the base of one of the brass candle holders-presumably the blunt instrument that had kissed me goodnight. I rolled over and looked down toward the front. Anna was gone. When I stumbled slowly to my feet, my head grew light and I fell back down again.
Then with the help of the pew, I slowly pulled myself up and held on. When I had my balance, I saw Anna stumbling up the outside aisle.
“You all right?” I asked.
“Nothing that a bottle of Extra-strength Excedrin and a week of sleep won’t fix,” she said. “How about you?”
“The same.”
“Who was it?”
“You don’t know?” I asked.
“No,” she said. “There were two. I think one of them was Abdul Muhammin, but I couldn’t swear to it.”
“Come on,” I said, and we walked into the fellowship hall.
“This the one you saw?”
Luther Albright didn’t look bright at all as he lay unconscious on the floor.
She shook her head. “Who is it?”
“Albright,” I said. “Theo Malcolm’s orderly, and trained investigator that I am, I’m beginning to observe a pattern: Interview Malcolm, get attacked.”
We walked back up to the main hallway to find my keys in the door. I looked at my watch. It was a few minutes after five. I retrieved my keys, unlocked my office, and called security and medical.
“My God,” Anna said, her eyes growing wide as she looked at the shank sticking out of my shoulder.
I looked down at it. “Albright,” I said. “In my excitement to see you alive and well, I forgot about it.”
“It’s not killing you?”
“No,” I said. “I don’t feel anything.” I reached down, took hold of the shank, and yanked on it.
Anna screamed, “NO, JOHN, DON’T,” as the shank pulled free. The dam now gone, the river of blood came gushing out. I stood dumbfounded and watched as a flash flood of my blood rained down on my desk top.
CHAPTER 43
While I was being treated in a small outpatient room at the Pottersville Medical Center, Pete Fortner walked in and stood beside me. Seeming oblivious to the doctor’s put out sighs and incredulous looks at his intrusion, he made no attempt to talk softly or stay out of the way.
“Albright’s in confinement,” he said. “You want me to lock up Muhammin too?”
I thought about it.
“I can lock him up for thirty days while we investigate,” he said. “Don’t have to have a charge or any evidence now.”
“Let’s leave him out,” I said. “I’ve got an idea for a little trap and we’ll need him for it.”
“When we gonna set this little trap?”
“How about tonight?” I said.
“They should’ve never messed with Anna,” he said.
“When I think what could have happened to her while I’m laid out on the floor, I…”
“But it’s obvious it was just to scare you,” he said. “All they did was threaten her.”
“Well, it worked,” I said.
“If this is you scared, I don’t want to see what you call anger,” he said.
I smiled. I knew what he meant-that anger far more than fear was motivating me-but he was only partially right. After what had happened to Nicole, what had almost happened to Anna scared me plenty.
“You ready?” I asked.
“Sure,” he said, “but in this little trap, is Muhammin the spider or the fly?”
“I’m not sure they have a term for what he is,” I said. “In prison vernacular he’s the fly’s bitch.”
Later that night, as a special program was taking place in the sanctuary, Merrill, Pete, and I were hiding in one of the stalls of the visitors restroom in the back. The lights were off and it was extremely dark, only a hint of hallway light peeking beneath the bottom of the door.
Like all toilets in the prison, the one in the stall had no lid, and we were all standing far closer to one another than we would have liked-especially Merrill and Pete.
“Pete, you get any closer and it’ll be sexual harassment,” Merrill said.
I laughed.
“How much longer we got?” Merrill asked.
Pete pushed a small button on the side of his watch and it lit up, bathing his round face in an eerie green glow. Looking at his watch, he said, “The GED class should already be out,” he said. “Shouldn’t be much longer.”
“Tell me again how this works,” Merrill said.
“Malcolm knows that when his class is completed, one of the officers from the chapel service is called to escort his students back to the compound,” I said, “so he slips in over here virtually unseen.”
“For a little butt lovin’,” Pete said.
I shook my head. “I can’t believe we’re arresting somebody for sex.”
Merrill laughed. “I’m sure some shit we’ve done is illegal in some states.”
“Sex with an inmate is a crime,” Pete said.
“Still,” I said.
“It’s not the sex,” Merrill said. “It’s the assault. They could’ve killed Anna, and a little higher and that shank in your shoulder could’ve been in your eye.”
“I know,” I said. “It’s like Watergate, but I still feel like one of those people who scare me the most-rigid, repressed, xenophobic, homophobic-”
“Watergate?” Pete asked.
“Not the crime as much as the coverup,” Merrill said.
“Merrill, you’re pretty smart, aren’t you?” Pete asked.
“But he hides it well,” I said.
“I is on occasion able to muster up a t
hought or two.”
I noticed we were all breathing through our mouths, avoiding as best we could our sense of smell. The unpleasant odor permeating the air was a pungent combination of human waste, mildew, stale smoke, and too many chemicals/too little cleaning.
We froze when we heard approaching footsteps followed by the metallic clicks of a key being inserted into the lock.
“How far along do we have to let them get?” Merrill whispered.
“We’ll have their DNA from the condom when the lab finishes processing it,” I said. “So not very far.”
“Thank you, God,” he said.
“Amen,” Pete said.
Like most straight men, they found homosexuality about as appealing as a lengthy prostate exam by a large-handed doctor who enjoyed his work, and I knew they were anxious to make the arrest before they saw or heard anything that might scar them for life.
That’s why the moment Malcolm and Muhammin were inside with the door shut behind them, they were slinging the stall door open and yelling for the two men to get on the ground.
Coming out of the stall behind them, I laughed.
“What’s so funny?” Merrill said.
“Not taking any chances, are you?”
“These are very dangerous men,” he said with a smile.
Within just a moment, Pete had them cuffed and on their feet, but it had given Malcolm enough time to collect himself.
“What the hell is the meaning of this?” he asked me.
“For assault.”
“First of all,” he said, “nothing went on here tonight. Second of all, if it had it would have been consentual.”
Merrill smiled. “Like little slave girls on the plantation, inmates can’t consent,” he said. “They not free to choose.”
“Not sexual assault,” I said. “Physical. The attack you had him and his friends make on me in the education building and on me and Ms. Rodden in the chapel.”
“This is absurd,” Malcolm said. “This’ll never stick. You can’t even prove we’ve ever-”
“Actually,” I said, “we have a used condom, so one of you better be the first to flip and let us know everything-including who helped in the education building attack.”
They looked at each other suspiciously, and I knew it was only a matter of time before both would spill in hopes of a deal.
Looking back at me, Malcolm asked, “How’d you know?”
“When I found out you hadn’t worked with Bunny I knew you had come over here for a different reason,” I said. “Your over-familiarity with your orderlies, your attempt to cover it up by having me attacked-their willingness to do it for you, the used condom, the fact that it was in the visitors bathroom.”
“Did Nicole see them?” Pete asked. “Is that why they killed her?”
“Whoa, wait just a minute,” Malcolm said. “I didn’t have anything to do with the death of that little girl. I swear.”
“Sort of makes you wish we cared and you could afford Johnny Cochran, doesn’t it?” I said.
CHAPTER 44
When I walked into my trailer, the phone was ringing, and something about hearing the unanswered rings echoing through the emptiness made me sad.
“Is everything okay?” Susan asked. “The sergeant in the control room said there was an incident in the chapel.”
“Sorry I didn’t call you back,” I said. “Everything’s fine.”
“You sure? You sound sad.”
“Well, I’m not anymore.”
“Good,” she said, pausing before adding, “How do you feel about phone sex?”
“I’m in favor of it,” I said.
She laughed. It was a good laugh. Warm, genuine, slightly seductive.
“I’d like to see if I could make you come from three hundred miles away,” she said.
“You just did,” I said with a laugh.
She laughed again, then said, “I’m serious. Wanna try our hand at it-so to speak. You up for it-or could you be?”
I laughed again.
“Well?” she asked.
I thought about it, another idea occurring to me. We’d miss a little sleep, but I didn’t sleep much anyway.
“We could,” I said, “or…”
“Or what?”
“Don’t get me wrong,” I said. “It’s not that I don’t like your idea.”
“But …?”
“But,” I said, “we could both jump in our cars and in two-and-a-half hours meet at a motel in the middle.”
“Oh,” she sighed. “I like that idea. I like that idea a lot.” She started to say something, but broke off.
When she hesitated, I said, “But…?”
“No buts,” she said. “I was just thinking, with cell phones we could try both our ideas-mine on the way, yours when we got there.”
“I like the way you think, woman,” I said. “And I know what I want you to get me for Christmas.”
“What?”
“A cell phone,” I said. “The only one I have belongs to the prison.”
She laughed. “Honey, after tonight,” she said, “you won’t be able to wait for Christmas. You’ll rush out as soon as you can and buy one for yourself.”
“And what do I tell them when they ask me why I want the one with the headset?”
“That you’re a very lucky man,” she said. “Where do you want to meet? Are we really gonna do this-drive all that way just for one sexual experience?”
“You’re right, that’s ridiculous,” I said. “We better make it six or seven.”
“I see you haven’t lost your appetite,” she said.
“No,” I said, “Webster’s still has my picture by the word ‘insatiable.’”
“Can you wait two-and-a-half hours?” she asked. “I want you hungry.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll be starving.”
Without hesitating, I rushed out of my empty trailer and jumped into my truck, driving as if I hadn’t just gotten a ticket.
Only a sliver of moon peeked out from behind a smoky cloud, leaving the night dark and shadowless, and I could see just the short distance that my headlights illuminated.
What all am I not seeing? I wondered.
Before I could even begin to consider all that question implied, I turned on the radio.
Tonight’s not the night for contemplation and introspection, I thought, but pleasure and passion.
And though the second thought set off a little alarm inside my head, I ignored it, concentrating instead on singing with Christopher Cross on the radio and riding like the wind.
When I arrived in Phoenix City, I found the motel “up on a hill, with a little blue general or admiral or some little soldier thingy on the sign” just like she had described.
Even better was the fact that I also found her waiting for me.
When I pulled in beside her, she stepped out of her car, and as quickly as I could jump out of my truck, we were devouring each other. In the small space between my old Chevy and her new Lexus, we kissed and hugged and groped like a couple of teens with no place of our own to go.
Eventually, she touched my shoulder and I winced.
“What happened to your arm?” she asked.
“Got in a little fight,” I said. “It’s nothing.”
As we continued to kiss, she slid along her car. I followed. Before I knew it, we were in her backseat tearing at each other’s clothes.
“Why waste time checking in?” she asked.
Beneath her black leather skirt with the off-center slit, I found thong panty style sheer hose-all that stood between me and Eden. Pulling her black sweater off not only tossed her hair in the most seductive of ways, but revealed a sleek black satin Miracle Bra with a gold embroidered heart-shaped cut-out.
For a long breathless moment, I sat back and drank in her beauty like wine. Forget the bra, she was the miracle, and in no time I was intoxicated.
She leaned forward, reached back, unhooked her bra, tossing it in the front
seat where it landed on the steering wheel.
“Bon appétit,” she said, then, cupping her hand behind my head, brought me to her breast.
When we had finished the appetizer, she said, “I brought you something.”
“That wasn’t it?” I asked. “Because I was thinking you could just give me that again.”
“I will,” she said. “Again and again and again. As often as you like. I’m the gift that keeps on giving.”
I smiled. “You are a-” I started, but stopped as my cell phone rang.
“Hello,” I said, my voice still hoarse with passion.
“Chaplain Jordan,” the unmistakably smooth voice of Bobby Earl Caldwell said.
For a long moment after I hung up, I sat there in stunned silence.
“What is it?” Susan asked. “What’s wrong?”
“Bobby Earl Caldwell wants to see me,” I said.
“What for?”
“Apparently to offer me a job.”
“Threatening you hasn’t worked,” she said, “so now he’s gonna try bribery?”
CHAPTER 45
Bobby Earl’s 19th Century plantation home was smaller than a Hollywood sound stage-if you didn’t count the garage-and as gaudy and distasteful as a televangelist’s studio set.
“I believe God’s children should have the best,” he said, leading me through large, lavishly decorated rooms with ornately hand-painted ceilings and faux marble fireplaces toward his back porch.
“Obviously,” I said, “but did you ask God how she felt about it?”
Ignoring me, he said, “I think our prosperity is directly related to our spirituality.”
The dingy little trailer I called home flashed in my mind, and I thought, you might be right, but then I pictured Mother Teresa, and thought, then again maybe not.
“What do you think?” he asked.
“That God wants what’s best for us,” I said. “Not necessarily for us to have the best.”
He nodded and looked as if he were intently considering what I had just said. “I like that,” he said. “But couldn’t that be the same thing?”
“Not often,” I said.
Taking the day off without explaining why, I had left early, driven fast, and arrived by midmorning.
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