“I don’t think so. Maddox wouldn’t because it was his secret, too. A secret that he more than anyone wanted to keep quiet. Not to mention that it was a crime and he would have lost everything. And Johnson’s an inmate. Nobody would believe him, and he didn’t seem to mind it too much. He was being treated like a king: drugs, alcohol, no work, and no trouble.”
“There’s always the possibility of a motive that we can’t see.”
“There’s always that, but I don’t think so. It feels wrong.”
“What do you mean?”
“If it were just motive, that would be one thing, but it’s means, as well. I mean, if someone like Skipper wanted to kill an inmate, he wouldn’t do it in the garbage truck. He would do it by having him killed on the rec field or shot during an escape attempt or beaten to death in confinement.”
“Like he tried with you.”
“Exactly,” I said. “But, there’s more. All but one of the murders were particularly bloody, and the third would’ve been. I think Skipper interrupted that one. They were all stabbed and disfigured. It’s personal, not business. A business kill is a dispassionate single gunshot wound to the back of the head, but personal is more like beatings, knives, and pain. This is a nice cold dish of revenge. It reminds me of love,” I said. Anna looked puzzled. “What is the opposite of love?” I asked.
“Hate,” she said.
“No. Disinterest is the opposite of love. Hate is closely related to love. Both are passionate; both burn white-hot. Those we hate most are often those we’ve loved most at some point.”
“Like a parent that betrayed us or a spouse,” she said.
“Right. Divorce, when amicable, is because there is no passion, but when it is heated, it means at least one still cares or is hurt so deeply precisely because he or she cared so deeply.”
“Damn, you are good. I can see why your dad wants you to be a cop. You have the mind for it. And, yet, you’re far too sensitive and caring to be a cop. Besides, you’re such a good minister. Maybe you really are meant to be a modern-day Father Brown.”
“Maybe. Or maybe I’ll just be lucky to get out of this one alive and should go back to just ministering.”
“There is a distinct contradiction in the two things,” she said, “but you are both of them. You, like most of us, are not just one person. I think you must do both or you will be miserable.”
“There’s always that,” I said.
“So who do you think did it?” she asked.
“Someone who has a very personal stake in all of this,” I said. “This is about love and hate, not money or cover-up. Unless, of course, it was made to look like something it wasn’t.”
Anna’s eyebrows shot up into twin peaks. “Do you think all the brutality could be a cover?”
That same bolt of enlightenment surged through my head. That was it. “I don’t think so,” I said. “But it could be. I still think it’s twisted love, passionate revenge. Because even when something is made to look like something it’s not, it usually still feels like what it really is. I said something to Molly Thomas the other day that reminds me of this. When she was explaining why she had made the accusation against me, I told her that Anthony was lucky to have someone who loved him so much, and I had the same feeling I’m having now. Like that’s the key.”
“You don’t think Molly had it done, do you?” she asked.
“No, but she wasn’t the only one who loved him. I need to find out who else did.”
“How are you going to do that?”
“This is prison. People know things, and people can be persuaded to talk about things.”
“In other words, you don’t know,” she said.
“In other words, I don’t know,” I said.
After leaving Anna’s office, I walked out into the waiting room where a dozen inmates stared at the blank wall in front of them in silence. A couple of them nodded to me. I nodded back. A few of the inmates were engrossed in paperbacks. I recognized Zane Gray, Robert B. Parker, and Stephen King. I started to walk out when I heard the faint tappings of an electric typewriter coming from behind the door to medical. I pulled out my keys and opened the door.
Standing next to the storage room where the typewriter was, Nurse Anderson jumped when I opened the door. The door to the storage room was parted slightly, and she moved in front of it.
“Chaplain,” she said as the typing stopped. “How are you today?” she asked, her tone returning to its normal loud volume.
“Who’s in there?” I asked.
She looked puzzled. “Wh-”
I pushed past her and opened the door. Inside, Allen Jones was stuffing a sheet of typing paper into his pants pocket. I reached out and ripped it from his grip, tearing the corner of the paper as I did.
One glance let me know it was another letter warning and threatening me. I looked at Jones.
He was looking down at the floor, his weary shoulders slumped forward, his head downcast. “I’s just trying to protect her,” he mumbled.
Nurse Anderson appeared behind me. “What’s this all about? What is that?”
“Another piece of the puzzle,” I said and walked out of the room.
“Chaplain, wait,” she called after me. “You don’t understand. I was only-”
Her voice stopped abruptly when the door to medical closed behind me.
Chapter 45
I now knew or thought I knew who was responsible for the murders. I also thought I knew why. But why kill all of them, and why now? I pondered these and other questions that plagued my mind as I paced up and down the length of my trailer. I was just getting used to walking well again, and the more I walked, the more the muscles in my legs and even in my upper body began to loosen and relax. I knew that I needed to go jogging again soon, but I wasn’t quite up to it yet.
There was something else bothering me, something my subconscious picked up on that hung onto the edge of my memory like a name once known, but now forgotten.
Before finally giving in to pacing and thinking, I had tried to do many things when I had come home after work, among them, watching the local news, which had yet to clear my name; reading Crossan’s book, The Essential Jesus; and cooking a real meal, which I later abandoned in favor of a peanut butter-and-jelly sandwich.
As I paced through the tight quarters that I called home, I occasionally bumped into the thin walls or the cheap furniture.
As I walked and thought and bumped my way along, I wondered how Molly’s death figured into all of this. Skipper most likely killed her in order to keep her quiet. She was the only one who could link him to all of the crimes he was involved in, and she had nothing to lose by telling all. Nothing to lose, that was, except her life. I should’ve thought about that. I felt responsible for her death. Had I not been on such a pity-party binge, I probably would’ve thought of it. I was to blame. Just then it came to me. The thought at the edge of my consciousness slowly drifted in. I saw the stack of videotapes. Images of Maddox, Johnson, and Thomas flickered on the screen of my mind. What was it? What had I missed when I previewed the tapes?
I walked over and pulled the tapes out of the linen closet. I placed them on the floor in front of the TV stand and pulled a chair, my only chair, over in front of the TV. I turned on the TV and VCR and popped the first tape in. As it began to play, the images that had been floating around in my head the last few days came back to life, accompanied by the tape’s dull moans of both pleasure and pain.
I tried to watch other parts of the frame this time, forcing myself to look away from that which most drew attention to itself in each frame. Nothing. I did this with all the tapes and still nothing.
I sat there staring at the TV screen, now playing the late news. The anchorperson was saying that Molly’s car accident was believed to be suicide. She went on to say how distraught she had been over the death of her husband, an inmate in the local state prison.
I wasn’t really listening to her, though. I was still trying to th
ink of what I had missed. I was sure it was on one of the tapes. What had it been? And, then it hit me like a tire iron across the face. I jumped up and ran toward my bedroom, bumping into the walls of the narrow hallway as I went. I retrieved the other tape-the eight-millimeter one-from the drawer in my bedside table and ran back into the living room, where the light was better.
While pastoring in Atlanta, I had helped our church begin a television ministry. We had a very small budget to begin with so, we used high eight tapes and equipment and did most of the work ourselves. I learned a lot about video production during that time. One of the things I learned was that it is best to fast forward a new tape all the way to the end and then rewind it to the beginning before you begin to record with it. This caused all of the loose magnetic particles on the tape to drop off so there would be fewer fade-outs during recording and playback. Most amateurs, however, did not practice this technique.
Therefore, you could tell how much tape they had used in recording because once the tape had been rewound, the part that had been used was not level with the part that hadn’t been used on the spool. This was because the tape that had been used was looser and uneven, whereas the tape that was unused was still wound tight and smooth.
As I looked at the eight-millimeter tape from Maddox’s collection, I could tell that an amateur had done the recording. Over half of the tape was loose and uneven, while the other half was smooth and tight. This meant that only half of the tape had been used before it was rewound. This also meant that an hour of footage was on the tape because it was a two-hour tape. However, we had only viewed a few minutes of it. There was more footage on the tape. I called Merrill, and in twenty minutes he was at my trailer with Uncle Tyrone’s eight-millimeter VCR.
“This better be good, man. I’s already asleep. I pulled a double today,” Merrill said as he entered the front door carrying the VCR.
“No promises, but a lot of potential. A lot of potential.”
“What is it?” he asked.
“I think there’s footage on this tape we didn’t see.”
“What? You called me over here for this. It could be Russ Maddox’s family reunion or something.”
“No, it’s not Maddox’s tape. He doesn’t have an eight-millimeter machine or camera.”
“So whose is it?” he asked.
“I think it’s Skipper’s. He would be able to shoot footage in the prison, and most people wouldn’t.”
“Well, let’s see, Sherlock,” he said and plopped down on the couch, the couch squeaking in protest as he did.
I put the tape in and pushed the fast forward button. After passing through the chapel scene at rapid speed, the screen turned to white noise and then to blue. I continued to fast forward it. In about three minutes, an image appeared on the screen again. It showed the infirmary at night. The camera was actually positioned in the hallway outside the infirmary and shooting through the glass windows. Inside the infirmary, Johnson and Thomas were the only patients. They were both on the far wall, and there were three beds in between them. The screen turned to snow again and then to blue, but before I could hit the fast forward button, an image flickered back on again.
It was a close-up of Johnson and Thomas having violent sex together on one of the beds in between them. They looked like animals, gnawing and pawing at each other. I saw no evidence of love or affection; they were both fully intoxicated. In about another minute, Strickland entered the room and caught them. She walked right up to where they were before they knew she was there. No sound could be heard from inside the infirmary, but there was a lot of sign language to hear. She addressed all her rage at Anthony. She obviously cared for him, but she looked as disgusted as anyone I had ever seen. She looked sick from her disgust and rage.
At first, Tony bowed his head and looked like a wounded little boy, but as she continued to blast him, something began to change. He glanced over at Johnson for his response to the whole scene, and that set him off. He punched Strickland hard in the stomach. She bent over and stepped back. Within seconds, Johnson was behind her forcing her down on the bed.
Like animals, they hit her some more, never on the face though. Experienced batterers. They ripped her clothes off and began to beat her and rape her. It seemed surreal to watch all of this violence and brutality in silence, and though there was no sound at all, the expressions on the faces of the men said it all. They smiled and laughed wickedly. They had become sadistic. I thought of Skipper-they had a good teacher. Within ten minutes, both Thomas and Johnson had raped, beaten, and sodomized Strickland.
First, Molly Thomas and then Sandra Strickland-Skipper was making his own little rape tape. I could tell that the second rape had actually occurred before the first one-Jacobson wasn’t in the infirmary like on the night of the murder, and Sandra Strickland wore the old gray nurse’s uniform that had since been abandoned by the department for something a little brighter. Why was it second on the tape? Skipper must have recorded a lot of footage during the first rape that he deemed unworthy, so he erased it and taped over it.
As I continued to watch something caught my eye-two things actually.
“Did you see that?” I asked Merrill.
“Yeah, they beat the hell outa that white woman,” he said. “They both beat and raped her, but she killed the black one first.”
“No, not that. Look,” I said as I rewound the tape. I played it back. At some point near the end, a door opened into the hallway where the camera was positioned. “Did you see it?”
“What are you talking about?” he said.
“Watch,” I said. I rewound the tape and played the same footage again. This time when the door opened and the light poured into the hallway, I pushed the still button. There he was. When the light came into the dark hallway, it made the glass the camera was shooting through reflect images like a mirror. It showed who the cameraman was. It was Matthew Skipper.
“Son of a bitch,” Merrill said in disgust. “He sat there and watched the whole thing-like the fool who filmed Rodney King getting the shit kicked out of him by some Cracker cops-and didn’t do a damn thing about it.”
“There’s more,” I said. “Look just over his right shoulder.”
“Son of a bitch,” he said again. Standing just behind Skipper in the doorway to the caustic storage room was Allen Jones, the inmate orderly. “Jones.”
“Uh huh.”
“Why would Skipper record them doing that rather than cracking their skulls?”
“Because Maddox would pay mucho dinero for something like that,” I said. “Plus, he can use it against them.”
“He’s one sick bastard.”
“And then some,” I said, “but he didn’t kill those inmates and Maddox.”
“No? Who did then?”
“Who had the motive to kill them? Only Strickland,” I said, but I was wrong.
“So what are you going to do?” he asked.
I looked at my watch. It was nearly midnight. “I’m going to have a little chat with Sandy Strickland,” I said. “Her shift is just getting started.”
“You want me to come along?” Merrill asked.
“There’s no need. I think I can handle her,” I said. “Remember, you’re not the only badass around here who’s had defensive tactics training.”
Chapter 46
Seeing her die haunts me still.
The veil of darkness covering the compound seemed spiritual as much as natural. I was alone in that darkness. And yet, I couldn’t help but wonder if I was in the darkness or if the darkness was in me. I had entered the institution just a few minutes before to the amazement of the control room officer, who asked why everybody was working so late tonight. I told him that duty called and that I would be in the infirmary. He said, “Ten-four.” And then I asked him who else was working late tonight.
He responded, “That tall, pretty classification officer. Medical called her in on an emergency transfer.”
Immediately my heart started racing. I
jerked my entire body around and quickly scanned the parking lot with my eyes. In about ten seconds, to my horror, they locked on her car.
Why had she come? Hadn’t I warned her? God, please let her still be alive.
The noise and movement of inmates and officers during the day was replaced by an eerie silence and the lonely stillness of night. I quickly walked to the medical building. The officer’s desk was vacant. I walked past the nurses’ station to find one elderly nurse dozing with her head on the counter.
I continued toward the infirmary to find that there was no officer in the infirmary control room either. I walked through the control room and discovered that there were no sick inmates in the infirmary, which explained why there was no need for an officer.
When I walked into the infirmary, I saw Sandy Strickland sitting alone on an exam stool beside one of the beds. Her upper body was slumped down on the bed, her right hand extended, rubbing the bed gently. I could hear her crying from the moment I entered the room. Between sobs she said a single word: “Tony.”
As I approached, she must have heard my footsteps. She jerked up, looked puzzled, and began wiping her eyes.
“What the hell are you doing here?” she asked.
“I just came from viewing a videotape of what Thomas and Johnson did to you here in this very room.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said nervously. “What video? What do you mean?”
“I mean Skipper recorded a video of Thomas and Johnson’s attack on you.”
“What are you talking about?” she said, trying to sound outraged, but her voice broke, and she began to cry.
“Skipper got it all on videotape, so there’s no point in denying it,” I said.
“That son of a bitch,” she said, expressing the same sentiment that Merrill had. And then it hit her. “Oh, my God, he could have stopped it. That sick bastard.” She was silent as she contemplated what he had done to her. Her face expressed the horror of what she was experiencing. After a long time she said, “Why?”
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