“Yes, I guess so,” she said.
“Where is it?” I asked.
“It’s in the first office on the left when you enter the medical department. Just before the nurses’ station.”
“Is it locked?”
“Oh, no. We just keep some extra furniture and a few office supplies in there. It stays unlocked all the time.”
“I see. Thanks again. Sorry to have taken up so much of your time.”
“No, it’s not that. I’m just so far behind in preparing for our ACA inspection, but you’re no bother at all. In fact, I enjoy seeing you. You are like a breath of fresh air around this place.”
“Thank you. I think the same of you.”
Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and yet loses his soul? After typing these sentences on the typewriter I found in the empty medical office, I pulled out one of the letters I had received and compared them. They looked identical—the t’s were missing the right side of the crossbar. The o’s were missing a small place in the bottom center. And, the a’s, as in angel or Anna, were darker than all of the other print.
The letters I had been receiving were typed on this machine, but that didn’t tell me who’d been typing them. I suspected it was an inmate, however. Any other medical staff member would have typed the letters on some other machine—or at home maybe. But, an inmate wouldn’t have access to any other machine.
I walked out of the office and down the hallway to the nurses’ station. There I found an elderly white nurse who seemed to be dozing.
“Hi,” I said.
She jumped slightly. “Hello,” she responded after recovering.
“How are you today?” I asked.
“Just fine, thanks. How are you, Chaplain?”
“I’m okay. I was wondering if I might ask you a question.”
“Sure, sweetie. What is it?”
“Have you ever seen anybody use that old typewriter in the front office up there?”
“No, I sure haven’t. I don’t think it works.”
“Nobody? Not even an inmate?”
“No, I don’t think so. Sorry,” she said, sensing my disappointment.
“Oh, that’s okay. It’s no problem. I appreciate your time.”
“Anytime, sweetie. Anytime.”
Chapter 32
Whether it was the presence of a spiritual entity or the collective soul of its inhabitants, confinement felt oppressed by the dark forces of slothfulness and depression. The thick, pungent air seemed to me to be a natural manifestation of the spiritual condition. I signed in at the sergeant’s desk, told the officer that I had received a note from the first shift sergeant asking me to check on an inmate named Larkins, and began walking down the long hallway toward Larkins’s cell. Halfway down the corridor, about a hundred feet from where I was, I saw a small group of inmates. Something was wrong. If these were confinement inmates, they should have been in their cells. If they weren’t, they shouldn’t have been here at all. As I looked at the inmates, I thought about what Hunter had said about the hit out on me. Ordinarily, I walked among the biggest baddest inmates in this place without giving it a single thought; now I was getting paranoid.
I didn’t like what I was thinking. I wasn’t going to give in to fear; I continued to walk. I was also not going to be stupid; I glanced back at the sergeant’s desk. He was gone. When I looked forward, the group of inmates was walking towards me, seven of them—all black, all big.
A loud, familiar voice in my head screamed for me to run, but I couldn’t, and I don’t know exactly why. I began to pray. The line “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death” crossed my mind. So did “To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.” I was not particularly comforted by either of them.
They were closing in on me, which means they must have picked up their pace, because I hadn’t sped up. As they walked toward me, I could see the white shirt of an officer just behind them. As they got closer, I could see that it was Matthew Skipper.
At first, I was relieved to see him, but almost immediately thought better of it. For all I knew, he was the one who put out the hit on me. For all I knew, he was about to do it himself and save the money. In another five seconds, we came face to face. The inmates surrounded the two of us, putting Skipper and me in a circle of black and blue—most likely the color I was about to be.
The inmates, none of whom I recognized, were panting with excitement. They smelled blood. They also smelled.
“Chaplain, I hear you’re confused about exactly what your job is around here,” Skipper said. His breath had the overpowering smell of tobacco and coffee.
He stood probably six-four, but he slumped, as if the weight of his belly pulled him down and forward. We would have been eye to eye, but he wore mirrored sunshades, which were at least a decade out of date, not to mention totally unnecessary in the dark hallway. So rather than staring into his eyes, I was staring into my own. In them I saw fear.
“My job is to do the work of God, which involves both justice and mercy,” I said, my voice sounding much stronger than I thought it would. A pleasant surprise.
“Your job is to give this bunch of inmates some religion. Not to be sticking your nose where it don’t belong.”
I was silent. It seemed a wise move at the time.
“Well, boy,” he yelled, “whatcha need, some job counseling?”
“Is that what these men do, job counseling?” I asked.
“When it’s needed.”
“And I thought I was doing such a good job here. I really thought that I had found my vocation, a reason to live.”
“Funny,” he said, “how your purpose for living is gonna get you dead.”
“That is funny,” I said sarcastically. “Come to think of it, though, the same thing happened to Jesus.”
“You boys do crucifixions?” he asked.
They laughed. It was a mean, humorless laugh.
“Perhaps we should go speak with the superintendent about my job description,” I said and started to move away from him. The inmates closed in tighter around us. There were less than six inches between us.
“Everybody knows I run this place, not Stone. He just thinks he’s the head nigger in charge. I’m the man around here. I’m the man. Stone’s scared of me. He’ll do what I say. You or nobody gonna change that. Nobody.”
“You’re the man, huh? You the man that did Johnson and Maddox?”
“I’m the man, period. All you need to know is that I’m the man that’s gonna put you in a fucking box. Okay, boys, do your thing.”
“I won’t fuck with no preacher,” one of the inmates said.
“Sounds fun to me,” another one said and then hit me hard in the kidney. My knees buckled, and I started to go down.
On the way down, one of them caught me, lifted me back up, and then punched me hard under the chin. My head began to ring, and the room began to spin all around me. I fell to the floor. This time no one caught me. I hit the bare, rough concrete floor at full force. It was a welcome relief compared to the two other blows I had just received. My vision was blurred. I tried to lift my head. I not only tried, but succeeded—only a few inches, however. Those few inches were just enough for me to see the blood on the floor beneath me. Not a lot of blood, but any blood of mine that is outside my body is too much blood.
“Inmates,” I heard someone yell. “Inmates, face the wall with your hands behind your head. Captain, I’ll have you and the chaplain secure in just a moment,” the officer said.
I looked up. All the inmates were still, each looking at Skipper. Just then, he reared back and swung his fist at one of the inmates, hitting him square on the nose.
“Get against the fucking wall,” Skipper yelled. “Officer, call the control room. Tell them to get the riot squad down here immediately. DO IT! NOW!” he screamed. The inmates quickly lined up against the wall. The officer did what
his captain told him to do using the radio clipped to his belt. “Call medical for the chaplain, too,” Skipper yelled again. “NOW!” He then knelt beside me and asked if I were okay. I was unable to answer. I just prayed that the CO at the end of the hall wouldn’t turn his back on us. Thank God, he didn’t.
Thanks.
Within a few minutes, I was being treated in the infirmary by Sandy Strickland under Anna’s watchful eye. I felt like I had just been fifteen rounds with Foreman. In actuality, I only had a cut under my chin and a small abrasion on my right cheek. I had no idea where the captain was, but I found myself periodically looking over my shoulder.
“It’s funny that the captain didn’t sustain any wounds at all,” Anna said to no one in particular.
“He never sustains any wounds,” Strickland said. “He makes sure of that. Chaplain, you better watch your back. You have no idea who you’re dealing with.”
“Yeah, but you do. Why don’t you help me? You have to be aware of what’s going on here at night. Why won’t you help us put a stop to it?”
“He scares the hell out of me. He’s a psycho.”
“Is that your medical opinion?” Anna asked.
Strickland smiled. “You don’t need an M.D. or a Ph. D. to diagnose that one.”
“I guess not. How are you feeling?” Anna asked me.
“Yo, I don’t want no rematch,” I said in my best Rocky Balboa voice.
She smiled, but I could tell it was only a courtesy.
“I feel okay. How do I look?”
“Still the best-looking man in the institution,” Anna said.
“I concur,” Strickland said.
“Are you going to help me?” I asked her.
“Haven’t you had enough? This is only a taste of what he will do. I can’t help you. I’ve got a little girl. She doesn’t have a daddy, and I’m not going to make her an orphan.”
“If you change your mind, you know where to find me,” I said and eased off the bed.
“The institutional inspector is going to want to talk with you. He’s in confinement locking up those inmates, but he’s got to fill out the incident report within twenty-four hours.”
“Tell him that the chaplain will be in my office,” Anna said. And we slowly walked out of the infirmary. Slowly.
Chapter 33
“Are you okay?” Anna asked as she handed me a can of orange juice and a bottle of aspirin. We were seated in her office. She was seated. I was more like a blob in the chair. My head ached, throbbing with the rhythm of my heart and the ringing in my ears. My mouth felt like I’d just received a root canal. When I tried to speak, I sounded drunk and drool rolled down my bottom lip.
“I’m okay. Really,” I said as best I could.
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
“Then tell me just what the hell is going on,” Anna said. “What happened in confinement?”
“Skipper.”
“He did this to you?” she asked in shock.
“No. He had it done. When I walked in there, they were waiting for me. The confinement sergeant left his desk, and it was just me, Skipper, and the seven inmates. He said that I wasn’t doing my job or I was doing more than my job. He knows I’m on to him.”
“This is still all so unbelievable. You’re sure he’s been taking inmates out of the institution for Maddox? I mean, come on, it wouldn’t be an easy thing to do.”
“No, but a lot easier on the first shift than any other. We don’t really know what goes on out here at night. This is probably just the surface of what Skipper’s been doing. He has to be supplying the drugs, too. Evans said it was too difficult and there wasn’t enough demand for the expensive drugs like Johnson was on.”
“What’s next?”
“I don’t know. I think it’s a little premature to go for Skipper. He’s dangerous, but he’s not stupid. The evidence is mounting, but it’s not enough yet.”
“Yeah, but you have to tell the inspector or the superintendent what happened today down in confinement. If you cover it up . . .” Before Anna could finish what she was saying, there was a knock at her door. Pete Fortner, the institutional inspector, entered the office. He was followed by Matt Skipper.
“Pretty exciting day, huh, Chaplain?” Fortner said. I couldn’t tell for sure, but he seemed to be oblivious to who or what Skipper was.
“Pretty exciting,” I said as I stood and walked behind the desk where Anna was seated and leaned against the wall. There were only two seats in front of her desk, so Fortner assumed that I was giving the seats to them. I was actually trying to put some distance and a rather large desk between myself and Skipper.
“You need to sit down more than I do, Chaplain,” Fortner said. Skipper remained silent. He still had his shades on, his eyes hidden.
“I’d rather stand right now. I still have large amounts of adrenaline pumping through my veins.”
“I know what you mean, son,” Skipper said and smiled broadly. His teeth were white with only the slightest tobacco stains.
I did not return the smile.
“Miss Anna, how are you today?” Fortner asked.
“I’ve been better,” she said curtly.
“Her boyfriend just got beat up and nearly killed, Pete. How else would she be doing today?” Skipper said and smiled again.
I could only see Anna’s profile, but I could tell that she was giving the severest of looks to Skipper. Fortner grew awkward and uncomfortable.
“I’ve already taken Captain Skipper’s statement. Why don’t I read it to you and see if there’s anything you have to add, okay?” Fortner asked.
“Sure,” I said.
“Okay, let’s see.” he opened a file folder on his lap and flipped through a few pages.
As he continued his search, Skipper began tapping his ring on the wooden arm of his chair. It was a big class ring, high school no doubt.
“Here it is,” Fortner exclaimed. “Do you want to read it or do you want me to?”
“You can,” I said.
“Okay. At approximately twelve thirty P.M. Captain Matthew Skipper walked into the west end of confinement corridor B and saw seven inmates surrounding Chaplain Jordan. He then reached for his radio to call the control room and found that it was dead. He ran towards the group, jumping in the center with Chaplain Jordan. Together, they kept the inmates at bay for as long as possible. The inmates then attacked. The captain used defensive tactics to defend himself, and the chaplain used his head. The captain landed a couple of good blows against one of the inmates, but it seemed as if the inmates were going to overtake y’all, until the other officer showed up. He radioed control, and the inmates dispersed. The riot team responded within five, minutes and the situation was squashed quickly. The inmates were locked up, the captain gave me his report, and the chaplain was taken to medical.” Fortner looked up. “Do you have anything to add, Chaplain?”
“No,” I said and then went back to biting my tongue.
“Do you know any reason why these inmates would want to hurt you?”
“I tell you, Pete, I really can’t think of anything right now. I’m still sort of out of it. Why don’t I stop by your office tomorrow,” I said.
“Yeah, Pete, the boy’s been through enough today. Give him a break. Come on, let’s go,” Skipper said.
“That arrogant son of a bitch,” Anna said when they had gone. “Did you see how cocky he was? He sat in here knowing you wouldn’t turn him in. Why?”
“He probably thinks I’m scared.”
“I know better than that.”
“He doesn’t. He’s been dealing with inmates and inmate families too long. In those dealings, he’s had all the power. They are powerless in most situations. He’s operated not just above the law, but as the law. It’s made him like that, but it will be his downfall. Pride comes before a fall. Believe me, I know.”
“Why didn’t you say anything to the inspector?” she asked.
“It’s just n
ot time. He’s coming down, God will see to that, but I don’t have enough evidence yet. And you know how easily evidence can cut both ways. If I’ve learned anything in my few years on the planet, it’s not to jump the gun.”
“Still, not to say anything could work against you, too, couldn’t it? I mean, if you agree with Skipper at first and then change your mind later, won’t that look suspect?”
“I didn’t agree with him. I just didn’t add anything. I told him I would talk to him tomorrow. I want the night to figure out what to do. But, you’re right. All of this is like playing with fire, and that’s true of most investigations. The trick is to get as few burns as possible, because rarely do you not get burned at all.”
“Just be careful. You’re not the man you used to be. You’ve become a lamb, and you are definitely among wolves now.”
“Well, I’m trying to become a lamb. But this wolf’s apparent strength is actually weakness.”
“And your apparent weakness actually strength?” she asked.
“If the Gospel is to be believed.”
“And it is,” she said.
“You think so?’ I asked.
“You think so,” she said, “and that, more than most things, makes me think so.”
I was caught off guard. For a moment, I was speechless. I felt tears stinging the corners of my eyes. “Thank you. That means more to me than anything. I want to do that for people, you know, point them in that direction, but I fear I fail most of the time.”
“Believe me,” she said, sounding slightly irate, “those fears are unfounded. You make a big difference around this place.”
I didn’t respond.
“It’s true,” she said.
At that moment, there was a faint knock on the door. I walked over and opened it and Sandy Strickland walked in. She looked as if she were having a hard day. Her pale-blue nurse’s uniform resembled surgical scrubs. Her hair was done up in a topknot, and her face was hard and wrinkled. Small lines cut through her makeup like tunnels in an ant farm. She was still beautiful, if no longer very attractive.
“I didn’t test Thomas,” Strickland said when I was seated.
Power in the Blood (John Jordan Mystery) Page 21
