Power in the Blood (John Jordan Mystery)

by Michael Lister

  He removed the lid from the Vaseline jar, scooped out a heaping amount, and began to masturbate. He thrust hard up and down and moaned with pleasure. It was a sick, contrived moan, like he needed to hear himself make it. It made me feel sick.

  I suddenly became very uncomfortable. I looked over at Anna. She seemed fine, but if we were watching a tape of her funeral, she would probably look the same way.

  “Are you uncomfortable?” she asked.

  “Slightly,” I said.

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. This just seems so personal, even more personal than watching two people have sex.”

  “There’s more to it than that,” she said. “What is it?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “Do you?” she asked.

  “Do I what?”

  “Do you, you know . . .” she said and nodded toward the TV.

  “We are not having this conversation,” I said. I then added with a smile, “It really is the safest form of sex, you know.”

  “Just one question,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Do you ever think about me when you do it?”

  I choked and stuttered as I tried to speak, which was admission enough for her. She smiled.

  I smiled.

  “I think that’s enough of that one,” I said and stopped the tape. I pushed the fast forward button. This time it fast forwarded the tape without previewing what was on the screen. I pushed play again. There was nothing, just snow.

  “You know, you are a very attractive guy; single, smart, sensitive, and to top it all off, you are very spiritual. I know you find me attractive, and we are alone in your trailer. Why don’t you seize the opportunity?”

  “Besides the fact that you’re married and I look like Ricky Raccoon?”

  “Yeah, besides that,” she said.

  “I would never . . .”

  “That’s precisely my point. You’re different from Maddox. In fact, you’re different from any man I know. I would never do this with any other man. I would never talk this way with any other man, but you, I can trust.”

  “Don’t trust me too much. It might get you in trouble.”

  “I’m not saying you don’t have a healthy libido. It’s just that you are to be trusted.”

  “Don’t believe that,” I said.

  “I do. I’m not saying you don’t have your struggles like everyone else, but I can tell things about people, especially men. I know you. I trust you.”

  “Do you trust Merrill like that?”

  “I trust Merrill, but for different reasons.”

  We turned our attention back to the tapes. The third tape was Maddox and Johnson again. It was shot in black and white, which, because of the contrast between the two men, took on an artistic look.

  The last tape, or what I thought was the last tape, was the kicker. It was Maddox in the starring role again, but this time his co-star was Anthony Thomas. Thomas was not as willing a participant as Johnson and seemed to be drugged.

  When we finished watching the tapes, I felt like I needed a shower. The world looked like an ugly, dirty place, and I didn’t like seeing it that way.

  “What do you think?” Anna asked when I had stopped the last tape.

  “I think what you think, that everybody on these tapes is now dead. I thought there were five cases?”

  “There were, but one of them had a smaller tape. Audio-tape, I guess.”

  “Where is it?”

  “It’s in my purse. Let me get it,” she said.

  “Anna,” I said chastisingly, “it could be very important.”

  “I know. I brought it with me. I just forgot to get it out of my purse. But it might just be music or at best just sounds. How is that going to help?”

  “I need to hear it to know.”

  She retrieved the tape and brought it over to me. It was not an audiotape, but an eight millimeter videotape.

  “Anna, this is a videotape.”

  “But, it’s so small.”

  “It’s eight millimeter.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means it’s from a different camera than the one in Maddox’s bedroom. It’s not standard VHS, like these other tapes. It means that it was shot by somebody else.”

  “Let’s watch it and see,” she said.

  “You girls are so untechnical. We can’t watch it. I don’t have an eight-millimeter VCR.”

  “Well, who does?”

  “Susan still has ours.”

  “Great, let’s drive up to Atlanta and see if she’ll loan it to us.”

  Just then the phone rang, and I knew it was bad news again. I was almost to the point of not answering my phone anymore.

  It was Dad.

  Molly Thomas was dead.

  Chapter 42

  Under shade of massive live oak trees dispersed among the bald cypresses that lined the banks, a small hill—the highest point in Pottersville—sloped down into the muddy waters of the Apalachicola River. The crooked cypresses, both in and out of the water, were silhouettes against the neon orange and pink of the setting sun. The natural slope down to where the swirling water patted the red clay of the bank was most often used as a boat launch. It was in this picturesque spot, where I had learned to water-ski and later had been baptized, that the car of Molly Thomas was being pulled from the devouring mouth of the powerful watery snake.

  Apparently, Molly Thomas’s car had raced down the hill at high speed and crashed into the river below. When I arrived, two deputy sheriffs’ cars, one city police car, one highway patrol car, one game warden’s Bronco, an ambulance, and a tow truck, and Dad’s Explorer, which had the windows rolled down because Wallace was inside of it, were all parked at odd angles around the scene.

  The yellow crime-scene tape, stretched between two cypress trees near the water, rippled in the small breeze coming off of the water, making a small and lonely whipping sound.

  Molly’s car could just be seen breaking the surface of the water. A cable attached to her back bumper was spinning around the winch of the tow truck pulling the two vehicles ever closer to one another. At certain points along the way, the steady hum of the winch was interrupted by the grinding of metal on metal as the river begrudgingly released the car.

  “Is this the girl you were dickin’?” my charming brother asked when I walked up to where he, Dad, and two other officers stood. Jake and the two officers laughed. I was amazed we were from the same family. I suspected we were not. There had to have been some sort of terrible mix-up at the hospital. Jake felt the same way.

  “Does it look like suicide?” I asked Dad, ignoring Jake completely.

  “Yes, Son, it does. There are no signs that she tried to brake or that another vehicle was involved.”

  “You were such a bad lay that she offed herself,” Jake said to even more laughter than the first time. He now had them primed. “She left a note addressed to ‘Dear Pencil Dick.’ We saved it for you.”

  More laughter.

  “Is it okay to walk down there?” I asked Dad.

  “Sure, Son. Go ahead,” Dad said in a voice that told me he was sorry for what Jake was doing, but that he wasn’t able to stop him.

  As I walked away, I heard Jake say something about having sex with a raccoon. There was more laughter, but this time it was forced, like men wanting something to be funnier than it was. As I walked down to the river’s edge, I felt awkward and self-conscious.

  I knelt down on one knee by the river and quietly began to cry. I was crying for Molly, a good woman who had loved her husband. I was crying for Anthony, who went to prison on a marijuana possession and came out a crack addict prostitute in a body bag. I also cried for me. I was a total stranger in a place I once called home. I had never fit in like Jake—my neck had never been that red—but now I was totally alienated.

  The isolation was painful.

  When I finished crying, I got up and walked over to where the car now sat on dr
y land. Molly’s wet auburn hair was matted, and it hung forward with the rest of her slumping body that only the seat belt held vertical. The officers and ME had opened her door maybe ten minutes ago. Water was still draining onto the ground. The hair covered her face, and for that I was glad.

  There was a strong odor coming from the car, but it wasn’t Molly, not yet anyway. It was the mix of the river water, including the things that are in it, and the interior of the car. I smelled fish and mildew.

  I walked around to the back of the car and studied the bumper. It was bent slightly, but there was no way to know when it had happened. There were a few dents and some white paint from another vehicle on the back right quarter panel. The paint could have been on the car for six months or six hours; there was absolutely no way to know. But I knew. This was the work of Matt Skipper. Molly had lost the love of her life. Having nothing else to lose, with the exception of her own life, she was very dangerous to Skipper. He no longer had power over her, because he no longer had total power over her husband.

  I walked back up the hill, picturing in my mind how the deed was done. This time I didn’t stop where the officers stood, but continued to where I thought Skipper would have tried to stop. I found tire marks on the road, not acceleration marks, but the skid marks of Molly’s car as she tried to stop. I pictured Skipper hitting her one last time knocking her unconscious, sending her car down the hill and into the river. A second tire track was visible on the edge of the road in the dirt.

  The tire track could just be seen beneath the highway patrol car that was parked on top of it, whose front tires had already ridden over it. It came as no surprise to me that the highway patrolman was one of Skipper’s biggest hunting buddies. I didn’t see any point in mentioning what I had discovered . . .

  Or in any longer seeking justice in the manner I had been.

  Chapter 43

  The Quarters, the name given to the black section of town by a certain segment of the white population, was roughly two hundred acres on the south side of Pottersville, only part of which was inside the city limits. A single row of small, red-brick duplexes provided by the government for low-income housing was the only part of black Pottersville actually located within Pottersville.

  The low-income housing, known as the black projects, was a mirror image of the government housing on the east side of town, known as the white projects. The only difference in the two projects was color. Thus, it was more of a negative than a mirror—the negative of a hateful and ugly picture of humanity.

  I drove past the row of identical duplexes and found myself again surprised by how widely the yards varied. In front of most of the dwellings, the yards were barren, a mixture of dirt, weeds, and trash. Others, however, had neatly trimmed lawns and a shrub or two. Most of the houses did not have vehicles in front of them. Of those that did, many were tireless heaps up on blocks and covered with plastic tarps. Two of the units had late-model Cadillacs that gleamed even under the late evening sun.

  Beyond the projects were the houses and trailers of African Americans who could afford to own their own homes. These dwellings were as eclectic as any in the world. White prosperity and poverty in the rural South were separated from each other—relegated to certain well-defined clumps and clusters. However, black prosperity was scattered like leaven within the lump of black poverty. To my left stood a nice brick home with a paved driveway, two-car garage with the door closed, and a large yard in which a flashy bass boat sat on its trailer. To my right an old, faded single-wide trailer with its insulation hanging loosely underneath sat unevenly on cinder blocks with at least six dogs lying on the bare dirt yard scratching and licking themselves.

  On the corner, a small fire burned surrounded by three men and a woman—all holding tall beer cans in their hands. Across the road and down two yards, at least twenty children were playing various games under the watchful eye of an elderly, gray-haired lady rocking on the front porch. Occasionally, she leaned forward and spat her snuff-filled spittle onto the front yard.

  A little farther down, I passed a small travel trailer that served as home for three adults and four children—a digital direct TV satellite dish mounted to its upper right-hand side. Next to it a twenty-three hundred square-foot home stood as it had for the nearly twenty years it had been occupied with no brick or wood on its exterior— only faded gray sheets of once-silver Thermo-Ply. The modest, freshly painted clapboard house with the manicured yard next to it was Uncle Tyrone’s.

  When I arrived at Uncle Tyrone’s house, his numerous children sitting on his front porch told me that Merrill and Tyrone were already at his shop. Uncle Tyrone owned a shoe shop just over the tracks in Pottersville. This meant that although he lived on the wrong side of the tracks, Tyrone owned his own business on the right side of the tracks. His was one of only four black-owned businesses in Pottersville and the only one that was located in the white part of Pottersville.

  He wasn’t very far across the tracks, but it was far enough to suit him and close enough to the tracks to suit the white establishment. I had heard some of that white establishment refer to him as a “white negra.” No one had ever said anything like that to me, because they knew what I was—what I had been labeled since the eighth grade when I had fallen in love with Merrill’s little sister, Kyria—a nigger lover.

  “Cousin John,” Tyrone said as I walked in, giving me his usual greeting, “how are you?”

  “I’m okay, Uncle Tyrone. How are you?”

  “I’m hangin’ tough, but you, you don’t look okay. You tryin’ to become black the hard way,” he said, laughing. Merrill and I laughed, too. “You ought to just have the opposite of that treatment Michael Jackson’s having. Be a lot less painful.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” I said. “Thank you. You sure know a lot about Michael Jackson to be an old man.”

  “I watch a lot of BET. And, what they forget to tell me I read in Jet.” We all laughed some more. “So, let me see your tape, son.” I reached into my pocket to retrieve the tape. “Is it standard eight millimeter or high eight?”

  “Standard,” I said as I handed him the tape.

  “Ah, yeah, I can handle this. Right back here,” he said as he began to walk through the faded curtain behind his counter.

  In the back of Tyrone’s store was an office roughly the size of my trailer. It was filled with shelves, which were filled with shoe boxes. On a table that stood against the right wall, there were all sorts of electronic equipment—VCRs, TVs, and stereo components. The eight-millimeter VCR sat on top of a small, square monitor in the center of the table.

  “You the only white man who come in here,” he said, smiling broadly. “Any other one see all this stuff think I stole it for sure.” We all laughed, though it was more true than funny.

  He popped the tape in.

  “I have no idea what’s on the tape. Would you mind if Merrill and I previewed it alone?”

  “You scared if I see some white man screwing a black man, I might go off. Well, I wouldn’t. I see that all the time,” he said as he began to walk back toward the front of the store. “Just push play when you’re ready,” he said.

  I did.

  The first scene to fill the screen was of a floor whose carpet looked familiar to me. It was the chapel at PCI. There was very little light, making the picture on the screen grainy-like a special effect for a rock video. When the camera tilted up and panned left, it showed Molly Thomas walking hesitantly into the dark chapel. She was shivering.

  Within seconds, Anthony had pounced on her like a leopard and begun to rape her. She didn’t scream very loudly, but you could tell that she was in pain. In between the screams, she tried to reason with Anthony. They both seemed unaware of the camera’s presence in the sanctuary. One time Anthony looked straight at it without looking into it. His eyes were wild, darting back and forth, as glazed over as a frozen pond and just as cold. In a few moments, before climax, Skipper came in and broke up the little party.


  The small video did two things. It showed that I was not involved and that Skipper was. However, Skipper was only shown as breaking up the violation and not as instigating it.

  Within another minute, the chapel was empty, and the camera stopped recording. The monitor went blue. I stopped the tape. The whole incident lasted less than five minutes.

  “Looks like you’ve just been cleared,” Merrill said.

  “Maybe,” I said.

  “Ain’t no maybe about it. You be just like Rodney King. Got the shit on tape.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of,” I said. “Things didn’t turn out too well for Brother Rodney.”

  “Now you know how we feel. Guilty until proven guilty.”

  “Yeah.”

  “What’s your next move?”

  “I think I’ll show this tape to the superintendent and the inspector.”

  “Not the others?” he asked.

  “They don’t prove Skipper did anything. And the fact that I have them makes it look like maybe I did it,” I said. “What do you think?”

  “Couldn’t hurt.”

  “Are you sure?” I asked.

  “Not much in this world’s for sure.”

  “That’s for sure.”

  Chapter 44

  The Department of Corrections of the state of Florida incarcerated just under 65,000 inmates at a yearly cost of roughly 1.5 billion dollars. The number of people required to operate this department was 23,732. I was now one of those people again.

  It was an overcast Tuesday morning, and I was sitting at my desk, again active as the chaplain of Potter Correctional Institution. I had been reinstated thanks to the videotape of the chapel incident, or I should say a VHS copy of that video that Uncle Tyrone had dubbed for me in about ten minutes. Being at work again was not only a result of the tape, but also of a feisty, blond FDLE investigator named Rachel Mills, whom I showed the tape to first and who was by my side as I showed it to Daniels and Stone.