Rivers to Blood

by Michael Lister

  “What’re they saying?” I asked.

  She hesitated. “If it gets out that it came from me …”

  “It won’t.”

  She nodded. “Somehow,” she said, “he’s making them rape themselves.”

  I thought about it, my mind reeling. No wonder they weren’t reporting it. This went beyond the usual violation and humiliation of rape into a whole new form of degradation.

  “Can you elaborate?” I asked.

  “Not really,” she said. “As you can imagine, they’re not very specific, but the thing they have in common is that he’s forcing them to sodomize themselves.”

  “You think any of them would be willing to talk to me?”

  “NO,” she said, raising her voice. “Absolutely not. If they ever found out I told anyone about it, my efficacy is over.”

  “It’s not a lot to go on,” I said.

  “It’s all I have,” she said. “All I can say.”

  “Why tell me at all then?” I asked.

  “The way you solved Justin Menge’s murder,” she said. “Not just your investigative skills. Your discretion.”

  While investigating the murder of Justin Menge last year, I discovered that Lisa had been having an affair with one of the suspects. An inmate. She assured me it was over and that it would never happen again, so I didn’t report her like I was supposed to. It was a judgment call. One I based on intuition and experience. One I had questioned several times since.

  “I’m not just talking about the way you handled my stupidity,” she said. “This is going to require a great deal of sensitivity.”

  I nodded and we fell silent a moment.

  The morning light spilling into my office caused Lisa’s bronze skin to shimmer, magnified her copper-colored highlights, and dappled the dark carpet with the distinctive design of razor wire.

  “Will you find out who’s doing it and stop him?”

  “With no suspects, no witnesses I can talk to, and nothing to go on?” I said. “Don’t see why I can’t have it cleared up by lunchtime.”

  “I better get back to my office,” she said. “The new warden’s out to get me.”

  “Everybody thinks that.”

  “Doesn’t mean it’s not true,” she said.

  “What’s not true?” Bat Matson, the new warden said, walking into my office without knocking.

  Chapter Eight

  Lisa tried to speak, but nothing came out.

  “A lot of things,” I said.

  “I know you two are probably discussing an inmate you’re both working with,” Matson said, “but I really need to talk to the chaplain.”

  “I was just about to leave,” Lisa said. “We were finished.”

  “Well, then,” he said, “my timing is even better than I thought.”

  Lisa left and Matson took her seat across the desk from me.

  Before coming to PCI a little less than a month ago, Bat Matson was the warden of the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola, the largest maximum security prison in the country. Known as the Farm, Angola was named after the home of African slaves who used to work its plantation. The site of a prison since the end of the Civil War, Angola’s 18,000 acres houses over 5,000 men, three-quarters of whom are black, 85 percent of whom will die within its fences.

  Matson had been brought to PCI by the new secretary of the department who the governor had recruited from Texas as part of his crackdown on crime platform. He was a fleshy man in his early sixties with prominent jowls and thick gray hair swooped to the side. He had the reputation of being tough, straight shooting, and very religious.

  He was just one of many changes taking place at PCI, including the relocation of death row into a newly constructed facility that housed both the row and the chair.

  “Sorry I haven’t gotten by here sooner, Chaplain,” he said. “I’ve been tryin’ to meet with all the department heads individually but it’s taken longer than I would have liked.”

  “No problem,” I said, not sure what kind of response he was looking for.

  “I want you to know that the chapel program is very important to me,” he said. “Every man here could benefit from a good dose of old-time religion.”

  Uh oh. I was the last chaplain who could give them that.

  “I know you’ve been without a staff chaplain since you’ve been here,” he said, “and that’s one of the first things I’m gonna take care of. I can promise you that. I’m sure as soon as we get you some help in here a lot of the things that have gone undone will get squared away right away.”

  I wondered what he was talking about, but was afraid to ask. I often felt guilty for spending as much time as I did investigating, but never felt derelict in my duties as pastor of my parish.

  “I’ve got big plans for PCI,” he said.

  He wasn’t the only one. With a full-size institution, an annex, and two work camps, PCI was already the largest prison in the state, but having death row here would change everything in ways none of us could begin to imagine.

  “Things are going to be very different,” he said. “I’m a warden that backs up his staff, but I expect them to back me up as well—especially my department heads. All the changes will take some getting used to, but I expect it. I expect it or I expect your resignation.”

  He paused for a moment, his eyes narrowing as he considered me.

  I didn’t say anything.

  “I’m telling that to everybody,” he said, “not just you. What I will say to you is that I expect my chaplain to be a chaplain—nothing else. I understand your dad’s the current sheriff, that you were a cop in Atlanta, and that you sometimes help the institutional investigator. I’ve met him and I can see why. But he’s about to go back to coaching, and his replacement, a real investigator, won’t need any help from the chaplain to do his job. You got any questions for me?”

  “They found the inmate that escaped yet?”

  He shook his head, then frowned, and looked at me the way you would a stubborn child you pity for how hard he makes life for himself.

  “You see?” he said. “That’s the kind of thing I’m talking about right there. You shouldn’t be worrying about the convict that escaped—until you visit him in the infirmary or perform his funeral.”

  “Is he as likely to get killed as he is captured?” I asked.

  “Depends on him. But between you and me––and the inmate population––I ain’t afraid to kill a convict.”

  He stood up and looked down at me, his jowls more noticeable now.

  “There’s a new sheriff in town,” he said. “Things are gonna be different. You’ll probably have to visit more inmates in the infirmary, but I guarantee you’ll visit less officers in the hospital.”

  He walked over to the door.

  “Your new staff chaplain should be here by the end of the week,” he said.

  I was shocked. A position had to be advertised for at least two weeks and a committee that included the new employee’s supervisor—in this case me—had to conduct interviews and make a recommendation to the warden who, if he approved it, then forwarded it to regional office.

  “We haven’t even advertised it yet,” I said.

  “Don’t need to. It’s already filled. I’m bringing in my favorite chaplain from the Farm. He’s got a lot of experience. He’s very devout. Just what we need around here.”

  “But—” I began.

  “It’s a done deal, Chaplain,” he said. “Approved by the secretary.”

  I thought about it, my frustration rising at the absurdity and futility of the situation.

  “Why would he take a demotion to come here?” I asked, figuring I already knew the answer.

  He smiled and winked at me.

  It was obvious. If the new warden had anything to say about it, and he did, his favorite chaplain from the Farm would be moving up into my position in no time at all.

  “You have a blessed day, Chaplain Jordan,” he said. “Get out there and do some good.”
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  Chapter Nine

  Michael Jensen, the inmate who had escaped, was a white man in his early forties with darkening blond hair, clear, kind blue eyes, and a dark complexion. He was probably somewhere between fifty and a hundred pounds overweight, but he carried it well.

  According to his file, he had never had a single discipline referral. He was a model inmate with good adjustment serving the last few weeks of a two-year sentence for a minor drug charge.

  His classification officer was as surprised as anyone that he ran.

  “Of all the inmates I ever worked with,” Ralph Jones, the thin, constantly moving African-American classification officer said, “Jensen would be the very last I’d ever expect to run. Dead last.”

  Having come from the work camp to meet with the warden, inspector, and classification supervisor about the case, Ralph had stopped in Classification to speak to a few of his friends. When I found him in the hallway and asked about Michael Jensen, he looked around nervously, grabbed my arm, and led me into an empty office.

  “The new warden told me not to talk to you,” he said, his small eyes wide behind his tinted glasses.

  “I won’t tell him.”

  We were standing in the empty office, the only light coming in from the window. Unable to be still, he shifted his weight often, jingling the change in his pockets and tapping his leg with the rolled-up papers in his hand.

  “You think of any reason he’d run?” I asked.

  He shook his head.

  “Nothing’s happened in the past few days? Problems with other inmates or staff?”

  Ralph had the annoying habit of nodding too vigorously and making little noises while you talked. This gave two impressions—that he wasn’t really listening, and that he was anxious for you to finish so he could say something he thought was more important.

  “Not a thing,” he said. “If I’d had any concerns I would have reported them to security.”

  “I know that,” I said, trying to sound as reassuring as possible. “I know you’re good at your job. I’m not looking for someone to blame. I’m just trying to understand why a model inmate with a few weeks left wanted to escape. That’s all.”

  “Nothing happened that I know of,” he said.

  “He get any bad news from home?” I asked.

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Who’s he got at home?”

  Ordinarily I wouldn’t expect him to know, but I was sure he had spent a lot of time with Michael Jensen’s file in the last several hours.

  “Ex-wife, two kids, sister, mom,” he said.

  Long hall, tile floors, and cinder block walls, Classification was hard surfaces and empty spaces, and our voices echoed in the office the way those in the hallway beyond the door did.

  “Where do they live?”

  “All in Apalach,” he said.

  “You think that’s where he’s headed?”

  His eyes narrowed behind his tinted glasses and he nodded slowly. It seemed an attempt to look thoughtful, but came off as contrived. “They always go home,” he said, pausing a moment before adding, “eventually.”

  “But why?” I said. “What happened? What was so bad, so urgent, that it couldn’t wait a few weeks?”

  He rubbed his chin, frowning and shaking his head as he thought about it. “We may never know. He may not even know.”

  “He was on his way back to the work camp from being here to see Medical,” I said.

  He nodded.

  “What for?”

  He shrugged. “You’d have to ask them about that.”

  Chapter Ten

  Terry Little’s nurse uniform was faded and slightly wrinkled. It fit loosely in a failed attempt to mask fat. It along with her melted-ice-cream figure gave her the shape of a snowman. She had short, odd-colored bottle-blond hair, cut in a dated style. She had prescription glasses designed to darken in the sun and lighten inside, but always seemed stuck in a caramel-colored in-between position.

  We were standing at the back side of the medical building in the small designated smoking area where she was nervously puffing on a long skinny cigarette. When she wasn’t puffing, which wasn’t often, she scratched the polish off her fingernails. Always fidgety, her encounter with the new warden and her supervisor about Michael Jensen’s visit yesterday had kicked her nervous shakes into hyperactivity.

  When I was a kid and she was a teenager, Terry used to babysit for me, Jake, and Nancy, and though we weren’t close and had never been, we shared the connection of growing up together, which created a certain trust, an assurance born of familiarity. If she knew something about Jensen she would tell me.

  “Heard you got some quality time with the new warden,” I said.

  “What an asshole,” she said, blowing smoke out forcefully, then picking a small piece of tobacco from her tongue.

  “Did he tell you not to talk to me?”

  She nodded, cutting her eyes toward me momentarily. “Said not to talk to anyone. Then he singled you out.”

  I nodded.

  “So whatta you wanna know?”

  I smiled. “Thanks. How did he seem?”

  “Like an arrogant asshole,” she said. “Like a––”

  “Not Matson,” I said. “Jensen.”

  “Oh,” she said, her face flushing. “Sorry. He was more quiet than usual.”

  “You’d treated him before?”

  “Lots of times,” she said. “He was diabetic.”

  “That why he was here this time?”

  She nodded.

  The early afternoon sun was high in a cloudless sky. And blindingly bright. The light glinting off of the chain link and razor wire above us reflected up off the white concrete pad beneath us. But far worse than the bright light was the humid heat. It bore down on us with an incredible intensity, a heat that made people lethargic, ill, even homicidal.

  If she hadn’t needed a cigarette and I didn’t need to get information from her in secrecy, I wouldn’t be out here. I’d be in the chapel, and like many of the inmates cooling off there right now, it would not be for spiritual reasons.

  “He was here while we changed his medication,” she said.

  “How long?” I asked.

  “A couple of days for observation after we changed it,” she said. “Less than a week.”

  So whatever happened to make him do what he did, probably happened here.

  “He seemed despondent,” she said. “Depressed. And angry. He was very upset about something. Maybe I just think that because of what happened, but I don’t really think so.”

  I thought about what she was saying.

  “I should’ve done more for him,” she said. “Tried to find out what was really going on with him. He was one of the best inmates I’ve ever worked with. I hate that this happened.”

  “Any ideas what was bothering him?”

  She frowned, twisting her round face and raising her eyebrows. “I could be wrong,” she said. “I hope I am. I really do. But I’ve worked with a lot of them over the years, and I know the signs. I can usually tell when they walk in the door. Why didn’t I say something, do more?”

  “About what?” I asked.

  She sighed heavily. “I think he had been raped.”

  Chapter Eleven

  I lived alone in an antiquated mobile home near the Apalachicola River in The Prairie Palm II—phase two of a failed trailer park community consisting of a single resident.

  When I first moved back to Pottersville from Atlanta, this was all I could find or afford. I had planned to stay here only temporarily, but should have taken one look at The Prairie Palm II and known what happens to plans around here.

  The truth was, I found this Spartan existence liberating, this isolated tin box on the outskirts of a tiny backwoods town appropriate for the marginal life I was living.

  This felt like a choice to me, not something foisted on me.

  Unable to sleep much at night, I occasionally came home from work, laid down on
my uncomfortable couch, and attempted to read until I drifted off, telling myself all I needed was about ten good minutes to take the ache out of my head and the burn from behind my eyes. This rarely worked—it wasn’t just at night that I had trouble sleeping—but that didn’t stop me from continuing to try it.

  I was rereading Thomas Moore’s book Dark Nights of the Soul, attempting to feel sleepy, when I heard someone pull up outside.

  I was reading the book again not only because I loved Moore’s insight, honesty, and low soulish spirituality, but because I believed myself to be experiencing an extended dark night of the soul. After years of an intensely intimate, nearly mystical spiritual life, I felt dead inside. All my attempts to regain what I once had falling far short, I felt comforted by Moore’s encouragement to embrace the darkness and emptiness, allowing this depleting experience to have its way with me, trusting that its difficult gifts were necessary for my evolving humanity.

  Of course it was possible that I was just depressed.

  I slipped the tattered envelope I was using for a bookmark between the pages, closed the book, replaced it on my TBR pile on the floor, and pushed myself up off the couch.

  Sliding the thin, wrinkled blind slightly to the side, I squinted in the bright light in an attempt to identify my visitor.

  When I saw the old burgundy Dodge pickup, I knew who it was. The truck belonged to Rudy, the owner of the local diner named after him. But it wasn’t Rudy, it was his teenage daughter Carla who had come calling.

  Carla and I spent a lot of time together at night in Rudy’s Diner where she worked and I didn’t sleep. She had natural blond hair and large green eyes and the permanent sadness of a motherless child.

  As I opened the dented and leaning door, she was out of the truck and approaching the trailer. She had almost reached it when an emaciated hunting dog dove out of the back of the truck, landed face first on the ground, jumped up, and started barking and running around wildly.

  She shook her head and frowned in frustration. “I wanted to talk you into taking him before you saw him.”

  “I can see why.”