Six John Jordan Mysteries

by Michael Lister

  In the colonel’s office, we waited while he used the phone. His office was decorated with photographs, paintings, and trophies, all related to hunting. His desk was cluttered, a thin layer of dust covering it and everything on it.

  The carpet needed vacuuming, and a distinct musty smell lingered in the air. Unlike the hallway, Colonel Patterson’s office was not cleaned by inmates. Like the hallway, his office was included in their job assignment, but unlike the hallway they weren’t allowed in here.

  Patterson hated inmates and made no attempt to hide it. Rumor was there had never been an inmate in his office. I believed it. There were other rumors about why the colonel hated inmates, many of which sounded like war stories, involving riots, gang attacks, and escape attempts, all starring the colonel himself. My theory was that the colonel just needed someone to hate, and since sixty-five percent of the inmate population was black, they made natural targets.

  “I want the yard closed, the work crews recalled, and a count taken immediately,” Patterson barked into his phone. “Call the superintendent, and ring him straight through to my office when you get him. Find Inspector Fortner, and get him back to my office with some incident reports.”

  If the colonel was upset by what had taken place, I couldn’t tell. He always operated at a fevered pitch, always yelling orders, always coming on way too strong,

  I glanced over at Shutt. He looked as if he’d just killed a man. His whole body, which appeared to be trapped in adolescence, trembled.

  “You okay?” I asked him while the colonel reported to the superintendent what had happened.

  He didn’t look up, so I repeated the question. When he finally looked at me, he appeared to be in a trance, not knowing where he was.

  “Huh?” he mumbled.

  His pubescent face was a mask of shock and fear.

  When he dropped his head again, I slid my chair over next to him. When I put my hand on his back, it actually shook from the force of the tremors running the length of his body.

  “Colonel, Officer Shutt needs to see a doctor,” I said.

  “What? No he doesn’t. Do you, son?”

  Son didn’t respond. He just continued to stare at the floor.

  “Call Medical, now,” I said, employing the colonel’s method of communication.

  “Ah, hellfire, Chaplain. He’s been trained. He’ll be all right.”

  “Call Medical now, or I will. And if I do, I’m going to declare a medical and psychological emergency. Then you can explain to them why you didn’t.”

  The colonel snatched up the phone, pushed three buttons, and yelled into the receiver, “Get Medical to my office now.” Hanging up the phone, he looked back at me. “Chaplain, you need to get a few things straight about the way things work around here. If I wasn’t leaving this afternoon, I’d take you under my wing and make things real plain for you. But the short version is this: I—”

  A quick knock on the door was followed by the entrance of the warden, Edward Stone, a deliberate-moving black man in an expensive suit.

  “Colonel, Chaplain, Officer Shutt,” he said by way of greeting. His eyes stopped on Shutt. “Have you called Medical, Colonel?”

  “Yeah, they should be here any minute,” he said curtly, as if he were talking to a new officer and not his boss.

  “He’s obviously in shock,” Stone said. “How you holding up, Chaplain?”

  I nodded. “Okay,” I said, my voice quivering slightly with the anger I felt for Patterson. “Just ready to get cleaned up.”

  “I heard how you responded to the, ah . . . situation very well. Control said you reacted with no hesitation. You never know until it comes down to it what a man will do in those kinds of situations. I know you’re new, but everybody’s trust for you just jumped up several notches. Isn’t that right, Colonel?”

  “Yeah, you never know what a man will do in a crunch,” he said, careful to respond to Stone’s first comment and not his second.

  “Let’s have Medical check out Officer Shutt and let the chaplain go home. We can take their statements tomorrow.”

  “Yeah, I think that’s a good idea,” Patterson said as if Stone had asked him.

  Before anyone could say anything else, the colonel’s phone rang and the medical personnel arrived to collect Shutt.

  I helped him to his feet, assured him everything was going to be okay, and followed him and the nurses out of the office.

  Just before I closed the door, I heard Patterson tell Stone that the deceased inmate in the trash bag was Ike Johnson.

  I then walked over to the training building and took a long, hot shower and scrubbed his blood off my body.

  2

  I was half undressed when my doorbell rang.

  I guess if I were more optimistic, I would say that I was half dressed—and that the glass of seltzer water without a coaster on my dresser was half full.

  My dresser, like every other piece of furniture that I scrambled to get after the divorce, was not worth the trouble of a coaster. It had been a gift. Actually its previous owners did not know that it was a gift—all they knew was that they threw it out.

  I was surprised when I heard the doorbell, not only because I was half undressed, but also because I had placed my order for pizza less than fifteen minutes before. It had always taken Sal’s at least twenty-five minutes to deliver out here.

  Since coming home to North Florida after my life in Atlanta had disintegrated, I’d made my home in a dilapidated old trailer on the edge of Potter County.

  Quickly pulling my pants back up, I whisked by my gem of a dresser, pausing only long enough to secure the two folded bills on its corner.

  The trailer had been repossessed, and its previous owners were obviously not a gentle breed. It was situated on a thatch grass prairie on what was supposed to be Phase II of an expanding mobile home community called the Prairie Palm. Presently, Phase II was a community of one, due in large part to Phase I, which resembled a trailer junkyard more than a place where people actually lived.

  The park got its name from the lone sabal palm, Florida’s state tree, standing in the center of the sixty-acre plot—something that seemed an appropriate metaphor for my isolated existence here.

  As I walked down the extremely narrow hall of my not-so-mobile home, passing over the pale yellow linoleum curling up so that it no longer reached the thin blond paneling of either wall, I remembered the plush two-story brick home Susan and I had shared in North Atlanta. It was nice. Very nice. But this impoverished place and the fringe existence I was now living here felt more like home.

  I opened the door and extended the money in one flowing motion, more from practice than a God-given talent.

  Expecting to see Ernie, Sal’s nephew, who resembled the Sesame Street puppet of the same name, I made an audible gasp and suddenly felt naked without my shirt.

  Instead of Ernie, I had opened the door to a young woman with big brown eyes in an orange, white, and blue uniform, which included a pair of tight-fitting navy blue shorts and a baseball cap.

  She had shoulder-length brown hair pulled through the hole in the back of her cap to form a ponytail and dark skin covering her taut, muscular little body.

  She looked confused as I handed her the money, but took it reflexively.

  I took the box from her and realized why she looked confused. It was a parcel not a pizza.

  The oversized blue block letters on its side read QVC, and then I remembered.

  Last Friday night, while unable to sleep, I flipped past a shopping channel and did something I’d never done before. Made a purchase. This parcel contained my new IBM ThinkPad.

  “No need for a tip,” she said. “Just your signature.”

  “Sorry. Was expecting a pizza.”

  She handed me the plastic pen and electronic clipboard and flashed me a quick smile.

  As I scrawled out my signature on the screen, I sensed her staring at the round pink scar on my left oblique and long, thin white scar acros
s my chest.

  When I looked up at her, she looked away.

  “Pizza, huh?” she said, seemingly just wanting to say something.

  In the distance, I could hear the sounds of poverty coming from Phase I of Prairie Palm. People with time on their hands and not much else. Children yelling and laughing, the revving of automobile engines, and the loud, distorted music of cheap car stereos and boom boxes swirled together into the sad and badly mixed soundtrack of life in the rural South.

  The only artist my ears could discern was John Mellencamp, which justified the volume. Appropriately enough, it was an acoustic version of his tribute to life in a small town.

  I was born in a small town and I live in a small town. Prob’ly die in a small town. Oh, those small communities.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I should have introduced myself. I’m John Jordan.”

  “Why?” she asked, her eyes narrowing.

  Educated in a small town. Taught to fear Jesus in a small town.

  Used to daydream in that small town. Another boring romantic that’s me.

  “Why, what?” I asked.

  “Why should you have introduced yourself? I’m just delivering a package. This isn’t a social call.”

  “I . . . I thought you were having a hard time deciphering my signature.”

  “Your name is on the package,” she said.

  “Oh yeah,” I said shaking my head and frowning. “Sorry. I was just—”

  “Relax. I’m sure a man in your profession introduces himself to nearly everyone he meets. Whether they want him to or not. What are you, a priest? Wait ’til I tell my friends I was hit on by a priest.”

  At first I couldn’t figure out how she knew, but then realized my clerical collar was still hanging around my neck.

  But I’ve seen it all in a small town. Had myself a ball in a small town. Married an L.A. doll and brought her to this small town. Now she’s small town just like me.

  “I’m the chaplain at PCI,” I said touching my collar.

  “I make deliveries out there sometimes. Big place.”

  No I cannot forget where it is that I come from. I cannot forget the people who love me. Yeah, I can be myself here in this small town. And people let me be just what I want to be.

  She turned to head back down the rocks and pebbles and oyster shells that served as my driveway toward the big colorful FedEx truck that matched her uniform, the blinking of its flashers rhythmic and hypnotic.

  I was just about to ask for her name and maybe even her number when Ernie sped into the driveway, jumped out of his car, and ran to my doorstep, where I was still watching her.

  Got nothing against a big town. Still hayseed enough to say look who’s in the big town. But my bed is in a small town. Oh, and that’s good enough for me.

  “Sorry I’m late, JJ. Uncle Sal’s getting slower and slower,” Ernie said.

  “You’re not late. Just a little early.”

  He looked confused, then followed my gaze back down the driveway toward the truck she had disappeared into.

  When I didn’t take the pizza box he was trying to shove into my hands, he said, “You want the pizza or the pussy?”

  “What?” I asked, digging into my pocket for the money with one hand and slapping him on top of the head with the other.

  “I said that will be eight dollars and eighty-nine cents,” he said as he handed me the box.

  I was still feeling around in my pockets for the money when I decided to take one more glance down the driveway.

  She was standing in the opening on the passenger’s side waving Ernie’s money in the air.

  “This one’s on me, Preacher,” she said. “I could use the tax deduction.”

  “Thanks,” was all I could manage.

  There was a time, not so long ago, when I’d’ve had a nice little buzz going by this time of the day and could’ve come up with a better response.

  Ernie ran down the driveway to her truck and got the money faster than I would have thought possible.

  They exchanged a few words, laughed, and then she drove off.

  As Ernie ambled back, I walked down the driveway to meet him at his car.

  Well I was born in a small town. And I can breathe in a small town.

  Gonna die in this small town. And that’s prob’ly where they’ll bury me.

  “Please tell me you know who that was,” I said.

  “Sure, that’s Laura Matthers. Her sister Kim and me are on the July jam court together Friday night.”

  “This Friday night, as in three days from now?”

  “Uh huh. But she’s got a boyfriend.”

  “Ernie, they almost always do.”

  3

  The following morning I stood at my desk in my chapel office inside Potter Correctional Institution, a stack of mail and the package containing my new computer in front of me.

  Moving the unopened mail to one side, I ripped into the box and extracted the computer inside, releasing a flurry of small packing peanuts as I did.

  At that moment, Warden Stone walked in without knocking.

  Every muscle in my body grew tense.

  “Chaplain, I need to speak with you for a moment,” he said as he closed my office door behind him.

  He made no attempt to hide his annoyance at the floating Styrofoam swirling around him as he removed two handfuls of packing peanuts from the chair across from my desk before sitting in it.

  Stone was always dressed impeccably in expensive suits that looked to be tailored, and he always took great care to protect them. Had he been aware of the sweaty, soiled inmate uniforms that normally occupied the seat, he probably would have left the peanuts in place.

  As I sat down, an envelope on top of my lopsided stack of mail slid off, revealing an inmate request form from Ike Johnson.

  Stunned, I quickly opened my center drawer and placed it inside.

  Before he started talking, Edward not Ed Stone paused to clean his charcoal wire-rimmed glasses. Like everything he owned, they looked expensive. As he removed them carefully from his face and wiped them with the spotless white silk handkerchief bearing his initials in bold black block letters, he treated them like they were costly jewels.

  As I watched him, I realized that the glasses, like everything he owned, seemed so expensive because he treated them that way.

  As he made these exact, intentional motions, I had a chance to really look at him for the first time. He was much leaner than I had thought. I had seen skin that was darker than his, but not by much. He had all the African features of a man from Nigeria. His nearly hairless skin was smooth and had a slight sheen about it. His movements were slow but not hesitant—more deliberate and economic than anything else. He knew exactly what he was doing and the precise amount of energy required to do it. He did everything as if it were the most important thing he would do that day.

  Edward Stone’s minimalist actions and conservative, controlling policies reminded me of the effects poverty and fear and fear of poverty have on people. No matter how successful they become, they always keep plenty in reserve for fear they will have to do without again. My grandmother, a child during the Great Depression, had been the same way.

  “How are you?” he asked. “With what happened yesterday?”

  I nodded. “I’m fine. Thank you.”

  “That was bad. Have to be an idiot to try to escape, but to try it in that manner . . . you’d have to be suicidal.”

  “Perhaps he was,” I said.

  “Maybe. I don’t know. But that’s what I want to find out. The thing is, his name came up in another matter that we’re considering investigating.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. I had not put much stock in the earlier reports, but now . . . I am not so sure. Thing is . . . we have a situation that I need your help with.”

  I waited.

  “It won’t be easy . . . and it’s totally out of the purview of your job. But I honestly do not have anyone else I can turn
to.”

  I nodded encouragingly.

  “I want you to help the IG with the investigation into . . . what happened yesterday.”

  I started to object, but he stopped me with a single authoritative wave of his hand.

  “I conducted a thorough background check on you long before I ever decided to approach you with this, and I know that you and the IG don’t care for each other very much, but there’s no other way.”

  “Even if you could convince me to work with him, you’ll never get him to work with me.”

  “I’ve already taken care of that through the secretary.”

  “His secretary?”

  “No. The secretary of the department,” he said with an amused smile. “So, like you, he really doesn’t have a choice in this matter.”

  “But—”

  “Your father being the sheriff here doesn’t hurt, but even if he weren’t, you’re . . . exactly who I need to . . . take care of this. I know you used to be a cop. Know you worked the Atlanta Child Murders. I know you’ve studied criminology. It’s even rumored you were the one who killed the Stone Cold Killer.”

  “As impressive as that is,” I said, trying to sound only mildly sarcastic, “wouldn’t the institutional inspector be a better choice?”

  “To be completely honest, I don’t trust Pete Fortner. Ordinarily, I would have the colonel assist in this kind of investigation, but he’ll be away from the institution in training for the next few weeks.”

  “Why don’t you trust Fortner?” I asked.

  “First of all, I need to know that you’ll do it.”

  I thought about it. I had been trying to leave the obsession and violence and negative energy of homicide investigations behind me, but I could feel the strong pull of what was being offered to me. It was seductive.

  “I’m a chaplain now,” I said. “That comes first. But if I can do both, I am willing. I will. But I will not work closely with the IG. Because I don’t trust him.”

  “Okay, the reason I’m asking you is because Daniels is Fortner’s boss. Fortner’s looking for a promotion, and he’d sacrifice my institution to get it. I don’t trust the two men together. You, on the other hand, Daniels hates. You’re the best man for the job.”