Six John Jordan Mysteries

by Michael Lister

  At that moment, my phone rang.

  “Good morning. Chaplain Jordan,” I said into the receiver.

  “Chaplain, this is Officer Jones in the control room. Is the warden in your office by chance?”

  No, not by chance. He leaves nothing to chance.

  I handed Stone the phone. He took it without comment or expression.

  “Stone . . . Yes . . . okay, send him over to the chapel right away.”

  He handed me the receiver and I hung it up.

  “Your new partner has arrived. Before he gets here, I just want to make clear your responsibilities. You are to assist him in the investigation in any way that you can, but I also want you looking out for the institution and its administration—and report to me every step of the way.”

  The front door to the chapel opened and the warden stood to open my office door for the inspector.

  I remained seated.

  When the inspector walked in he and Stone introduced themselves to each other.

  Tom Daniels was fifty-five, but looked sixty-five. His battleship-gray eyes matched his hair, which still showed no sign of receding.

  When they had finished shaking hands, Stone sat down again, pulling his pants legs up slightly and crossing his legs. He then steepled his hands together in front of his face as if praying, the tips of his fingers at his lips.

  Daniels just sort of collapsed into his chair.

  Tom Daniels had the look of an alcoholic. I knew, being an alumnus myself. His face was red and swollen, his nose pink and puffy, spiderwebbed with little blue broken veins.

  Though an obvious alcoholic, he was a high-functioning one. He worked hard. Presented well. Yet he was often late, and didn’t produce the results he once had. And though he made a good salary and lived modestly, he was plagued by financial problems.

  He was dressed in gray slacks that matched his hair and eyes, a white shirt that matched his pale skin, and a red tie that matched his bloodshot eyes.

  The effect of alcoholism on Tom Daniels was severe, but its effects on his family were devastating. Though never beaten nor abused, his wife and daughter had been neglected.

  His daughter, though a teetotaler, functioned as a dry drunk and an enabler. She lacked confidence and any idea how to relate to men in general, and a husband in particular. She attracted, and was only attracted to, alcoholics. I knew. I had married her.

  “I believe you know our chaplain, John Jordan,” Stone said.

  “Yeah, I know him,” Daniels said without so much as a glance in my direction.

  “As I am sure you’re already aware, he will be assisting you. He grew up here and knows many of the employees of the institution.”

  I had been away for so long it felt like I didn’t know nearly as many people as I used to, and many of those employed by the prison commuted from other communities.

  “I’ve been told I don’t have a say in the matter,” Daniels said irritably.

  “So has he,” Stone said.

  Daniels cut his cold, dull eyes in my direction and smirked. “What about the institutional inspector?”

  “He’ll help too, but you are to limit his knowledge and access.”

  “You better have a damn good reason for that,” Daniels said.

  “I do.”

  When he didn’t explain, Daniels said, “Oh yeah? What’s that?”

  “A good reason.”

  “No. I mean what’s the reason?”

  Stone smiled. “You have copies of all the files and reports that I have. You know as much about it as I do. So I’m going to let you brief Chaplain Jordan. At the end of the day, report back to me. Both of you.”

  Stone then stood and left without another word.

  “Before we even begin this little exercise in futility,” Daniels began, “I want to get a few things straight. I don’t like you. I’ve never seen a more hypocritical sight in all my life than you in a clerical collar, ’cept maybe it makes you look like the little candy-ass faggot you really are. This is my investigation and you better stay the hell out of my way. I’ll be watching you—waiting for you to fuck up. When you do, and I know you will, I will personally bury your ass. Deep.”

  4

  Dostoevsky said the degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.

  I often thought about that as I entered PCI each day.

  At times I believed the condition of our prisons spoke well of our civilization. In some ways we as a country take great care of those we incarcerate—of course whether most of them should be incarcerated in the first place is another matter.

  The fact that convicted felons didn’t lose their freedom of religion. The fact that I was employed by the state to ensure the guarantee of that right. The fact that I was here to counsel inmates and help them deal with crises—both inside prison and back at home. All spoke well of our approach to imprisonment.

  Other times I was disheartened by the inhumanity and incivility that I witnessed.

  There’s no question that mass incarceration, particularly as it affects African-American men and other impoverished minorities, is out of control in our culture. The prison industrial complex largely runs on the injustice of our justice system. Yet once we take custody of inmates, we by and large take care of them.

  Of course there is abuse. Of course there is neglect. But from what I witnessed on a daily basis these are largely isolated incidences, the abuses of power by isolated individuals rather than a systemic problem within our prison system.

  One of the ways we care for the incarcerated is by the way we classify each according to his crime and custody level, his skills and abilities, and his psychological and medical needs.

  In a prison like PCI, there are all types of inmates—those who received a DUI and resisted arrest, those who sexually abused children, those who committed murder, rape, or theft—the last usually in the pursuit of drugs. There are inmates who are dangerous and others who are themselves in danger. Putting all these various individuals in one institution is a very precarious endeavor.

  Some inmates are violent. Others are not. Some are escape risks. Some you’d have a hard time getting to leave. Others need close medical or psychological supervision. And all must be assigned a job that they are qualified to do, even if it’s just picking up trash.

  The department responsible for giving inmates a security evaluation and a job assignment, as well as determining whether or not they are a risk or at risk, is Classification.

  Since Daniels made it clear he didn’t want me working with him, and because the feeling was mutual, I decided to conduct a little inquiry of my own, beginning with a classification officer named Anna Rodden.

  Anna, who I had been in love with since childhood, was my older sister Nancy’s best friend all through school.

  “Anna,” I said after tapping on her door.

  She was seated behind her desk wearing a sleeveless white silk blouse and a fire engine–red skirt, with the matching jacket draped over the back of her chair. Her long brown hair was gathered in a single long ponytail at the nape of her neck, held by a red and white bow. The white of her shirt made her olive skin look even darker. She was dark in other ways too. As she looked up from her work, I was again amazed at the depth of her seemingly bottomless brown eyes.

  “John,” she said, sounding happy to see me.

  I loved the way she said my name.

  “Come in,” she continued. “How are you? I heard what happened yesterday. I was just about to call you.”

  “I’m okay.”

  “You sure?”

  I nodded. “How’re you?”

  “Had better days. Escape attempts are difficult enough, but when the inmate gets killed . . .”

  “Was he one of yours?” I asked.

  She nodded. “Everyone from Central Office on down wants to know why I didn’t know he was an escape risk.”

  I nodded and frowned.

  Had I taken this job in part so I could see
her every day? Would I continue to do it once she left?

  She was in the final stages of finishing her law degree at Florida State, and would soon be one of the state’s toughest prosecutors.

  “What brings you my way today?” she says.

  “Stone has asked me to look into what happened yesterday.”

  Before I had finished my sentence, she was shaking her head.

  “That’s the one thing I won’t help you with. I can’t.”

  She had witnessed firsthand the darkness and violence my relentless and obsessive investigative techniques had brought into my life.

  “I know you haven’t forgotten what Atlanta was like,” she added. “So you must just be blocking it out. But I can’t.”

  I understood and appreciated her concern, but things were different now. I was different. I was older. I wasn’t drinking. I wasn’t in a bad relationship.

  I had moved to Atlanta in 1986 to work the Atlanta Child Murders. I had only been eighteen at the time. Most of the work I had done on that case and the Stone Cold Killer case that followed was in my early twenties. It was now 1995. I was twenty-seven years old, far, far better equipped to deal not just with homicide investigations but life itself. Or so I believed.

  “This is nothing,” I said. “A simple—”

  She let out a harsh laugh. “Nothing is ever simple with you, John.”

  “I really think this can be. I’m just taking a quick look into it. I thought with you and Merrill here to keep me honest I’d—”

  A quick knock at her door stopped me.

  It was Tom Daniels.

  “Yes?” she said as he stuck his head in the door.

  “My name is Inspector Daniels.”

  “Your mother named you Inspector?” she said. “Sort of limited your career options, didn’t it?”

  “Cute,” he said. “I think you know. I’m the Inspector General of the DOC.”

  “What can I do for you, Inspector General?”

  “It’s a private matter. Can I talk to you alone?”

  She shook her head.

  “Fine,” he said. “We can do this in front of—”

  When he came around and saw it was me, he shook his head and said, “Should’ve known.”

  “Are you following me?” I said.

  Ignoring me, he dropped into the seat next to mine.

  “I’m looking into the death of the inmate yesterday,” he said to Anna. “Ike Johnson. Is he yours?”

  “Is he my what?”

  “Is he your . . . Was he assigned to you? Are you his classification officer?”

  “I was.”

  “What can you tell me about him?”

  She shook her head. “Not much. Before yesterday I would’ve sworn he wasn’t an escape risk. Could be something new going on with him I don’t know about yet. You should probably ask his pimp.”

  “Who’s that? The chaplain?”

  She frowned. “So childish.”

  “And what were you being earlier?” he asked. “All I need is a little information. Why’re you being so damn difficult? Who’s his pimp?”

  “Inmate named Jacobson.”

  “What’s Jacobson like?”

  “Pretends to be crazy—which he is, but not in the way he pretends to be. He acts looney but he’s truly dangerous.”

  “Okay. Thanks. I’ll talk to him. What about Johnson’s family situation on the outside? Who’d he have?”

  “Grandmother who raised him and an aunt that I know of.”

  “No girlfriend?”

  “He didn’t like girls, never has.”

  “Faggot on the outside, not just in here?”

  “Use language like that again and you won’t get any more information from me. I don’t care who you are.”

  “Sorry. I just . . . Didn’t mean to give offense. Sorry. What I meant was . . . Was he a homosexual for real and not just for convenience the way some of ’em are in here?”

  “Ike was gay. If you’re asking if I am aware of a lover he would have tried to escape for, I am not. He did have four visits from a Don Hall when he first got here, but that was over a year ago.”

  He jotted something down in a small notebook and said, “Anything else?”

  “I’ve just started looking,” she said. “I . . . Like I said, I didn’t think he was an escape risk. Obviously I missed something.”

  He stood, withdrew a card from his pocket, and placed it on the desk in front of her.

  “This is an official investigation of a death within this prison. A death in which you are at least partly to blame. Call me the moment you come up with anything else. Don’t tell the chaplain or anyone else. Only me. No matter what it is. Understand?”

  She nodded without saying anything.

  “And don’t discuss my case or anything about it with anyone but me. Not the chaplain. Not your mama. No one.”

  Without waiting for her to respond, he turned and walked out of the office, closing the door a little harder than was necessary—but not hard enough to be overly obvious.

  She shook her head and narrowed her eyes at me. “Know how to pick ’em, don’t you?”

  “Whatta—”

  “That was your ex-father-in-law, wasn’t it?” she said.

  I frowned and nodded.

  “I never liked Susan,” she says. “Now I know why. What an ass. You two are working on the same case?”

  “We’re supposed to be working it together.”

  “You don’t seem too together.”

  I smiled. “That’s about as together as we’re ever gonna get.”

  “I’ve changed my mind about helping you with the case. Hell, I’m gonna help you solve it before that smug, obnoxious ass does. But I’m gonna be keepin’ a close eye on you. If it gets too—”

  “It won’t.”

  “So how can I help?”

  “Do you know for a fact that Jacobson was Johnson’s pimp?”

  “As much as you can know such things for facts inside here. They were both assigned to me.”

  “What was his job assignment?”

  “Not pimp, I can tell you that.”

  “I meant Ike Johnson.”

  “Outside grounds,” she said, seeming not to catch how odd that was.

  Inmates who worked outside of the institution did so because they were deemed to be a low escape risk. It had to do with their custody, their release date, and past history.

  “Outside the gate?” I asked. “You sure?”

  She nods. “I know.”

  “He works outside the gate five days a week, but he tries to escape in the trash truck on his day off?”

  The vast majority of escapes occurred while an inmate was already outside the prison—work assignment, court hearing, transport, medical procedure. Breaking out of a maximum-security prison was extremely difficult to do—nearly impossible.

  “What else can you tell me about him?” I asked.

  “As you can imagine, he spent a lot of time in confinement for physical contact with other inmates. And sometimes drug use.”

  “By physical you mean sexual contact, right?”

  “Sure wasn’t for fighting. You see how small he was?”

  He had fit in a garbage bag but before this moment I hadn’t realized how small that meant he had to be.

  “Skinny too,” she added. “He had HIV and AIDS.”

  I thought about being covered in his blood.

  She must have seen something in my eyes.

  “You came in contact with his blood, didn’t you?”

  “Contact is one word for it. Swimming. Drowning. Are a couple of others.”

  “The chances that you could be . . . are so small . . . Are you worried?”

  “Didn’t even know to be until a minute ago.”

  “Don’t be. Get tested. Just for peace of mind. But don’t worry. I’m sure you’re absolutely fine.”

  I nodded. “Okay. I’m not really worried,” I lied.

  “Good. Beca
use you’re fine. But if you get worried and need to talk . . .”

  We were quiet a moment and I thought about what happened yesterday in light of what I now knew about Johnson.

  “If he really wanted to escape . . .” I said, thinking out loud. “He’d’ve tried it while outside for his job, right? He sat there in that bag and heard what the officer was doing to all the other bags. He knew what was coming.”

  “You’re thinking suicide?” she said.

  “Considering the possibility. But there are much better ways to commit suicide. Maybe it was murder.”

  “Murder?” she said.

  “Everybody here knows how the garbage is checked before it leaves the front gate. It’d be a great way to hide a murder or have one committed.”

  “So somebody kills him and puts him in the garbage bag so he’d be dumped somewhere or get stabbed and it would look like he was trying to escape.”

  “I think if it were an escape attempt, he’d’ve lost his nerve there at the end. And maybe even if it were suicide.”

  “Maybe the officer had been paid to miss that bag,” she said.

  “That’s good. But if he was, that meant he knew the inmate was in there, which meant he knew he was killing him. Which means he deserves an Oscar for the performance he gave. Hard to fake shock like that. What can you tell me about Jacobson?”

  “He was in the infirmary with Johnson on Monday night.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah. And they had a fight. Tuesday morning Jacobson was taken to Confinement and locked up, and Johnson . . . Well, you know what happened to him.”

  “What time was he placed in the box?”

  “Log indicates it was around six thirty in the morning. Of course, those logs are never exact.”

  “No, but it’s probably close to the actual time, which means he could have killed him and bagged him before he was taken away.”

  “Maybe, I don’t know. Seems to me that whoever did the deed would have to actually load the bag on the truck. Otherwise . . . it’d be too heavy . . . obvious a body was inside, wouldn’t it?”

  “It may not mean anything, but then again . . . He was locked up before the shift change. And yet, it was close to the time of the shift change. Too close.”