Six John Jordan Mysteries

by Michael Lister

  “What about the trash? When is it picked up?”

  “Early in the morning usually. I’m not really sure. Our orderly always gets it ready and puts it out here to be picked up.”

  “Is that orderly here now?” I asked.

  “Yeah, I think so,” she said.

  “Mind if I speak to him?” I asked.

  “Not at all. Let’s go see if we can find him.”

  She took one last, long draw on the stub of her cigarette and tossed it into the ashtray.

  We found her orderly, the same old black man I had denied a phone call earlier this morning, in one of the storage closets near the back. She told him I wanted to talk to him and that we could use the staff break room around the corner.

  I could tell he didn’t want to, but he swaggered toward the break room nonetheless.

  “This won’t take long,” I said when we were finally seated at one of the tables in the staff lounge.

  He didn’t respond.

  “Sorry again I couldn’t let you use my phone this morning.”

  He shrugged.

  “I just want to know how you normally gather and take out the trash down here and if you did it any differently on Monday night or Tuesday morning.”

  “I gather it up before I leaves every night and puts it near the back door where you’s just standing with Nurse Strickland. Next mornin’ I picks up any new trash and sets them outside the door. Officer and inmate from inside grounds comes by and picks it up and takes it out.”

  “Is that how it happened Tuesday morning?” I asked.

  He shook his head slowly. “Already told the inspector. Gathered it all up and put the bag in the back hall, then Nurse Anderson come say she need me to clean up a spill in the exam room. When I come back to put it outside, it was done gone. Nurse Anderson with me at the time. She can tell you. Trash wasn’t outside the door neither. No sign of the truck neither.”

  “Did you see the inmates in the infirmary that morning?” I asked.

  He nodded.

  “Anything unusual about them?”

  “No, sir. All three were lying there in they beds sleepin’.”

  “All three?” I asked, the surprise in my voice obvious. “Who else was there?”

  He hesitated and looked confused. “Johnson, Jacobson, and Thomas.”

  “What time were you in there?”

  “Can’t say for sure. Gots no watch. I come in at four. Wasn’t too long after that.”

  “You see Jacobson and Johnson fighting around five?”

  He shook his head. “I’s still gathering up the trash and cleaning up. I’s all over the building.”

  I walked back to the nurses’ station and called the trash officer, who I had been in the back of the truck with yesterday.

  “Officer Shutt?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s Chaplain Jordan. Just wanted to see how you’re feeling.”

  “Better,” he said. “A lot better. Thanks. And thanks for your help yesterday. I just freaked.”

  “I understand,” I said. “I’m surprised you’re back at work so soon.”

  “Just trying to stay busy,” he said, sounding a little defensive. “Tryin’ not to think about it. That’s all. Wasn’t . . . It was just an awful accident.”

  “I just keep wondering how he got into that trash bag in the first place,” I said, trying to make it sound like an idle curiosity.

  “That’s a good question. I wonder that too. I usually pick up the trash from every department early in the morning. They set it outside their back door, and me and an inmate pick it up. But yesterday, there was no trash outside of Medical.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. I parked between Medical and Laundry like I always do. I usually stay in the truck, but I had to ask the laundry sergeant about an inmate who used to work for him so I walked over with the inmate. When we came back with the bags from Laundry, Medical’s were already gone. They must’ve put them in themselves.”

  “They ever done that before?” I asked.

  “Sure, but not very often. And usually we see that old black inmate ’cause he’s so slow, but we didn’t see anybody. Why all the questions?”

  “I’m just trying to figure out exactly what happened.”

  “I’ll tell you what happened. A dumb inmate tried to escape and became a dark meat shish kebab. Everybody’s saying what a great thing I did. Hell, I’ll probably get Officer of the Month. And if anybody has anything else to say about it, they can say it to my lawyer.”

  “Your lawyer?” I asked.

  “Hell, yes,” he said. “I been grieved and sued so many damn times by these dumb sons a bitches I had to get one. What kind of world do we live in? A bunch of stinkin’ inmates can make me need a lawyer.”

  7

  Every eleven minutes, someone in the US died of AIDS.

  In Florida state prisons, those with HIV outnumbered those in Florida’s free population two to one.

  Many inmates came into the system infected with HIV—primarily the result of shared needles and unprotected sex.

  In the close confinement of prison it spread rapidly.

  Tattooing, drug use, unprotected sex caused HIV to spread inside prison the way the virus was designed to.

  Only six state prison systems in the US distributed condoms. Florida wasn’t one of them.

  “You got another minute for me?” I asked Sandy Strickland.

  I had found her in an exam room inventorying supplies.

  “Of course,” she said as she turned around to face me, her blue eyes sparkling even under the dull fluorescent lights. “Come in.”

  When I had closed the door behind me she looked a little surprised.

  “What is it? You okay?”

  I sensed genuine concern. She was a good nurse. I had come to the right place.

  “I . . . wondered if you . . . might . . . This is harder than I thought it’d be.”

  “Take your time. It’s okay. Whatever it is . . . we’ll . . . figure it out.”

  “I found out today that the inmate who was killed yesterday, the one whose blood I was covered in, had AIDS.”

  She nodded slowly.

  “I can’t quit thinking about it. Can’t . . . concentrate . . . Just keep thinkin’ I might have been infected.”

  “Oh, you poor man,” she said. “I know exactly how you feel. Blood is such a scary thing these days. I come in contact with bad blood all the time. It scares the hell out of me too.”

  “Should I be scared?” I asked.

  “Unless it penetrated your skin or splashed into your eyes or mouth . . . even then you’d—”

  “The officer freaking out splashed it everywhere.”

  “I can test you. Give you peace of mind. But I wouldn’t worry. Chances are good you weren’t infected.”

  I nodded. “Thank you. It helps just talking about it.”

  “I can test you privately down here. Nobody else has to know.”

  “Thank you. Thank you so much.”

  She motioned for me to sit on the exam table.

  As she worked around me, I thought how ironic it was that I might be infected. Not only had I been in a married monogamous relationship until recently, but I was extremely careful inside here every day.

  When she was finally ready to draw my blood, she put her delicate hands on me, patting, squeezing, caressing, comforting. She even held my hand as she withdrew the blood.

  “How long does it take?” I asked as she busied herself labeling the vial of blood and disposing of the needle.

  “We’ll have to do a series of tests. This first one will be back in about a week, give or take. I’ll sneak it in with some other tests. I’ll call you the minute I know. And then we’ll do another test in a few weeks, and another in about three months just to be absolutely certain.”

  “You’re an excellent nurse,” I said. “How did you wind up here?”

  “You mean in prison?” she said with a smile. “Old sou
r Sister Mary Margaret said I’d wind up in prison one day. I worked for a doctor in Tallahassee . . . and . . . we got involved . . . needed to get away.”

  “Tallahassee’s loss is our gain.”

  “Didn’t mean to get into all that, but . . . you’re easy to talk to. Maybe we can do more of it outside of this place—over coffee or something.”

  8

  There are four types of lockup in the Florida state prison system.

  Protective-management lockup is for those who are at risk in the general prison population—rapists, child-molesters, ex-law-enforcement officers.

  Close-management dorms are for those who, because of their custody, crimes, and behavior on the inside, are confined to a cell.

  Confinement has two classifications—administrative and disciplinary. An inmate is placed in administrative confinement when the administration determines that it is best to do so—usually when he is under investigation for a crime. Disciplinary confinement is for those inmates who were accused of a crime and were found guilty. Jacobson was in the latter.

  Whereas most inmates in the Florida DOC are housed in open-bay military barracks–style dormitories, those in lockup are housed in single six-by-nine cells. Some of the lockup cells house two inmates, some one. All have a sink, toilet, bunk, and a very small window covered with steel mesh.

  Inmates in lockup are fed through a slot in the metal door about the size of a food tray. Jacobson’s was open, and I was talking to him through it.

  Squatting down to talk through the tray slot in the door always made my knees ache and my feet fall asleep. I usually chose to talk to an inmate through the tray slot because of the security hassle involved in arranging to meet him in his cell or the conference room.

  For me to enter an inmate’s cell, he must be frisked and cuffed, and an officer must be present at all times. The same is involved if I meet with him in the conference room.

  Many times what the inmate has to say to me is so short that being frisked and cuffed takes longer than our meeting. Other times the inmate has a lot to say, but is unable or unwilling to because of the security officer standing within hearing distance.

  I was hoping that without an officer present, Jacobson would talk openly.

  “Fuck you, motherfucker,” he said.

  Guess open communication wasn’t going to be a problem.

  From the last cell down the corridor to my right, I could hear Inmate Starn yelling, “CHAPLAIN, CHAPLAIN, COME HERE. COME HERE, CHAPLAIN.”

  He did that every time I came to Confinement. It was Wednesday, and I had already seen him twice this week.

  Crouching down on the bare cement floor of Confinement, I smelled the same odor I always did—sleep.

  The stale air was thick it.

  Drool. Perspiration. Halitosis.

  Behind me, the gray block wall was lined with empty milk cartons, wads of crumpled napkins, and various other items of trash the inmates had tossed out of their cells.

  Jacobson’s cell was one of twenty along a long corridor. An officer was seated at the end of the hall, a round, baldheaded black man. Another officer, a tall slender man with strawberry blond hair and pink cheeks, was crouched down by a food slot about five cells down from me.

  “Nothing I can help you with?” I asked. “Nothing you’d like to talk about?”

  “I said, fuck you motherfucker.”

  From the next cell an inmate yelled, “MOTHERFUCKER DON’T TALK TO THE CHAPLAIN LIKE THAT. YOU STUPID SON OF A BITCH AIN’T YOU GOT NO RESPECT.”

  Deciding to change my approach, I said, “From what I hear, you would, but I’m not interested.”

  “Ain’t no punk,” he said.

  He may or may not have been a punk, but what he looked like was a neo-Nazi serial killer. Shaved head. Pale white skin. Sparse beard. Prison-green tattoos. Shark eyes.

  “What are you then?” I asked.

  “I’m Satan, man,” he hissed.

  “Don’t be so hard on yourself,” I said.

  “Shee-it, don’t be so hard on Satan,” the inmate to my left said, and started laughing.

  “You come to cast me out, Holy Man?” Jacobson asked.

  “Actually, I just wanted to see if there was anything I could do for you and maybe ask you a few questions.”

  Somewhere in another corridor a steel door slammed. The noise bounced off the concrete walls and floors and reverberated through Confinement.

  “We’re locked in now, boys,” another inmate said.

  “Nothin’ you could do for me,” Jacobson said. “I’m well taken care of. What you really mean is, there’s something I can do for you. You need something I have.”

  “CHAPLAIN, CHAPLAIN,” Starn continued to call.

  “Which is what?” I asked.

  “Secrets.”

  The officers’ radios sounded at the same time, and because of their distance apart and the cement surroundings, every word was doubled.

  “What makes you think I want to know your secrets?” I said.

  “I see evil. I hear evil. I speak evil.”

  “What sort of things?” I asked.

  “I’ve crossed my heart, hoped to die. Watch it, or I’ll stick a needle in your eye. I’ll cast you out, Holy Man. I can have you stuck, just like Johnson. Was it in his eye? CO’s are so sloppy. I heard it was messy. Did all his blood drain out? There’s power in the blood. Life and death. Atonement’s in the blood. But I guess you know that. You think he atoned for his sins?”

  “CHAPLAIN, CHAPLAIN. CHAPLAIN, I NEED YOU,” Starn yelled.

  “You had Johnson stuck? What was his sin?” I asked.

  “I can have anybody I want to stuck,” he said.

  As he talked he widened and narrowed his eyes.

  “But I like sticking pigs best,” he added. “Hickory, dickory, dock—Johnson didn’t have a cock, but he got one . . . every night, and now he’s taken flight.”

  “CHAPLAIN, CHAPLAIN,” Starn yelled, his voice sounding sad and whiny.

  “Did you have Johnson stuck?”

  “The pig had him stuck because he was tired of getting stuck in the butt.”

  He jumped up suddenly from his crouched position at the slot and began dancing around the cell, crashing into the sink, bed, and walls as he did.

  Then he started singing. “There is power, power, wonder-working power in the blood of the lamb.”

  “Jacobson,” I said. “Jacobson.”

  “Power, power, wonder-working power in the blood of the lamb.”

  Evidently the officer at the other cell heard me, and rushed over and looked through the narrow glass window of the cell door. He yelled for the other officer, who was still seated at the end of the hall, to come quickly and began to fumble for his keys.

  “CHAPLAIN, CHAPLAIN.”

  “Step back, Father, please,” he said.

  His voice was an octave higher from the excitement, his fine strawberry blond hair moving about as he moved, and his face, previously pink, was now deep red.

  I complied.

  He pulled the handcuffs from the back of his belt and opened them. As soon as the rotund black officer joined him, Strawberry Blond unlocked the door and stepped in, Rotund following closely behind him. As Rotund entered the cell, I could have sworn I saw him smile.

  “Would you be free from the burden of sin? There’s power in the blood, power in the blood.”

  Strawberry Blond told Jacobson to assume the position.

  Jacobson responded with many colorful obscenities, some of which I had never heard before.

  Suddenly Jacobson was on the floor.

  It happened so quickly it took me a moment to realize that it had.

  While Strawberry Blond was telling Jacobson to turn around and spread his legs, Rotund stepped up and punched him hard at the base of the neck.

  In a matter of moments Jacobson was cuffed, face down on the rough concrete floor, then snatched up to his feet, a mild abrasion on his forehead.

 
“Let’s get him to Medical,” Rotund said. “See about these cuts.” Then he added to Jacobson, “Next time I’m using the gas.”

  “You better ask your captain first,” Jacobson whispered.

  “Nobody touch this blood,” Rotund said as if he hadn’t heard Jacobson. “It’s bad blood in more ways than one.”

  “Let me call the OIC first,” Strawberry Blond said, beginning to walk back toward his desk. “Chaplain, can I talk with you for minute?”

  “Sure,” I said looking back at Jacobson, who stared blankly at the wall in front of him.

  As we walked down to the officer’s desk at the end of the corridor, I learned that Strawberry’s name was Rogers. When we passed by Starn’s cell, I stopped and looked in.

  “Chaplain,” Starn asked, “do you believe that a demon can possess a man?”

  “We already talked about this, Starn,” I said.

  “I’m scared,” he said in the small voice of a scared child. “Satan wants me.”

  “Nothing spiritual, good or bad, can happen to you that you don’t allow,” I said. “I’ll come back and talk to you again in a few minutes. Okay?”

  “Okay,” he said in an upbeat voice, soothed like a child.

  When Rogers and I reached his desk, he sat down.

  I stood across from him.

  “What happened to make him go off like that?” he asked.

  “I really couldn’t say. He was okay, and then all of a sudden he exploded. Does he often do that?”

  “He does pretty much whatever he wants around here,” he said.

  “Whatta you mean?”

  He frowned. “Certain inmates are looked out for around here.”

  “Who gives that kind of preferential treatment to an inmate as unstable as he is?”

  “He’s not unstable. He’s a damn actor. Did you say anything about Johnson to him?”

  I nodded. “Why?”

  “That’s the only thing he seems to genuinely get upset about. I think he’s scared for real about that.”

  “Do you think he had anything to do with it?”

  “He had everything to do with Johnson. They were both down here constantly. So either he had something to do with it or it scared him shitless, excuse my language, because he didn’t.”