Six John Jordan Mysteries

by Michael Lister

  “Like if it he didn’t do it, it was done in part as a message to him?” I asked.

  “Think about how it was done,” he said. “It was a message to someone.”

  I nodded. “No doubt.”

  Rotund yelled from down the hall, “Come on. What’s taking so long?”

  “Just a minute,” Rogers yelled back.

  I glanced at my watch. It was almost time for my meeting with Tom Daniels and Edward Stone.

  “What’s gonna happen to Jacobson?”

  “He’ll be taken to Medical, checked out, and probably taken to the isolation cell and sedated and watched for twenty-four hours. That is, unless Captain Skipper cuts him out. Then he could be sent back down here or who knows? There’s no telling. Hell, I just work here.”

  “What’s the difference in being confined in one cell as opposed to another?”

  “Not much during the day, but I’ve heard at night all sorts of weird shit happens in here.”

  9

  They looked like men sitting around a barber shop on Saturday morning. Nowhere to go. Nowhere they had to be. Nothing but time to kill. Inmates don’t have much, but what they have—time—they have a lot of.

  They sat around the chapel library under the watchful eye of the officer temporarily assigned to watch them until my new assistant, a Jewish chaplain, was hired next month. Mr. Smith and three other inmates were reading Decision magazine, the monthly magazine that the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association faithfully sent us free of charge. Mr. Smith and one of the other inmates were wearing headphones—listening to gospel music or a recorded sermon.

  On my way to meet with the warden and the IG, I decided to stop by the chapel to check in on things.

  When Mr. Smith saw me, he jumped up and walked out into the hallway where I was unlocking my office door. “They’s two what want to see you, Chaplain.”

  “Okay,” I said, “but it will have to be when I get back. I’ve got a meeting with the warden in about ten minutes.”

  “I tell ’em to wait. So hot out there, they won’t mind. ’Sides they gots nothin’ else to do.”

  “Thank you,” I said, and walked into my office.

  As I closed the door, the phone began to ring.

  “Chaplain Jordan,” I said into the receiver.

  “This the chaplain?” a distressed female voice asked.

  “It is,” I said. “How can I help you?”

  “This is Veronica Simpson. My husband Charles Simpson is an inmate there. I need to talk to him. I haven’t heard from him in four months, and I need to talk to him right now. I’m not playing with you, and I’m not crazy, but I’ve got a gun to my head, and I’m going to use it on myself and his two-year-old son if I can’t talk to him right now.”

  “Okay,” I said, “now listen to me. I will let you talk to your husband, so just put the gun down and relax.”

  “I’m not crazy. I swear,” she added quickly, her voice seeming to gain strength. “If I can just talk to him, I won’t kill myself.”

  “The thing is, he is not here right now,” I said, talking very slowly. “It will take a few minutes, but I will have him called up right away. So, why don’t we talk until he gets here? Would that be okay?”

  “That would be okay,” she said softly. She was beginning to sound calmer.

  “I have to ask you to hold on a minute while I call down to his dorm and have him sent up here. Is that okay?”

  “That’s okay. I’m not going anywhere. I’m all right, Preacher. I just want to talk to my husband. I won’t do anything foolish. Promise. Just as long as I can talk to him.”

  As quickly as I could, I pressed hold, then the second line, and punched in the number to the control room. Without going into much detail, I told the sergeant in the control room to find Simpson and get him to my office as soon as humanly possible.

  I then punched line one again, hoping she’d still be there.

  She was.

  We talked about five minutes, waiting for her husband to come to my office. Our conversation dealt primarily with all the pressures she faced being a single mom whose husband was incarcerated.

  I actually felt as if I did her some good, but chances were I’d never know.

  When Simpson finally did arrive, after what seemed like days, I quickly put him on the phone and went into the other office where I called the Tampa Police and reported her threat of suicide. While talking to her I had discovered where she lived, and I told them. I then jotted down a few notes about what had transpired and called the OIC and filled him in. He advised me to fill out an incident report, which I did. I then walked back into my office and sat down at my desk.

  Noticing that Simpson was crying, I busied myself with opening the rest of my mail.

  My mail consisted of roughly fifteen requests from inmates for everything from Bibles and greeting cards to phone calls. There were also two letters from citizen volunteers who ministered at the prison saying what a blessing they themselves were, a memo from the chaplaincy administrator about upcoming religious holidays that were to be observed by the Jewish, Muslim, and Christian inmates, and a single piece of typing paper trifolded and taped together on the end with the word Chaplain typed on the outside.

  I unfolded the typing paper, tearing it slightly while removing the tape. It read, I’ve seen you talking to her. I watch over her. If you don’t stay away from her, I will kill you like I did that little bastard yesterday. She’s an angel, and I’m her guardian. She’s mine. Stay away from her.

  I reached into my desk and pulled out the request from Ike Johnson. I laid them both on the desk in front of me and began to compare them. Within seconds, I could tell they were typed on the same machine.

  I thought of Anna as I reread the note.

  “I’m sorry, what’d you say?” I said when I realized Simpson was talking to me.

  “Thank you, Chaplain. I thinks she going to be all right. I should have called her or written or something. It’s my fault, but this place is getting to me. I don’t know what to do.”

  “Why don’t you start coming to see me every week for a while, and you might want to think about seeing the psych specialist as well.”

  “Okay,” he said. “I will.”

  “And, stay in touch with your wife. It’s tough in here, but it’s tough for her out there too.”

  “I know. I will. Thank you.”

  10

  The warden’s office was neat, orderly, and as conservative as he was, with one exception. In the center of his wall of fame, amid the diplomas, merit certificates, and department commendations, was a hand-drawn picture of a family—a husband, a wife, and a child. The artist used crayons and showed great potential—potential he never got to live up to because of his untimely death at eight years old.

  Edward Stone and his wife never tried for children again after that.

  “You’re late,” Stone said.

  “Sorry.”

  “Let’s get to it. Don’t have much time left. But first, shut the door.”

  I did. Then took the chair next to Daniels.

  “Inspector, what do we have so far?” Stone asked.

  “In some ways, a great deal of information,” he said, sitting up and leaning forward slightly. “But in other ways, not very much at all. I am finding your people very uncooperative.”

  Daniels looked as if a day’s work felt like a week’s. His shirt ballooned out just over his belt, the way you would expect it to if it had been worn all day without a retuck. His face was red. And large, conspicuous drops of sweat trickled down the sides of his cheeks.

  “Surely the chaplain has been helpful with this,” Stone said.

  Unlike Daniels, Stone looked as if he had just finished getting dressed—morning-fresh and military-crisp.

  Daniels began to speak, but I jumped in. “As soon as you left us this morning, the inspector expressed his desire to work alone and left.”

  “Inspector?” Stone said.

  “
I’ve made it clear from the very beginning that I won’t work with him,” Daniels said, the sweat on his forehead increasing. “I am fully capable of conducting this investigation on my own. I certainly don’t need someone like him botching up my case.”

  “If, as you say, you are fully capable of conducting this investigation on your own, how is it that you are having difficulty doing so?” Stone asked.

  “I’m not having difficulty investigating. I am having difficulty with these mother-loving rednecks around here. I have gathered a lot of information about the inmate who was killed, though.”

  Daniels withdrew a wrinkled, soiled handkerchief from his back left pants pocket and wiped his forehead. It merely smeared the sweat around. It also left some lint on his eyebrow.

  “But you will work together, or I will call the secretary. Understood?”

  Daniels didn’t respond.

  “Understood?” Stone said again.

  Daniels made a slight nod with his head.

  “Understood?” Stone repeated, looking at me.

  Nodding, I said, “I understood it the first time.”

  “Now, tell me what you have, Inspector,” Stone said.

  “I can tell you that Johnson was murdered,” Daniels said with a swell of pride that changed his posture. “The inmate was unconscious before he was ever placed in the bag. ME says he was full of enough chloral hydrate to be dead soon anyway.”

  “What is chloral hydrate?” Stone asked.

  “Sleeping pills.”

  “Couldn’t he have taken them himself?” Stone said. “Maybe to relax during his escape or because he wanted to die?”

  “I don’t think so. I think he was drugged by someone who knew that putting him in the trash bag would get him stabbed to death.”

  “Did the ME say how the drug was administered?” I asked.

  Medical personnel might use a syringe. An officer might put it in food. Another inmate might give it to him as a pill or powder and tell him it’s some other kind of drug.

  Daniels’s face turned even redder. It was obvious he hadn’t asked.

  “He was unable to say conclusively,” he said. “We should know shortly.”

  “What else do you have?” Stone asked.

  “He had an abnormal amount of lacerations, even for an inmate. A few abrasions that were not related to his death.”

  “Where did the fatal blow strike him?” Stone asked.

  “Bottom part of his heart. The rod got stuck in his rib cage. Shutt broke several ribs trying to get it free. But that’s not what killed him.”

  “What?” Stone asked.

  “ME says that the rod scraped the bottom of the heart, but really didn’t pierce it. The loss of blood would have killed him eventually. He lost a shitload of it in a hurry, but it still takes a while. He didn’t die immediately. Died as the result of a blow to the throat that dislocated his windpipe.”

  “Could the officer have done that or even known what he was doing?” Stone asked.

  “Maybe. I don’t know. Your prime witness is sitting right across from you. Why don’t you ask him?”

  “I’ll get to him in a minute,” Stone said with a quick glance in my direction. “What else can you tell us?”

  “He was a drug user. There were traces of crack and alcohol in his blood.”

  “Crack?” Stone said.

  Dust was visible in the shaft of sunlight shining in through the window, specks dancing in it. Amazingly, it seemed to avoid Stone.

  “So his death could be drug-related,” Daniels said.

  “Aren’t drug screenings done periodically?” I said.

  “Yes, they are. He was tested as recently as a week ago, and it was negative. Besides, he was in Confinement most of the time, which makes it virtually impossible to get drugs—or anything else, for that matter.”

  “That’s not what I’ve heard,” I said.

  “What have you heard?” Stone asked.

  “That some strange things go on around here at night. Especially in Confinement.”

  Neither man reacted or commented, and Daniels continued.

  “He was a . . . gay. Had AIDS. There were traces of semen around his . . . on him. It is being processed at FDLE. Maybe we’ll get lucky and get something from it. Who knows?”

  “How about you, Chaplain?” Stone asked. “You discovered anything useful?”

  “I have more,” Daniels said.

  “Let’s have it.”

  “The lab also found some unusual trace evidence—a PRIDE chemical on his blues. May give us an idea of where he was before he wound up in the trash heap.”

  PRIDE is a state-authorized not-for-profit company that operates inside Florida state prisons, training inmates for general manufacturing and services. Many of the products created by PRIDE are used inside the prison.

  “Chaplain? What about being our prime witness? Can you tell us anything else about the actual stabbing yesterday?”

  “I really don’t think I can add anything to what I’ve already said.”

  “Should Shutt be looked into?” he asked.

  I nodded.

  “Okay,” he said, and then he looked at Daniels again. “Have you ever heard the old saying, ‘You can catch more flies with honey than vinegar’?”

  “Sure, I’ve heard it,” he said.

  “Well, the chaplain here is your honey. He is well liked and respected, and he knows at least half of the staff pretty well. So, you are to work with him and not without him or you are not to work in this institution at all. Understand?”

  “Yeah, I understand.”

  “Understand, Chaplain?” Stone said to me.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good. Now go find out what’s going on in my institution.”

  11

  Nights were the worst.

  The tin man alone in his tin house.

  Loneliness, fear, isolation, guilt. An unquiet mind.

  The inability to sleep.

  Earlier in the evening I had attended an AA meeting, driving to the next county to ensure anonymity. It had helped, but not enough. I returned home and, in the absence of the prospect of sex with anyone other than myself, went jogging.

  At midnight I had turned off the lights.

  That’s when the neon lights inside my head came on.

  Thankfully it wasn’t long before the phone rang.

  “This the chaplain what work for the Potter prison?” an elderly black woman’s voice asked. I could hear a loud television and a dog barking in the background.

  “Yes, ma’am, it is. John Jordan.”

  “This is Miss Jenkins. Ike Johnson’s aunt.”

  “Yes ma’am. I’m so sorry about Ike.”

  “Thank you. We planning the funeral and wondered if you would do it.”

  I was stunned.

  “We not really church peoples,” she said.

  I’m not either, I thought.

  “Ike’s grandma, Miss Winger, said you’s real nice to her.”

  I had spoken to Grandma Winger earlier that morning to tell her that her grandson, the one she had raised like a son, had been killed. At the time, I thought he was killed while trying to escape. She refused to believe it. She said that they were coming to visit him this Saturday, and he knew it. According to her, his current life was the best one he’d ever had.

  “When is the funeral?” I asked.

  “Saturday, if you’s able to make it. Can you do it Saturday?”

  “Yes, I can. I will.”

  I rolled over after hanging the phone on its cradle and stared up at the ceiling. It hadn’t changed.

  The breeze outside caused the aluminum of the trailer to bend in and out, making the sound of a whip cracking.

  I sat up.

  I laid back down.

  I decided to get up and work on Ike’s funeral some.

  I stumbled down the hallway into the living room and made some notes.

  Preparing the funeral sermon of a stranger killed
under suspicious circumstances was challenging. I grew weary, but I still couldn’t sleep.

  On my way back to bed, I stopped by the bathroom.

  Looking in the mirror, I discovered I looked as tired as I felt.

  As I turned to head back to bed, I noticed a small pile of clothes near the shower. It was about two days’ worth. I smiled as I thought of how Susan hated that. Having that thought gave me a strong urge to leave them there, which I only overcame because if I left them in reaction to her, she would still be controlling my life. I bent down and scooped them up, slinging one sock between my legs as I did. When I reached for it, I saw something that stopped my heart.

  On the back of my left leg, there was a cut about two inches long.

  I dropped the clothes and bent down even farther to take a closer look. It wasn’t very deep, but still deep enough for AIDS-infected blood splattered on it to get into my bloodstream.

  When did I get it? Was it today or before what happened in the sally port?

  For the second time that night, my phone rang.

  I rushed to the phone, grabbing the receiver as I climbed into bed.

  “John John,” the voice said. “John John.”

  Slightly slurred, slightly desperate, slightly scared.

  The voice was the voice I heard within the sound of my own when I had been drinking. It was the voice of my mother, and she only called me John John when she was drunk.

  “John John, answer me. Are you there?”

  “I’m here.”

  “They got me locked up again. I’m dying. You’ve got to come see me soon.”

  “Mom, you’re not dying. It just feels like it. It’s withdrawals.”

  “No . . . you . . . don’t understand. I haven’t been drinkin’. Come see me. Before it’s too late. I love you. I love you, John. You’ve always been my favorite.”

  “You tell everybody that when you’re drunk.”

  She started coughing. It sounded as if she dropped the phone. Her act was definitely improving.

  It took maybe two minutes, which seemed like thirty, for her to pick up the phone again. When she did, she said, “I’ve got to see you, son . . . before I die.”