Six John Jordan Mysteries

by Michael Lister

  “What you’ve got to do is get sober. I’m hanging up now. Call me when you’re sober.”

  12

  The next morning as I was meeting with inmates and opening mail, I received another typed note.

  Like before, it was a single piece of typing paper, trifolded, taped, with one typewritten word on the outside: Chaplain.

  I carefully peeled back the tape and opened it.

  I could tell immediately that it was produced by the same typewriter as the other one.

  It read, Chaplain, if you don’t back off, I’m going to kill you. Just back off, or you’re dead. I will kill you and that girl you love. Killing’s better than fucking. I love it. I will probably fuck her and then kill her. But I might kill her then fuck her. Back off!

  The institutional mail was delivered every day but Sunday. The note had probably been sent the previous night. Who was it about? I was in love with Anna, but was it obvious to anyone? The other note had spoken of protection, now this one of threat. Were they about two different women? Anna and who? Sandy Strickland? Who else had I been seen with recently?

  My office door opened and Tom Daniels walked in.

  I nodded toward one of the chairs across from my desk as I carefully folded the letter and stuck it in my desk drawer.

  He sat down.

  Looking better than he had yesterday, his face wasn’t as red, his eyes not as bloodshot.

  He looked down at the clipboard that he was carrying, flipped through a couple of pages, then looked back up at me.

  “Look, the warden said we’ve got to work together. Neither of us is happy about it, but whatcha gonna do, right?”

  I knew the warden’s words alone were not enough to bring about this change in him.

  “The investigation is more important than our dislike of one another. Wouldn’t you agree?”

  “I don’t dislike you. I’d like to talk with you about what happened.”

  “I’ve heard your excuses before.”

  “I’ve never offered any excuses. You’ve only heard things from Susan.”

  He shook his head. “Don’t want to talk about it. Just concentrate on the work. I don’t like you, but I can work with anyone.”

  “I’m sorry for any pain I’ve caused you or your family. I love Susan. Only want the best for her.”

  He was unable to hide his obvious awkwardness and discomfort.

  “We need to follow up some of the leads that our physical evidence has produced,” he said. “You could do some of them without anyone noticing. IG of the department walks in and starts asking questions, people get nervous and clam up.”

  No wonder he was being civil. He needed my help.

  “Like what?” I asked.

  “The lab said there were traces of a chemical on Johnson’s pants that’s used in floor cleaner and wax in medical and dental facilities. We’ve traced the exact chemical to two types of cleaners manufactured by PRIDE. The cleaners are used in the medical offices, the infirmary, and the dental offices.”

  “We know he was in the infirmary the night before he was killed.”

  “But he couldn’t get it on him from just being there—even if he fell on a recently mopped floor. Besides, the chemical on his pants had not been diluted. He’d’ve had to come in contact with an actual bottle of cleaner, and it’d have to have been within a few hours of his death.”

  “We need to find out if he ever worked with the cleaner or if his uniform was switched with someone else’s. Happens a lot. Uniform could’ve come in contact with the chemical when another inmate was wearing it.”

  He shook his head. “I doubt it. The chemical had not been through the washer and dryer, and the uniform had his name tag on it. It actually stuck to the spear. How about Medical and Dental?”

  “I’ll check them again as I can. I have to continue my regular work as well. And I’ve been asked to do Ike Johnson’s funeral on Saturday.”

  “Find out all you can about him from his family,” he said. “They may know something useful and not know they know it.”

  I nodded.

  “I think it’s best if we’re not seen together. You do those things. I’ll talk with Fortner, make him feel a part of the investigation, and continue to check with the lab.”

  Working together without working together. It was ingenious.

  13

  Merrill Monroe, my best friend since elementary school, was an African-American correctional officer sergeant in charge of Outside Grounds.

  Inmates assigned to his crew were not considered escape risks and were allowed to work outside the gate.

  I found him in a garden to the left of the institution, down on his hands and knees showing an inmate just how to plant sugar snap peas.

  The light brown sleeves of his short-sleeve CO uniform were stretched tightly over muscular dark brown arms. Every time he moved, his muscles flexed, straining his shirt to the point of ripping.

  As he instructed the inmate on exactly how to do his job, he spoke in slow, even tones. I had seen him stare down a gang of inmates, two with shanks, the same way. I had also seen him wipe out an entire gang by himself, never raising his voice and never acting as if it required much effort either.

  “Sarge, you got a minute?” I asked as I came up behind him.

  He stood, nodding at me and pointing at the row of peas to the inmate.

  We walked away from the garden and the inmates working there for some privacy.

  “I was thinking of planting some sugar snap peas and needed some help.”

  “Shee-it. Your ass ever planted anything in your life?”

  “Not too late to start, is it? Really am about to put some sod around my trailer.”

  “Want some advice?” he said.

  “From an expert like yourself? Of course.”

  “Put the green side up,” he said, a broad smile creeping across his face, revealing his startling white teeth.

  We were both silent a moment.

  He glanced back in the direction of the garden. I could tell he was not happy with how the inmates were planting the peas.

  “It’s hard to get good help these days,” I said.

  “Yeah. Speaking of which, I heard about what you did in the sally port on Tuesday. Pretty impressive for a skinny white boy.”

  “I’m not skinny,” I protested. “I’m fit.”

  “You’s fit before all that shit in Atlanta,” he said. “Now you skinny.”

  He stood directly in front of me, positioning himself between me and the sun, the shadow he cast keeping me from needing the shades I had left in my office. He was always doing things like that and never mentioning it.

  I could see my reflection in his glasses. I looked distorted, like my face was too big for my head and body. Merrill towered over my six feet by about four inches, totally eclipsing the sun.

  “Anyway,” he continued, “you did good. Showed some of these rednecks that a man can be civilized and have balls too.”

  “Did Johnson work for you?”

  “On paper.”

  My eyebrows shot up. “Oh really?”

  “He was assigned to Outside Grounds but never came. Each month I got a note from Captain Skipper saying he using Johnson other places, just go ahead and give him credit for working out here.”

  “And you did it?” I asked, a little surprised.

  “Captain say do it, I do it,” he said, falling back into his favorite dialect for expressing his frustration. “I not smart enough to think for myself. Don’t ask no questions. No sir.”

  Merrill thought for himself all right, and asked plenty of questions. As smart as any man I’d ever met, Merrill had been unable to attend college. Instead he had spent much of his time at the public library and already had a much better education than most college graduates.

  “Did he ever show up out here for work?” I asked.

  “When he was first assigned here. Came out about three times. Didn’t do a damn thing. Worried about his fingern
ails and hair too much.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Inmates called him Go-down ’cause he a go down on anybody.”

  I nodded, thinking about the picture developing of little Ike Johnson.

  “You tell me anything about Hardy? CO who works nights in the infirmary.”

  “Ex-military,” he said. “Still in the reserves. Hell of a good officer. Smart. Tough. Fair. He not as good as me, but . . . he’s good.”

  “Pretty confident for a black man named after a dead white woman.”

  He ran his hand across his short hair and then started patting it. “With good reason.”

  “Anything else about Johnson you can think of?”

  “Didn’t know him that well, But I’ll tell you who did. Inmate named Willie Baker. Probably the oldest homosexual on the compound. Hell, maybe even in the world.”

  “The one they call Grandma?” I asked.

  He smiled. “Yeah,” he said with surprise and amusement. “Chaplain got the 4-1-1.”

  “That’s me, Mr. Information. But it’s not the 4-1-1, but the 9-1-1 concerns me. You ever get a request from Johnson? Was it typed?”

  He shook his head. “Nigga couldn’t read or write.”

  14

  Blue movement everywhere.

  The compound pulsing with energy.

  Inmates laughing, yelling, talking, walking, playing, lining up, gathering in small groups, moving. Always moving.

  Inmates on the compound were in perpetual motion.

  Above it all the hot July sun was unrelenting, unforgiving. The only shade was provided by four pavilions. But even if they blocked the sun, they were impotent against the heat.

  The heat was stifling, thick and difficult to breathe.

  As I walked through the open population, I was again reminded that I was a stranger in a strange land. This was their world. Most of the inmates treated me like a servant at a dinner party.

  Passing through the lower compound, I made my way down to the rec yard where inmates were playing basketball, softball, lifting weights, and walking around the track—all beneath the clear, blue sky.

  I found Willie at the far end of the field, sitting on the ground leaning up against the back of the softball fence.

  He looked about a hundred and fifty. His gray hair, what little there was, made a nearly complete circle around the crown of his head. His eyes were hollow. His stubbly gray beard sporadically covered his gaunt face, dipping down in the recesses of his cheeks because he had no teeth.

  If he was in any way effeminate, you couldn’t tell just by looking at him. Of course, if he was alive, you couldn’t tell it just by looking at him either.

  He sat with two other men, both in their twenties, both as feminine as most females I’d ever seen, more so than many.

  I squatted down in front of Willie. “Mind if I ask you a few questions?”

  Willie’s expression didn’t change.

  “Grandma,” the inmate to his left said in a high falsetto voice, “Chaplain want to talk whichya.”

  Willie didn’t respond.

  A gray officer’s station building stood in the center of the rec yard. Part of it was open, housing free weights and Ping-Pong tables. Scattered all around it were card tables where small groups of inmates played checkers, chess, and dominoes.

  “Grandma,” he said again, this time patting his cheek as he did, “wake up, old girl. They’s a man what wants to talk whichya.”

  Willie’s eyes drifted slowly back down to earth, landing somewhere in my vicinity. Then he said in a soft, airy voice, “Who—” he breathed out and paused as if this would require the last bit of life that was left in him “—is . . . it?”

  “It’s the chaplain. The new one,” he said.

  “The fine one,” the other one said.

  Willie leaned down and whispered something in the ear of the inmate to his left. He was obviously the spokesperson for the group. His name tag read Jefferson.

  “Grandma wants to know if you think homosexuals have no hope where God concerned.”

  “I don’t think anybody has no hope where God is concerned.”

  Willie leaned down again and whispered something else in Jefferson’s ear.

  Around us the other inmates on the rec yard were loud and active, sounding like children on a playground. And, in many ways, that’s what they were.

  “Grandma say you all right,” Jefferson said. “Whatcha wanna know?”

  “Everything there is to know about Ike Johnson.”

  “Grandma say he dead. What else they to know?” Jefferson said after receiving instructions from Grandma to do so.

  “I want to know all about him while he was alive so I can find out why he was killed.”

  Beyond the blacktop court where young black men played full-court basketball like they did in Miami, the elderly inmates played horseshoes like they did in retirement homes in Sarasota. Past them, the young white inmates played volleyball the way they did on Panama City Beach. Yet, beyond all of this, the wall of chain-link fence and razor wire served as an ominous reminder of exactly which part of Florida this was.

  “Grandma say he a real ho. Do anything. Sooner or later his kind always gets stuck. Grandma say everybody think he belonged to Jacobson, but he didn’t. Grandma say he belonged to another inmate, and they both belong to a cop.”

  “A correctional officer here at the prison?” I asked.

  “Yeah. But the point is he wasn’t loyal. He’d do anything anytime. He also run his big mouth.”

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

  “Grandma say that all she can say, ’cause she ain’t got a big mouth.”

  I thought about all the names that I had come across so far in this investigation. I wanted to ask him about at least one of them.

  “Can you tell me who Johnson’s real old man was?” I asked.

  “Can’t say,” Jefferson said.

  “What about Captain Skipper?” I asked.

  “Grandma say, he won’t say nothin’ about that redneck son of a bitch,” Jefferson said.

  “Okay, what about Allen Jones, the inmate who works in the infirmary?”

  Again the whisper, again Jefferson with the response. “Say all he know is he well looked out for. He in love with them nurses.”

  “How about a young officer named Shutt?” I continued.

  “Must be new, ’cause Grandma don’t know him,” Jefferson said.

  “Anything else you can tell me that might help me find out who killed Johnson and why?”

  “Grandma say it come down to three things. Sex. Drugs. Rock ’n roll. Everything in here do.”

  15

  “Who can I get drugs from?” I asked.

  “Things already gotten that bad?” Anna said.

  She was wearing a colorful jumper with blooming spring flowers all over it. It fit nicely, though not too nicely. Never too nicely in here. Her long brown hair was worn down in long, looping waves.

  “If an inmate wants to buy drugs on the compound,” I said, “how does he do it?”

  I was seated across from her desk in a blue plastic chair that sloped down to the left.

  Behind her, through the window, I could see inmates mowing dead grass. The sun had taken a toll on everything this year, but the grass most of all. The waves of heat made the inmates look as if they were many miles rather than a few hundred feet away.

  “Well, let’s see,” she said, narrowing her eyes and tapping her pencil on her forehead. “First he would have to have something to buy them with. This could be cash from an outside account, personal property to trade—say, a watch, a ring, or canteen items—or he could be willing to do something—sex, a hit, a favor.”

  “Do many of them have what it takes to buy drugs?” I asked.

  “Not many have cash, but nearly all have something of value—we’re talking about the trading of goods and services.”

  “Just how available are drugs on the compound?” I asked.

/>   “Not as much as you might think after working here and seeing all the crime, but a whole hell of a lot more than a person on the street would think.”

  “How does it get in?”

  “Some of it’s homemade. We have chemicals here and a pharmacy. Usually though, the homemade stuff is liquor. Most of the drugs come in because someone brings them in—family and friends during visitation or COs or staff smuggle it in to sell or trade.”

  “What about screenings?” I asked.

  “Officially, they’ll tell you we do random drug screenings. Unofficially, most of them are conducted after we receive a tip from another inmate. Of course, after an inmate tests positive once, he is watched more closely.”

  “How could Johnson have had more than one kind of drug in his system when the tests done on him in both Confinement and Medical came back negative?”

  She thought about it for a moment.

  “I can only think of three possibilities. Inmate somehow faked the test—traded urine with someone or something like that. It was an honest mistake by the officer doing the test. Or, someone was looking out for him.”

  We fell silent a moment.

  I tried to process and piece together all the information I had received recently.

  “Have you received any threats lately?” I asked.

  She smiled. “You mean in addition to the normal stuff?”

  “Yeah.”

  “No. Why?”

  “Just curious,” I said.

  “You’re never just anything,” she said. “Especially just curious.”

  “Just be careful.”

  “I always am,” she said.

  “Extra careful for a while, okay?”

  She nodded slowly. “Okay.”

  I told her about the notes I’d been receiving.

  Before she could respond, her phone rang.

  She answered it.

  “It’s for you,” she said after putting the call on hold. “Says it’s urgent, but she’ll only talk to you in your office.”

  “Who is it?”

  “Molly Thomas.”

  “Okay,” I said, standing. “Will you give me a few minutes to get to my office, and transfer it?”