He smiled weakly. “Did time with Bobby Earl when I was down the first time,” he said.
Behind Porter, inmates poured into the dorm for count, many of them sweating and panting from playing on the rec field. Like kids letting the screen door slam shut behind them, none of them made any attempt to prevent the massive metal door from ramming the steel frame that held it. A few of them spoke to me. Most did not.
“Were you up there to see Nicole?”
He nodded. “I was gonna try,” he said, “but they killed her before I could.”
“Who?”
“Just promise me no matter what happens to me, you’ll find and punish whoever killed my daughter.” Tears formed in his eyes again and he tried unsuccessfully to blink them away. “She was so beautiful. So sweet.”
“Yes, she was,” I said. “Who do you think killed her?”
“Who else?”
“What might happen to you?”
“Just promise me,” he said, his voice filled with desperation and fear. “I’d hate to think he got away with killing us both.”
Many of the inmates filing into the dorm had their shirts off, their hard bodies glistening as the sun hit the sheen of sweat covering them, and they looked like oil-covered body builders in the focused beam of a spotlight on center stage.
“Who?” I asked again.
His eyes widened momentarily at something behind me, and he quickly looked away. I turned to see Roger Coel walking toward us.
“Bobby Earl,” Porter whispered, then nodding toward Coel, “and he’ll probably use one of them to do it, too.”
“Coel?” I asked.
“A correctional officer,” he said.
Roger Coel walked past us and said, “You need to get in the dorm, Porter. It’s almost count time.”
“Yes, sir,” he said.
The compound had gone from playground to ghost town. The rowdy sounds of mean children in men’s bodies were replaced by the eerie sound of the nearly silent wind as it slithered through the structures.
“I was just tellin’ Dexter a coupla days ago to watch out for Bunny,” he whispered.
“Mrs. Caldwell?” I asked. “Why?”
“She bad news. Nothing but trouble. I’s a damn fool. I fell in love with her like no other woman in my life, but she didn’t love me. She don’t know how to. She’s just playin’ me.”
“You had a relationship with her?” I asked.
He nodded.
“When?”
“Before Bobby Earl,” he said. “She was a secretary in the chapel at Lake Butler. That’s where she met Bobby Earl. They hooked up while me and him was down the first time. Then when he started coming back in to preach, we’d get together. Usually in the back of the chapel. Sometimes in the bathroom or the kitchen.”
“After she was married to Bobby Earl?” I asked, thankful for something verifiable.
He nodded. “For a while. It was good while it lasted,” he said. “But when she’s finished with you...”
“So Nicole wasn’t adopted?” I asked in shock. “She’s your and Bunny, ah, Mrs. Caldwell’s child?”
“Bobby Earl adopted her, but she’s Bunny’s and mine’s daughter,” he said. “They told all they supporters they’s adopting some underprivileged little black girl who didn’t stand a chance in the world.”
“Bunny was with Bobby Earl when she had Nicole?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said. “Fool thought he was havin’ a son, an heir to his empire, then a little black girl pops out. They say he beat Bunny black and blue, but she wouldn’t tell him who the father was.”
The compound was full of inmates who could spin a yarn, but as fantastic as his story sounded, I didn’t think that’s what this was. It was unbelievable, sure, but I was beginning to believe him, and not just because he was giving me information I could check, but because of his conviction and certainty. He was either telling the truth or genuinely believed he was.
“And you haven’t seen her since then?” I asked.
“I see her when they come in, but I ain’t messin’ with her if that’s what you mean.”
“And now you think she’s seeing Dexter Freeman?”
He shrugged. “She may’ve moved on from him by now,” he said. “Somebody say she with Walter Williams.”
“Who?”
“Oh,” he said with a contemptuous laugh. “His new Muslim name is Abdul Muhammin. Nigga’ say he all spiritual now, but I sure as hell can’t tell. Please just find out who killed her. And don’t let them get away with it. And if somethin’ happen to me, I guarantee Bobby Earl’ll be the one what done it.”
“Why would he want to kill you?” I asked.
He didn’t answer me, just looked around nervously.
“Tell me,” I said. “Why do you think he killed Nicole?”
“Because,” he said, putting his hand on the door of the dorm and looking away, as Coel walked back by again.
“I said get in that dorm, inmate,” Coel said. “Now.”
“Because?” I asked as Cedric opened the door and walked into the dorm.
“Because he finally found out I was Nicole’s father. He killed her and now he’s gonna kill me,” he added just before the solid metal door slammed shut, its loud clank reverberating through my body, the way the jolt he had just delivered echoed through my mind.
15
After searching unsuccessfully for Anna, which it seemed I had been doing my whole life, I finally found her in the records vault in Classification.
Shoes off, long, elegant legs beneath the black sheer of her hose, perfectly painted nails, she had thrown herself into replacing the inmate files she had used over the last few days.
She went about her task with far more aggression than she normally did, violently cramming folders where there wasn’t sufficient space. When she noticed me, she stood upright, her body growing rigid. But that was the extent to which she acknowledged my presence.
“There are people paid to do this,” I said.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said without looking at me.
“I told you I’d do it,” Lisa, the file clerk, called from her desk just outside of the vault. “I don’t have anything else to do.”
I glanced out at Lisa, but it was the wall behind her desk that caught my attention. Beneath a wood-framed cork board filled with magazine cutouts of NASCAR drivers rather than the DC Memos it was designed to hold, a small black radio with a broken antenna emitted the grating sounds of slightly distorted country music. In front of her, Lisa’s desk was disorganized and cluttered, piled high with inmate files and requests, though I had never once seen her actually working.
I walked over and stood just behind Anna.
Lowering my voice, I said, “I’m sorry I was in no condition to receive you when you called on me last night.”
“It doesn’t matter,” she said.
“Last night?” Lisa asked. “What were the two of you doin’ together last night?”
“I just got confused when I saw you,” I said. “Or maybe it was the bourbon.”
“Bourbon?” Lisa asked in shock.
Anna didn’t say anything, just continued to file. Beneath her dark eyes were even darker circles, her hair needed brushing, her clothes were wrinkled, and she wore none of her usual jewelry, save the huge albatross of a wedding ring hung round her finger.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Why won’t you talk to me? I’m reasonably sober.”
“I don’t think I will, John,” she said. “And that’s nothing to tease about.”
“You’re right,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
“Last night, when I saw you like that,” she began, but then broke off.
“What?” I asked.
“You sure you don’t want me to file for you, Anna?” Lisa asked.
“I’ve got the damn files,” she said. “Go take another break.”
“But, I’ll—”
“NOW,” Anna yelled.
Lisa
huffed out of the office, her cheap heels clicking hollowly on the over-waxed tile floor.
The small vault, dusty and smelling of mildew, seemed to shrink in on us, the naked flourescent bulbs above us making everything look flat and dull.
“Last night what?” I asked.
“That’s not the John I know,” she said, still without looking at me. “It’s not anyone I want to know.”
I nodded.
“I’m doing my best to forget last night,” she said. “I’m gonna try and just remember the John I knew, the John that could never talk to me like that.”
“Just a little too flawed for you?” I asked.
“You can believe that if you want,” she said, looking up at me for the first time, her eyes swimming in the mixed drink of anger and pain.
“So if it happens again,” I said, “you won’t come looking for me?”
“No, John,” she said. “I won’t. I’ve got a sober husband at home, and though he doesn’t need taking care of, I think I’ll do it anyway.”
16
At three, when his shift had ended, Merrill Monroe stopped by the chapel.
He found me in the hallway outside my office, looking in.
“Lock yourself out?” he asked with a smile.
I laughed.
We had been friends since junior high school, and though on the surface we had little in common, with the exception of Anna there was no one whose company I enjoyed more.
“Actually,” I said, “I was trying to remember where everybody was last night. Walk through it and try to follow everyone’s movements. Pete just walked into the library to get Whitfield.”
“Library?”
“Listening to Bobby Earl tapes,” I said. “Feedin’ his soul before he takes his post.”
Merrill smiled to himself appreciatively as if at an inside joke.
Standing in front of the main doors, he eclipsed the light coming through their glass panels. His upper body was a perfect V, broad shoulders tapering down into narrow hips. His light brown CO shirt stretched tightly over the dark brown skin that covered the muscles in his shoulders, chest, and arms—especially the large round biceps which appeared perpetually flexed.
A moment later, Pete and Tim joined us in the hallway.
“It’d help me to have a visual as I’m thinking through this whole thing,” I said. “I’ve called for Coel, but until he gets here, why don’t you be him, Merrill?”
Merrill snapped to attention, saluted, and did his best whiteman’s walk into the sanctuary.
“Was the door closed?” he asked.
I nodded, and he closed the door. Through the glass of the door, he could still see the entire main hallway and we could see him, which meant the murderer could, too.
“He can see everything from there,” Pete said.
“Yeah, that’s the point of the glass,” Tim said.
“So how could anyone get into that locked office without him seeing them?” Pete asked.
“That is the question,” I said, then, turning to Whitfield, asked, “How long were you here?”
“I got called out almost immediately,” he said. “The service hadn’t even started yet.”
“To escort the education inmates back down to the dorms?”
He nodded.
“And when’d you make it back?” I asked.
“I had just gotten back when you saw me in the bathroom,” he said.
“Okay,” I said. “For now, you just be one of the inmates.”
“Which one?”
“Register,” I said. “And, Pete, you be Freeman. Go in the sanctuary, sit down, and then in a moment, slip out here again.”
The door behind me opened, and I turned to see Roger Coel walking in. In another moment, Coel was in his place inside the sanctuary and Merrill was playing Muhammin.
One by one, Tim, Pete, and Merrill slipped out of the sanctuary and into the hallway. They got water, stretched their legs, and went down the smaller hallway to the bathroom.
“Now, Bobby Earl was preaching,” I said to Coel, who was still in the sanctuary, “and he’s pretty loud and dramatic. Could you have gotten wrapped up in his performance and not seen what was going on out here?”
“Hell, no,” he said. “I didn’t get caught up in Bobby Earl. Not even for a second. Now, Bunny’s a different story.”
“Okay,” I said. “So just watch like you did that night.”
He did.
And as he did, Tim Whitfield darted out of the small hallway, crossed the main one, and into my office.
Coel wasn’t even looking into the hallway at the time, but still saw him in his peripheral vision.
“He wasn’t even looking and he saw him,” Pete said. “And that was with the door unlocked, which we know it wasn’t.”
I nodded.
“I take it you were a little more distracted when Bunny and Nicole were singing.” I said.
“Well, yeah,” he said. “Bunny’s a beautiful woman, but not enough not to see the hallway at all times. Besides, if I ever did get distracted by Bunny, it was when Nicole was on stage with her, and she wasn’t killed on stage.”
“The only time you left your post was when Bunny called you to the other office door?” I asked.
“Which was less than twenty seconds,” he said. “And I was looking in the office at her.”
“So no one got in that office from this hallway,” Pete said. “Which means we know who killed Nicole.”
“Who?” I asked.
“Bobby Earl or Bunny.”
“Which one?” I asked.
“Both, maybe,” he said with a shrug. “I don’t know. But it’s got to be one of them. No one else could have.”
“That’s not necessarily true,” I said.
“Of course it is,” he said. “No one could’ve gotten into your office without Coel seeing him.”
“Even if that’s true, it doesn’t mean they did it.”
“Who else?” he asked in frustration.
“There’re a lot of possibilities,” I said. “But the most obvious is that the killer could have already been in there.”
Pete looked like he had been hit. He started to say something, but stopped.
“Where?” Tim asked.
“Hiding in the bathroom,” I said. “Or under the desk. It’s not likely, but it is a possibility. And there are others. We’ve got to figure out what really happen, not just assume it was Bobby Earl or Bunny by process of elimination.”
17
Since I couldn’t work where Nicole’s blood still stained the floor, Merrill and I went into the staff chaplain’s office, which was vacant now and would be until we actually got funds appropriated to hire a staff chaplain.
Merrill was sweating heavily, and the dark skin of his face and arms glistened under the harsh flourescent light. When he sat down, his large frame dwarfed the chair across from the desk, and he looked like a parent sitting down to a child’s tea party.
I opened the bottom right drawer of the desk, withdrew a couple of paper cups, and poured orange juice from a can into them.
“So,” he said. “You know whodunit yet?”
I shook my head.
“I can’t even get my mind around a motive,” I said. “I mean the most obvious would be sexual—”
“She been messed with?” he asked.
I shrugged. “I haven’t seen the prelim autopsy report yet, but— ”
“I ain’t talkin’ ‘bout her murder,” he said.
I had been so focused on her murder, I hadn’t even considered that she might be the victim of molestation, which would be a powerful motive.
“Bobby Earl?” I asked.
He nodded.
My mind began to race.
“Whacha thinkin’?” he asked.
“That if a public figure wanted to kill his adopted daughter because she was about to tell the world his dirty little secret, bringing her inside prison to do it would be... brilliant.”
&nb
sp; “Nobody said Bobby Earl was stupid,” he said. “If he was messin’ with her—”
“Which is a very big if, but certainly something we need to file away for consideration if the autopsy shows—”
“What’s this we shit, white boy?” he asked.
I smiled. “I’ve got to interview them,” I said.
“When you talkin’ about Bunny, you can say we.”
I laughed.
“You notice the way Bobby Earl’s handling the death of his daughter?” he asked.
“You mean in as public a way as possible?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Now, I hate to be cynical, but I bet he receive one hell of an outpouring of well-wishes and financial support because of it.”
“Word on the compound is he had a very large life insurance policy on her, too,” I said. “And that he’s mobbed up and in need of a quick stimulus package for his struggling economy.”
“If he brought that little girl in our house to kill her for money... for any reason...” he began, but was unable to finish.
“I know,” I said.
“Just do me a favor and don’t be askin’ me to give the motherfucker mercy.”
I didn’t say anything.
My religion, what little I practice of it, is compassion. Merrill’s if he has one, is justice. More often than not, they compliment each other, but occasionally they throw us into conflict. I couldn’t imagine this would be one of those times, but when they came they almost always surprised me.
“Could it have been anybody else?” he asked. “I mean really.”
I nodded. “I can think of a couple of ways it could be one of the inmates or staff members that were here.”
He nodded. “I almost hope it is somebody else.”
We both grew silent a moment, retreating into the disturbing thoughts inside our heads, comfortable with each other’s quiet company. I thought about what he had said about mercy, and realized I wasn’t feeling any at the moment either. I wondered if I would before we caught whoever committed this unimaginably dark deed.
“Cedric Porter says he was Nicole’s real father,” I said.
“You believe him?”
Six John Jordan Mysteries Page 24