Six John Jordan Mysteries

by Michael Lister

  I followed. When I caught up with him, I asked, “Are you enjoying your work here?”

  “I’m not here for enjoyment,” he said curtly. “I’m here to do my part to free my brothers from their oppressors.”

  “And to enjoy it would lessen its importance somehow, wouldn’t it?” I asked.

  He didn’t respond, and we walked the rest of the way in silence.

  To my surprise, his office, which was filled with kente cloth and African art, was not only unlocked, but there was an inmate inside it.

  The inmate, Luther Albright, one of Malcolm’s orderlies, was in Malcolm’s chair with his feet on the desk.

  “Luther, will you please excuse us a moment?” Malcolm asked as if it were Albright’s office.

  Taking his time getting to his feet, Albright walked very slowly out of the office, glaring at me and bumping my shoulder with his as he passed by.

  When he was gone, I said, “Does he work for you?”

  “He’s one of my—”

  “Or do you work for him?”

  Malcolm said, “I will allot you ten minutes out of professional courtesy.”

  “Does that mean you’re going to be courteous?” I asked.

  On his desk, open file folders revealed photos of several inmates, including Abdul Muhummin, my chapel library clerk. He quickly closed the files when he reached his desk, and I thought his attempt at nonchalance was jerky and awkward.

  He shook his head. “I don’t have time for this,” he said. “I’ve got work to do. My concentrating on doing my job may be the only hope some of them have.”

  “I feel the same way,” I said. “We’re here doing the same thing—trying to achieve the same goals.”

  The small office and state-issued furniture was all hard, cold surfaces, with no warmth or personality, and was filled with stacks of papers and books and the sloppy clutter that resulted from laziness and disorganization rather than busyness. If it weren’t for the kente cloth and African art, it’d look like every other office in the institution.

  “Do you have a Band Aid?” he asked.

  “What?”

  “I may need it if I get cut—oh, but it’s the color of white peoples’ skin, isn’t it? So, because I live in a white world, I have to bandage the wounds white people inflict with something that resembles your pale weakass skin.”

  “Are you for real?” I asked.

  “We don’t have the same goals,” he continued. “I’m part of the solution. You’re part of the problem.”

  “But some of my best friends are black,” I said with a big smile.

  “That’s not funny,” he said.

  I shrugged. “I thought it was,” I said. “But the fact is, it’s true.”

  “Monroe,” he said. “He’d see he didn’t need your friendship if he wasn’t such a white man’s nigga’. You think you’re doing us a favor by helping us. It only adds to our dependency.”

  “Perhaps,” I admitted, “but does that mean I should just forget about Nicole?”

  “The white preacher’s colored show piece,” he said. “Well, he finally showed her to the wrong son of a bitch, didn’t he? Ironic thing is, whoever killed her did her a favor. Freed her from slavery.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Wake-up,” he said. “Bobby Earl’s one of the most racist bastards ever to do time in Florida. I’ve told my students, he’s the one they should’ve killed. “

  “Who’s ‘they’?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “Whoever did it,” he said. “I don’t know.”

  “You were there, though, weren’t you?” I asked.

  He nodded. “You saw me.”

  His right eye started twitching, and he looked down and began rearranging the objects on his desk as if it were something that had to be done immediately.

  “But I’ve never seen you there before,” I said. “Why choose the night before last to go for the first time? It seems a little—”

  “Just checkin’ things out,” he said. “I get a lot of complaints about how racist you and your chapel programs are.”

  His comment had its desired effect. Suddenly I felt guilty and defensive, my pulse quickening, my hairline sweating, and I wondered who had accused me of such a thing. I had fought the good fight against the rampant racism of the area nearly my whole life, but with one comment I felt the need to defend myself, spouting my record the way a politician does. The race card was a powerful thing, especially when used on someone afflicted with so much white guilt.

  “Really?” I asked, my voice flat, calm. “From whom?”

  “I can’t reveal my sources,” he said.

  “No, see, that’s only reporters,” I said very slowly. “You’re a teacher in a prison.”

  “If you don’t stop patronizing me, you’ll regret it,” he said.

  “Luckily,” I said, “I have experience living with regret, so it shouldn’t be a problem.”

  “Why are you harassing me?” he asked, his voice taking on a whining, wounded-child quality that matched his squinty expression.

  “I would think that’s obvious to you,” I said.

  “Because I’m black,” he said.

  I smiled and shook my head. The persistence of his perception was maddening, and I realized that for all his racist outrage there was very little that was black or Afro-centric about him.

  “Could be,” I said. “Or maybe it’s not harassment at all, but just a few friendly questions.”

  “But why’re you asking me?”

  “Because you were there,” I said.

  “So were a lot of other people,” he said.

  “That’s true, and I’m talking to them, too,” I said.

  “Oh,” he said, and nodded, seeming to relax a little.

  “But, unlike you,” I added, “the murder didn’t happen during their first and only visit to the chapel.”

  Leaving Theo Malcolm’s office, I walked down the long hallway of the empty education building toward the door, my dress shoes echoing loudly on the polished tile. Windows starting half way up the walls revealed dark, empty classrooms, many of which were seldom used. We had the inmate labor to build them, but lacked the budget to staff them.

  Theo Malcolm has something to hide, I thought. Something so big, in fact, that he aggressively went on the offensive under the banner of racism in an attempt to distract me from it the moment I spoke to him.

  The reverberation of my heels striking the tile was so loud in the long, open corridor that I didn’t hear anyone come up behind me—but I felt them. In the split moment before they struck, I knew they were there, but it wasn’t soon enough for me to spin around and defend myself.

  In an instant, the lights in the hallway were off and someone grabbed my head and slung me into the plate glass window of the classroom to my left.

  While one of them pressed my head to the glass, another pinned me to the block wall with his large, muscular body. Two others coming up behind me on either side grabbed my arms and held them in place against the glass.

  At first, nothing happened. I was trapped, unable to move, and we all just stood there, only the sound of our breathing to break the silence. Then I heard footsteps coming down the hallway toward us, not clicking the way my street shoes had, but padding the way the rubber soles of the inmate boots did.

  When the unseen figure reached us, he leaned in so close that his lips were touching my ear.

  “If you’re not happy being a chaplain and want to be a cop,” he whispered, “join the fuckin’ police force.”

  The voice was vaguely familiar, but shrouded in whisper as it was, I couldn’t be certain who it was.

  In the back corner of the room I was facing, the red glow of the EXIT sign seemed to float in the darkness as if disembodied from time and place.

  “If you go near Mr. Malcolm again, we’ll fuck you up so bad you won’t be fit to be a cop or a chaplain. Understand?”

  I didn’t say anything, didn’t move or give an
y indication I had heard him.

  “He doesn’t understand,” he whispered to the group.

  The big guy with the muscular body who was pinning the bulk of my body to the wall drove a punch into my kidney so hard that my knees buckled and if they hadn’t been holding me I would have gone down.

  As the pain surged through me, I saw tiny dots of light like a dark, starry night, and I felt dizzy and nauseated.

  “Understand?” he asked again.

  “Now I understand,” I said, trying to swallow back the acid rising up my throat.

  “Good,” he said. “’Cause you’re only going to get one warning.”

  The voice receded, the others following one by one, until only the body and head guys remained. Then, as the big guy pressing my mid-section to the block wall held me in place, the guy holding my head grabbed a handful of my hair, jerked my head back, and slammed it into the glass.

  This time as my knees buckled there was no one to keep me from falling, so I did.

  “I said I understood,” I called after them, but they neither spoke nor slowed down, and before I could say anything else, they were gone and I was lying on the cool tile floor of the hallway alone in the dark.

  20

  “You okay?” Merrill asked.

  “I’ll live,” I said.

  I was back in the chapel, lying on the floor of the staff chaplain’s office, holding an ice pack to my eye with one hand and the receiver to my ear with the other.

  “How many were there?” he asked.

  “Coupla hundred at least,” I said.

  He laughed.

  It was Merrill’s day off and he had been washing his truck when I called.

  From my unique vantage point on the floor, I could see things that usually went unnoticed for long periods of time—like the small chips and scratches in the ceiling tiles, the marks and proprietary scribblings of “Property of PCI Chapel” beneath the chairs and desk, and the cobwebs in the corners that fluttered like fine hair in a breeze when the central unit kicked on.

  “Six, I think,” I amended.

  “You let six little inmates do that to you?” he asked.

  “Embarrassing, isn’t it?” I said.

  “I wouldn’t let it get out.”

  “Though, in my defense, there was nothing little about them,” I said.

  “’Cept they brains,” he said. “Messin’ with a man of God—what were they thinkin’? ‘Touch not my anointed and do my prophets no harm’ or I a have his handsome sidekick find you and fuck you up.”

  “That last part was a paraphrase, wasn’t it?” I asked. “It’s not in any of my translations.”

  “Gospel according to Merrill,” he said. “Thou shalt not fuck with me nor any of my friends, lest thou havest thy ass kickithed.”

  “Amen,” I said.

  The melting ice shifted in the bag and clinked against the plastic of the receiver.

  “What was that?” he asked.

  I told him.

  “And you have no idea who they were?” he asked.

  “I couldn’t see anyone,” I said, “but the voice sounded a little like Abdul Muhammin.”

  “Your library clerk?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” I said, “but when I got back over here, he was sitting at his desk in the library quietly doing his job, so I can’t be sure.”

  “And you think the teacher sent them?”

  “Well, they only made a move on me after I talked to him,” I said. “And he’s the only one they warned me off of.”

  “They coulda been tryin’ to point the finger at him,” he said. “Knowing you be lookin’ at him a lot harder now.”

  “That’s true,” I said. “And I’d be inclined to believe it if it didn’t give them too much credit.”

  “Oh,” Anna said as she opened the door and saw me. “I didn’t think anyone was in here.”

  I turned from the copier to see the woman I most enjoyed seeing in all the world, and my breath caught the way it did every time I saw her.

  “Hey,” I said, heart racing, mouth dry.

  “I can come back,” she said stiffly. “How long will you be?”

  My stomach dropped, and in that moment I felt the pain I must have caused her. “I’m almost finished,” I said, my tone begging her not to leave.

  It was later in the day, and we were inside the small copy room, which had originally been designed to be a storage closet in the inmate library. A dozen or so inmates sat around reading newspapers and magazines while others worked with the inmate law clerks on appeals, grievances, and law suits in the court-mandated law library.

  “I wanted to tell you again how sorry I am,” I started.

  She held up a hand. “Don’t, John,” she said. “Let’s not.”

  “Not what?” I asked, my voice hoarse, even desperate. “I just want to tell you how sorry I am.”

  “I already know,” she said.

  “Ouch,” I said.

  “No, I didn’t mean it like that,” she said. “I know you are genuinely sorry for what happened, and that you want forgiveness, and you’ll promise never to do it again, but all that’s just part of the sick cycle.”

  I nodded. “You’re right,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

  Her eyes grew wide. It was obvious she didn’t want to hear me apologize again.

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “John,” she said angrily, but couldn’t suppress the small smile dancing at the corners of her lips.

  I not only ached to be near her, but I longed to talk to her, to tell her about all that had happened, to think aloud about the case with her like I usually did and get her reactions to the words and deeds of the suspects.

  Before I could apologize for apologizing again, Pete Fortner walked in the room.

  “I got the prelim results back,” he said.

  “And?” I said.

  He looked at Anna.

  “If she’s willing,” I said, looking over at her, “I want her to stay. We could use her perspective.”

  She nodded.

  He shrugged. “Fine by me,” he said.

  As he opened the file and began flipping through it, I closed the door. After studying the pages inside a few minutes, he closed the folder and said, “She was beaten to death. Her right arm was broken, the wrist fractured. Her left shoulder was dislocated. She had blunt force trauma to her abdomen that resulted in massive internal hemorrhaging. She was hit so hard that her liver ruptured.” His voice caught in his throat, and he glanced down at the folder again, blinking back tears as he did. “Her jaw was broken, and she died from an acute subdural hematoma—the result of a severe blow to the head.”

  We were all quiet when he finished, shaking our heads and trying to avoid each other’s eyes. Suddenly, the small room had become claustrophobic, and I was having trouble breathing.

  I saw Martin Fisher’s crumpled, seemingly sleeping body again.

  “Was there any sign of sexual assault?” I asked after we had each regained our composure.

  “ME says he can’t tell for sure,” Fortner said.

  “What does that mean?” I asked. “There was nothing about the way she was killed that would keep him from—”

  “He says there was some inflamation and very slight bruising that could either be from normal childhood activity—riding a bike, climbing a jungle gym—or very careful molestation. He’s just not sure yet.”

  “What about old injuries?” I asked. “Any indication of prior abuse or assault?”

  “He said she had more old bruises than she should have, but no breaks or fractures,” he said. “Nothing like this.”

  “You suspect the parents?” Anna asked.

  I nodded. “Have to,” I said. “They were the only ones we know for sure were alone with her inside my locked office.”

  “John and Patsy,” she said to herself.

  I nodded.

  “Any other suspects?” she asked.

  “Dexter Freeman, Paul Register, Ced
ric Porter, and Abdul Muhammin—”

  “Two sex offenders and a murderer,” she said. “I can’t believe this. What makes them suspects?”

  “They were all out in the hallway during the time Nicole was in my office,” I said.

  She nodded. “But getting from a hallway where they can be seen by an officer into a locked office is...”

  “A problem,” I said. “We’re working on it. But it’s not impossible.”

  “You know how it could’ve been done?” she asked.

  I nodded.

  “Because it seems impossible to me,” she said.

  “The door was locked when I tried to open it,” Pete said. “And there was nobody in the office except you.”

  I nodded.

  The copier finished its run and the sorter began clicking as the stacks of paper were shifted to the top to be stapled. We were all quiet for a moment waiting for the noisy cha-chinks of the stapler to stop.

  “Suspect anybody else?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Roger Coel, Theo Malcolm, and Tim Whitfield were also near my office at various times throughout the service.”

  “No shortage of suspects, is there?” she said.

  “This is prison,” Fortner said.

  “Which,” I said, “is why Nicole should’ve never been allowed anywhere near here.”

  21

  Later that afternoon, I taught a class called “Grace: Still Amazing,” and as I did, I noticed several strong reactions from Dexter Freemen, especially when I shared my belief in the absolute, unconditional love of God. It was a strong enough reaction that I felt a follow-up was in order, which also gave me an opportunity to talk to him about the night of the murder, the night when he was one of only a handful of inmates out in the hallway near my office.

  I had gotten a haircut recently—as usual from whoever happened to be available at the time—and my too-short hair refused to lie down, a fact that was emphasized by the steady breeze that stood it on end as I was buzzed through the electronic gate and onto the rec yard.

  I slowly scanned the penitentiary playground, my eyes searching the blue masses for a black man, who, contrary to his name, was not free.