Six John Jordan Mysteries

by Michael Lister

  Standing there with Dexter’s family, attempting to offer support and perhaps comfort in their time of crisis, I thought about how strange it was. Only a sometime-investigator and all-the-time prison chaplain would be caught in the seeming contradiction of trying to minister to one of a handful of suspects in a murder he was investigating.

  “Am I early?” I asked.

  Dexter shook his head. “Everyone else is running on CPT,” he said.

  “That’s Colored People Time,” Trish explained.

  “Oh,” I said, and winked at Dexter.

  He shook his head. “Honey, he works in a prison that runs on CPT. He knows words and phrases Chris Rock doesn’t.”

  I smiled. “I’m going to slip back there,” I said, nodding toward the back, “and give you all some time together.”

  “Thank you,” he said, “but I’d like for you to sit with us. We don’t have any other family.”

  “I’d be honored to,” I said.

  After the funeral and interment, I stood with Dexter and his family beneath the canopy of a towering oak tree in front of the small church as they underwent the tearing of their souls at having to say good-bye again so soon. The air wasn’t as cool as it had been, but the gentle breeze made the shade beneath the shelter of the oak tolerable.

  I was facing the church and Dexter when I saw the expression on his face change. I turned to see what was behind me.

  A Greensboro City police car crept by, as if in slow motion, the two young, white police officers inside glaring at Dexter in a manner that indicated they had no intention to protect or serve.

  I looked back at Dexter. The muscles in his jaws were flexing and his eyes had narrowed to slits. Trish continued to hug him, only now it was about restraint as much as affection. “Don’t,” she said. “We’re not going to let them keep us apart one more day than we have to.”

  He seemed to relax a little, and when I turned back, the police car was gone.

  “The one in the passenger’s side is Larry Lassiter, my brother,” Trish explained. “He’s the one who set Dexter up.”

  I nodded.

  “We better get you back,” she said to Dexter.

  “Okay,” he said.

  “Would you mind if I followed you?” I asked.

  “Mind?” Trish said. “I was going to ask if you would.” We walked over to our vehicles. “Now that Mama Freeman is gone,” Trish said, “we’ll be moving, too. We’re going to get away from them. If we can just make it until then.”

  “An actual innocent inmate,” Anna said. “I’ve become so jaded I didn’t really believe they existed.”

  I had called Anna from a convenience store in Greensboro and asked her to check with FDLE about Larry Lassiter. What she had discovered, that Lassiter was under investigation and Dexter was believed to have been set up, so surprised her that she had rushed up to tell me the moment I arrived at the institution. I had just been buzzed through the sally port when she rushed up and gave me the news.

  “They gonna get Dexter a new trial?” I asked.

  “It has low priority,” she said. “They’re not going to do anything until they arrest Lassiter. Don’t want to warn him.”

  “So Dexter could EOS before anything happens,” I said.

  She nodded and frowned. “At least it’d be taken off his record.”

  I shook my head. “That’s not enough,” I said.

  “Not much we can do.”

  “I’ll talk to Dad, see what he can do.”

  She shook her head to herself in disbelief again and said, “An actual innocent inmate.”

  32

  In seminary, I had read On Death and Dying by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross. In it, she shared her experiences with the dying and what she had learned from them. Kubler-Ross witnessed each of her patients experiencing the same five stages when faced with a terminal condition. I read the book as a part of a class on hospital ministry and experienced its truth first-hand while I served as a student chaplain at Emory Hospital. Memories of those days drifted over me like the sounds of a sad love song that brings both pleasure and pain as I drove over to Mom’s.

  I had watched helplessly as the initial denial began with the first shake of their heads as the doctor delivered the grim prognosis, listened as they shared with conviction the opinion that this was a mistake, just a mix-up of records or an invalid test result. After a while, the light of their denial burned out, and then, like a lightning flash in a dark sky, their anger bolted out of nowhere and struck with rage at whatever happened to be in its path. I was usually called in on the next stage, for when it came to bargaining, everyone wanted to talk to the ‘Man upstairs.’ I heard confessions and received numerous vows that would be kept if only God would allow them to live. When this failed, which of course meant I had failed them as much as God had, they sank slowly into the quick-sand of depression, emerging much later, as if from baptism, new and clean in their acceptance.

  My mom, who would die soon from the disease of alcoholism if she didn’t receive a liver transplant, was in the midst of a lengthy stage of bargaining, and had grasped the religion of the dying with all the fervor and desperation of a falling rock climber clinging to the last safety line.

  When I arrived at Mom’s, an extremely overweight lady in illfitting polyester pants and an untucked religious T-shirt that read “Turn or Burn” over fiery flames met me at the door. She wore thick glasses, and her labored breathing whistled out of the numerous gaps between her too few teeth.

  “You the son who’s a preacher?” she asked with a smile that scrunched up her face, lifted her glasses, and narrowed her eyes.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said. “I’m John.”

  “I’m Sister Bertha,” she said. “Come on in. I came over here to pray for her. You wanna join us?”

  “You go ahead,” I said. “I’ll—”

  “You’re a preacher, aren’t you?” she asked. “Prayin’s what you’re paid to do.”

  “Actually, I have to do most of my praying on my own time,” I said. “You go ahead. I’ll see her when you’re finished.”

  She turned back from closing the door and eyed me skeptically. “You don’t want to pray with us?” Her question was filled with accusation and disdain.

  “Well, I—”

  “Listen,” she interrupted. “Your mother’s under the attack of Satan. She needs prayer warriors now more than ever. She has become a precious saint and this whole thing is just Satan trying to snatch her life.”

  I nodded as she spoke, but I didn’t say anything.

  “What?” she asked angrily. “You don’t agree? I can’t get an amen from a supposed-to-be preacher?”

  “Actually,” I said. “Her condition is the direct result of her actions. Not the work of the devil. As unpleasant as it is, in truth, she’s reaping what she’s sown, and I believe that it is to her benefit to deal with the reality of what she’s done and what she’s experiencing because of it. She needs our compassion, but love doesn’t involve lying to her or supporting her in denying her responsibility.”

  She shook her head, her face scrunching again, this time as if she smelled a bad odor. “My God,” she said. “No wonder we’re in the shape we’re in, when preachers are so deceived. Do you know anything about spiritual warfare?”

  “Lady, I’m a recovering alcoholic,” I said. “I know all about spiritual warfare.”

  She snorted and rolled her eyes. “Do you know how to bind and loose the enemy? Do you have the Gifts of the Spirit?”

  “I—”

  “I bet you don’t even speak in tongues,” she said and turned and waddled down the hallway to my mother’s sickroom.

  I went to the kitchen to wait. While I was there, I noticed how dirty it was. Dishes were piled in the sink, plates of discarded food lined the counter, and the kitchen table was covered with letters and bills.

  I began to clean.

  Sister Bertha prayed long enough for me to clean nearly the entire kitchen. Her pra
yers were loud and demanding, formal and austere. She addressed God, the Devil, demons, and even cancer, though my mom’s condition was cirrhosis of the liver. She also prayed against her “blind and deceived family” and rebuked us for being a hindrance to her healing. When she was finished, she paraded out of the house without saying a word to me.

  I continued to clean the kitchen long after Bertha had left. She disturbed me, and her irresponsible, judgmental religion left me angry and embarrassed. I was certain that her pseudo-spiritual, superstitious cocktail was eating away at Mother’s soul. When my anger had subsided, I walked down the long hall that awaits every son, to the room where my mother faced her mortality like the single raised finger of a Ferris wheel operator signaling that only one rotation remained on the ride of her life.

  I quietly entered the room where I found her sleeping, and sank into the chair beside her bed. I studied her face as if seeing it for the first time. The gravitational pull of desperation in her eyes was held in by her heavy lids, and I could examine what was normally too painful. It was the guilt and pain she felt when she looked at me that hurt me most.

  Her stress-creased face radiated a calm glow, and the corners of her mouth were turned up in a small pleasant smile. She looked peaceful. She looked only vaguely familiar. Perhaps I had been wrong about Sister Bertha. Perhaps I had been guilty of judging her for judging me. She must have been doing some good—she must have wanted the same thing I did.

  My head fell into my hands and I began to pray... for Mom, and for her son, who needed forgiveness once again. After a while, I sensed she was looking at me, and I looked up to see the wide-eyed, adoring face of a mother—one I didn’t recognize as my own—gazing at me lovingly. I looked away for a moment. I was used to the glazed, out-of-focus gaze, the bobbing-head, confused leer, but not the compassion only a mother was capable of.

  When I looked back, she asked, “Were you praying for me?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said. “And for me.”

  “For you?” she asked. “Why?”

  “Because I’m quick to judge and slow to learn.”

  “No, you’re not,” she said, and I got the impression she thought I was talking about her. “Why didn’t you pray out loud?”

  “I didn’t want to wake you,” I said. “But I probably will before I go, if you will allow me to.”

  “Allow you to?” she said, shaking her head. “Allow you to? I’m your mother, John. Don’t be so bashful. You don’t have to ask me if you can pray for me. You act as if I’m a stranger.”

  I could tell by the quick flash of pain in her eyes that she had read my thoughts. “In a lot of ways we are strangers, Mom, and you know it. We really don’t know the people we’ve become.”

  “Well, you’ve become a man of God,” she said.

  I shook my head.

  “Don’t,” she said and reached for my head. “I mean it. You’ve got to get more bold about your faith, that’s all... like Bertha. I want you to lay your hands on me and cast out this foul demon of sickness.”

  “Mom,” I said slowly, my mouth suddenly dry, my tongue thick. “I don’t think it is a demon.”

  “You don’t?” she asked, her face narrowing into a concerned question. “Not the attack of the enemy?”

  I shook my head.

  Her face clouded over, but I could tell she was still focusing, contemplating.

  “It’s like sobriety,” I said. “We’re all responsible for our own. No one else can be. Or my divorce. Do you know how much I would like to say that Susan had a demon.” I laughed. “Or how I would like to blame her or someone or something else. No. I’ve got to take responsibility for me, for my part, for my actions.”

  She began to cry.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “Are you trying to hurt me?” she asked in a soft, wounded voice. “To pay me back?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “I need you to go right now,” she said. Her voice was firm, but not mean.

  “Can I pray for you?”

  She shook her head.

  I nodded, and slowly walked out of the room. I was three steps down the hall when I realized what I needed to do. But it was ten steps before I was able to do it. I stopped, turned, and went back to her bedroom.

  “Would you like for me to call Sister Bertha for you, Mom?”

  33

  “Bobby Earl’s in serious financial trouble,” Dad said. “At least he was until Nicole was killed.”

  I had stopped by Dad’s on my way home from work, and as usual, found him in the corral behind his house feeding his cows. In addition to being a sheriff, Dad had, as of late, become a cowboy, transforming his five-acre lot into a small farm and having more fun than he had had in years.

  “He had a life insurance policy of a million dollars on her,” he added.

  I shook my head, anger spiking anew inside me.

  “So far there doesn’t seem to be any mob connection, but he’s got money problems of the magnitude that make a person impetuous.”

  “His TV show doesn’t bring in—”

  “That’s just it,” he said, “it brings in shiploads. So it’s going somewhere. Either it’s being grossly mismanaged or he’s got an addiction or he is laundering it for the mob.”

  Where’s all the money going? I wondered.

  “And get this,” he said. “He’s hired a high-powered attorney to file a wrongful death suit against the State of Florida for a few more million.”

  I shook my head in disbelief as I thought about it.

  We were quiet a moment, then he started shaking his head. “Religion,” he said. “War. Hate. Judgmentalism. Money. Power. Pride. Theft.”

  I nodded, but didn’t say anything.

  “How can you be associated with them?” he asked.

  “Who?” I asked. “The Caldwells?”

  I knew I was about as far from the Caldwells as a person of faith could be, but it bothered me it wasn’t obvious to him. I had broken away from my family years ago. Our relationship now was that of adults, not parents and child. We had little in common, and though I loved them, we weren’t close, yet I still cared what they thought about me—especially Dad—and I didn’t like it. It made me feel immature and insecure.

  “All the crazy fanatics and fleecers.”

  “I don’t see myself as associated with them in any way,” I said. “I feel about organized religion the way you do. I find it tragically ironic that they do what they do in the name of Jesus, the poor peasant who refused power at every turn.”

  “Hell, they hide behind him,” he said.

  “I just wonder what exactly they have to hide,” I said, attempting to change the subject. “We need to interview them.”

  “That’ll take an act of God,” he said.

  “Well, don’t count that out,” I said.

  He ambled over to where I was leaning on the metal corral panel and draped his arms over the top so that we were nearly a mirror image of each other.

  “You get anywhere with FDLE on the Dexter Freeman case?” I asked.

  He looked at me incredulously. “You just called me about it this afternoon,” he said. “I haven’t even called them yet. What’s the rush?”

  I shrugged. “His family needs him. Prison’s a dangerous place. He’s innocent.”

  “We’ll get it taken care of,” he said. “It’ll just take a while. I’m sheriff, not king.”

  “I wasn’t aware there was a difference,” I said.

  He smiled. “There’s not in Potter County,” he said. “But that’s as far as my reign extends.”

  We fell silent and his smile faded.

  “You think they brought that little girl all the way down here and into that institution just to kill her?” he asked.

  “God, I hope not,” I said and prayed. “But,” I added, “can you think of a better place to do it?”

  “I’m havin’ a hard time thinkin’ about it at all,” he said, looking down at his feet. He wa
s kicking at the dirt with the point of his boot, then covering over the divot with the heel of the other one.

  On the other side of the small corral, three cows ate grain out of a trough that hung from one of the panels, two of them with calves sucking milk from them as they did. One of the calves seemed to be getting more than her fill, but the other continually nuzzled the sack with his nose attempting to get the milk to let down.

  “Probably going to have to bottle feed him,” Dad said when he looked over at where I had been staring in wonder. “Her milk’s not flowing right.”

  A small breeze blew over us, carrying with it the fresh scents of livestock, the sweet smell of hay, and the dusty smell of grain. The stillness and peace of the moment was interrupted as three violent sneezes erupted from me in quick succession.

  “Excuse me,” I said.

  “Bless you,” Dad said.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “We haven’t gotten any results back on the condoms yet,” he said, “but the pathologist said that the one found in the visitor’s restroom was definitely covered in feces like we thought. The fluid on the two found in the kitchen was saliva. So I guess we’re talkin’ oral, anal, or something else altogether—like muling, but we don’t know who—or why there’re two with saliva, and DNA’s gonna take a while.”

  “One of the inmates says DeAndré Stone was there that night,” I said, “but so far no one else has corroborated it.”

  “You believe him?”

  “I’m inclined to,” I said.

  “Well now, that changes things, doesn’t it?”

  “Have you seen the crime scene photos?” I asked.

  He nodded slowly and looked down.

  “I was only in there a few minutes, but I thought I saw something,” I said.

  He wiped at his eyes, then looked up at me and said, “What’s that?”

  “Staging,” I said.

  “The body or crime scene?” he asked.

  I nodded. “I noticed her skirt and top had been pulled up and her panties down,” I said, “but if she wasn’t sexually assaulted, then it was staging—made to look like a sex crime when it wasn’t.”