Six John Jordan Mysteries

by Michael Lister

  Like the stranger in the mirror, my surroundings seemed foreign to me. Dangling hollow door, paper-thin paneling, curling linoleum-covered creaky floor, rust-spotted lime-green sink beneath a leaky faucet, and cabinet doors that no longer fastened shut—it was bad. I deserved worse.

  I needed to talk to someone, to share the dark thoughts slamming into the walls of my mind, to release the conflicting feelings swirling inside my chest cavity, but who? Who could hear my confession, who could offer compassion, comfort, and wise counsel?

  A moment later my phone rang.

  “Hey,” Susan said, her voice sultry and sleepy.

  “Hey,” I said. “I was just thinking about you.... about us.”

  “I figure you’ve got a lot of that to do,” she said.

  I didn’t say anything.

  “I’m going back to Atlanta today,” she said.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “To let you think,” she said. “I’m a different person, John. If you think there’s any possibility we can be together again, we’ll have to start over—get to know the people we’ve become. I’m in no hurry. I won’t rush you.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “I don’t regret last night,” she said. “No matter what happens. So please don’t feel guilty about it. I’m a big girl and not nearly as fragile as I used to be. Don’t worry about me.... But think about me.”

  “I will,” I said, and I felt an enormous weight begin to lift, as if the newness of the morning might bring hope rather than regret. “Thank you.”

  “I know you,” she said. “You’re predictable in such a good way. I loved who you were.... I love more who you’ve become.”

  “I love who you’ve become, too,” I said.

  “Becoming,” she said. “Becoming.”

  “Of course.”

  “Good-bye,” she said.

  “Good-bye.”

  “No regrets.”

  “None.”

  “The investigation’s over,” Fortner said.

  He had been standing in the parking lot waiting for me, and had quickly walked over to my truck as soon as I pulled in.

  “What?” I asked in shock as I got out of my truck and closed the door.

  “At least for us,” he said, and we began walking toward the admin building. “Tom Daniels showed up this morning and took over. Didn’t you take his daughter out last night?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Isn’t he your ex-father-in-law or something?”

  “Or something, as it turns out,” I said. “We’re still married.”

  He shook his head in disbelief and smiled. “I’m not even assisting him this time,” he said, his face growing angry. “He’s got a team from FDLE. Evidently, Bobby Earl called the governor.”

  I shook my head wearily.

  Across the street, near the employees’ softball field and next to the training building, several news trucks were setting up, as reporters, mics in hand, were checking makeup and hair as camera men were making final adjustments to tripods and video cameras.

  Following my gaze, Pete said, “Oh, I saw you on Larry King. Did you talk to Bobby Earl?”

  “We were in different states,” I said.

  “Oh,” he said. “Hey,” he added, stopping suddenly, “what the hell happened to your truck?”

  I told him.

  “Van was from Louisiana?” he asked. “You sure?”

  I nodded.

  “But it couldn’t’ve been Bobby Earl,” he said. “He was with Larry King at the time.”

  “Which was very smart,” I said.

  Further down the road, past the training building and obstacle course, members of the pistol team were practicing on the firing range, preparing for a tournament this coming weekend. From this distance, the .38 rounds sounded like the small pops of firecrackers.

  “Did you see who it was?”

  “Who was what?”

  “In the van?”

  “Just a glimpse,” I said, “but it looked like DeAndré Stone.”

  “Oh shit,” he said. “He came into the institution last night.”

  “For what?”

  “Evidently his uncle has given him a volunteer badge and made it clear to the control room sergeant that he can come and go as he likes as a representative of Bobby Earl Caldwell Ministries.”

  “But what did he do?” I asked.

  “I’m not sure,” he said. “I just saw his name on the control room log. But guess who’s back in the infirmary?”

  “Cedric Porter?”

  He nodded.

  “Is he okay?”

  “No, but he’s gonna live.”

  “We need to—”

  “Assign security to him? Already done.”

  “Great,” I said. “Good work.”

  “Thanks.”

  Correctional officers, most of them in mud-covered trucks with tall CB antennas bobbing up and down in the wind, and employees began to trickle down the long road that leads to the prison, each of them straining to look at the news vans and reporters. Soon the empty parking lot was filling up, doors slamming, alarms twerping, the last bites of breakfast being eaten, and Pete and I, suddenly in a crowd, had to lower our voices.

  “This has got to stop,” I said. “Dad’s still working with NOPD on the Caldwells, but I’m gonna try to work it out so I can interview them in the next day or so.”

  “Speaking of which,” he said, “your dad’s off the case, too.”

  I nodded.

  “Stone wants to see us in his office,” he said. “Says if we continue to investigate, he’s going to send us home and file criminal charges.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Are you going to stop?”

  “Of course,” I said. “I always do what I’m told.”

  Tom Daniels was waiting for me in Stone’s outer office with his best glare. I tried not to quake. The door to Stone’s office was ajar, and I could hear that he was on the phone.

  I walked over to Daniels, and in a low voice that Stone’s secretary couldn’t hear, said, “Dad.”

  “Son...” he whispered back, “... of a bitch.”

  Tom Daniels’ puffy face was lined with tiny broken blood vessels and looked far older than its fifty-seven years. His gin-soaked eyes were bloodshot and gray like his hair, which was in disarray.

  “You’ve always had a way with words,” I said. “And always been way too sentimental when it comes to family.”

  “We’re not family,” he said.

  “Oh, but we are,” I said. “My wife, your daughter, never filed our divorce papers. We discussed the whole thing over dinner last night. We’re thinking of getting back together and moving in with you and Mom.”

  He was speechless, his anger seething beneath the fiery surface of his skin.

  “I’m overcome, too,” I said. “Let me see if I can find us a tissue.”

  39

  When we were all seated inside Stone’s office, he said, “I’ll make this brief. Inspector, Chaplain, you are no longer to investigate the murder of Nicole Caldwell.”

  “We can’t just stop,” Fortner said. “We’re too far in. Getting too close to finding the killer.”

  “That’s my job,” Daniels said. “I appreciate what you’ve done, Pete, and I’ll use it, but you can’t work on this one anymore.”

  Fortner started to continue his protest, but Stone stopped him by raising his hand. “I didn’t call you in here to discuss it,” he said. “Merely to inform you. Do you understand?”

  I nodded, but Fortner shook his head. “Do y’all want the killer to get away for some reason? Is he a family member, something like that?”

  The sudden rage from Stone was palpable, but he spoke very calmly. “If it matters,” he said, “this was not my decision. I’m confident in your abilities. Both of you.”

  “But—” Fortner began again.

  “The media attention changes everything. This is coming from the top,” Daniels
said. “And not just of the department. Your warden’s dangerously close to losing his job. If you want to join him, then persist in your insubordination. If not, back off and stay the hell out of my way. Both of you.”

  Fortner nodded and Daniels looked over at me. “Understand?” he asked.

  I nodded.

  “I’m not playing here,” he said. “Don’t nod your head in here and then go out there and fuck up my investigation. I’ve been empowered to fire and or file criminal charges against anybody who gets in my way on this thing. So don’t fuck with me.”

  “The thought never crossed my mind,” I said with a smile, and Fortner laughed out loud.

  “I mean it,” Daniels said angrily.

  “Me, too,” I said.

  When no one else said anything, I looked over at Stone. “Are you doing this to protect DeAndré?”

  He looked genuinely perplexed. “If it turns out that Bobby Earl is guilty—and I seriously doubt it will—DeAndré can find another job.”

  You’re either a very good liar or your love makes you clueless, I thought, wondering which was more likely.

  When we had left Stone’s office, Pete stopped me out in front of the gate.

  “Did you see Nicole with a coloring book and crayons when she was here?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” I said. “She colored a picture for me.”

  “Coel said she had them that night,” he said. “Carried them in your office to color while she was waiting for Bobby Earl to preach his sermon.”

  “Yeah?”

  “They weren’t in the stuff we inventoried from the crime scene,” he said.

  “What?” I asked in shock.

  “They’re not still in your office, are they?” he asked.

  “Well, I’m the last person who wants to be investigating when I’ve been ordered not to, but let’s go have a look.”

  We walked through the sally port, down the sidewalk, and into the chapel.

  Several inmates were seated in the chapel library listening to tapes, reading books, pestering my clerks, and by the anxious look on a few of their faces, waiting to talk to me.

  After greeting the rest of the inmates and the officer who was babysitting them for me, Pete and I walked into my office. It was the first time since the night of Nicole’s murder I had been inside.

  Before I turned on the light, the still, stale air of the room was as dark and dank as a tomb. The wet copper smell of blood was in the air and breathing it in left a bad taste in my mouth.

  I felt a presence in the room. As it swept past, its touch felt like the shredded gown of a gothic ghost floating above us, and the hair on the back of my neck stood on end. I wondered if Pete sensed it. No longer was this room my sanctuary from the insanity and brutality of prison, but a haunted and defiled death chamber, and turning on the light did nothing to vanquish the spiritual and psychological pain echoing through it.

  “My God,” Pete said. “It’s worse now than when it happened.”

  We spent the next few moments in silence looking around the room, trying to breath shallowly and only through our mouths.

  It didn’t feel like my office anymore. It looked pretty much the same—especially if you avoided the blood-stained carpet, but it wasn’t, and I wondered if it ever could be again.

  “We found her body there,” he said, indicating the bloody outline on the floor. “The envelope and cash next to it there,” he continued, “the card there, and the candy there.”

  “That’s just where they were when I came in,” I said.

  “Still no coloring book and crayons,” he said.

  The statement was so obvious I couldn’t think of a response that wasn’t sarcastic, so I didn’t say anything.

  “You think the killer took ’em?” he asked.

  “If he did,” I said, “it tells us a lot about him.”

  “Whatta you mean?”

  “Many sexual murderers and serial killers take something belonging to the victim in order to relive the experience over and over again.”

  He shuddered. “That would point away from Bobby Earl to Register or one of the other inmates.”

  “Or it could point to someone close to her,” I added. “Were Bobby Earl and Bunny searched before they left the institution that night?”

  “No,” he said. “They had just lost their daughter. They were victims at that point, not suspects.” He shook his head. “The stuff could’ve been inside Bobby Earl’s Bible cover.”

  I moved past him, edging around my desk to take a better look under it, but froze when I reached its corner.

  “What is it?” Pete asked.

  “Look,” I said, pointing to the piece of paper on the floor. It was another page Nicole had colored and removed from her book.

  “What the hell?” he said in shock. “That wasn’t here before, was it?”

  I shook my head, still pondering what it meant.

  “And there’s no way we’d’ve missed it,” he said.

  I didn’t say anything, just continued to stare at the picture.

  “It’s not the one she did for you, is it?” he asked.

  I shook my head.

  “You think it was in here somewhere—bookshelf, desk, chair, and fell down after we left?”

  “No.”

  “Me neither,” he said. “I’ll be damned.”

  We were quiet a moment. I stepped around the picture and searched the desk and bookshelf thoroughly. No crayons. No coloring book. Nothing.

  “This means someone’s been in here since we have,” he said.

  I nodded.

  “Her killer?”

  “Possibly.”

  “Well,” he said, “it was pretty damn dumb. Now we know it had to be a staff member with access to keys.”

  “Not necessarily,” I said. “See how close it is to the door? It looks like someone could’ve slid it right beneath the door.”

  “But there again, that points away from the Caldwells,” he said. “Bobby Earl hasn’t been here.”

  “No,” I said, “but DeAndré has.”

  40

  I found Theo Malcolm sitting at his desk grading papers, his inmate orderly, Luther Albright, standing behind him with his arms folded like a bodyguard. From a boom-box in the corner, the aggressive sounds of gangsta rap polluted the air in the room. When he had said, “Enter,” and I walked in, he briefly looked up, shook his head, and looked back down at his papers.

  “You don’t seem happy to see me,” I said with a big smile.

  “I’m very busy,” he said. “What can I do for you?”

  The rapper was rapping about killing white policemen in the war of the streets—about takin’ his nine and smokin’ the pig’s cracker ass until they were all just traces on the pavement.

  I shook my head.

  “If you don’t like our music,” Albright started, but Malcolm held up his hand.

  Our music? Was Albright an orderly or a buddy? Getting overly familiar with an inmate was a dangerous decision to make. I had seen more than a few careers destroyed because of it, and I wondered if Malcolm realized how foolish he was being.

  “You probably think that African Americans believed OJ was innocent,” he said.

  “Actually,” I said, “I don’t.”

  “Well, we didn’t,” he said, as if contradicting me. “We’s not’s dumb as y’alls thinks we is,” he said in his best slave dialect, before gliding smoothly back into his regular condescending tone. “We knew he was guilty. We didn’t care. We were glad he got away with it. Killing a white woman and a white man—even a cop—can’t come close to the multitudes of young black men y’all’ve killed.”

  Albright smiled.

  I shook my head. “Are you for real?”

  “An eye for an eye, brother,” he said.

  “Leaves everybody blind,” I said.

  “It’s very good that you know the quote, though the quote itself is naive,” he said, “but do you know who said it?”

&
nbsp; “Dr. King. Will that be on the final?”

  “Well, if you all really believed it, I guess you wouldn’t have shot him down like a dog, would you?”

  “Actually,” I said, “I had nothing to do with it.”

  Malcolm stood, walked over, and stopped the music. When he turned to face me again, Albright put his hand on his shoulder. “I don’t have time for this,” he said. “I’m really busy. If you need something, you better ask now.”

  “Have you been back to the chapel or my office since the night Nicole died?”

  “No, why?”

  “I found something in my office that wasn’t there before,” I said.

  “Well, I haven’t been back,” he said. “Is someone saying I have?”

  Ignoring his question, I said, “On the night Nicole was killed, why’d you stop by the chapel? I mean beside to check the program for racism.”

  “I was there to see Bunny,” he said.

  “What?”

  “We worked together at Lake Butler,” he said. “We’re just friends.”

  “Did you see her?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “She was on the stage singing, so I left.”

  “Did you see Officer Coel standing at the sanctuary door?”

  He shook his head.

  “Did you see anyone in my office?” I asked.

  “Just Nicole,” he said. “And she was fine when I left. If you suspect me of her murder, you’re wasting valuable time you could be using to find the real killer.”

  “You sound like OJ,” I said.

  “Look—” he began angrily, but I cut him off.

  “What’re you trying to hide?” I asked.

  “I have nothing to hide.”

  “Why was I attacked right after I talked to you last time?” I asked. “And why were you the only suspect they told me to stay away from?”

  Before he realized what he was doing, he glanced at Albright.

  “I thought I recognized your voice,” I said to Albright.

  He didn’t say anything, just glared.

  “I’ll be in the chapel if you want to give it another go,” I said.

  “We know where to find you,” Albright said.