Six John Jordan Mysteries

by Michael Lister

  “And vice versa,” I said.

  When I got back to my office, I called Chaplain Rouse at Lake Butler again.

  “Chaplain Rouse,” he said after the second ring.

  “Where’s your secretary?” I asked.

  “I’m in between secretaries at the moment,” he said.

  “You have two?” I asked.

  “Huh?”

  I wasn’t sure if he didn’t get it or didn’t approve of the humor, so rather than taking the risk of being sued for sexual harassment, I let it go.

  “They’ve been promising me one for about a year now,” I said. “A staff chaplain, too.”

  “Can’t imagine where the state gets the reputation of being mired down in bureaucracy,” he said. “What can I do for you?”

  “Tell me what you can about Theo Malcolm,” I said.

  “Don’t know him.”

  “Says he knows Bunny from working with her there,” I said. “He’s a teacher.”

  “Well, he hasn’t taught here,” he said.

  “Angry young black man,” I said. “You’re sure?”

  “Positive,” he said.

  “Maybe he had a different job,” I said.

  “What’s he look like?”

  I told him.

  “Nope,” he said. “Never worked here.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Thanks.”

  “Wonder why he’d make that up?” he asked.

  “Why indeed?” I said, then sat there and thought about it for a long time after he had hung up.

  I could come up with only one reason—to hide his real purpose for being there that night, and if he wasn’t there to see an old coworker, what was he doing?

  41

  “Couldn’t Malcolm know Bunny from somewhere else and just say it was Lake Butler?” Anna asked.

  It was late afternoon, the inmates had returned to the compound and the chapel was empty. Anna and I were alone in my office.

  “It’s possible, I guess,” I said, “but why?”

  She shrugged.

  “Abdul Muhammin also said he knew Bobby Earl from Lake Butler,” I said.

  “But he did,” she said.

  “Uh huh,” I said.

  “Uh huh what?” she asked, puzzlement on her face.

  “Muhammin would know that Bunny worked there,” I said, “and could have told Malcolm.”

  “For a cover story,” she said. “Which shows a connection between them and that they have something to cover up.”

  “Unless Malcolm heard it somewhere else,” I said, frowning and letting out a long sigh. “It’s thin. Maybe they’re not connected.”

  I shook my head.

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  I didn’t say anything.

  Eyes narrowed in concern, she stared at me for a long moment.

  “I’m worried about you,” she said. “I got some information about the Stone Cold Killer case off the Internet. You should’ve told me there were children involved.”

  “Probably,” I said. “But I never thought it was him. Still don’t. The crimes were too different. And how many serial killers do you know kill adults and children?”

  “But you worked a case in which children were killed?”

  I nodded.

  “And this case has dredged it all up again?” she asked.

  “It’s never very far away,” I said.

  “And you’ve been dealing with it all alone?”

  I shrugged.

  “You are so alone down here, aren’t you?” she asked.

  I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t, but I thought, not just here. I had yet to find a place where I really fit.

  “And having someone in your life...” she started and then stopped, letting it float between us like a wish tied to a balloon, “wouldn’t change that, would it?”

  Having you would change everything, I thought, but said, “No, probably not.”

  We fell into a silence pregnant with all that was left unsaid between us.

  Eventually, I told her about still being married to Susan.

  She shook her head in disbelief. “Why didn’t she sign them?” she asked.

  I told her.

  “She trying to manipulate you in some way?”

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “She really seems different. She came down to Mexico Beach and we went out last night.”

  “What?” she asked in shock.

  “She’s in an ACOA support group, and—”

  “A what?”

  “Adult Children Of Alcoholics,” I said.

  “I don’t know what to say,” she said. “I couldn’t be more shocked.”

  Oh, I bet you could, I thought, but decided not to tell her about sleeping with Susan.

  “I have no right to feel the way I do,” she said. “I have no claim on you, but...”

  “I could say the same thing,” I said, but we know differently.

  We were quiet again, and I began to think about the women in my life, and like a Polaroid image finally coming into focus, I realized how much Susan resembled Anna—physically anyway.

  She was the woman in my life. The woman by which all other women were judged, to which none could compare.

  My phone rang, breaking the silence, and as I answered it, Anna whispered, “I’m going to the restroom.”

  I nodded to her and then said into the receiver, “Good afternoon. Chaplain Jordan.”

  “Chaplain Jordan, it’s your wife,” Susan said.

  Heart pounding, heat spreading across my face, I felt as if I had been caught cheating, and was glad when Anna stood up and left the room.

  “Are you sure?” I asked. “Because I don’t have one.”

  “It’s a long story, but you do.”

  “Well, supposing I do,” I said. “How is she?”

  “Actually, she’s wonderful,” she said. “She’s still after-glowing.”

  “Wow,” I said. “Her husband must really be amazing.”

  “He has his moments,” she said.

  I heard a noise from the hallway like someone bumping into the wall and then a scream.

  “Can I call you back?” I asked.

  “Sure,” she said, but I was already dropping the phone and running out of the office.

  42

  In the hallway, I looked around. No one was there. Nothing was out of place. To the right, through the glass of the double doors, I could see that the sanctuary was dark and still. To my left, the chapel library was dark and empty as well. In front of me, a narrow hallway led to the restrooms, kitchen, and fellowship hall.

  I ran down the hall and without stopping, burst into the women’s bathroom. I hit the door hard and it slammed into the wall behind it. I held my gaze wide, trying to take in the whole room, so that any movement, no matter how small would be perceptible. Nothing. I looked around. I still saw nothing.

  “Anna,” I called.

  No response.

  I pushed open the doors to the two stalls and looked inside. They were both empty, but one of them had toilet tissue hanging down from the holder to the floor. I ran out of the bathroom and back into the hallway. I looked around the front door, saw no one, locked it, and decided to search the building room by room, starting with the library.

  In the library, blue plastic chairs sat neatly beneath folding tables, books evenly lined the front of wooden shelves, and religious magazines and pamphlets were stacked on wire literature racks. There were only a couple of places to hide—behind the counters or in the storage closet. I started with the counters. I ran over to the counter where Muhammin normally checked out books and tapes and looked behind it. I then rushed over to the other one.

  My mind filled with images of Anna bound and gagged, her body trembling with terror. I closed my eyes and shook my head, a feeble attempt at exorcizing the unwelcomed images from my head. I opened my eyes and frantically began searching again as a dark sense of dread descended upon me.

  Rushing over to the stor
age closet, I turned the handle and snatched it open, slamming the door into the wall behind it, the handle puncturing the sheetrock. At first glance, I saw nothing. But in the back behind a large stack of boxes in the center of the floor, I thought I saw movement. I moved toward it, running to the left of the stack without slowing, coming up quickly behind the boxes.

  The tower tilted and fell. The top box, full of left-over Christmas and Hanukkah cards, hit me squarely on the back of the neck, scattering a thick mist of dust as it did. I went down, but the moment I hit the floor, I was moving. I bucked the box off my back and crawled around to the other side of the stack. No one was there. I looked back towards the door. No movement. No one.

  I sneezed several times before rushing back out of the library, pausing only long enough to shut and lock the door, and then ran across the hall to the extra office I had been using and checked it. It was locked. I unlocked it and looked inside, locked it again and then ran down and rechecked mine. After locking my office door, I searched both bathrooms. I hurriedly locked them behind me and ran into the kitchen, the odor of damp and soiled dishcloths filling my nose.

  In the kitchen an island composed of cabinets and a counter top was the only thing that blocked my view. I ran around behind it. When I did, an inmate scurried around the other side on his hands and knees. He was out of the kitchen and moving to the left before I could stop and turn around.

  I ran out of the kitchen and followed him into the fellowship hall. When I ran through the door, he swung a metal chair like a baseball bat, two of its legs striking the top of my back and the base of my neck. For the second time within five minutes, I hit the floor. As I attempted to roll over, he hit me again, and sharp streaks of pain bolted along the nerve endings in my back and head, and splotches of bright yellow distorted my vision.

  He swung again, and the chair connected with the back of my skull, causing my face to slam into the hard tile floor.

  Without thinking, I began rolling toward the inmate. I had no idea where I was, but I rolled. And I rolled into him. Then I rolled through him, knocking his feet out from under him. He went down. I turned. I was face to face with Luther Albright, the inmate orderly who worked for Theo Malcolm.

  He reached down into his pocket and brought out a shank, which had once been a toothbrush. The handle had been filed to a sharp point, the brush covered with putty, and two razor blades protruded from it.

  He slashed at me. I flung myself back, but not far enough. He sliced both my shirt sleeve and the flesh beneath it with the razors. Then, with the flick of his wrist, he turned it and stabbed at my arm with the sharp spear of the handle. I screamed out as he plunged it into my shoulder.

  Reflexively, I began kicking at him. I hit his boots at first, but as I continued, I landed a couple of solid blows to his shins. He then made the mistake of pulling his legs back so I couldn’t reach his shins, and I kicked him in the groin. His eyes widened, his face contorted, and, after a moment, he began to heave.

  I stumbled to my feet as he began throwing up. I heard Anna scream from the sanctuary, and I turned to run, but then turned back and kicked Albright in the head. The blow was hard and knocked him out cold.

  I ran back down the hallway and into the dark chapel, pausing to let my vision adjust. As soon as I could see, I scanned the entire sanctuary. I didn’t see anyone. And then, the split second of a heavy blow to the base of my skull and I was out, a black hole opening up before me and sucking me into it.

  Later, when I opened my eyes, I saw the base of one of the brass candle holders—presumably the blunt instrument that had kissed me goodnight. I rolled over and looked down toward the front. Anna was gone. When I stumbled slowly to my feet, my head grew light and I fell back down again.

  Then with the help of the pew, I slowly pulled myself up and held on. When I had my balance, I saw Anna stumbling up the outside aisle.

  “You all right?” I asked.

  “Nothing that a bottle of Extra-strength Excedrin and a week of sleep won’t fix,” she said. “How about you?”

  “The same.”

  “Who was it?”

  “You don’t know?” I asked.

  “No,” she said. “There were two. I think one of them was Abdul Muhammin, but I couldn’t swear to it.”

  “Come on,” I said, and we walked into the fellowship hall.

  “This the one you saw?”

  Luther Albright didn’t look bright at all as he lay unconscious on the floor.

  She shook her head. “Who is it?”

  “Albright,” I said. “Theo Malcolm’s orderly, and trained investigator that I am, I’m beginning to observe a pattern: Interview Malcolm, get attacked.”

  We walked back up to the main hallway to find my keys in the door. I looked at my watch. It was a few minutes after five. I retrieved my keys, unlocked my office, and called security and medical.

  “My God,” Anna said, her eyes growing wide as she looked at the shank sticking out of my shoulder.

  I looked down at it. “Albright,” I said. “In my excitement to see you alive and well, I forgot about it.”

  “It’s not killing you?”

  “No,” I said. “I don’t feel anything.” I reached down, took hold of the shank, and yanked on it.

  Anna screamed, “NO, JOHN, DON’T,” as the shank pulled free. The dam now gone, the river of blood came gushing out. I stood dumbfounded and watched as a flash flood of my blood rained down on my desk top.

  43

  While I was being treated in a small outpatient room at the Pottersville Medical Center, Pete Fortner walked in and stood beside me. Seeming oblivious to the doctor’s put out sighs and incredulous looks at his intrusion, he made no attempt to talk softly or stay out of the way.

  “Albright’s in confinement,” he said. “You want me to lock up Muhammin too?”

  I thought about it.

  “I can lock him up for thirty days while we investigate,” he said. “Don’t have to have a charge or any evidence now.”

  “Let’s leave him out,” I said. “I’ve got an idea for a little trap and we’ll need him for it.”

  “When we gonna set this little trap?”

  “How about tonight?” I said.

  “They should’ve never messed with Anna,” he said.

  “When I think what could have happened to her while I’m laid out on the floor, I...”

  “But it’s obvious it was just to scare you,” he said. “All they did was threaten her.”

  “Well, it worked,” I said.

  “If this is you scared, I don’t want to see what you call anger,” he said.

  I smiled. I knew what he meant—that anger far more than fear was motivating me—but he was only partially right. After what had happened to Nicole, what had almost happened to Anna scared me plenty.

  “You ready?” I asked.

  “Sure,” he said, “but in this little trap, is Muhammin the spider or the fly?”

  “I’m not sure they have a term for what he is,” I said. “In prison vernacular he’s the fly’s bitch.”

  Later that night, as a special program was taking place in the sanctuary, Merrill, Pete, and I were hiding in one of the stalls of the visitors restroom in the back. The lights were off and it was extremely dark, only a hint of hallway light peeking beneath the bottom of the door.

  Like all toilets in the prison, the one in the stall had no lid, and we were all standing far closer to one another than we would have liked—especially Merrill and Pete.

  “Pete, you get any closer and it’ll be sexual harassment,” Merrill said.

  I laughed.

  “How much longer we got?” Merrill asked.

  Pete pushed a small button on the side of his watch and it lit up, bathing his round face in an eerie green glow. Looking at his watch, he said, “The GED class should already be out,” he said. “Shouldn’t be much longer.”

  “Tell me again how this works,” Merrill said.

  “Malcolm
knows that when his class is completed, one of the officers from the chapel service is called to escort his students back to the compound,” I said, “so he slips in over here virtually unseen.”

  “For a little butt lovin’,” Pete said.

  I shook my head. “I can’t believe we’re arresting somebody for sex.”

  Merrill laughed. “I’m sure some shit we’ve done is illegal in some states.”

  “Sex with an inmate is a crime,” Pete said.

  “Still,” I said.

  “It’s not the sex,” Merrill said. “It’s the assault. They could’ve killed Anna, and a little higher and that shank in your shoulder could’ve been in your eye.”

  “I know,” I said. “It’s like Watergate, but I still feel like one of those people who scare me the most—rigid, repressed, xenophobic, homophobic—”

  “Watergate?” Pete asked.

  “Not the crime as much as the coverup,” Merrill said.

  “Merrill, you’re pretty smart, aren’t you?” Pete asked.

  “But he hides it well,” I said.

  “I is on occasion able to muster up a thought or two.”

  I noticed we were all breathing through our mouths, avoiding as best we could our sense of smell. The unpleasant odor permeating the air was a pungent combination of human waste, mildew, stale smoke, and too many chemicals/too little cleaning.

  We froze when we heard approaching footsteps followed by the metallic clicks of a key being inserted into the lock.

  “How far along do we have to let them get?” Merrill whispered.

  “We’ll have their DNA from the condom when the lab finishes processing it,” I said. “So not very far.”

  “Thank you, God,” he said.

  “Amen,” Pete said.

  Like most straight men, they found homosexuality about as appealing as a lengthy prostate exam by a large-handed doctor who enjoyed his work, and I knew they were anxious to make the arrest before they saw or heard anything that might scar them for life.

  That’s why the moment Malcolm and Muhammin were inside with the door shut behind them, they were slinging the stall door open and yelling for the two men to get on the ground.