Stepping a few feet away, Patterson threw the cigar over the fences and in the direction of the small logging road peeking out of the woods beyond.
The perimeter fence is actually two ten-foot-high fences, both of which are topped with looping razor wire, with twenty feet between them and more rows of looping razor wire inside. The design makes it impossible to enter or exit the institution over the fence without getting tangled up in razor wire and having your flesh filleted.
“You trying to start a forest fire?” Stone asked.
“It landed in dirt,” he said.
I looked over in the direction of the road. The cigar had landed on a patch of yellowish-brown grass between two square indentations about ten feet apart and close to the fence. At least if it started a fire, we’d see it.
“Did all the inmates eat breakfast before we closed the yard?” Stone asked.
Patterson nodded.
“How long can we keep it closed before we have to feed them lunch?”
Patterson looked at his watch. “I’d say we could go five or six hours.”
Stone nodded, then turned to Pete. “How long before we need to call FDLE?”
“We should have already,” he said. “Even when we do, it’ll take them nearly two hours to get here.”
As the small group of men continued to talk, I stepped over to the first fence and looked out. I knew the victim had not come through the fences—her body bore none of the scissored signs, but I wondered if her killer had escaped this way. It was highly unlikely. The sensors would have alerted the control room if he had attempted to climb the fence, and even if they had been malfunctioning, perhaps from the thunderstorm, he’d most likely be tangled up in the razor wire bleeding to death.
Still, it didn’t hurt to check.
There was no flesh or blood on the gleaming blades of the razor wire. No one had been through the fence. I studied the narrow logging path. There were no tracks near the head of it and only some faint tire tracks, most likely belonging to an ATV farther back.
“What the hell’re you doin’?” Patterson asked. “No way he got out through there.”
I nodded. “Just looking,” I said, walking back over to join them.
“So we’ve only got a few hours,” Stone said. “How do we proceed?”
“Has anyone talked to the rec yard supervisor?” I asked.
Stone raised his eyebrows, then looked over at Pete.
“I’m still tryin’ to find ’im,” he said. “He didn’t show up for work today and he’s not answerin’ his phone.”
Stone’s eyebrows arched even higher.
“John, you think your dad would send a deputy by his house to see if he’s home?”
I nodded. “I’ll give him a call him in a minute.”
“So how do we proceed?”
“We need to know who the hell she is,” Patterson said.
“That’s the other thing,” Pete said. “No one seems to know. I described her to the control room officers, the admin lieutenant, the guy at the center gate. No one’s ever seen her.”
It was one thing for none of us to recognize her, but unless this was her first day, it seemed unlikely that no one in the control room or security building would. If it wasn’t so unthinkable, we might consider that she came in from outside, but it was as difficult to get in the prison as it was to get out.
“How can we identify the body?” Stone asked. “Think, people.”
“What if that’s a wig?” Pete asked.
I had already had the thought and looked closely. It was not.
“Try it and see?” Stone said.
Pete hesitated.
“Ah, hell,” Baker said, and reached down and pulled on the hair. “It’s hers—well, mostly. Feels like some weave in there.”
“White girls call them extensions,” I said.
He smiled. “Extensions, then.”
“That’s good thinking, though, Inspector,” Stone said.
I knew what was coming next, one of the most well-worn phrases of business people and bureaucrats everywhere.
“That’s what I need the rest of you to do,” he continued. “Think outside the box.”
I smiled.
“Something amusing, Chaplain?” Stone asked.
“No, sir,” I said, “I just had an outside the box thought. May I borrow your phone?”
“What is it?”
“Let me check something first,” I said.
He handed me his phone, and I stepped away from the group again and called Dad.
Jack Jordan, my dad and the sheriff of Potter County, wasn’t in his office, but at a crime scene, so I called his cell phone.
“Where are you?” I asked.
“Linton’s,” he said. “Some kids broke in here, the liquor store, and the co-op last night.”
Linton’s was one of the auto parts stores in town. Not a single bookstore, theater, or art gallery in Pottersville, but we had three auto parts stores.
“Stole some spray paint and painted the town,” he said. “Cut some doughnuts behind the co-op and fucked up some of their equipment.”
“How do you know it was kids?”
“Spelled whore H-O-R-E and damn D-A-M,” he said.
“’Round here that doesn’t necessarily mean kids,” I said.
He laughed.
“Be careful,” I said. “Sounds like you’re dealing with some dangerous, hardened criminals.”
“You know me,” he said. “Always vigilant.”
“I know you’re busy with this big case and all,” I said, “but can you spare a minute for a quick question?”
“Only because it’s you.”
“Has anyone reported a missing person?”
“I don’t think so, but I can check,” he said. “What’s going on?”
I told him.
“Hold on a minute and let me see,” he said.
I did.
In less than a minute he was back. “None so far.”
“Okay,” I said. “Thanks.”
“Keep me posted,” he said.
“I’ll try,” I said, “but I can’t imagine you’ll be able to break away from such a taxing case to even take my calls.”
“Anything?” Stone asked when I got off the phone.
“Not yet,” I said, “but I wanna try one more thing.”
“What’re you thinking?” he asked.
“That no one recognizes her,” I said, “and we all say that if we’d ever seen her before, we wouldn’t forget.”
“Yeah?”
“What if she’s not a CO?” I said. “Uniform doesn’t really fit her and she’s wearing tennis shoes.”
“No way,” Stone said. “Just can’t happen.”
“We’ve got to at least consider it’s a possibility.”
“Then who?” Stone asked.
“I’m about to check.”
“No way a civilian got in here,” Stone said.
“Control room just wouldn’t allow it,” Baker said.
“It’s impossible.”
“Almost, but not quite,” I said. “It’s improbable, but not quite impossible. It’s a whole box and thinking thing.”
He didn’t smile.
“A uniform alone wouldn’t do it,” Baker said. “She’d have to have a photo ID and—”
“Check her pockets,” Stone said.
Baker did. There was nothing in them.
“No way she got in without an ID,” Patterson said.
“Maybe her killer took it,” Pete said.
“Why would he do that?” Patterson asked.
“Conceal her identity,” I said.
“If a civilian managed to get into my institution and get killed ...” he said, but trailed off.
No one said anything.
“You thinking of someone in particular?” he asked.
I nodded. “Teacher at the elementary school,” I said. “Been here a couple of years. Name’s Wynn. I’ve heard her appearance h
as changed a lot lately. I think it’s possible it could be her. ”
“Make the call,” he said.
I did.
First period was almost over and Melanie Wynn had yet to show up for work.
“How the hell’d she get in here?” Pete asked.
“Her husband’s a sergeant in D dorm,” Patterson said. “That’s the one closest to the rec yard.”
“Slow down,” I said. “We don’t know it’s her yet.”
“It can’t be,” Stone said. “It’s just not possible.”
“Joe Wynn worked last night,” Pete said. “I saw his name on the log. You think he brought her in here to kill her—or have someone do it?”
“Pete,” I said, “you’re getting way ahead of what we know. Let me call their home.”
I punched in Information, got the number for Joseph and Melanie Wynn, and was connected, but the sleepy voice that answered the phone was neither of them.
“This is John Jordan from Potter Correctional Institution,” I said. “Who am I speaking with?”
“Kayla,” she said.
She sounded about eight.
“Is your mom or dad home?”
“Hold on,” she said.
She was gone a few moments, during which I heard her calling for her mom and dad.
“No one’s here,” she said, a slight alarm in her voice.
“Do you know where they could be?”
“No, sir,” she said. “Mom was supposed to wake me up for school and Dad usually gets back from work before we leave.”
“It’s okay,” I said, “I work with your dad at the prison. I’ll find him for you. Do you have someone who can come and stay with you?”
“My Mema lives next door.”
“Give me her name and number and I’ll call her to come stay with you,” I said.
After I got off the line with Kayla’s grandmother, Stone said, “It’s her, isn’t it?”
“Could be,” I said. “No way to know for sure yet.”
Pete had stepped a few feet away and was talking on his cell phone.
“We’re fucked,” Patterson said.
“We’ve got to call FDLE,” Stone said.
“You think Joe’s on the run?” Baker asked.
“No,” Pete said, snapping his phone shut and walking up to us. “He’s in D dorm pulling a double.”
With Pete waiting with the body until FDLE arrived, and Patterson and Baker returning to the security building to check in, Stone and I were headed to D dorm to talk to Joe Wynn.
“What the hell you think’s going on?” Stone said.
“I have no idea,” I said. “I really don’t.”
“You know more than you’re saying,” he said. “Always do.”
I smiled. It was the closest thing to a compliment he had ever given me.
“Not this time,” I said.
“You guessed the identity,” he said.
“Only when I considered it might be someone from outside the institution,” I said, “and we still don’t know for sure it’s her.”
“It’s her,” he said. “And you know it as well as I do.”
I nodded.
“You think the husband killed her?” he asked.
“We just don’t know enough to even guess,” I said, “but it’d be an anomaly if he doesn’t have something to do with it.”
He tapped on the glass of the D dorm door and gripped the large metal handle, waiting to be buzzed in by the officer in the wicker. “Thanks for helping with this,” he said.
“You’re welcome,” I said, as the door was buzzed open and we walked inside.
The barrack-style dorm had an officer station or wicker in the center with glass on all sides for observation and two long wings spanning out from it, each with about seventy bunks in them. The bathroom and day room were next to the wicker.
The nearly one hundred and fifty inmates inside had been locked in since breakfast and were restless. They filled the day room watching TV and playing checkers, lay on their bunks and read or slept, sat on their bunks playing cards with the man in the bunk beside them. The dorm smelled of sleep, sweat, urine, and the burning twang of cheap tobacco—even though it was a non-smoking dorm.
Many of the men approached us, attempting to redress the warden, but he rebuffed them, telling them now was not the time. We were buzzed into the officer’s station, stepping up the few short steps into a cool, fresh, air-conditioned oasis in the center of the dorm.
“Warden,” Wynn said, “Chaplain.”
We both spoke.
The other officer, a short Hispanic man with salt-and-pepper hair said, “Warden, what’s going on out there? Why are we on lockdown?”
“Could you excuse us a moment,” Stone said to him. “We need to talk to Sergeant Wynn alone.”
“Sure,” he said, and stepped down to the door.
Wynn buzzed him out, then looked at us, fear in his eyes. “What is it?”
Joe was soft and rotund with curly blond hair, a wide, full face, and glasses. His voice was wet and nasally, his mouth always full of saliva, his nose perpetually congested. Until recently, his wife, Melanie, had been large and shapeless, too, but following a hysterectomy, she had lost nearly all her excess weight—and with it her interest in Joe, or so the town talk had it. Town talk also had it that she was proud of her new boobs, tucked tummy, processed hair, and straight teeth—and showed them off to any man she could—even if she had to drug his drink and tie him up to do it.
“Do you know where your wife is, Sergeant?” Stone asked.
He shook his head. “In her classroom I guess,” he said. “She teaches first grade at the elementary school. I’m pulling a double. Haven’t spoken with her. Is something wrong?”
“She didn’t show up for work,” I said. “We called your home and your daughter answered. She had overslept and missed school and said your wife wasn’t there.”
“What?” he asked. “Kayla’s home alone?”
“Not now,” I said. “Your wife’s mother is with her.”
“Do you have any idea where she could be?” Stone asked.
He shook his head. “We’re separated,” he said. “Well, we still live together until I can find a place—I’m sleeping on the couch—but I’m about to move out.”
“Do you mind if I ask why?” Stone said.
“Because,” he said, “she cheated on me.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
He shrugged. “It happens.”
“How do you feel about her?” Stone asked.
“Sir?”
“Do you still care for her?” he asked. “Any chance for reconciliation?”
He shook his head.
“We’ve got to tell you something difficult to hear,” Stone said.
“As long as Kayla’s okay, it won’t be too difficult,” he said.
“Kayla’s fine,” I said.
“We’ve found a body on the rec yard,” Stone said.
“Okay,” Wynn said, but it sounded uncertain, almost like a question.
“We think it might be your wife.”
He shook his head. “Can’t be,” he said. “She doesn’t work here. Never been inside. I told you, she’s a school teacher.”
“We think it might be,” Stone said. “Will you come look at it and let us know?”
“Sure,” he said, “but it ain’t her. It can’t be.”
When Joe saw the battered face of his wife, he started crying.
“How the hell ...? What is she doing in here? Why is she wearing a CO uniform?”
“We were hoping you could tell us,” Stone said.
“No,” he said. “I have no idea. How ... I mean, there’s no way she could ... It can’t be her.”
“But you’re saying it is,” Stone said. “Are you sure?”
He nodded. “It’s Melanie.”
“How’d she get in here?”
“I have no idea,” Joe said. “I can’t believe it. Why would she even
want to?”
“Is that your uniform?” Stone asked.
Because there were no controls in place for tracking and accounting for CO uniforms, there was no way to know whose uniform Melanie was wearing. It could’ve been almost anyone’s—except someone like Joe.
Joe looked down at his girth and then at the warden with an incredulous look. “Are you kidding? Look at me ... Look at her.”
“She’s changed a lot lately, hasn’t she?” I asked.
He nodded. “She’s like a whole different person since her surgeries.”
“What happened?”
He was quiet for a long moment before responding. “I think she finally felt ... you know, like she had options. I mean, look at her.”
I did. Even without the battered face and blood, she wouldn’t have been my type. She had that fake, plastic, Barbie Doll look. She appeared sad, even pathetic more than anything else—a middle-aged woman trying to pass for a pop princess.
Feeling guilty for my harsh assessment of Melanie and sorry for Joe, I nodded, and said, “She’s very beautiful.”
“Look at her now,” he said. “Who could’ve done this to her?”
It was cruel to make him stand here staring at his dead and disfigured wife for so long, but he was our most likely suspect. Most forensic profilers say that when a victim’s face has been beaten, their killer was someone close to them—or at least knew them. Most closers, cops who specialized in getting confessions from suspects, say that having something of the victim’s in the room breaks the killer down.
“What’s she doing in here, Joe?” I asked. “Just tell us. We’ll understand. I’ve been divorced. I know how hard it is to be married, how cruel beautiful women can be.”
“She wasn’t difficult,” he said. “She was just a little lost, but she was trying to get better, seeing a counselor, trying to break things off with her boyfriends. I always thought we’d wind up together.”
Just a few minutes before, he had indicated there was no chance of reconciliation.
“How did it happen?” I asked. “It was obviously an accident. You didn’t mean to kill her. Everyone’ll understand. This kind of thing happens all the time.”
“You think I—I didn’t kill her,” he said. “I swear on my daughter’s life. I’ll take a lie detector test—whatever you want, but I didn’t kill her.” He looked up from the body, turning toward the rec yard gate. “I’ve got to go be with Kayla. She doesn’t know, does she?”
Six John Jordan Mysteries Page 45