Six John Jordan Mysteries
Page 65
Inside the expansive open space of the PM unit, all the cell doors closed, it was still and quiet. On the far end near the wall opposite us, Father James McFadden stood behind an altar table setting up for his service, before him a small group of folding chairs formed uneven rows.
“It’s so quiet,” I whispered to Daniels as we walked toward the makeshift Mass.
“Where is everybody?” he asked.
“Tonight is PM library night,” I said. “Most of them are up there. A few more are in medical. The rest are probably in their cells.”
Since inmates in protective management couldn’t have contact with the rest of the inmate population, they went to the library at night when no other inmates were there. It was also why we had a special Catholic Mass for them in the PM unit—they couldn’t come to the chapel with the open population inmates for the regular one.
As we reached the back row of folding chairs, an officer standing on the left side nodded to us, and we walked over to him.
Billy Joe Potter was an overweight white man in his mid-twenties with bad skin, a bad haircut, and a bad attitude. He was mean and slow and didn’t care about anything. He didn’t have to—not only was he a member of the most influential family in Potter County, but it was easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a state employee to enter the ranks of the unemployed.
Known among his relatives as the family fuck-up, Potter had worked briefly in several county jobs, including mosquito control, building inspector, and dog catcher, before being sent to prison without the possibility of parole—he could do time in brown or blue, but he was going to do time.
“You forget something?” he asked Daniels.
“Did you forget something? The outer door and the quad door were both unlocked.”
He lifted his hands up in a helpless gesture and shrugged nonchalantly. “Can’t be helped. Only two of us.”
Complacency is the number one problem among prison staff, and it gets more inmates and correctional officers killed than anything else. Employees get comfortable, forget where they are, why they’re here, and when they least expect it, an entirely preventable incident occurs. The most dangerous condition in a prison is when it’s been a while since anything much has happened. When security is relaxed in an area of the prison for whatever reason—ineptitude, laziness, a staff shortage—it goes unnoticed until there’s an incident. It’s not a problem until it is, then it’s addressed, often corrected, but not until it is too late for someone.
At various times, different departments within the institution are understaffed—at least one area nearly every shift. There’s not an incident every time, but nearly every incident occurs in one of these areas. You can only get away with it for so long, and then . . . . Tonight felt like one of those “and then” times.
“I’m over here,” Potter continued. “Officer Pitts is counting the other quads. He’s gotta be able to get back in the wicker after he counts.”
Wicker is the term used for the officers’ stations inside the dorms, and though everyone referred to it as such, no one had ever been able to tell me why.
“He’s out of the wicker and the goddam door is unlocked?” Daniels yelled.
“What would you do?” Potter asked. “We’re undermanned.”
“You damn sure are. Wherever you’re assigned always will be.”
Standard procedure called for a sergeant and an officer in the officer station or wicker, as well as at least one officer in each quad—and with a volunteer down here to conduct a religious service, there really should have been two.
“In case you didn’t know,” Potter continued, “there’s a shortage of correctional officers.”
I looked at Daniels. “There’s an even bigger shortage of good correctional officers.”
Potter glared at me.
I tried not to quake.
“Soon as Pitts is back in the wicker,” Potter said. “I’m gonna call for Catholic Mass. That okay with you?”
Daniels didn’t respond.
Across the quad, an inmate walked into the dorm and Potter nodded him toward his cell, which clicked open.
“Menge,” he explained. “Had a visit tonight.”
I glanced over to see Justin disappear into the third cell from the entrance on the bottom just on the other side of the stairs, and felt relieved that he was safely back inside.
Daniels shook his head in confusion. “Who unlocked his cell?”
“Pitts—” he began when a yell from one of the cells stopped him. The acoustics were so bad it was impossible to know exactly where it came from. “Shut the hell up,” he yelled back toward the cell. Then looking back at Daniels, said, “Pitts must be back in the wicker.”
“Must be?” Daniels asked. “Must be? What the hell kinda half-ass Mickey Mouse operation are y’all runnin’ down here?”
“We’re doin’ the best we can.”
“Oh, I don’t doubt that.”
Potter looked at him for a moment, but didn’t say anything, then radioed Pitts, confirmed that the count had cleared, and advised him that he was about to call for Mass.
As Potter yelled that it was time for Mass and for those inmates wishing to attend to call out the number of their cells, I walked over to speak to Father James.
One by one, inmates called out the number of their cells. Potter radioed the cell numbers to Pitts, and they were buzzed open. Slowly, from every direction, inmates began making their way toward the folding chairs.
“I knew it wouldn’t be well received when I did it,” Father James said, returning the flyer to me. “But it got everyone’s attention, didn’t it?”
Father James was tall and thin with wispy white hair that had receded to about the half way point on the top of his head. Age, back problems, and perhaps the enormous dogs he seemed to be perpetually walking around town, caused him to bend forward slightly and made him look stiff and brittle and far more feeble than he really was.
I nodded and frowned. “It did. But not all of it was good. Look at this.”
I unfolded the second flyer—the one claiming a murder would take place during the Mass—and handed it to him. His thin, slightly deformed hand shook as he read it.
“I didn’t do this one,” he said, his pale blue eyes narrowing as he looked up at me.
“Any idea who did?”
“None at all. You think it’s announcing an actual murder?” He looked around at the inmates moving toward him.
I shrugged. “That’s what I came to find out.”
He studied the flyer some more. “It’s nearly identical to the one I made. Could an inmate do something like this?”
I nodded. “Not on the compound, but we have a PRIDE printing vocation program here. Lot of inmates work in it. None of the PM guys, but they could pay somebody to do it. Sneaking it down here would be the difficult part.”
PRIDE Enterprises is a not-for-profit corporation that works in prisons across the state, using inmate labor to provide manufacturing and services to government agencies and the private sector. It provides the state with both revenue and savings and inmates with jobs while they’re incarcerated, and gives them marketable skills when they’re released.
PCI’s printing program, which is operated by PRIDE, employs over a hundred inmates. They create and print books, brochures, business cards, tickets, flyers, newsletters with the latest equipment and software. Duplicating the priest’s unsophisticated flyer wouldn’t have presented a challenge for them.
After a few minutes, when most of the inmates had taken their seats, things began to quiet down again, and Father James looked relieved. As the last of the inmates were seated, I walked back over and stood by Daniels.
“He know anything about it?”
I shook my head. “Says not.”
Father James welcomed the men and gave his call to worship, but even after they were well into the second hymn, stragglers were still being buzzed out of their cells and joining the service.
“Anything out of the ordinary going on?” Daniels asked.
Potter shook his head. “Quiet as church. I’m about to fall asleep. Now I remember why I used to hate goin’ so damn much.”
He looked at me.
With a collar around my neck, I was an obvious target for his contempt, but I was probably no more connected to organized religion than he was. It’s what made my position ironic. From an early age, I’d had an intense spiritual hunger and an idealistic desire to help humanity, but had never felt comfortable or spent very much time within the structure of organized religion.
Daniels pressed the two flyers into Potter’s chest. “Know anything about these?”
While Potter examined the flyers, Daniels and I looked around the room. Between the exposed pipes running along the unfinished ceiling and the bare concrete of the floor, there was mostly open space with only a TV suspended from a bracket on the wall opposite us and a desk for the PM sergeant near the door.
Every sound reverberating in the open space of the two-story bare concrete building ricocheted around the room like a racquetball, and the air was filled with the stale depressing smell of confinement—sleep, sweat, and the lingering acrid odor of cigarette smoke.
I scanned the solid metal doors of the twenty-eight cinder block cells. With all the food tray slots closed, I could only see the inmates who were standing directly in front of the glass.
Potter’s radio announced that two inmates were returning from medical, and they appeared at the door. He nodded them toward their cells, which popped open as they approached them, and then he turned his attention back to the flyers.
“It’s bullshit,” Potter said.
“What?” Daniels asked.
He nodded toward the flyers. “We got this place locked down tighter than the warden’s black asshole. Every cell door is shut and locked. We’ve got complete control over all movement.”
From somewhere near the staircase, an inmate asked Potter if he could be released to attend the service.
“See,” Potter said. “Complete control.”
Potter then radioed Pitts and asked him to unlock cell 203. The buzz of an electric lock sounded, then a click, and Chris Sobel, Justin Menge’s boyfriend, emerged from the cell and walked over toward the folding chairs. Before he reached them, Potter motioned for him, and he walked over.
“Sir?” Sobel said.
His eyes were red and puffy, his face splotchy, and I wondered if he had been crying. His hands and hair were damp, the label on his uniform was missing, and he wasn’t wearing shoes.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
He glanced at me and gave me a small twisted-lip frown and a quick nod.
“Next time I call for service, you either go right then or not at all,” Potter said. “Understand?”
“Yes, sir,” he said. “Sorry, I fell asleep.”
Potter didn’t say anything else and Sobel made his way over to the back row of chairs and took a seat. Almost as soon as he sat down, Potter called him back.
“Where the hell’re your shoes?”
Sobel looked down at his socked feet. “This is now holy ground. It’s my tradition.”
“I got some traditions of my own you gonna find out about if you don’t go git your goddam shoes on.”
“Yes, sir,” he said, and quickly headed back to his cell.
“Complete control,” Daniels agreed with so little sarcasm that Potter didn’t pick up on it.
“Damn straight,” Potter said.
I scanned the small crowd of inmates for Justin Menge, but he wasn’t among them. Though an outspoken critic of the Catholic Church, as far as I knew he never missed Mass.
Potter raised his eyebrows as if a thought had just occurred to him. “If we did have a murder down here . . . wouldn’t be a bad thing.”
Daniels started to comment, but Potter’s radio sounded the return of another inmate from the library.
Daniels eyes grew wide when the inmate appeared at the door by himself. “Where the hell’s his escort?”
“They just bring ‘em as far as the front door of the dorm. Officer in the wicker watches them from there.”
“When he’s there,” Daniels said, shaking his head.
We fell silent for a while as Father James continued his homily. Eventually, Sobel came back with his shoes on, though he had missed most of the service.
The dim light coming from the high ceiling of the quad seemed to obscure more than it illuminated, casting everything in a ghost-like vagueness that seemed far too appropriate for the anticipation of murder.
Potter’s radio sounded again and Pitts told him he was going to do a visual walk by of the cells, which he promptly came and did, his dark skin shining in the dull light of the quad. Even from a distance, it was obvious Pitts was athletic. His casual, yet crisp movements demonstrated his comfort with and confidence in his body. After he made his rounds, Pitts gave Potter the thumbs-up gesture and returned to the wicker.
As the service continued, I looked around the quad, bowing my head periodically as Father James prayed, preparing to serve the Holy Eucharist.
“Pray, brothers, that our sacrifice may be acceptable to God, the almighty Father,” he said.
His small congregation responded more or less in unison, “May the Lord accept the sacrifice at your hands, for the praise and glory of his name, for our good, and the good of all his Church.”
“Lord Jesus Christ, you said to your apostles, ‘I leave you peace, my peace I give you.’ Look not on our sins, but on the faith of your Church, and grant us the peace and unity of your kingdom where you live for ever and ever.”
When I looked up again, Potter was shaking his head, but he stopped when Father James held up the elements.
“This is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Happy are those who are called to his supper.”
I looked around the dorm some more, and though I was prepared for what came next, I still shuddered slightly when Father James said, “The body and the blood.”
I glanced over at Daniels and Potter. They both looked pale.
When nothing happened, it was as if the collective breath being held was exhaled, though what followed was only a slight release of tension, not a complete exorcism of our uneasiness.
As Father James came around the table and presented the sacraments, the inmates stood and began filing down the center aisle to receive Holy Communion.
Father James held the bread in one hand, a chalice filled with grape juice (wine wasn’t allowed) in the other, and in an atypical, unorthodox manner, each inmate would tear a small piece of bread from the loaf, dip it into the chalice, and drop it into his mouth.
“The body that was broken for you. The blood that was shed for you.”
This continued for a long time under the scrutiny of Daniels and Potter, both of whom had moved closer to get a better view.
“The body of Christ. The blood of Christ.”
Since Daniels was watching the Holy Eucharist so closely, I decided to concentrate on the rest of the quad. I looked down each wall, pausing at every cell, beginning where I stood and scanning slowly to the other end.
“The body that was broken for you. The blood that was shed for you.”
I looked down the wall closest to me first. Nothing was out of order. There was no movement. No sound, but echoes of the priest’s haunting words.
“The body of Christ. The blood of Christ.”
I examined the wall opposite us. First the upper level, and then the bottom. Moving across each cell, beginning with the end closest to us and working my way back down to the far end near the door.
And that’s when I saw it.
“The body that was broken for you,” the priest was saying. “The blood that was shed for you.”
I began moving toward it, but
before I reached it, I knew what it was.
“The body of Christ. The blood of Christ.”
It can’t be, I thought, but knew it was.
There on the bare concrete floor, seeping from beneath Justin Menge’s cell door as if from an open wound, was an expanding pool of blood.
4
“How the hell did this happen?” Daniels yelled.
I didn’t respond.
“We saw him come in just a few minutes ago,” he said. “We’ve been here the whole time. Watching.”
We were standing in front of Justin Menge’s cell, carefully avoiding the blood puddle at our feet. Every inmate at the Catholic service and the few that were in their cells had been strip-searched by Potter and Pitts and then escorted to the empty quad on the other side of the dorm where they would stay locked down until the investigation was completed.
“How the hell did this happen?” Daniels said again, each time emphasizing a different word, as he continued to look around every visible inch of the quad.
Satisfied the crime-scene was secure, he withdrew latex gloves from his coat pocket and handed me a pair. After we put the gloves on, the first thing we both did was pull on the cell door.
It was locked.
This massive metal door fronting the 6 x 9 foot cinder block cell was the only possible entrance or exit.
“Shit,” he said.
“I know.”
He shook his head. “It’s locked and he’s alone inside.”
Like a coach yelling at his players during practice in an empty gymnasium, Daniels’s voice echoed through the cement quad, bouncing around the room like an overinflated basketball.
I reached down and pulled on the food tray slot. It was also locked.
He took a step back and motioned up to the officer in the wicker to unlock the cell door.
Then he looked back over at me. “I asked you a question.”
“You did?”
“How the hell did this happen? We just saw him come in. He’s in a locked cell. Alone. And he’s only been in—What? Twenty, twenty-five minutes?”
I shrugged. “Maybe less.”
“Could it be suicide? It’s got to be, right? I mean, of course. That flyer’s got me thinkin’ crazy, but it can’t be murder. He had to do it to himself. No one else was in here.”