Six John Jordan Mysteries

by Michael Lister

  “I know. I’m sorry. But you’ll be safe and chances like these don’t come along very often.”

  I pulled into the parking lot next to the green tin building used for a dry dock and in front of the marina gift shop. The entrance to the café in the back was down the breezeway.

  She hesitated before getting out, and I turned and glanced out my back window toward the mill, but the view was blocked by the construction of a new strip mall.

  “Keep trying Steve,” I said. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  “And if you’re not?”

  “I will be,” I said. “I’m just—”

  “When I was little, a homeless man staying at the abbey held a gun to my head and led me into the woods.”

  “Oh, Kathryn. I’m so sorry.”

  I remembered reading a similar scenario in one of her novels.

  “I’m not sure if he was going to rape and kill me or kidnap me. Father Thomas caught up to us and stopped him before he could do anything but scar me for life. It’s why I freaked out in the clearing and why I’m not handling this as well as I should. I just wanted you to know.”

  I wondered how much her traumatic experience in childhood really had to do with her present day reactions. Maybe a lot. Maybe not. But that was her narrative, and the stories we tell ourselves to make sense of ourselves and the world are all-powerful. That was no less true of me and the person who killed Tammy than it was her or any other human on the planet. We are our stories. We are who we believe we are. Part of my reason for being at St. Ann’s was to revise my stories.

  “Come on,” I said. “I’ll take you back to the abbey.”

  “No, it’s okay. I’ll be fine. I need to face my fear.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Positive. I’ll be fine. I know the owner. I’ll sit and talk to him.”

  She opened the door and stepped out of the truck. “Now go. Be careful. And hurry back.”

  41

  As I pulled out of the marina parking lot, instead of going back the way we had come, I took a left, driving toward the bay, then took a right onto a narrow oyster shell road that led to the back of the old mill site.

  Driving around the mammoth marred-concrete and rusting-steel plant, I recalled the enormous stacks of pine logs, piles of pulp chips, and lines of loaded log trucks, where now there was only an empty lot. I imagined the fluffy white smoke, like cumulus clouds, billowing out of the smokestacks that now looked purposeless and out of place, and, most of all, I remembered the smell––that heavy, pungent stench that would cling to clothes and air currents alike, oppressive in its unrelentingness.

  I pulled off the small road and parked among some tall stalks of sea oats, looked for the best place to get through the chain-link fence that surrounded the compound. Grabbing the small snub-nosed .38 from beneath my seat, I climbed out. Back toward Bridgeport, children played in a park next to the bay, while people stood on the retaining wall around the marina fishing with cane poles.

  Like the structures and machinery of the dilapidated mill, the fence was in disrepair. Wired to its weathered links next to the faded and rusted signs warning not to trespass were bright new signs warning of explosive devices and the impending demolition of the remaining mill buildings, which according to the sign would take place in the morning.

  Finding a place where the fence had been cut and poorly repaired, I pulled it apart and slid through, ripping my jacket on the jagged ends of the half-circles of aluminum as I did. Once inside, I checked to make sure my gun and phone were still in my pockets. Confirming they were, I moved through the maze of galvanized pipes, boilers, and buildings toward the offices in the front.

  In preparation for demolition, the mill had been stripped of most of the machinery that was worth moving, but in testament to the sheer amount of materials required for a working mill to transform pulpwood into paper, an enormous amount remained.

  A complex network of tubes and pipes of every size ran into and out of the ground and buildings, passing through shutoff valves with large, round handles like steering wheels. Glancing inside a couple of the buildings through broken panes of glass, I saw that the insides of the buildings looked similar to the outsides. Joining the pipes inside were enormous vats, extraordinarily long conveyor belts, and an elaborate system of metal-grate catwalks, beneath which the soiled concrete floor was littered with green barrels and drums, bleached and unbleached pulp, and rolled and unrolled paper.

  As I neared the office building in the front, my phone rang. Answering it quickly, I looked around to see if anyone had heard it, but as far as I could tell, there was no one around to hear anything.

  “Hello,” I said in a whisper.

  “John?” Kathryn asked. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine. You okay?”

  “Yeah. Still can’t get Steve, but I’ll keep trying. Just wanted to let you know I’m going back to the abbey, so take your time. Do what you need to do.”

  “How are you—”

  “A friend of mine is eating here. I know she won’t mind taking me. I’ll see you back there tonight, and I’ll call you if I get Steve.”

  “You sure?”

  “Positive,” she said, but it was unconvincing. “I’d rather be there and I don’t want you worrying about me. Everything’s fine. I promise.”

  When I ended the call, I set my phone to vibrate, slipped it back into my pocket, and continued toward the back door of the front office. I had taken maybe three steps when I felt the gun barrel touch me on the back of the head.

  “Lift your hands very slowly,” the voice behind me said.

  I did.

  Reaching into my pockets, he withdrew my gun, then my phone. After he did, I slowly looked over my shoulder to see who it was. As I suspected, it was the guy from the clearing who had taken Tammy’s diary. Like before, he was alone, and I wondered where his partner was.

  “You’re trespassing in a very dangerous place,” Ralph Reid said.

  I turned to see him stepping out of one of the back doors of the building in front of me. He was wearing a hard hat.

  “There are live explosives all over the place. What’re you doing here?”

  “You took Tammy’s diary,” I said.

  “I was trying to help Father Thomas. I told them not to hurt anyone. Just get the book.”

  He was relaxed and comfortable, his words and manner demonstrating how untouchable he felt.

  “They work for you or the paper company?” I asked.

  “We all work for the company. They do the heavy lifting. We’re here getting the last of our things. And we’re not a paper company anymore.”

  No wonder he felt so confident. He had the weight of the monster behind him.

  “What are you going to do with me?”

  He looked surprised. “Escort you off this dangerous property and remind you that trespassing is a crime.”

  “That’s it?”

  “What’d you think I was going to do?”

  “Don’t know,” I said, “but the guy pointing the gun at me gave me a few ideas.”

  “Oh, sorry,” he said, as if it had slipped his mind. “Russ, put down the gun and give him his things back. John, I think you’ve been working in prison too long. Russ was just doing his job, securing the facility. We mean you no harm. I’m an officer of the court for God’s sakes.”

  When I had my phone, I said, “Do you mind if I call your client?”

  He made a sweeping gesture with his upturned hand. “Be my guest.”

  Russ walked around and stood by Reid, eyeing me cautiously as he did. At a minimum, Russ and his partner should be arrested for assault, but I’d have to wait for Steve for that.

  Father Thomas was in his office. Sister Abigail was with him. He put me on speaker phone and I told them where I was and who I was with, then asked Father Thomas if he had anything to do with the theft of the diary.

  “I most certainly did not,” he said. “I would never—”<
br />
  “He says he did it on your behalf.”

  “I never said any such thing,” Reid said. “Don’t put words in my mouth. I said I was trying to help my client. I had to know if what was in her diary could hurt us. And I had to get it before it became police evidence.”

  “Assault and theft are crimes whether or not it was in police custody yet.”

  “I realize that,” he said. “I’m a good attorney. Sometimes I just get a little overzealous on behalf of my clients.”

  “Did you hear that?” I asked into the phone.

  “Ask him how he can keep a straight face when saying such things,” Sister Abigail said.

  “You think I’m lying?” Reid asked with just a slight hint of outrage in his voice.

  “If you expect me to believe that you risked disbarment because you were concerned about what Tammy’s diary might say about Father Thomas.”

  “I told you,” he said, “Father Thomas is the closest thing to a priest I’ve ever had.”

  I said into the phone, “Father, I think you need a new attorney.”

  “We all know good and well his primary if not only interest is in getting this land back for the paper company’s new development,” Sister Abigail said.

  I repeated what she said.

  Reid shook his head to himself and sighed heavily.

  “Did you kill Tammy Taylor?” I asked.

  “What?” he said in shock, his eyes wide and slightly wild. “No.”

  “Did you have your two, ah, heavy lifters do it?”

  “No,” he said. “I had nothing to do with it.”

  “Where is the diary?” I asked.

  “Russ got overzealous and destroyed it,” Reid said.

  Russ smiled and said, “Sorry. I misunderstood.”

  “Why does the Gulf Coast Company want the abbey property so badly?” I asked.

  “We don’t,” he said. “Not so badly. Certainly not enough to kill over it. We’re just planning ahead. We have several developments in the works and we’d like to put one of them out there. If we can’t, it’s not the end of the world.”

  “Why do you continue to support St. Ann’s if you want it closed?” I asked.

  “Obviously we don’t want it closed,” he said. “We would like it relocated. That’s it.”

  “Actually,” Sister Abigail said, “they can’t just stop their support. Floyd set up a trust for the abbey that will continue as long as the paper company does.”

  I repeated what she said.

  “Unless—” Reid began to say, but stopped.

  “Unless what?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “Nothing.”

  Sister Abigail said, “Unless the board of directors has just cause to suspend support.”

  “Such as?” I said.

  “Annual attendance drops below a certain number,” she said. “We’re convicted of a felony. The—”

  “Who?”

  “Father Thomas or myself or our successors.”

  “Aha,” I said, but it wasn’t the same without Kathryn there to appreciate it.

  “What happens to the trust and land if St. Ann’s closes?” I asked Reid.

  He shrugged.

  “The land wouldn’t automatically go back to the paper company,” Sister Abigail said.

  I told him what she said.

  “I’m not so sure about that,” Reid said.

  “So if Tammy’s death gets the abbey shut down...”

  “Then he gets what he wants,” Sister Abigail said, “and that’s the best motive I’ve heard so far.”

  42

  “What happens if St. Ann’s closes?” I asked.

  “It depends,” John David Dean, the abbey’s attorney said.

  I was sitting in his office in downtown Bridgeport. I had rushed over from the paper mill because when Sister Abigail called and asked if he would see me, he said now was the only time he had until after the first of the year.

  “On what?” I asked.

  “On when it closes.”

  John David Dean was a thin man in his early seventies with course salt-and-pepper hair that looked like a toupee, but wasn’t. Though his movements were hesitant and his hands shaky, he was still suave, and I had no doubt he had been too smooth for his adversaries to know what had hit them as his younger self.

  “Floyd never had much family,” he continued. “He and his wife never had any kids together.”

  “That mean he had some without her?”

  John David Dean smiled appreciatively. “It’s more rumor than anything else, but if it’s true, she would inherit the land, the buildings, and the trust money.”

  At one time, Dean’s office had been elegant. Now, it was just old, the thick carpet and expensive furniture, though well-preserved, dated.

  “She? He has a daughter?”

  He shrugged. “I doubt he did. You know how small-town talk is.”

  Though his office and his clothes didn’t smell of smoke, Dean’s breath did, and even if it hadn’t, his muffled, sandpaper voice said he had smoked a very long time.

  “What would the Gulf Coast Company have to do to get St. Ann’s land?” I asked.

  He looked up and thought about it, rubbing his chin with shaky fingers as he did.

  “Well, they could trade other land for it and relocate the abbey,” he said. “If it closes, they could contest Floyd’s will, take the heir or heirs to court, or they could try to buy it.”

  “So just getting the abbey closed is not enough.”

  “Which is why they haven’t already done it,” he said.

  “They’ve got thousands and thousands of acres around here,” I said. “How important is St. Ann’s land to their developments?”

  “From what I understand, vital, but that’s just talk too. I’m not privy to their plans. I’ll tell you this, they’ve got to figure out a way to convert their land into some cash pretty quickly or they’ll go under.”

  “If Floyd doesn’t have a daughter,” I said, “who inherits St. Ann’s?”

  “According to his will, his niece and nephew would split the trust, while one got the land and the other the buildings, but if St. Ann’s closes after they’re dead, it—the land, the buildings, and the trust—automatically goes back to the paper company. I mean the Gulf Coast Company.” He shook his head and frowned. “Can’t get used to calling it that.”

  Knowing the answer, but wanting to hear him say it, I said, “Who’s his niece?”

  “Tammy was,” he said.

  “And the nephew?”

  “Our distinguished chief of police,” he said. “Steve Taylor.”

  43

  The Bridgeport courthouse was obviously designed and built in a time when function was elevated above form. It was essentially a two-story square box made of that yellowish brick I associated with the 1970s.

  Inside, I found the clerk of the court’s office almost completely empty. There was nothing on the long counter that ran across the front, and two of the three desks behind it had no folders or stacks of papers on them. The room smelled of fried food and activator.

  “Where is everybody?” I asked the large young black woman behind the counter.

  Her skin was as dark and shiny as her shoulder-length hair, and she wore a formless black dress with white and yellow flowers on it, the front of which was covered in a light dusting of doughnut powder.

  “The other two secretaries are already off for Christmas. The customers waiting to see what the paper company’s gonna do,” she said. “They do what they got planned and land value ‘round here gonna skyrocket, but if they don’t, no one want to be holding a buncha pine trees and sand spurs.”

  “I keep hearing about all these plans,” I said. “I wanna see something.”

  “Honey, you’ve come to the right place,” she said. “Step in here.”

  She held the small swinging door at the end of the counter open for me and I followed her into the enormous vault. It was filled with oversized
filing cabinets, computers, and wooden bookshelves, and smelled of old paper, dust, and an industrial air freshener that only made things worse. A framed color drawing of the proposed Gulf Sands Estates hung on the wall to the left of the door.

  “Is that...” I began.

  “The stuff dreams are made of,” she said. “If they pull it off, this place’ll never be the same again. We’ll look like Orlando or Tampa and eventually Miami.”

  The detailed drawing showed a multi-stage development project of large-city proportions. It included golf courses, subdivisions, condominiums, restaurants, schools, a college, and even a theme park.

  It was enormous in scale and scope, with the breadth and depth of an economic empire. The rumors were true. Florida’s Forgotten Coast was about to be discovered, and like the original natives when Columbus landed, we would never be the same again.

  I grew sick to my stomach, the rape of the land I loved so much sending me into a depression.

  “Don’t know nobody happy to see it coming,” she said. “‘Cept maybe the bankers and lawyers and real estate brokers.”

  “I’m surprised more people aren’t protesting,” I said.

  “What good would that do?” she asked. “They gonna do what they want to. Hell, they already had a major highway moved so it would meet their new thoroughfare and give them more beachfront to sell.”

  I looked at the drawing more closely. I couldn’t see how St. Ann’s figured in. They really didn’t need it. As beautiful as it was, it was too far from the Gulf and the rest of the development to even hold a golf course. I had to be missing something, but what was it?

  Touching the spot where St. Ann’s would be on the drawing, I asked, “Do you know what this tract of land has to do with the new development?”

  She squinted at it. “That look like—I think that’s—” she began, then broke off. “Hold on and let me check and see.”

  She withdrew a binder from a nearby bookcase and began to flip through it, nodding to herself as she did. “Mmm-hmm. That’s where the new road’s gonna go.”

  “New road?” I asked.

  Closing the binder with a snap, she replaced it on the bookcase. “If this thing goes through, Highway 98 can’t very well handle all the traffic. Plus, this new road will come directly from the new airport they tryin’ to build in Panama City. And it’ll connect to I-10. Rich bitches from all over the world can fly into Tallahassee or Panama City and be at their fancy resort in twenty or thirty minutes.”