JJ08 - Blood Money

by Michael Lister

  The immorality of income inequality in our country was as devastating as it was dangerous. The vanishing middle class meant there were mostly extremes now—high-end department stores for the wealthy and Dollar Stores for the rest of us. Both were booming while most everything in between was struggling. There were no exclusive or expensive shops or boutiques in Pottersville, but that didn’t mean we lacked variety. There were three different Dollar Stores.

  Of all my friends, family, and neighbors, none were struggling to survive because of laziness or lack of effort. The seemingly random and capricious nature of their struggle was due to lack of opportunity––that, and the greed of those pulling the levers of the great machine, who decided to keep such an obscene amount for themselves.

  “So tell me about last night,” I said.

  “Creepy ol’ Ronald Potter hired me and Carla Jean to come out and help host his party. Well, the party after the main party. Girls aren’t allowed at that.”

  “Never have understood that,” I said.

  “Me either. Anyway, I’ve done this before . . . and it was good money and there’s not much to it. Just sort of hang out and entertain the troops, so to speak. But here’s the thing, and this is what it all comes down to for me and why I even considered doing it—we don’t have to do anything we don’t want to.”

  I nodded. “Such as?”

  “The way he puts it is he pays us to be there. That’s all. What we do while we’re there is up to us. Now, don’t get me wrong, we want everyone to have a good time so we’ll get tipped and be invited back to the next one.”

  “So what kind of stuff do you do?”

  “Bring ’em drinks. Dance with ’em. Show ’em our tits. Fool around if we want to––but only if we want to. And remember these are mostly old geezers. Doesn’t take much. Oh, they talk big, but most of ’em can’t do much of nothin’. Plus which they’re all drinkin’ so much.”

  I thought carefully how to word my next question. “What sorts of things do they ask for?” I said. “In the back rooms?”

  “Anything their wives won’t do,” she said. “Or don’t do a lot. I’m not sayin’ we do them. You asked what they ask for.”

  I nodded.

  Because of how quickly I had to get ready this morning, I was dressed more casually than usual, and I wasn’t wearing a clerical collar, for which I was grateful.

  “Felix’s wife won’t go down on him and he loves gettin’ head,” she said.

  She seemed to be warming to our conversation—something I wanted to encourage.

  “What guy doesn’t?” I said.

  “I know, right? Some guys are happy to get anything.

  I feel funny talkin’ to you about this.”

  “Please don’t,” I said. “I’m a man. I get it. And I’m not a cop.”

  “Cops are the worst,” she said. “They expect you to do what they say and they’re not nice about it. And they’re usually rough.”

  “Jake?” I asked.

  “He’s not bad. Really. That other one was. Andrew Sullivan. Guy’s a prick. Put his hands around my mouth and neck and tried to make me swallow. I pretended like I did then spit it in his face. I woulda caught a bad beating for that but Jake stepped in and saved me.”

  “He been violent with you before?” I asked. “When he drinks.”

  “He was drinkin’ last night?” She nodded. “Big time.”

  I knew he was on duty because he was at the prison crime scene. I guess I never got close enough to smell it on him.

  Across Main Street, at the drive-thru liquor store, an elderly man on a rusting, once green riding lawn mower pulled up to the window, cut the motor, and placed his order.

  “Your dad, Judge Cox, and Mr. Hugh Glenn are always perfect gentlemen,” she said. “Your dad has never asked for anything. Judge either, except for one time when he had too much to drink and he begged me for anal before he puked and past out. Mr. Hugh . . .”

  “What?”

  “I can’t say it.”

  “Sure you can. You can say anything. It’s all important and it helps me.”

  “I can’t see how this will help . . . but he just likes to sniff me while he . . . you know . . . touches himself.

  They’re all good men. I’m glad they’re our leaders. I think your dad’s a good sheriff, but I think Mr. Hugh would make a good one too.”

  I nodded.

  Balancing the suitcase of beer on the hood of his mower with one hand while steering the small back wheel with his other, the elderly man drove away, turning right on Second Street and disappearing behind the empty building that had once been a NAPA Auto Parts store.

  “Ralph Long talks a lot, flirts, but never does anything. I think he’s gay.”

  “Pretty sure he is,” I said.

  She looked around us then leaned in and lowered her voice. “The worst son of a bitch I’ve ever run across is Don Stockton.”

  I nodded.

  “And it was just you and Carla Jean? I asked. “Yep.”

  “Not the third woman, the blonde, that––”

  “Have no idea who she was. Wasn’t with us.”

  “Did you talk to her?”

  She shook her head. “I think Carla Jean did. Hell, sounded like she let her in the house, but I never laid eyes on her. I’d talk to Ronald Potter. If he didn’t hire her she may’ve just been crashin’. Whatever she was doing . . . it got her killed, didn’t it?”

  “It did.”

  “So scary.” I nodded.

  “That could’ve been me.”

  “I’m glad it wasn’t.”

  Her face softened and she smiled and turned her head. “Thank you. That’s a sweet thing to say.”

  We were quiet a moment, then I said, “Did anyone leave for a while and come back? Did anything out of the ordinary happen? Anything suspicious or strange?”

  “Seemed like everybody was comin’ and goin’ but I can’t be too sure. I don’t remember a lot. I think somebody drugged me.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  “You didn’t tell me Chris was such an ass to you last night,” Anna said.

  “Told you I saw him.”

  She smiled. “Good point.”

  “Assumed you’d guess the rest,” I said.

  “I should have. How could I have been married to him?”

  We were sitting on the small back porch of my—now our trailer—watching the river swirl its way toward the bay, the soft glow of the setting sun gently tinging everything gold, purple, and pumpkin.

  Evening was palpably present in everything, the air, the quiet, the cool and calm.

  “Tell me about your day,” I said.

  “Very, very ordinary. Missing you was the best and worst of it. Tell me about yours.”

  I did.

  “So you’re working on a murder where the victim is unknown and the body is stolen, an attempted suicide that might actually be attempted murder, a mother contemplating cutting short the little time she has left, and a warden who’s gonna fire you for being with me?”

  “You left out the only thing that matters.”

  “What’s that?” she said.

  “I get to come home to you.”

  “You do, you dear, sweet man, but are you sure you want me? I––”

  “Never more certain of anything in my life.”

  “Even with a baby on board, a psycho ex in tow, and the sin factor that could cost you your job?”

  “I’ve waited my whole life for you.”

  “But––”

  “And it was worth the wait.”

  “Just so we’re clear there, Mr. Jordan, you know I love you the same way, right? Just because I didn’t get to declare it to the warden or choose you over my job . . . I love you with every single cell of me.”

  I breathed that in, then kissed her.

  We kissed for a while. The desultory noises of the river slowly floating by were the only ones I could hear beside the sweet, heavy sound of blood passion in my e
ars.

  And the wide world with all its constant cares and troubles waned away.

  “He does know it’s me, doesn’t he?” she said eventually.

  “Who? Knows what’s you?”

  “The warden. He knows it’s me, right? Why isn’t my job in jeopardy?”

  I smiled. “Double standard, isn’t it? I’m expected to have his religious and moral sensibilities whereas you are not.”

  “I worked so hard to save my marriage,” she said, her gaze drifting, her voice growing wistful.

  “We both did,” I said.

  Her attention returned to me, her eyes finding mine.

  “We really did.”

  We did, didn’t we? It was easy to say––and it was what we both want to believe, but . . . I had no doubt she had done all she could, but had I? I would always wonder. It reminded me again I needed to call Susan.

  “Let’s get back to the warden’s expectations . . .” she said. “I’m . . .”

  “A whore, basically.”

  She liked that, her face lighting up, her big brown eyes shimmering with delight.

  “His word?” she said, taking me in her hand. “I wouldn’t want to fail to live up to expectations.”

  We began fumbling with each other’s clothes, unable to wait until they were all the way off for the devouring to begin.

  “I’m your whore,” she whispered hoarsely, her voice delicious with desire. “I’ve always been. Do whatever you want to me.”

  I did.

  Later that night, after Anna went to bed, I walked out under the night sky and began to pray.

  The heavens above me were brilliant with a billion stars, the earth below me, dark and damp, and I could feel the beloved moving through me in the cool breeze.

  I was grateful and so very glad to be alive, and I began there.

  Thank you.

  Thank you for letting me be here. Thank you for letting me be a part of all this. Thank you for Anna, for love, for what we have in each other, for the life we share.

  It came to my mind to pray for Chris, but I wasn’t ready to do that just yet. So I saved it, planning on coming back to him when I was a little further in and the better angels of my nature had had a chance to have more influence.

  I then lifted up for several inmates I was counseling, sending health and healing and forgiveness and peace in their direction.

  Next, I prayed for guidance and wisdom, for insight and patience, for help as a man, a chaplain, and an investigator.

  I really had no idea what the hell I was doing and I needed help with everything every single step of the way.

  For the next several minutes I practiced some mindful meditation and was just about to pray for Chris when Jake walked up.

  “Hey,” he yelled as he lunged out of the darkness at me.

  I jumped and he got a good laugh out of it.

  “You out here listening to the colors of the wind or some shit like that?” he said.

  I laughed.

  “I came to make sure you weren’t drinkin’ again,” he said. “We got serious shit goin’ down and we need you sober.”

  “If anything could drive me to drink, it’s you,” I said, “but so far so good.”

  We were quiet a moment and his demeanor changed. “I wish to God I hadn’t stayed,” he said. “I do.

  And I probably shouldn’t’ve fucked Melanie, but she’s not underage. I don’t care what you say, and that’s all I did. I didn’t have anything to do with anything else. I never even saw the girl that got killed. Never took anything or did anything illegal.”

  “I talked to Melanie about you this afternoon,” I said.

  “What’d she say?”

  “That you have a little dick but you’re a decent enough guy.”

  “What’d she really say?” I told him.

  “I been thinkin’,” he said. “Well, first . . . do you suspect me?”

  “Of some sort of mental deficiency? Yes.”

  “Seriously,” he said. “Do you?” I shook my head.

  “True story?” he asked. “True story.”

  “So I was thinking . . .” he said. “The killer had to leave to kill her and dump the body. That narrows it down to whoever left, right? So it’s got to be whoever left between the time Carla Jean let her in and when she was found at the prison. That was Don Stockton, Andrew Sullivan, Ronald Potter, and Felix Maxwell. I mean, everyone left the table throughout the night, but they’re the only ones that left the house. Sullivan was gone the longest. Then Stockton. But I think they were all gone long enough to do it.”

  “That’s good thinking,” I said. “We need to go over everybody’s exact movements. Can you––”

  My phone vibrated and I answered it.

  “Chaplain Jordan?” the deep voice with the thick Southern accent said.

  “Yeah?”

  “I was asked by the OIC to call you in to the institution. An inmate in A-dorm’s dead. Looks like he committed suicide.”

  When I ended the call, Jake said, “What’s up?”

  “Emergency at the prison,” I said. “I have to go in.

  Will you write down everybody’s movements through the night as best you can remember?”

  “Will do.”

  “Oh, and did I notice a cold-case deck on the poker table?”

  “Dad asked me about that,” he said. “Got me thinkin’. There was a deck shuffled in by the end of the night but it wasn’t there when we started. I have no idea how it got in and who brought it. Is it important?”

  Chapter Fifteen

  A-dorm at Potter Correctional Institution is an open-bay, military barrack–style inmate housing unit that serves as the orientation and honor dorm. In the shape of airplane wings, A-1 houses new inmates during their initial week of orientation, and A-2 houses inmates with the best adjustment to prison, the ones who act honorably.

  To be selected for the sixty-four coveted positions in the honor dorm, an inmate can have no disciplinary reports, or DRs, and must have achieved above satisfactory on his gain time evaluations in his work and housing areas.

  Suicide did not seem likely for the honor dorm.

  All the inmates from A-2 had been moved into other dorms, the yard was closed, and only a handful of officers and officials were near the crime scene. The still and quiet dorm with its rows and rows of empty bunks looked like an abandoned post-Cold War military base that had not survived down-sizing.

  Buzzed into the dorm near the raised and enclosed officers’ station, I walked in between the row of double bunks against the wall to my right and the single bunks in the center of the dorm to my left, toward the back corner, which was the least visible in the dorm, especially at night.

  When I arrived, a few of the officers milling around gestured toward me. Nearly all encouraged me to “have a look.”

  I did.

  On the back side of the last bunk—the point in the dorm that was furthermost from the officers’ station—an inmate was hanging on a small piece of rope, probably the kind used to crank the lawnmowers by the outside grounds crews. The small rope had been looped around the post at the top of the bed.

  The body of the inmate fell forward against the rope, his pale face puffy, his dry, swollen tongue protruding. His head hung loosely, his arms dangling down toward the ground. The tops of his feet and bottoms of his shins lay against the cold tile floor.

  He was wearing a pair of white boxers and a white T-shirt, both of which had his name and DC number stamped on them. Danny Jacobs. One of the most faithful members of the inmate chapel choir.

  Beginning just beneath his thighs and culminating in plum-colored feet, his legs were a gradient of lighter to darker purple.

  One of the officers standing nearby said, “They found him when they turned the lights on this morning.”

  I wondered if the dorm officers had made rounds after lights out last night.

  “He leave a note?” I asked.

  “No,” he said. “Everyt
hing’s just like we found it.”

  “Is someone assigned to the top bunk?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Phillips.”

  “Lance Phillips?”

  “Uh huh.”

  “Jacobs has been sleeping in the top bunk since Phillips went to Medical,” another officer offered.

  It was at that moment that I realized how close in size and build Danny Jacobs and Lance Phillips were.

  If the officers knew that Phillips was in Medical for supposedly attempting the same thing, they didn’t say anything about it.

  “Anybody see anything?”

  “Say they didn’t,” the first officer said. “But if they did, we’ll know soon enough. God knows inmates can’t keep a secret.”

  “Chaplain, what the hell’re you doin’ down here?” Mark Lawson, the interim institutional inspector asked as he walked up behind us. “This is a friggin’ crime scene.”

  “I was called in by the OIC,” I said.

  “I’m the one that told them to call you in,” he said. “Not to come pretend like you’re still a cop, but to act like a chaplain. To call this boy’s family and let them know what’s happened.”

  Mark Lawson had been the inspector of Potter Correctional Institution for about two months. Here on special assignment, while Pete Fortner was on medical leave, he was an ex-offender who had received a full pardon from the governor, and the son of the woman who was dating the regional director.

  He had the bulky build of an inmate and pea-green prison tattoos on his forearms, which according to the hype was supposed to make him more accepted and respected by the inmate population. So far I hadn’t seen any evidence that it was anything but hype.

  “Nothing’s to say I can’t do both,” I said.

  “Yes there is,” he said, stepping up a little too close. “Me. Not to mention the warden.”

  He held his arms like someone who had worked out so much that his muscles were too tight to allow them to straighten.

  “Listen,” he continued, “I know you used to be a cop. Pretty good one from what I hear. I know you used to help the other inspector ’cause . . . well, let’s face it, he needed help, but while I’m inspector, you’ll be a chaplain. Just a chaplain. I don’t need any help. I know what I’m doing. Understand?”