MICHAEL LISTER'S FIRST THREE SERIES NOVELS: POWER IN THE BLOOD, THE BIG GOODBYE, THUNDER BEACH

by Michael Lister

  Dammit, why do I have to die now? Why? How cruel to do this to me now.

  She sat there gazing down at me, as if I were the man of her dreams, rubbing her fingers through my hair—the only part of my body that didn’t hurt. Occasionally, she would run her fingers delicately along the edge of my cheek, tracing the beard line. Although she barely touched it, it still hurt. It was, however, worth it.

  “I was so scared in the hospital,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. “I thought I might lose you, and I had just found you. I prayed like I never have before. I remembered some of the things you said at that funeral . . . Anyway, I want you to hang around a while and teach me more, okay?”

  “I plan to.”

  “You know how you said that stuff about grace, about things being a grace, like dancing with me that night or a good night’s sleep?”

  I nodded. Where the hell is my grace?

  “You’re a grace for me,” Tears formed in her eyes. She smiled.

  “There’s nothing I want more.”

  A small breeze rippled the top of the muddy, coffee-colored water, and the moss hanging from the cypress limbs above us swayed slightly. Upstream, a fish jumped and made a loud splash.

  We were silent, both fully in the moment. A single small tear fell from her left eye into my right.

  “Tears form in my heart, but they fall from Laura’s eyes,” I said.

  “That’s beautiful,” she said, and then more tears came.

  “It’s from one of Dan Fogelberg’s songs—‘Anastasia’s Eyes’.”

  It was a very romantic moment, considering that I looked like a raccoon that had barely survived being hit by a car . . . and was going to die anyway.

  The branches of the bald cypress were too high and too small to provide any real shade, but a large live oak about ten feet away shaded the entire area of the bank and part of the muddy river. The water looked like just-stirred coffee as it swirled around the cypress trunks and the edge of the bank. The lapping of the water on the trunk of the trees reminded me of the bow of a boat breaking waves in the Gulf.

  “I was a pretty successful pastor in Atlanta,” I said. “When I finished seminary, I served for a short time as an associate of one of the larger churches in the area, and then two years later I was the senior pastor of the second largest Methodist church in Atlanta. I drank like a fish when I was in high school, college, and shortly after that when I was working with the Stone Mountain Police Department, but I stopped when I received my calling. I didn’t seek help or look at why I drank so much. I just stopped.”

  “And, stopping like that is always temporary,” she said.

  “Yes, it is, especially because I had an extremely horrific case with a very traumatic ending just before I quit the department. I didn’t drink while I was the associate and for two years after I became a senior pastor. I threw myself into my vocation.”

  “You exchanged one addiction for another,” she said.

  “Yep, I was a classic workaholic. Now, this whole time I’d been living as a dry drunk, and that was okay with Susan, because that’s what she was used to. We had a nice, comfortable, unhealthy relationship. We didn’t see each other that much, and we lived in a glass house, so when we

  did, we were usually doing our best to win an Oscar.”

  “All the world’s a stage,” she said.

  “Uh huh,” I said. “Finally, with all the pressure of being a pastor of a large church, never having gotten over my last case, and no personal life whatsoever, I began to drink again. Small amounts at first, but then I tried to swim in the bottle, and that’s when I drowned.”

  “How did Susan respond?”

  “Like an old pro at enabling. She was the best. The silence, the secrets, the excuses, and the justification.”

  “Sounds like a perfect setup. What happened?”

  “Remember that grace we spoke of earlier—she stepped in. I saw that I needed help, and I went looking for it. I started AA, I read the books, I got a sponsor, and I made one fatal mistake—I became honest about my addiction. Susan couldn’t handle it. It’s funny, but it wasn’t my addiction that split us up, but my recovery. And the church, the last thing they wanted was an honest recovering alcoholic for a pastor. I was too real, too much of a reminder of their own needs.”

  She nodded encouragingly.

  “Things got worse from there. I was faithful during all of this time. To be rigid enough to be a dry drunk meant that it was not a problem to be rigid enough to not be human. However, Susan and I had never been all that human with each other either, if you know what I mean. We were probably down to once a week, sometimes less. So, when the charges came that I was having an affair with one of the wives of a board member, she believed it. She was always so insecure anyway; that was all she needed.”

  In the distance, the hollow tapping of a woodpecker started. It echoed off the trees and surface of the water, sounding like a family of woodpeckers at work.

  “Why do you think the woman accused you of adultery?” Laura’s eyes were filled with compassion and understanding. Her mouth stayed slightly parted when she wasn’t talking—desirous, it seemed, to drink in my pain.

  “She didn’t. Her husband did. She had come to see me because they were both alcoholics. She wanted help. He didn’t. He fixed her. Not too long after that, she committed suicide, and the papers had a field day. It all hurt like hell, but the worst thing was the way the church turned me out to the wolves.”

  “Probably a lot of wolves within your fold.”

  “Yes, there were. And every one of them had on sheep’s clothing. I didn’t see it coming, and I didn’t know what hit me.”

  “So, you moved to this luxurious home,” she said, looking back at my trailer, “in sunny Pottersville, Florida.”

  “Right here,” I said. “All of this came on the heels of a disastrous case I worked on with the SMPD. I quit. I ran away. I wanted to die. But, I didn’t drink, and, somehow, I didn’t lose my faith, in myself or in God. So, I’ve been demoted to a convict preacher.”

  “You don’t see it as a demotion,” she said. “I can tell.”

  “Well, maybe not. But, it was certainly a demotion as far as everyone else was concerned.”

  “I think it’s a grace. The inmates at Potter CI have a priest who knows what it’s like to fall from grace.”

  “You’re beginning to see grace everywhere, aren’t you?”

  “Obi-wan trained me well,” she said and started to laugh.

  “There’s just one thing. Grace was the only thing that I didn’t fall from. I actually fell into grace’s gentle embrace.”

  “You’re right. But I was using it as an expression, not literally.”

  We strolled back to the trailer in no particular hurry. We laced our fingers together and held hands, weary of traveling alone. When we walked into the trailer, the phone was ringing, and I knew it was bad news.

  It was.

  It was Merrill. Anthony Thomas had been murdered in the infirmary the night before—stabbed and raped with a surgical scalpel, which the murderer had left in the body.

  Chapter 40

  “You look awful,” Molly Thomas said when she was seated in the only chair in my living room. She was wearing a pair of dark blue jeans, a white oxford button-down shirt, and white leather Keds. The large shirt, probably one of Tony’s, was not tucked in, and the tails were wrinkled. Clasped in her right had was a small wad of tissues that were wrinkled, too.

  When she’d knocked on the door, Laura had greeted her like any Southern lady would, not realizing that she was the woman who had accused me of raping her in the chapel of PCI. I agreed with her, I did look awful, but she looked worse. She looked like the grieving widow she was. Her eyes were deep and hollow with big black bags underneath. Her auburn hair was thin and wispy, part of it standing up, but she didn’t care. She had aged ten years in the ten days since I had last seen her.

  “Molly, I don’t think it’s a good i
dea for you to be here,” I said, sounding too harsh even under the circumstances. “I’m very sorry about Anthony, but I’m not the one to help you right now.”

  “I’ve got to talk to you,” she said. Her voice was flat and as expressiveless as her face was expressionless. “I know what I’ve put you through, but I’m going to make it right. I’m so sorry.” She began to cry. Women seemed to be doing a lot of that around me lately. “I just didn’t know what else to do.”

  Laura stood over near the door, giving Molly room but keeping watch over me. I hoped for Molly’s sake that she didn’t try anything crazy or make any sudden movements. I could picture Laura pouncing on her and, quite frankly, kicking her ass.

  “What are you talking about, Molly?” I asked.

  She tried to speak, but nothing came. She cleared her throat. “I’m talking about calling the superintendent and telling him that you were involved in the thing in the chapel.” Her voice was weak and sounded hoarse. “I didn’t tell him you did it or anything. I just told him that you were involved. I’m so sorry. I was just trying to protect Tony. I was so scared they were going to kill him.”

  When she said “kill him,” she looked as if she had just revealed the most horrible secret. The shocked expression on her face turned to rage and then pain in seconds. She cried for two minutes, her red eyes unable to produce enough tears for more, and then talked the rest of the time through sobs and gasps for breath.

  I looked over at Laura. She looked relieved. Her small smile said that her trust in me had been validated. She seemed as proud of herself for trusting in the right man as she was happy for me actually being innocent.

  “Skipper said if I accused you,” Molly continued, “he would let Tony out of confinement and take care of him. I just didn’t know what else to do. I was so scared and so alone.” She lifted the wad of tissues to her eyes, her hands trembling like those of an elderly woman. “You were the only one who had ever helped me or even treated me with any decency, and I stabbed you in the back.”

  I wondered if she knew how Tony was killed. Judging by her composure when she said “stabbed you in the back,” she didn’t know. I was glad. I wished I didn’t.

  “I killed him,” she continued. “If I had not done what I did, he might still be alive.”

  I thought the same thing, but I said, “You did not kill your husband. It was probably just a matter of time. He had fallen in with some very bad people.”

  “He wasn’t bad when he went to prison. I mean, he had broken the law. He was no angel, but he was no devil either—but that’s what he was the last time I saw him.”

  “When you called the superintendent, did you accuse anyone else of being involved?”

  “No, not to him, but he had me speak with some sort of inspector. I told him that Captain Skipper was involved, too. But, he only wanted to know about you. He acted as if you were the only one involved. I was making it up, but I didn’t know what else to say, so some of the things that Skipper did, I told him you did.”

  “Did you tell him that Anthony was there?” I asked.

  “Yes, but that he was made to be. I thought that might make them sympathetic to him. Oh, God, I’m so sorry, but I was just trying to help Tony. He was so powerless, you know. They could do anything they wanted to him, and there was nothing he could do.”

  “I understand,” I said. What I didn’t say was that he was still responsible for the wrong he did and that he probably got hooked up with Skipper to begin with because he was looking for a way to beat the system.

  “I’m going to make it right,” she said, nodding her head rapidly. “I’m going to the press and to the superintendent tomorrow and tell the truth. I will clear your name. I’ve wronged you like no other person in my entire life, and I’m sorry. Just please believe that it was all for Tony.”

  “I do, Molly,” I said, waiting for her to look into my eyes. “He was very lucky to have someone who loved him so much.”

  Suddenly and unbidden, a jolt of enlightenment surged through my mind like lightning running down a tree.

  When Molly left, Laura said, “That’s good news, isn’t it? Won’t she clear your name?”

  “Maybe, but I doubt it,” I said, not realizing how right I was. “It’s already so public, and most people probably will not see her real story, and of those who do, most will not believe it.”

  “Come on now,” she said. Her eyes were wide, searching for strength in mine. “Don’t give up. . . . I’m not going to.”

  “I just think that the damage has already been done. Words are something that can never be taken back. Never. I just wonder what my inmates are thinking. How can they ever trust me again?”

  “From what I’ve heard, they know what’s going on. They probably all know about Skipper, and it sounds like most of them are discovering what a wonderful man you are. They’re probably a lot more forgiving and believing than someone on the street.”

  “The vast majority of them are guilty and have no difficulty believing that everybody is guilty. They probably aren’t surprised by what they’ve heard about me, but they probably do believe it.”

  “So what are you going to do?” she asked.

  “I am going to testify tomorrow in Skipper’s probable-cause hearing and see what happens, but I can’t imagine ever going back to Potter Correctional Institution.”

  “Well, you obviously don’t have much of an imagination,” she said and then smiled warmly enough to melt some of the ice of my isolation.

  Chapter 41

  There were really only two questions that Skipper’s lawyer had for me. They had already established an alibi for Skipper during the time in which Johnson was killed. Skipper’s lawyer, Gilbert Hamilton, was a short, round man from Alabama with a Southern gentleman’s exterior and a predator’s interior.

  He was overweight by at least a hundred pounds, and he carried it all at the center of his body. His hair, what little of it there was, he wore closely shaven in a partial crew cut. He was wearing a light blue pinstriped suit with a white shirt roughly the size of a two-man tent, a burgundy tie with navy blue stripes, and matching suspenders. He reminded me of Boss Hog.

  “Now, Mr. Jordan, I have only two questions for you, which if answered honestly will prove that the state does not have a case against my client, Captain Matthew Skipper.”

  He pronounced it “Skippa.”

  “First, in the matter of attempted murder, did Captain Skipper, at any time . . . Let me rephrase the question. Has Captain Skipper at any time ever laid a hand on you?”

  I started to answer, but he continued to talk.

  “Has he,” he continued, enjoying listening to the sound of his voice reverberate off the wooden walls of the small courtroom, “ever so much as laid a finger on you?” He pronounced it “finga.”

  I looked at him to see if he was through.

  “You may answer the question, son,” he said.

  “No, sir. He has never laid so much as one finger on me,” I said, being careful to enunciate properly. I did not wish to sound anything like the man questioning me.

  “Thank you, sir, for your candor and honesty. I have always found it to be the best policy, haven’t you?”

  I started to respond, but he continued talking.

  “Now,” he said, “think long and hard about this next question before you answer, and I remind you that you, sir, are still under oath. On Saturday night a week ago, were you following Captain Skipper between the hours of twelve thirty and one thirty A.M.?”

  I started to answer, but he continued. “All I am looking for here is a yes or no answer. Were you following him during the time that the county medical examiner says Russ Maddox was murdered?”

  “Yes, sir, I was,” I said, followed by an audible gasp from the courtroom.

  “So you are saying that you are his alibi then, sir?”

  “Yes, sir, I guess that’s exactly what I’m saying.”

  “Nothing further, Your Honor,” Hamilton s
aid, and it sounded like “Nuthin’ futha, ya hona.”

  I was Skipper’s alibi. That was the kicker. I looked over at Skipper, seated with Hamilton at the defendant’s table. When he caught my eye, he winked and smiled widely, showing me all of his yellow tobacco stains. He looked happier than I had ever seen him look. He was now more convinced than ever of the myth of his invulnerability. But I knew better.

  My entire appearance in court had taken less than fifteen minutes. I was exhausted. I went home to rest—but not for long. I had to figure out whodunit, so I went in search of clues. The only problem was I couldn’t find them because of the vigor with which Laura and Anna had cleaned my trailer.

  I looked high and low. I searched every room, every cabinet, every closet, and every nook and cranny. Still I couldn’t find them. I called Anna at the institution.

  “How did your day in court go?” she asked immediately. I told her, but she knew already. After all, this was Pottersville.

  “Are you okay?”

  “I’m okay,” I said, “but I’m feeling felinely and trying not to get killed.”

  She thought for a minute, “So, what are you so curious about?”

  “Very good. I didn’t think you were going to get that.”

  “Scary, isn’t it? So, how can I help with your feline pursuits?”

  “You can tell me where you put the videos that were on top of my TV.”

  “The Disney tapes?” she asked immediately.

  “Yes.”

  “I took them to watch. I’ve heard how good Aladdin and The Lion King are. I wanted to watch them. You don’t mind, do you?”

  I laughed. “Those are the tapes from Maddox’s private collection.”

  “What? He hid them in Disney cases? That’s sacrilege! You don’t think there could be children on them do you?”

  “I hadn’t considered that, but considering what he hid them in, it is a possibility. I need to watch them.”

  “I’ll bring them over this afternoon. I want to watch them too. Does that make me a pervert?” she asked sincerely.