Blood of the Lamb (a John Jordan Mystery)

by Michael Lister

  I became aware of Stone continuing to pour his wrath and rage all over Coel.

  “Our number one priority is public safety,” Stone yelled.

  Finally, Coel had had enough. Casting off restraint, he slammed his hands on the table and jumped up. “So why the hell did you let a child into the institution?” Coel shot back. “What were you thinking? I’ve got to live with this the rest of my life. But I wasn’t the one who put her at risk.”

  None of us could believe what had happened, and we were all looking for someone to blame—anyone, though deep down we all knew we were each responsible in our own way.

  “By not doing your job you most certainly did,” Stone said. “It wasn’t going in that got her killed. It was not being adequately protected.” Stone jerked his head around at Fortner and saw me for the first time. To Fortner, he said, “Get this over with and get him out of here.” To me, “I want to see you in my office when y’all are done.”

  I nodded.

  When he had stormed out of the room, Fortner looked at Coel. “You need a minute before we do this?”

  He shook his head. “He should’ve never let her in,” he said. “That’s my statement. And that’s all I’m saying without my lawyer.”

  “What?” Fortner said. “Come on. I’m just trying to find out what happened.”

  “It sounds like y’all’re lookin’ for someone to hang this on,” Coel said.

  Fortner continued to plead and reason with him, but he refused to reconsider. Finally, I stood up and switched off both recording devices. “Okay,” I said. “No statements. Nothing official, just some information off the record. How about just answering a few simple questions?”

  “Like what?” he said.

  “Like who were the inmates who went to the bathroom or the water fountain or into the hallway for any reason while Nicole was in my office?”

  He nodded slowly. “I want y’all to find who killed her. Hell, I’d like to find the bastard myself, but I’m not gonna take the fall for somethin’ that was Stone’s fault.”

  I nodded.

  He studied me for a long moment, then nodded to himself as if agreeing with himself about some internal decision we were not privy to.

  “Abdul Muhammin,” he said. “I remember him because I couldn’t believe he was attending a Christian service, and it was the first time I’d ever seen him without his koofi.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I thought that was strange, too.”

  “He’s a chapel clerk, isn’t he?”

  I nodded.

  “You need to ask him about it,” he said.

  “Plan to,” I said. “Who else?”

  “Paul Register,” he said.

  “The one they call Chester the molester?” Fortner shouted. “Good God. How could you let him out there with her?”

  “She wasn’t out there,” he yelled. “She was inside a locked room with her mother. And I was standing at the sanctuary door watching. But the point is, she should have never been inside here in the first place.”

  “We all agree on that,” I said. “Who else?”

  “Cedric Porter,” he said.

  “Inmate from public works?” Fortner asked. “I thought he was an atheist. Does he come to church?”

  “I’ve never seen him there before,” I said.

  “Probably just came to see Bunny like the rest of ’em,” Coel said. “Hell, a lot of them stayed in the bathroom during most of the sermon.”

  “Why’d you let ’em?” Fortner asked.

  “Because I was by myself,” he said. “They pulled Whitfield to help get education back to the dorms. At the sanctuary door, I could see the hallway, the sanctuary, and both office doors.”

  “Sorry,” Fortner said. “You did good. You were in a no-win situation.”

  Obviously grateful for what Pete had said, Coel looked at him for a long moment, then slowly nodded his head, a grave expression on his face.

  “Any other inmates come or go?” I asked.

  “Dexter Freeman,” he said. “Y’all know him?”

  “I do,” I said. “I’ve worked with both him and Register.”

  “They’re both in on sex charges,” Fortner said.

  I nodded, then looked back at Coel. “Did you ever leave your position at the door?”

  He shook his head.

  “Not even for a moment?” I asked.

  “One time,” he said. “Bunny opened your office door and motioned for me to come over.”

  “Which door?” I asked.

  “The one in the sanctuary,” he said. “I walked over and she asked me how to place an outside call. I told her, then went back to where I was. But I saw her and the little girl at that point and they were fine.”

  “And no one else came or went?” I asked.

  He shook his head.

  “What about staff?”

  “Well, let’s see,” he said. “There was you.”

  “I know I was there,” I said, and I heard a harsh sarcasm in my voice that reminded me that Stone wasn’t the only one on edge. “I meant anyone else.”

  “And Theo Malcolm.”

  “The school teacher?” Pete asked in surprise, his eyebrows and glasses shooting up again.

  He looked over at me.

  “Yeah,” Coel said. “He must’ve stopped by after his class, on his way out or somethin’. He didn’t stay too long.”

  “What the hell was he doin’ there?” Pete asked.

  Coel shrugged.

  “I wondered the same thing,” I said. “As far as I know, he’s never been in the chapel before. And he was in a big hurry to get out. He nearly knocked me down on his way to the door.”

  “He didn’t stay long,” Coel repeated. “At least, I don’t think he did. I didn’t actually see him leave.”

  “Could he have killed her?” Fortner asked.

  I shrugged. “We’ve got to talk to him. He was coming from the back when I saw him.”

  “I never saw him close to your office door,” Coel said.

  “And Officer Whitfield came in at the end,” I said.

  “Oh, that’s right,” he said. “I forgot. He got back just in time for the… well, you know.”

  “So,” Pete said, “you got any idea who did it?”

  “No,” he said, “but Stone might as well have. He’s the one who tied her to a stake like bait down there with all the predators.”

  CHAPTER 11

  When Edward Stone welcomed me into his office, something he had never done, he closed the door, something he had often done. He then invited me to take a seat and offered me coffee, something he never did, and when I declined, he frowned deeply, something he often did.

  “I assume your father and Inspector Fortner have both asked for your help,” he said.

  I didn’t respond. He had warned me not to investigate after the last case I had worked.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “I’m about to do the same thing. We need your help on this one. You’re a good investigator, you have a unique position that allows you to move about between both the inmates and the staff comfortably, and you are respected by both groups.”

  “What was she doing in here?” I asked, my voice raw and accusatory. “How could you have let her? Why would the people who’re supposed to be her parents even want to—”

  “They weren’t supposed to be her parents,” he said. “They were her parents. She was loved and cared for by—”

  “People who used her race to further their cause? People who subjected her to the fatal dangers of prison to gain greater acceptance from the large black population?”

  He shook his head. “You of all people should understand ministry,” he said. “You do anything for God.”

  “For God?” I asked in shock. “Bobby Earl’s ego is his God.”

  He winced, the furrow between his eyes deepening into dark crevices, and I could tell that my words had seemed blasphemous to him.

  “Bobby Earl serves the same God I do,�
�� he said. “And there’s nothing we wouldn’t do for him.”

  “Including offering up your child?” I asked.

  I knew it was a low blow before I said it, but I didn’t realize how low I was for saying it until I saw the anguish in his eyes. Though I was unaware of any of the details, I knew he had lost a son as a child and I wanted to wound him for what he—what I—had allowed to happen to Nicole. The outrage I felt at his culpability in Nicole’s death filled me with a self-righteous indignation that made me thoughtless and cruel, and, gripped by a familiar guilt, I cringed to come face to face with the man I had so often told myself I no longer was.

  He took a deep breath and sat more upright in his chair. As he straightened the vest of his dark suit, the bony fingers of his hands shook. He always wore a three-piece suit, and I had never seen him take off his coat. His suits weren’t expensive or particularly nice, but they didn’t have to be. The way he held himself, the way they fit him, made them look as though they were—at least until today. Today his suit looked cheap and ill-fitted for his narrow frame, as if in the course of one night he had shrunk somehow.

  “Why not?” he asked. “Abraham did.”

  “God wasn’t asking for Isaac’s blood, but for Abraham’s love. In the story God provides a lamb.”

  “That reminds me,” he said, opening the center drawer of his desk and withdrawing a page from a coloring book. “This is for you. It was found in your office near… ah, her body. They gathered it with the rest of the evidence.”

  Tears stung the edges of my eyes as I took the wrinkled picture from him. The color-crayon image, made blurry by my tears, was of Jesus just as Nicole had promised. It was her rendition of the portrait that hung in the Sunday School rooms of my youth: Jesus, his dark eyes intense, his long dark hair flowing, with a lamb draped across his shoulders. In the bottom corner in red that glistened like blood as one of my tears fell on it, it read: To: Chaplin JJ. From: Nicole.

  Images of Jesus praying alone in the Garden of Gethsemane flashed in my mind. I heard his trembling voice begging for his life, and the cold, cruel silence that followed. Where was God then? Where was God now?

  Where are you?

  “I realize you have a job to protect,” I said. “One that would be in jeopardy if central office finds out what really happened, but why did you let an ex-offender and a minor into the institution without proper background checks and safety procedures?”

  “So you know,” he said, shrinking in his chair without any outward movement.

  I nodded, waiting, watching, measuring his response.

  “You’re right, I did all that, but there’s a good reason. I’ve known Bobby Earl for many years. He’s conducted services in all my institutions.”

  “And he’s related to—”

  “The regional director,” he said.

  “Your boss?”

  His nonverbal admission was a few small nods of his head.

  I waited for a moment, but instead of saying anything, he took off his glasses, withdrew a silk handkerchief from his inside coat pocket, and slowly wiped them with it. Without his large glasses to cover much of it, I could see more of his face. His skin was dark—not quite the blued-black of a Nigerian, but very black, and shiny, and far more lined than I remembered.

  “But your enthusiastic endorsement of him led me to believe that you two—”

  “He was incarcerated at Lake Butler when I was the assistant warden there,” he said. “I’ve never seen such a dramatic change in anyone. He made a believer out of me. He’s the real deal.”

  “Still,” I said, “it seems more personal than that.”

  Stone glanced down at the picture I held in my hands and then turned and looked at the one behind him on the wall. “Bobby Earl helped me and my wife through a very difficult time in our lives.”

  I nodded, even though he couldn’t see me.

  Still staring at the picture as though it gave him the strength to be vulnerable, he said, “He’s given my nephew, DeAndré, who became like a son to me when mine died, a place to belong, a purpose. Got him off the streets. Kept him out of prison. I owe Bobby Earl Caldwell more than…”

  “I understand,” I said.

  “I made a mistake,” he said, as he turned back to face me. “And I don’t want to lose my job, my career, over it. But more than that I want to find and punish the man who did it.”

  He paused for a moment, took a deep breath, and let out a long sigh. “Will you—”

  “I will,” I said. “No matter who it is or how it makes you, me, or this institution look.”

  He swallowed hard without saying anything, his nod seeming not one of approval, but of recognition, as if reconciling himself to the statement’s inevitability.

  CHAPTER 12

  When I got to the chapel, I tried to say my morning prayers, but found I was unable to concentrate on anything except what had happened to Nicole. Leaving the silence of the sanctuary, I walked to the storage closet next to the unoccupied office I was using since mine became a crime scene and grabbed a handful of sharpened pencils and a new legal pad. Back in the small office, I sat down at the desk and began to make some notes on the case.

  Making a list of the suspects, I considered each of them carefully.

  Paul Register, Dexter Freeman, Cedric Porter, Bobby Earl and/ or Bunny Caldwell, Abdul Muhammin, Roger Coel, Theo Malcolm, Tim Whitfield, and DeAndré Stone.

  The Caldwells were the most likely of the lot.

  Even if they didn’t actually kill their daughter, they could be behind it. Why didn’t DeAndré come back in with them? Why have security if you’re not going to guard your daughter when she’s surrounded by several hundred convicted felons?

  And then it hit me like the hardest punch in boxing—the one you don’t see coming.

  What if Bobby Earl gave DeAndré the night off precisely because he didn’t want his daughter to be guarded? Could he be that wicked? Was this crime that calculated and premeditated?

  I’d have to figure out a way to ask Bobby Earl, but for now I could start with the suspects at my door.

  I found Abdul Muhammin at his post in the chapel library, preparing to open it to the inmate population. Like most inmate orderlies in the prison, he had a proprietary interest in what he believed to be his library, but that was okay, because it motivated him to do a good job. Only on occasion did I have to remind him that the people using the library were more important than the library itself.

  “Bet we’ll be busy today. Everybody wantin’ to see the scene of the crime,” he said, shaking his head to himself. “Sick bastards. I still can’t believe it happened.”

  “Me neither,” I said.

  “It’s all they’re talkin’ about on the pound.”

  “I bet.”

  I sat on the edge of a folding table across from the small desk where he continued to stamp cards and insert them into books.

  “How did it happen?” he asked.

  Muhammin was a thick, light-skinned black man in his late twenties. He had bulk, but no muscle, and he was fleshy, almost puffy, without being fat.

  “I’m still not sure,” I said. “You have any ideas?”

  “Has to be Bobby’s bitch, doesn’t it?” he asked, and I could tell he wasn’t even conscious of how demeaning he was being to Bunny. In fact, I was sure to him he wasn’t being. In his world the sky is blue, water is wet, and women are mamas, bitches, or whores. “Who else could’ve done it?”

  Like most libraries, this quiet room smelled of dust, glue, and ink, but unlike most libraries, there was a monotonous uniformity to the materials it held. Try as I did to compensate with the small budget I was given each year, the majority of books and tapes that lined the shelves were donated by puritanical people with a particular point of view—for the evangelistic compulsion to convert and proselytize was felt most strongly by those most conservative. Ironically, those with the least to say usually say the most and the most outwardly religious were often the m
ost theologically unsophisticated.

  “What about Bobby Earl?” I asked.

  His face wrinkled into a slack-jawed mask of incredulity, as if what I had suggested defied a natural law that everyone knew to be as certain as gravity.

  “Bobby’s no child killer,” he said. “His conversion was real—I saw it—but even before he was born-again or whatever y’all call it, he was no killer. People either are or they ain’t, and he ain’t.”

  “Did you get to talk to him?” I asked.

  He shook his head and frowned. “After what happened, I didn’t even try.”

  An unopened box from Bobby Earl Caldwell Ministries sat next to a rack of pamphlets and tracts, and I wondered again about the complex motivations of a man like him—why he did what he did the way he did it, but soon found myself contemplating the more pertinent subject of what a man like him was capable of doing.

  “I was surprised to see you without your koofi,” I said, attempting to make it sound like curiosity and not accusation.

  “Just showin’ a little respect,” he said. “Keepin’ everything on the down low.”

  I nodded as if I not only understood but appreciated what he had done.

  As if just making a casual observation, I said, “I saw a lot of people last night I don’t normally see—especially in those type services.”

  “Lotsa men here to see Bunny,” he said. “But a few of the sick pricks were here to see that little girl. Did you see the way that little Chester was hanging around outside your door? Hell, he’s pressing his nose against the glass like it’s the fuckin’ candy store.”

  “Paul Register?”

  “You shoulda seen the bulge in his pants when she was singing on stage,” he said. “He looked like he was goin’ to whip it out any minute and lay hands on it. Hell, if the door wasn’t locked, I’d say he did it. You know how those nasty bastards can’t resist little chicken tenders. Break in there, Chuck and Buck her, then ice her ass so she can’t tell.”

  I could tell he was disappointed that I didn’t react to his callous comments or ask what Chuck and Buck meant, but long before I heard the term on the compound, I’d seen the low-budget independent film it had come from. Even if I hadn’t been familiar with it, I wouldn’t have asked. I wasn’t about to give him the perverse pleasure of saying anything else so crude about Nicole.