I shook my head.
“Then what’re you doin’ here?” he asked.
I walked past them and over to Phillip Linton, the city employee in charge of maintenance.
“How’s it goin’, JJ?” he asked.
“Okay,” I said. “You?”
“I’m great,” he said. “Never better. If it got any better I wouldn’t know what to do.”
That was always Linton’s response, and it always sounded the same way to me—like he was trying to convince himself as much as me that what he was saying was true.
“What brings you out here?” he asked.
“I need to speak to one of your inmates for a few minutes,” I said.
“Sure,” he said. “Which one?”
“Porter,” I said.
“Cedric,” he yelled. “Chaplain needs a moment of your time.”
“Yes, sir,” he said.
I walked down the sidewalk next to the chainlink fence to meet him.
“You got out of the infirmary awfully quick,” I said. “I was surprised when they told me you were already back at work.”
He shrugged. “I just a convict. I can work with a headache.”
“Let’s move down this way a little,” I said, leading him away from the earshot of the others and further away from the children.
“You found Nicole’s killer yet?”
“No,” I said. “But we will. And again, I’m so sorry but I need to ask you a few more questions about the night she was killed.”
“I hope y’all catch him soon,” he said, “’fore he finally kill me.”
“Who?”
He shook his head at me in disbelief. “Bobby Earl.”
“You think he’s the one who tried to have you killed?” I asked.
He nodded. “More than once,” he said, pulling up his shirt to show me a jagged scar running down the side of his abdomen.
“Why haven’t you checked in?” I asked.
If an inmate felt his life was in danger—for any reason: gambling debts, refusing to perform sexual favors, retaliation from an officer—he could check himself into protective management, where he would be locked in a cell and watched closely while the inspector investigated the matter.
“’Cause,” he said. “If I in a cell, I can’t run or hide or fight back. Least out here I can see ’em comin’. Anyway, don’t worry about me. You just find out who killed my little girl. Then he better be the one lookin’ over his shoulder.”
I didn’t say anything.
“You said you wanted to ask me about the night she was killed,” he said. “What about it?”
“How long were you in the bathroom?”
“What?”
“We’re trying to establish everyone’s movements during the time when Nicole was killed,” I said.
“You know where I was,” he said.
“How long were you in there?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Don’t know, but it was a while. My stomach was real upset. The later it got, the sicker I got. I missed work the next day. You can ask Mr. Linton.”
“Who all’d you see while you were in the bathroom?”
“No one,” he said.
“No one?”
“It was empty when I went in,” he said. “Once I was in the stall, I couldn’t see anyone. I heard a few people, but I didn’t see anyone.”
“Well, who’d you hear?”
“You,” he said with a smile. “Abdul. Freeman. Somebody came in and washed they hands near the end, but they didn’t say nothin’, so I don’t know who it was.”
“When was this?” I asked.
“Near the end,” he repeated. “Because it wasn’t long after that I went back in the service. Bobby Earl and Bunny were giving they altar call.”
“How long was the hand washer in there?” I asked.
“A while,” he said. “A long time now that I think about it.” His eyes growing wide in alarm, he added, “If I was that close to her killer and didn’t…”
He looked away and thought about it, tears forming in his eyes. “I hate to think I was that close to him and didn’t kill him.”
“Why were you even at the service that night?” I asked.
“Whatta you mean?”
“You don’t normally come to church, do you?” I said. “Was it just to see Nicole?”
He nodded.
“Not Bunny?” I asked.
He hesitated.
“You still love her, don’t you?”
He looked away, glancing back at the other inmates. Without looking back at me, he nodded.
“Did you see her?”
“Bunny?” he asked.
“Nicole.”
“Of course,” he said.
“I mean did you get to talk to her?”
He shook his head. “How would I do that?”
“You tell me,” I said. “How’d you use to meet Bunny?”
He shook his head. “I didn’t see her. Not except on stage when she’s singin’. Bunny and I used to meet in the back of the chapel—the kitchen or the cleaning closet—when she worked at Lake Butler. Not since.”
Over at the school, a bell rang and the children began to scatter, most of them racing back to class. A few stragglers had to be goaded by the teacher on duty, but soon the playground was empty, its abandoned equipment looking sad and useless like a body without life.
“I’m sorry to have to ask this,” I said, “and I’m sure it’ll seem like a stupid question since you had a child together, but did you and Bunny use condoms?”
He nodded. “She always made me. And she still got pregnant,” he added, shaking his head. “I think she did it ’cause she went with so many different mens.”
Looking down the sidewalk toward the other inmates, I hesitated to ask my next question, wishing I didn’t have to. True to form, the inmates on the work crew were quiet, respectful, and hard working, their interaction lacking the cruelty, horseplay, and profanity that was typical of many of the inmates on the inside.
“I’m doing my best to find out who killed Nicole,” I said. “And sometimes that means I have to do and say things I’d rather not, but I have to—and I have a good reason to ask what I’m about to or I wouldn’t ask it.”
“What is it? Damn.”
“Did you and Bunny ever have anal intercourse?”
If he found the question intrusive or disturbing, he didn’t give any indication. Shaking his head, he said, “It never came up.”
I nodded.
“We weren’t together long,” he added, as if it were something that had to be worked up to. “But I don’t think they was anything Bunny wasn’t up for.”
“She has a reputation for really liking black men,” I said.
He nodded. “She does. Her dad was a real redneck racist. Used to catch her with black boys and beat her, but she keep on goin’ with ’em.”
“You see anybody in the hallway?” I asked.
He shook his head.
“What about in my office or near the door?”
“I saw the teacher sorta hangin’ out,” he said.
“Mr. Malcolm?”
He nodded.
All around us, spring was turning into summer. The tops of the oak trees above us were filled with thick green growth. The flowers spilling out of the planter in front of the school, already past their zenith, were in the heat of the increasingly warmer days beginning to wilt.
“What about Bobby Earl’s bodyguard?”
He shook his head again.
“Is there anything else you can tell me that might help us?” I asked.
He shook his head.
We both fell quiet a moment. Tears filled his eyes, and he wiped at them absently.
Slipping his hand into the pocket of his inmate uniform, he withdrew a soiled and crumpled piece of paper, unfolded it, and handed it to me. It was a picture similar to the one Nicole had colored for me.
“She colored this for me,” he said. “I carry
it everywhere I go.”
I nodded.
“My little girl was being used,” he said, his voice weak and small. “Anyone who’d do that… well… sometimes I think I’d be better off dead,” he said. “I don’t care what happens to me. I really don’t.”
I nodded.
“Would you do something for me?” he asked.
I didn’t respond.
“When you find out who did it, will you tell me first?” he continued.
I just might, I thought.
“And if it’s Bobby Earl,” he said, no attempt to conceal his contempt, “would you invite him back for just one more revival service?”
CHAPTER 31
Later that afternoon, I took Highway 20 into Tallahassee and picked up I-10 heading west toward Greensboro. Greensboro was a small town in Gadsden County, which borders on the Georgia state line. It was originally settled by wealthy slave owners, and is still famous for its large plantations, substantial black population (joined now by Mexican migrant workers), and tobacco crops.
In Greensboro, I bought a pack of Certs at a convenience store and then drove over to the AME Church near the high school where Pottersville regularly got beaten in every athletic competition. The church was actually a small white clapboard house with a chimney that had been converted into a steeple. However, I suspected, that like most of the conversions that took place inside the church, the process was incomplete and didn’t seem to be working out too well.
Perhaps because everyone else was running on CPT, I was one of the first to enter the small sanctuary. I walked down to the front where the casket was centered between the two altars and looked at the lifeless shell that used to be Dexter Freeman’s mother. Even in death, she was beautiful, and I could easily see Dexter’s handsome face in her features. She wore a delicate white dress with lace around the neck, and in her hands was a Polaroid picture of herself and Dexter that had been taken in the visiting park of Potter Correctional Institution. You could tell by her expression that the blue inmate uniform her son wore didn’t diminish in any way the fact that her boy was the apple of her eye.
A small door to my right opened, and I turned to see Dexter enter the sanctuary, his wife and daughter at his side, his son in his arms. He wore a navy blue double-breasted suit and a burgundy silk tie over a crisp white shirt as if he had come from a GQ photo shoot rather than a Florida state prison. His son’s suit matched his, and his wife and daughter wore matching navy dresses with white lace collars. They were the picture-perfect young American family.
When he saw me, his face lit up, and he rushed over and wrapped me up in a hug that included his son.
“I can’t believe you’re here,” he said. “Honey, this is Chaplain Jordan, the one I was telling you about.” He looked at me. “This is—”
“Honey,” I said, and took her outstretched hand.
“I’m Trish,” she said with a smile. “And this is Moriah.” She touched her daughter on the head. I held my hand out and she took it.
At the mention of Moriah, I couldn’t help but think of Abraham and Isaac; Bobby Earl and Nicole.
“And this is Dexter, Jr,” she added with a big smile.
“What’s up, DJ?” I said, and held my hand up for a high five, which he gave me with no hesitation.
When I looked back at Dexter, he was shaking his head, and staring at me. “Thanks so much for coming, Chaplain. You’ll never know what it means.”
“You’re welcome,” I said. “You have a beautiful family.” I winked at Moriah.
“Thank you,” she said, as she shrugged her shoulders and looked down, an embarrassed grin spreading across her adorable face.
Standing there with Dexter’s family, attempting to offer support and perhaps comfort in their time of crisis, I thought about how strange it was. Only a sometime-investigator and all-the-time prison chaplain would be caught in the seeming contradiction of trying to minister to one of a handful of suspects in a murder he was investigating.
“Am I early?” I asked.
Dexter shook his head. “Everyone else is running on CPT,” he said.
“That’s Colored People Time,” Trish explained.
“Oh,” I said, and winked at Dexter.
He shook his head. “Honey, he works in a prison that runs on CPT. He knows words and phrases Chris Rock doesn’t.”
I smiled. “I’m going to slip back there,” I said, nodding toward the back, “and give you all some time together.”
“Thank you,” he said, “but I’d like for you to sit with us. We don’t have any other family.”
“I’d be honored to,” I said.
After the funeral and interment, I stood with Dexter and his family beneath the canopy of a towering oak tree in front of the small church as they underwent the tearing of their souls at having to say good-bye again so soon. The air wasn’t as cool as it had been, but the gentle breeze made the shade beneath the shelter of the oak tolerable.
I was facing the church and Dexter when I saw the expression on his face change. I turned to see what was behind me.
A Greensboro City police car crept by, as if in slow motion, the two young, white police officers inside glaring at Dexter in a manner that indicated they had no intention to protect or serve.
I looked back at Dexter. The muscles in his jaws were flexing and his eyes had narrowed to slits. Trish continued to hug him, only now it was about restraint as much as affection. “Don’t,” she said. “We’re not going to let them keep us apart one more day than we have to.”
He seemed to relax a little, and when I turned back, the police car was gone.
“The one in the passenger’s side is Larry Lassiter, my brother,” Trish explained. “He’s the one who set Dexter up.”
I nodded.
“We better get you back,” she said to Dexter.
“Okay,” he said.
“Would you mind if I followed you?” I asked.
“Mind?” Trish said. “I was going to ask if you would.” We walked over to our vehicles. “Now that Mama Freeman is gone,” Trish said, “we’ll be moving, too. We’re going to get away from them. If we can just make it until then.”
“An actual innocent inmate,” Anna said. “I’ve become so jaded I didn’t really believe they existed.”
I had called Anna from a convenience store in Greensboro and asked her to check with FDLE about Larry Lassiter. What she had discovered, that Lassiter was under investigation and Dexter was believed to have been set up, so surprised her that she had rushed up to tell me the moment I arrived at the institution. I had just been buzzed through the sally port when she rushed up and gave me the news.
“They gonna get Dexter a new trial?” I asked.
“It has low priority,” she said. “They’re not going to do anything until they arrest Lassiter. Don’t want to warn him.”
“So Dexter could EOS before anything happens,” I said.
She nodded and frowned. “At least it’d be taken off his record.”
I shook my head. “That’s not enough,” I said.
“Not much we can do.”
“I’ll talk to Dad, see what he can do.”
She shook her head to herself in disbelief again and said, “An actual innocent inmate.”
CHAPTER 32
In seminary, I had read On Death and Dying by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross. In it, she shared her experiences with the dying and what she had learned from them. Kubler-Ross witnessed each of her patients experiencing the same five stages when faced with a terminal condition. I read the book as a part of a class on hospital ministry and experienced its truth first-hand while I served as a student chaplain at Emory Hospital. Memories of those days drifted over me like the sounds of a sad love song that brings both pleasure and pain as I drove over to Mom’s.
I had watched helplessly as the initial denial began with the first shake of their heads as the doctor delivered the grim prognosis, listened as they shared with conviction the opinion that this was
a mistake, just a mix-up of records or an invalid test result. After a while, the light of their denial burned out, and then, like a lightning flash in a dark sky, their anger bolted out of nowhere and struck with rage at whatever happened to be in its path. I was usually called in on the next stage, for when it came to bargaining, everyone wanted to talk to the ‘Man upstairs.’ I heard confessions and received numerous vows that would be kept if only God would allow them to live. When this failed, which of course meant I had failed them as much as God had, they sank slowly into the quick-sand of depression, emerging much later, as if from baptism, new and clean in their acceptance.
My mom, who would die soon from the disease of alcoholism if she didn’t receive a liver transplant, was in the midst of a lengthy stage of bargaining, and had grasped the religion of the dying with all the fervor and desperation of a falling rock climber clinging to the last safety line.
When I arrived at Mom’s, an extremely overweight lady in illfitting polyester pants and an untucked religious T-shirt that read “Turn or Burn” over fiery flames met me at the door. She wore thick glasses, and her labored breathing whistled out of the numerous gaps between her too few teeth.
“You the son who’s a preacher?” she asked with a smile that scrunched up her face, lifted her glasses, and narrowed her eyes.
“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “I’m John.”
“I’m Sister Bertha,” she said. “Come on in. I came over here to pray for her. You wanna join us?”
“You go ahead,” I said. “I’ll—”
“You’re a preacher, aren’t you?” she asked. “Prayin’s what you’re paid to do.”
“Actually, I have to do most of my praying on my own time,” I said. “You go ahead. I’ll see her when you’re finished.”
She turned back from closing the door and eyed me skeptically. “You don’t want to pray with us?” Her question was filled with accusation and disdain.
“Well, I—”
“Listen,” she interrupted. “Your mother’s under the attack of Satan. She needs prayer warriors now more than ever. She has become a precious saint and this whole thing is just Satan trying to snatch her life.”
I nodded as she spoke, but I didn’t say anything.
Blood of the Lamb (a John Jordan Mystery) Page 15