The Body and the Blood

by Michael Lister

  “You havin’ deep spiritual thoughts?” he asked.

  “Depends how you define them. Some would say they were just the opposite.”

  “About my daughter?”

  “But only in the most respectful ways.”

  In addition to being the IG, Tom Daniels was also my ex-father-in-law—or at least he would have been had Susan filed the papers.

  “Things’re goin’ good between you two?” he asked.

  I nodded.

  “Think you’ll be movin’ back to Atlanta or can you talk her into movin’ down here?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “We really haven’t talked about it.”

  Actually, we had, but I didn’t want to get into it with him.

  “Well, try to get her down here,” he said. “I miss her like hell.”

  I didn’t say anything. Even though he and I had attended a few meetings together and were becoming friends for the first time in our lives, I still felt awkward and guarded around him. I was used to mean, antagonistic drunk Tom Daniels, and finding friendly, sober Tom Daniels much more difficult to take. Not that he had been a mean drunk. He could be quite charming. His animosity seemed to have been reserved especially for me. With Sarah and Susan—his wife and daughter—the effect of his addiction hadn’t been abuse, but neglect. This meant that I was trying to have a lasting relationship with a woman who grew up with an emotionally unavailable father—one she seemed to completely adore and subconsciously hate.

  “What’re you doin’ here so late?” he asked.

  “I’ve got to check on a service and a possible murder in PM,” I said. “What’re you doing here at all?”

  He was assigned to Central Office in Tallahassee and only traveled to institutions for very specific purposes, often involving homicide.

  He held up his battered brown leather satchel and nodded toward it. “Takin’ depositions. Conducting interviews. I was headed out, but I left one of my notebooks in the PM unit. I’ll walk down with you.”

  As we were buzzed through the center gate, we ducked our heads down and turned into the wind again.

  “Looks like I’m gonna put Juan Martinez away for good this time,” he said.

  While attending outside court, and in the custody of the Leon County’s Sheriff’s Department, Juan Martinez escaped from the Leon County jail. Six hours later, he had been picked up at the bus station downtown. Officially, it was assumed that he had spent those six hours trying to put together some money and arrange transportation, but what he had actually done changed the Daniels family forever.

  Breaking into Tom Daniels’s home while he was at work and repeatedly raping his wife, violating her in ways hard to imagine one human doing to another, Juan Martinez had made Tom Daniels sober, a better husband, and given him a new mission in life. Since then he had spent the vast majority of his time searching for a way to lock up Martinez for the rest of his natural life. But it wasn’t easy.

  The problem had been a lack of evidence. Not only had Martinez worn a condom during the assault, but Sarah had immediately taken a shower and waited two days to tell anyone.

  With no witness, no evidence, and no motivation to pursue a case of such enormous liability, the Leon County Sheriff’s Department quickly concluded that Martinez had been with his family the entire time doing all he could to get as far away from Florida as soon as possible. This finding suited Tom Daniels just fine. Not only did it keep Sarah’s humiliating ordeal out of the papers, but it gave him the opportunity to get Martinez himself.

  All this had happened before Susan and I began our reconciliation. A lot of time had passed, but the wounds had yet to heal, and occasionally, Sarah showed just how traumatized she still was. Of course, the whole family was. Susan, who had always had a strained relationship with Sarah, tended to avoid the subject, and Tom, guilt-ridden and driven, was probably giving Martinez more attention than his wife.

  “You’ve got to feel good about the way you’ve done it.” Had Daniels not been sober, I doubt very much Martinez would still be alive, but the peace-seeking man beside me seemed to be searching for justice, not retribution.

  He nodded. “Feels good. Beating him to death with my bare hands would feel better, but . . .”

  I knew how he felt. “I questioned whether you should be involved in the case at all. Glad I was wrong.”

  We were now in the housing area of the compound, enormous dormitories surrounding us on both sides. The dorms formed a horseshoe with sidewalks, pavilions, two small canteens, and barber shops in the center.

  I looked over at Daniels as we walked against the wind. His head was down and I couldn’t see his face, but even the way he walked was different. He was actually leaning into the wind, his steps intentional, his gait certain.

  As far as anyone knew, Martinez hadn’t intentionally chosen the IG’s wife—he and Daniels hadn’t had any dealings prior to the assault—his just happened to be the house he broke into, his the wife he found at home.

  “How’s Sarah?” I asked.

  Pain filled his eyes as he glanced at me before quickly looking away. “Not good . . . but I think this’ll help.”

  The past three months were the longest I had seen him sober. Sure, he had been without booze for a few days at a time before, trading his alcohol addiction for the adrenaline addiction of working a homicide investigation or some other all-consuming activity he could do compulsively, but this was different.

  “What’ve you got on him?” I asked.

  “A witness,” he said.

  “Who?”

  “Justin Menge,” he said.

  I felt a jolt and my pulse picked up. “Justin Menge?”

  “He’s the real deal. Hell, I think he may even be an innocent man.”

  “His sister just told me the same thing.”

  He looked over at me with raised eyebrows. “Either way, he’s one hell of a good witness and he’s more than happy to help me put Martinez away.”

  “His sister said her visit with him really shook her up.”

  “Visit?” he asked in surprise. “When?”

  “Just a few minutes ago.”

  “I mean when was the visit.”

  “See previous answer,” I said.

  “Couldn’t’ve been. I just talked to him down in PM.”

  “I think she was just coming from having seen him.”

  “Must’ve been a short vis—wait,” he exclaimed, shaking his head. “What the hell’m I thinkin’? It wasn’t Menge, but his boyfriend, Sobel, I just saw. I’m constantly gettin’ them confused. Sorry.”

  “Paula said Justin was acting very strange.”

  “Probably just nervous about testifying. Martinez has punks everywhere.”

  “Said he didn’t even seem like the same person.”

  “He’s not.”

  “Isn’t Martinez in the PM unit, too?”

  He nodded.

  “No wonder he’s scared.”

  “Only way Menge could get so much on him, but I’ve got to get him out of there now that he’s agreed to testify.”

  “Does Martinez know?” I asked.

  “Menge still breathing?”

  G-Dorm was a massive two-story concrete structure that resembled a giant cement septic tank with windows. Unlike the other open bay dorms, G-Dorm was divided into quads, each with twenty-eight cells. It was designed for the inmates who presented a management problem for the institution.

  Protective management was for inmates who, because of size, crime, previous job, poor adjustment, gang affiliation, or gambling debts on the compound, were not safe in open population. They were the most difficult inmates in the institution. Many of them were pedophiles and rapists who were subject to brutality from the other inmates. Others were ex-law enforcement officers who feared retaliation for other reasons. Locking them inside their own quad saved them from having to interact with the rest of the population—and often saved their lives.

  “Which service is it?”

>   “What?”

  “Which service are you having to check on down here?” Daniels asked as we reached G-Dorm.

  “Catholic. Look at this.”

  We stopped in front of the dorm and I handed him a flyer that had been distributed in the PM unit. He handed me his satchel and I held it while he held the flyer up toward the small light, his hands steady. As he read the flyer, he shook his head. His dark brown eyes were the clearest I’d ever seen them and his red face was the result of the cold wind, not alcohol.

  Centered at the top of the page in bold were the words: THE BODY AND THE BLOOD. Beneath it, in slightly smaller letters it read: A Celebration of Murder. In the middle of the page were the words: Come Eat the Body and Drink the Blood. From Death comes Life. And then below that it listed the time and the place of the PM Catholic Mass.

  “The fuck?” Daniels said as he read. “You gonna get rid of this guy?”

  “The priest? He’s just trying to get their attention. In fact, if this was all there was to it, I would’ve just called him, but look at this.”

  I handed him another piece of paper from my coat pocket. It was a flyer similar to the first. At the top it, too, read: THE BODY AND THE BLOOD. Beneath it, in smaller letters like the other flyer it read: A Murder will take place. In the middle of the page it read: Slice the Flesh and Shed the Blood, and then listed the same date and time as the first one.

  “You did say murder, didn’t you?”

  “What?”

  “Earlier, you said you were coming to PM to check on a service and a possible murder,” he said.

  “Yeah.”

  “I thought I just misunderstood you.”

  “It may be nothing, but . . . .”

  “Did you notify security about this?” he asked, his tone suddenly harsh and accusatory.

  “I took it to the institutional inspector when I received it.”

  “And?”

  “Said it was probably a prank—nobody advertises murder.”

  “The hell they don’t. Come on.”

  He opened the heavy metal door and rushed into G-Dorm.

  I followed.

  Chapter Three

  The front of G-dorm had three doors. The center one led to a holding room with another locked door and then to the elevated, glassed-in officer’s station high in the center of the building. From it, officers could see each quad and control the locks of every door in the dorm. The other two doors led into the hallways on each side that ran between the officer’s station and the two quads on that side.

  Entering the hallway on the left side of the building, we ran back to the second quad and went through a second solid metal door that lead to the PM unit.

  A little alarm began to sound inside of me. “Why aren’t either of these locked?”

  Daniels shrugged. “Sure as hell should be.”

  The quads of G-dorm were roughly a hundred feet long and fifty feet wide, and held twenty-eight 6 x 9 foot cinder block cells. Unlike most county jails, the fronts of state correctional institution cells were not made of bars, but solid metal doors, each equipped with a locked metal food tray slot and a long narrow strip of steel-reinforced glass. The cells ran along the two longest walls—each side with seven at floor level and seven above, accessed by a set of gray metal stairs leading up to a metal grate catwalk. There were no cells along the short walls on either end.

  Inside the expansive open space of the PM unit, all the cell doors closed, it was still and quiet. On the far end near the wall opposite us, Father James McFadden stood behind an altar table setting up for his service, before him a small group of folding chairs formed uneven rows.

  “It’s so quiet,” I whispered to Daniels as we walked toward the makeshift Mass.

  “Where is everybody?” he asked.

  “Tonight is PM library night,” I said. “Most of them are up there. A few more are in medical. The rest are probably in their cells.”

  Since inmates in protective management couldn’t have contact with the rest of the inmate population, they went to the library at night when no other inmates were there. It was also why we had a special Catholic Mass for them in the PM unit—they couldn’t come to the chapel with the open population inmates for the regular one.

  As we reached the back row of folding chairs, an officer standing on the left side nodded to us, and we walked over to him.

  Billy Joe Potter was an overweight white man in his mid-twenties with bad skin, a bad haircut, and a bad attitude. He was mean and slow and didn’t care about anything. He didn’t have to—not only was he a member of the most influential family in Potter County, but it was easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a state employee to enter the ranks of the unemployed.

  Known among his relatives as the family fuck-up, Potter had worked briefly in several county jobs, including mosquito control, building inspector, and dog catcher, before being sent to prison without the possibility of parole—he could do time in brown or blue, but he was going to do time.

  “You forget something?” he asked Daniels.

  “Did you forget something? The outer door and the quad door were both unlocked.”

  He lifted his hands up in a helpless gesture and shrugged nonchalantly. “Can’t be helped. Only two of us.”

  Complacency is the number one problem among prison staff, and it gets more inmates and correctional officers killed than anything else. Employees get comfortable, forget where they are, why they’re here, and when they least expect it, an entirely preventable incident occurs. The most dangerous condition in a prison is when it’s been a while since anything much has happened. When security is relaxed in an area of the prison for whatever reason—ineptitude, laziness, a staff shortage—it goes unnoticed until there’s an incident. It’s not a problem until it is, then it’s addressed, often corrected, but not until it is too late for someone.

  At various times, different departments within the institution are understaffed—at least one area nearly every shift. There’s not an incident every time, but nearly every incident occurs in one of these areas. You can only get away with it for so long, and then . . . . Tonight felt like one of those “and then” times.

  “I’m over here,” Potter continued. “Officer Pitts is counting the other quads. He’s gotta be able to get back in the wicker after he counts.”

  Wicker is the term used for the officers’ stations inside the dorms, and though everyone referred to it as such, no one had ever been able to tell me why.

  “He’s out of the wicker and the goddam door is unlocked?” Daniels yelled.

  “What would you do?” Potter asked. “We’re undermanned.”

  “You damn sure are. Wherever you’re assigned always will be.”

  Standard procedure called for a sergeant and an officer in the officer station or wicker, as well as at least one officer in each quad—and with a volunteer down here to conduct a religious service, there really should have been two.

  “In case you didn’t know,” Potter continued, “there’s a shortage of correctional officers.”

  I looked at Daniels. “There’s an even bigger shortage of good correctional officers.”

  Potter glared at me.

  I tried not to quake.

  “Soon as Pitts is back in the wicker,” Potter said. “I’m gonna call for Catholic Mass. That okay with you?”

  Daniels didn’t respond.

  Across the quad, an inmate walked into the dorm and Potter nodded him toward his cell, which clicked open.

  “Menge,” he explained. “Had a visit tonight.”

  I glanced over to see Justin disappear into the third cell from the entrance on the bottom just on the other side of the stairs, and felt relieved that he was safely back inside.

  Daniels shook his head in confusion. “Who unlocked his cell?”

  “Pitts—” he began when a yell from one of the cells stopped him. The acoustics were so bad it was impossible to know exactly where it came from. “Shut t
he hell up,” he yelled back toward the cell. Then looking back at Daniels, said, “Pitts must be back in the wicker.”

  “Must be?” Daniels asked. “Must be? What the hell kinda half-ass Mickey Mouse operation are y’all runnin’ down here?”

  “We’re doin’ the best we can.”

  “Oh, I don’t doubt that.”

  Potter looked at him for a moment, but didn’t say anything, then radioed Pitts, confirmed that the count had cleared, and advised him that he was about to call for Mass.

  As Potter yelled that it was time for Mass and for those inmates wishing to attend to call out the number of their cells, I walked over to speak to Father James.

  One by one, inmates called out the number of their cells. Potter radioed the cell numbers to Pitts, and they were buzzed open. Slowly, from every direction, inmates began making their way toward the folding chairs.

  “I knew it wouldn’t be well received when I did it,” Father James said, returning the flyer to me. “But it got everyone’s attention, didn’t it?”

  Father James was tall and thin with wispy white hair that had receded to about the half way point on the top of his head. Age, back problems, and perhaps the enormous dogs he seemed to be perpetually walking around town, caused him to bend forward slightly and made him look stiff and brittle and far more feeble than he really was.

  I nodded and frowned. “It did. But not all of it was good. Look at this.”

  I unfolded the second flyer—the one claiming a murder would take place during the Mass—and handed it to him. His thin, slightly deformed hand shook as he read it.

  “I didn’t do this one,” he said, his pale blue eyes narrowing as he looked up at me.

  “Any idea who did?”

  “None at all. You think it’s announcing an actual murder?” He looked around at the inmates moving toward him.

  I shrugged. “That’s what I came to find out.”

  He studied the flyer some more. “It’s nearly identical to the one I made. Could an inmate do something like this?”

  I nodded. “Not on the compound, but we have a PRIDE printing vocation program here. Lot of inmates work in it. None of the PM guys, but they could pay somebody to do it. Sneaking it down here would be the difficult part.”