The Body and the Blood

by Michael Lister

  PRIDE Enterprises is a not-for-profit corporation that works in prisons across the state, using inmate labor to provide manufacturing and services to government agencies and the private sector. It provides the state with both revenue and savings and inmates with jobs while they’re incarcerated, and gives them marketable skills when they’re released.

  PCI’s printing program, which is operated by PRIDE, employs over a hundred inmates. They create and print books, brochures, business cards, tickets, flyers, newsletters with the latest equipment and software. Duplicating the priest’s unsophisticated flyer wouldn’t have presented a challenge for them.

  After a few minutes, when most of the inmates had taken their seats, things began to quiet down again, and Father James looked relieved. As the last of the inmates were seated, I walked back over and stood by Daniels.

  “He know anything about it?”

  I shook my head. “Says not.”

  Father James welcomed the men and gave his call to worship, but even after they were well into the second hymn, stragglers were still being buzzed out of their cells and joining the service.

  Potter motioned for one of the slow-moving late-comers to pick it up, and I could tell he savored and often abused what little authority he had.

  “Anything out of the ordinary going on?” Daniels asked.

  Potter shook his head. “Quiet as church. I’m about to fall asleep. Now I remember why I used to hate goin’ so damn much.”

  He looked at me.

  With a collar around my neck, I was an obvious target for his contempt, but I was probably no more connected to organized religion than he was. It’s what made my position ironic. From an early age, I’d had an intense spiritual hunger and an idealistic desire to help humanity, but had never felt comfortable or spent very much time within the structure of organized religion.

  Daniels pressed the two flyers into Potter’s chest. “Know anything about these?”

  While Potter examined the flyers, Daniels and I looked around the room. Between the exposed pipes running along the unfinished ceiling and the bare concrete of the floor, there was mostly open space with only a TV suspended from a bracket on the wall opposite us and a desk for the PM sergeant near the door.

  Every sound reverberating in the open space of the two-story bare concrete building ricocheted around the room like a racquetball, and the air was filled with the stale depressing smell of confinement—sleep, sweat, and the lingering acrid odor of cigarette smoke.

  I scanned the solid metal doors of the twenty-eight cinder block cells. With all the food tray slots closed, I could only see the inmates who were standing directly in front of the glass.

  Potter’s radio announced that two inmates were returning from medical, and they appeared at the door. He nodded them toward their cells, which popped open as they approached them, and then he turned his attention back to the flyers.

  “It’s bullshit,” Potter said.

  “What?” Daniels asked.

  He nodded toward the flyers. “We got this place locked down tighter than the warden’s black asshole. Every cell door is shut and locked. We’ve got complete control over all movement.”

  From somewhere near the staircase, an inmate asked Potter if he could be released to attend the service.

  “See,” Potter said. “Complete control.”

  Potter then radioed Pitts and asked him to unlock cell 203. The buzz of an electric lock sounded, then a click, and Chris Sobel, Justin Menge’s boyfriend, emerged from the cell and walked over toward the folding chairs. Before he reached them, Potter motioned for him, and he walked over.

  “Sir?” Sobel said.

  His eyes were red and puffy, his face splotchy, and I wondered if he had been crying. His hands and hair were damp, the label on his uniform was missing, and he wasn’t wearing shoes.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  He glanced at me and gave me a small twisted-lip frown and a quick nod.

  “Next time I call for service, you either go right then or not at all,” Potter said. “Understand?”

  “Yes, sir,” he said. “Sorry, I fell asleep.”

  Potter didn’t say anything else and Sobel made his way over to the back row of chairs and took a seat. Almost as soon as he sat down, Potter called him back.

  “Where the hell’re your shoes?”

  Sobel looked down at his socked feet. “This is now holy ground. It’s my tradition.”

  “I got some traditions of my own you gonna find out about if you don’t go git your goddam shoes on.”

  “Yes, sir,” he said, and quickly headed back to his cell.

  “Complete control,” Daniels agreed with so little sarcasm that Potter didn’t pick up on it.

  “Damn straight,” Potter said.

  I scanned the small crowd of inmates for Justin Menge, but he wasn’t among them. Though an outspoken critic of the Catholic Church, as far as I knew he never missed Mass.

  Potter raised his eyebrows as if a thought had just occurred to him. “If we did have a murder down here . . . wouldn’t be a bad thing.”

  Daniels started to comment, but Potter’s radio sounded the return of another inmate from the library.

  Daniels eyes grew wide when the inmate appeared at the door by himself. “Where the hell’s his escort?”

  “They just bring ‘em as far as the front door of the dorm. Officer in the wicker watches them from there.”

  “When he’s there,” Daniels said, shaking his head.

  We fell silent for a while as Father James continued his homily. Eventually, Sobel came back with his shoes on, though he had missed most of the service.

  The dim light coming from the high ceiling of the quad seemed to obscure more than it illuminated, casting everything in a ghost-like vagueness that seemed far too appropriate for the anticipation of murder.

  Potter’s radio sounded again and Pitts told him he was going to do a visual walk by of the cells, which he promptly came and did, his dark skin shining in the dull light of the quad. Even from a distance, it was obvious Pitts was athletic. His casual, yet crisp movements demonstrated his comfort with and confidence in his body. After he made his rounds, Pitts gave Potter the thumbs-up gesture and returned to the wicker.

  As the service continued, I looked around the quad, bowing my head periodically as Father James prayed, preparing to serve the Holy Eucharist.

  “Pray, brothers, that our sacrifice may be acceptable to God, the almighty Father,” he said.

  His small congregation responded more or less in unison, “May the Lord accept the sacrifice at your hands, for the praise and glory of his name, for our good, and the good of all his Church.”

  “Lord Jesus Christ, you said to your apostles, ‘I leave you peace, my peace I give you.’ Look not on our sins, but on the faith of your Church, and grant us the peace and unity of your kingdom where you live for ever and ever.”

  When I looked up again, Potter was shaking his head, but he stopped when Father James held up the elements.

  “This is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Happy are those who are called to his supper.”

  I looked around the dorm some more, and though I was prepared for what came next, I still shuddered slightly when Father James said, “The body and the blood.”

  I glanced over at Daniels and Potter. They both looked pale.

  When nothing happened, it was as if the collective breath being held was exhaled, though what followed was only a slight release of tension, not a complete exorcism of our uneasiness.

  As Father James came around the table and presented the sacraments, the inmates stood and began filing down the center aisle to receive Holy Communion.

  Father James held the bread in one hand, a chalice filled with grape juice (wine wasn’t allowed) in the other, and in an atypical, unorthodox manner, each inmate would tear a small piece of bread from the loaf, dip it into the chalice, and drop it into his mouth.

  “The body that
was broken for you. The blood that was shed for you.”

  This continued for a long time under the scrutiny of Daniels and Potter, both of whom had moved closer to get a better view.

  “The body of Christ. The blood of Christ.”

  Since Daniels was watching the Holy Eucharist so closely, I decided to concentrate on the rest of the quad. I looked down each wall, pausing at every cell, beginning where I stood and scanning slowly to the other end.

  “The body that was broken for you. The blood that was shed for you.”

  I looked down the wall closest to me first. Nothing was out of order. There was no movement. No sound, but echoes of the priest’s haunting words.

  “The body of Christ. The blood of Christ.”

  I examined the wall opposite us. First the upper level, and then the bottom. Moving across each cell, beginning with the end closest to us and working my way back down to the far end near the door.

  And that’s when I saw it.

  “The body that was broken for you,” the priest was saying. “The blood that was shed for you.”

  I began moving toward it, but before I reached it, I knew what it was.

  “The body of Christ. The blood of Christ.”

  It can’t be, I thought, but knew it was.

  There on the bare concrete floor, seeping from beneath Justin Menge’s cell door as if from an open wound, was an expanding pool of blood.

  Chapter Four

  “How the hell did this happen?” Daniels yelled.

  I didn’t respond.

  “We saw him come in just a few minutes ago,” he said. “We’ve been here the whole time. Watching.”

  We were standing in front of Justin Menge’s cell, carefully avoiding the blood puddle at our feet. Every inmate at the Catholic service and the few that were in their cells had been strip-searched by Potter and Pitts and then escorted to the empty quad on the other side of the dorm where they would stay locked down until the investigation was completed.

  “How the hell did this happen?” Daniels said again, each time emphasizing a different word, as he continued to look around every visible inch of the quad.

  Satisfied the crime-scene was secure, he withdrew latex gloves from his coat pocket and handed me a pair. After we put the gloves on, the first thing we both did was pull on the cell door.

  It was locked.

  This massive metal door fronting the 6 x 9 foot cinder block cell was the only possible entrance or exit.

  “Shit,” he said.

  “I know.”

  He shook his head. “It’s locked and he’s alone inside.”

  Like a coach yelling at his players during practice in an empty gymnasium, Daniels’s voice echoed through the cement quad, bouncing around the room like an overinflated basketball.

  I reached down and pulled on the food tray slot. It was also locked.

  He took a step back and motioned up to the officer in the wicker to unlock the cell door.

  Then he looked back over at me. “I asked you a question.”

  “You did?”

  “How the hell did this happen? We just saw him come in. He’s in a locked cell. Alone. And he’s only been in—What? Twenty, twenty-five minutes?”

  I shrugged. “Maybe less.”

  “Could it be suicide? It’s got to be, right? I mean, of course. That flyer’s got me thinkin’ crazy, but it can’t be murder. He had to do it to himself. No one else was in here.”

  As the electronic lock on the cell door clicked, Daniels pulled it open and the smell of wet copper rushed out and filled our nostrils. Taking a step inside the cell, he reached over to his left and reconnected the disabled light.

  The lights inside the cells in G-dorm consisted of small halogen tubes with white plexiglass covers. The covers were held in place by four recessed screws—the heads of which were round and had a small flange hanging down. Using part of the cylinder of a large ink pen that had been cut to fit the opening, inmates often unscrewed the covers to disable the lights or hide contraband behind them.

  There was no contraband in Justin’s. The concealment in this instance had been the cell itself—the cover simply removed, the light merely disabled.

  “Picked a hell of a time to be sober,” he said.

  My eyes darted around the room, unable to find focus, my mind rejecting the images they were sending. I had seen my share of crime scenes, but I had never gotten used to them, and I had never seen anything like this. I took a step back and looked away for a moment. And that’s when what I had just seen finally registered.

  On the floor inside the cell looked to be most of the blood from Justin Menge’s body. It was dark maroon and black with pale yellow around the edges. But it was just his blood. His body was beneath the covers on the lower of the two metal bunks that hung from the pale gray cinder block wall, the gaping wound on his neck partially visible.

  The sheet and blanket surrounding the body had very little blood on them compared to everything else—not soaked in blood like I expected them to be. Most of the blood was on the floor.

  “The body and the blood,” I said.

  Daniels’s eyes grew wide as he looked over at me. “Just like the fuckin’ flyer. His body’s in one place and his blood’s in another.”

  We were both quiet a moment, the fact that the horror we were witnessing had been foretold sinking in more forcefully, and I wondered what I was going to tell Paula.

  “The flyer,” I said.

  “Yeah?”

  “Doesn’t strike me as a suicide note.”

  “Oh,” he said, nodding absently. “You’re right.” He shook his head, the lines in his face and forehead deepening. “Fuck.”

  I looked around the cell again. There were faint sprays and splatters, but none were heavy or concentrated on anything. “There’s no real arterial spray.”

  He quickly looked at all four walls. “It’s as if he was just drained.”

  “This much blood,” I said, “you’d think something’s got to have arterial spray on it. I bet the murderer’s shirt is covered with it.”

  He glanced down for a moment and took a deep breath.

  I followed his gaze. The outline of Menge’s body was faint, but visible in the blood covering the cell floor. And there was something else.

  “Look at that,” he said, nodding toward two shoe prints in the blood. “You’re right. Not suicide after all.”

  Looking at the nearly perfect set of boot prints before the outline of the body in the tacky substance, I realized that some of the blood had already begun to clot. Yet a lot of it had not. It didn’t make sense.

  “What if his throat was cut while he was laying face down on the floor?” Daniels said. “All the subsequent blood could be covering the bulk of the spray and splatter patterns.”

  I raised my eyebrows at him and nodded. “That could be it.”

  “How the hell did he get from the floor to the bed?”

  I looked at him, wondering if I had misunderstood what he meant. It seemed so obvious to me. “The murderer must have moved him.”

  He was distracted, genuinely perplexed, and didn’t answer right away. “Huh? Yeah, you’re probably right.”

  “Though it was risky as hell to wait here while most of the blood drained from his body,” I added.

  He nodded, still staring down, his eyes shifting back and forth between the body and the blood.

  “We’ve got to get FDLE in here to process this as quickly as we can,” I said, thinking that the rate at which the blood was drying would help them to establish time of death more accurately.

  “I’ve already called them. They’re on the way,” he said, “but it’ll be at least another hour.”

  I shook my head and frowned.

  “How can the blanket only have smears on it?”

  Stepping over the blood and pulling back the covers with his gloved hand, he exposed the pale, purplish body of Justin Menge.

  Except for a few patches of blood, the she
ets were clean.

  He ran his glove along the sheet beside the body. “Just smears.”

  Unlike the sheets, Justin’s shirt was saturated with blood.

  “Lift his shirt up a little, would you?” I asked.

  He did.

  Beneath the smears of blood on his skin, the front of Justin’s body was deep purple. Daniels then rolled him over. In contrast to his stomach, his back was nearly the color of the sheet.

  “Lividity,” I noted aloud.

  “Yeah,” Daniels said. “Killed face down on the floor, then left there a while before being placed on his back on the bed.”

  I nodded. “But how was there enough time?”

  Daniels then made another noise that sounded like a distressed grunt.

  “What is it?”

  “No weapon,” Daniels said.

  I quickly took in the rest of the cell.

  “What’s that?”

  I moved over to the right side of the cell and carefully lifted the blood-stained inmate uniform wadded up in the front corner. Stretching it out revealed that it was smeared, not soaked with blood, and that it belonged to Menge.

  “No arterial spray on it,” he said. “Killer must’ve used it to clean up—maybe to dry off after he washed up in the sink.”

  I nodded, and returned the uniform to its original spot.

  When I glanced back at Menge, I noticed that the label on the shirt he was wearing had been ripped off, leaving a blue square with far less blood on it than the rest of the uniform. It looked like a small rectangular stencil that had been spray painted with blood.

  “His name tag’s been ripped off,” I said. “After he was killed.”

  A white label with the inmate’s name, DC number, and bunk assignment was sewn on every inmate uniform at the institution.

  “It’s right there.” He pointed to Menge’s plastic ID badge lying on the bed beside him.

  In addition to the label sewn onto their uniform, inmates were required to wear a photo ID badge through a loop in their shirt or on the lapel of their jacket.

  “Not the ID badge, but the name label sewn on his uniform. It’s missing. But the ID badge is strange, too.”