“I don’t follow.”
“It only has traces of blood on it.”
He didn’t say anything.
“Presumably the label is covered with it,” I continued, “and it’s missing.”
“Oh, yeah,” he said. “I thought you meant something else. I’ve already noted that.”
He sounded defensive, as if he didn’t know what I meant, but wasn’t willing to ask, and for a moment the old Tom Daniels was back.
“The yell we heard when we were talkin’ to Potter,” he said, “think that’s when it happened?”
I shrugged. “It didn’t sound like that kind of yell—not a scream or a cry for help. We were so on edge about the flyer, we’d’ve come running if it were a scream.”
“You’re right. It was definitely a yell, not a scream. At the time I thought it was just the usual inmate outburst.”
“Still,” I said, “we should’ve checked it out.”
He frowned and nodded.
Closing my eyes for a moment, I took in a shallow breath through my mouth, trying not to smell the blood any more than I had to. I wasn’t sure why, but I was finding this more difficult than I usually did. It was probably a complex mixture of things—like the shock and horror of the excessive violence and bloodletting, the fact that Justin, every bit the sensitive, talented artist, seemed far more vulnerable than most inmates, that I had told his sister I would check on him, and the fact that I had been warned, had been so close when it happened, and was still unable to prevent it.
“It doesn’t make sense,” I said.
“None of this does.”
“Good point.”
Carefully turning Menge’s head, Daniels examined the enormous gash in his neck. As he moved the head, what had to be the last of Menge’s blood oozed out of the gaping red and black wound.
“Doesn’t look self-inflicted,” I said.
We fell silent a moment, the raw violence of the situation resting heavily upon us, and I realized I had not said a prayer for Justin Menge nor mourned his death. I closed my eyes and briefly prayed for him and his family, especially Paula. The mourning would have to come later.
When I opened my eyes, Daniels was shaking his head, and I could tell something awful was dawning on him.
“What is it?”
“My case. There goes my whole fruckin’ case against Martinez.” He looked over at me, eyes blazing. “I know you’re thinking about Menge and I should be too, but, dammit, I was so close.”
“I understand. I’m sorry.”
The more he seemed to think about it, the more it registered, the more disconsolate he became.
“I can’t catch my breath,” he said, his voice trembling, his hands shaking. “Do you know how many hours I’ve put in on this thing? How bad I wanted to get the bastard?”
I nodded. “You’ll find another way.”
He waved it off with a blood-covered gloved hand and looked away. He stood there quietly for a moment, staring at nothing, while I moved over and began looking through Menge’s things.
Next to a black plastic comb on the stainless steel sink sat a small travel-size tube of toothpaste with the cap off, a blob of white oozing out of it. Next to it was a new bar of PRIDE soap.
The top bunk didn’t have a mattress, and several books and notepads were stacked on it. Among the books was Catechism of the Catholic Church, Ceremonies of the Modern Roman Rite, The Road Less Traveled, A History of Art, a Bible, and a few paperback mystery and romance novels. Next to the notepads, several dozen drawings Justin had done were in small stacks grouped by periods: impressionists, post-impressionists, cubists, post-modernists, abstract expressionists.
Daniels moved over beside me and began thumbing through the notepads.
Lifting the lid of his footlocker, I squatted down beside it, and began carefully sifting through its contents. There wasn’t much to see—a couple of bags of chips, two Butterfingers, socks, underwear, some personal hygiene products, some family photographs, and the colored pencils and sketch pads he used in lieu of the paints and canvases that were considered contraband. One thing I couldn’t be sure about was his uniforms. One was on him, one wadded up in the corner, but I’d expect to see at least one more folded with his other things. He may just have had two. Some inmates did. Others had several. It’d be difficult to find out how many he actually had.
“There a notebook in there?”
I shook my head.
“It’s not up here either.”
“What?”
“Pad he used for his journal and statement against Martinez. It’s gone. It was here earlier. I saw it.” He shook his head. “Dammit. That fuckin’ little . . .”
“You think Martinez…”
“Who else? I don’t know how he did it. Still can’t figure out how it was done, but yeah, I’d say he should top our suspect list.”
Our? Was that just habit? Was he referring to the department? Or was he saying I would be involved in his investigation?
We were silent a moment, while I looked around one last time and thought about how it might have been done. Daniels continued to shake his head, seemingly on the verge of tears.
On the pale gray cinder block wall between the bunks, each dangling by a small strip of stolen Scotch tape, hung two different drawings of La Grenouillere.
In 1868, Claude Monet and Pierre-Auguste Renoir had set up their easels side by side and painted the frog pond or La Grenouillere with quite disparate results. Justin Menge had recreated them both with amazing accuracy, especially considering he was limited to a medium-size pack of colored pencils. He had lavished such care on them, risked so much to display them.
“Seen enough?” Daniels asked.
“One more thing.”
Stepping over to the body, I Carefully lifted Justin’s shirt, and used my gloved index finger to press the purple patches on his lower stomach. The area beneath my finger turned white. When I moved my finger the discoloration returned.
“Blanching,” I said.
“Yeah?”
“If he was killed the moment he came back into the dorm, how long’s he been dead?”
He looked at his watch. “Over an hour and a half now.”
I shook my head. “The blanching, lividity, and rate of blood clot just don’t add up.”
“None of this shit makes any sense. Maybe crime scene can tell us what the fuck’s goin’ on.”
Chapter Five
Within an hour, the crime scene crew had arrived, and I stood back and watched as a FDLE technician snapped pictures, the brilliant flash washing out all color in the cell, turning crimson to pink and white. The crime was so surreal, the capturing of it so dramatic, that I half expected to hear the whine of the old flash bulbs, as if mourning the images they were illuminating.
While a female technician gathered evidence and put each piece into its own plastic or paper bag or envelope—depending on what it was and if it had blood on it—a male technician examined the doorjamb and lock mechanism for toolmarks. When the scene had been completely photographed, the blood splatter patterns were examined and sketches of the entire scene were drawn to scale.
“Obviously, I want your help with this thing,” Daniels said.
Obviously? He had never wanted it before.
I thought about how weary I was, how spiritually unwell. I knew being involved in a homicide investigation, even in a limited way, would only make things worse. I knew all this, yet I couldn’t resist.
“You’re a good investigator,” he continued, “and I need someone who can move around inside here among the inmates and the staff. No one does it better. Plus, you were here. You saw the whole thing go down. You willing?”
“What about FDLE?”
“My investigation. They’re assisting. I know I’ve been a real pain in the ass when we’ve worked together before, but I’m different now. Hell, I’m sober.”
I thought about Paula Menge and how I’d waited too long to do what she’d a
sked me to do. Thought about Justin and the progress he’d been making—how abruptly all his work had been cut short.
I nodded.
“I’ll clear it with the warden. Anybody gives you any shit, you let me know.”
“Everybody’s pretty used to it by now . . . though we do have a new colonel.”
“I’ll break it down for him.”
I cringed inside. He certainly had the authority. What concerned me was his approach. When this was over, he’d return to Central Office and I’d be left to deal with all the people he had angered and offended.
“Now that that’s settled,” he said, “let’s talk to the two fuck-ups in charge down here.”
He had Potter and Pitts brought down to us so that we could observe the crime scene being processed while we talked to them.
Michael Pitts was in every way Billy Joe Potter’s opposite. He was smart, alert, caring. Whereas Potter was short and dumpy, Pitts was tall and lean, Potter soft and pale, Pitts hard and dark. In contrast to Potter’s ill-fitting and wrinkled uniform, Pitts’s crisp and clean uniform looked as if it had been tailor-made for him.
“What the hell happened here tonight?” Daniels asked.
“That’s what we’d like to know,” Potter said. “This ain’t our fault. We’re short handed. We do the best we can. A hard job that pays shit. Nobody can blame us.”
“I damn sure can,” Daniels said. “So shut the fuck up and answer my questions. I don’t give a good goddam who your family is.”
Daniels leaned into Potter, daring him to respond. When he looked down, Daniels said, “Now walk me through exactly what happened from the time Menge returned from his visit.”
“Yes, sir,” Pitts said. “I’d just completed count in quads one and three and was returning to the wicker to call it in to the control room, when Officer Stanley arrived back at the dorm with an inmate. I sent him to quad two and returned to the wicker where I called in the count and buzzed his cell door open.”
“I still don’t see how this coulda happened, anyway,” Potter said. “I mean we all saw him go in the cell and it was locked when we found him. Can any of you explain that? It couldn’t’ve happened.”
“Okay, Potter,” Daniels said, “that’s what I’ll put in my report. This murder couldn’t’ve happened.”
“Well, I’m just saying—”
“Well, don’t. Just shut the fuck up.”
The FDLE agents in and around the cell stopped what they were doing and looked at Daniels. Potter shut up.
“Please continue, Officer Pitts,” Daniels said. “What happened next?”
“Well, after I buzzed Sobel into his cell. I logged in count and movement—”
“Menge,” Daniels said.
“Sir?”
“You mean Menge,” he said. “You said you buzzed Sobel in, but you meant Menge.”
“I thought it was Sobel,” he said. “Sorry. They look a lot alike.”
Behind Pitts and Potter, the two FDLE agents working inside the cell were gathering trace evidence with tweezers and putting it into tiny coin envelopes and plastic bags. Outside the cell, three other agents were busy labeling and tagging each item of evidence that had been recovered.
“That’s what happens when you’re married long enough,” Potter said. “You start to look alike. Those two butt-fucks have been together longer than me and my old lady.”
“This is important,” Daniels said, ignoring Potter. “Who did you buzz in?”
“It was Menge,” Potter said. “You buzzed Sobel out a little while later for church and then you saw him again when he went back to his cell because I had to make him go put his shoes on.”
Daniels looked at me. “Shoes?”
I nodded.
“That’s right,” Pitts said. “It was Menge. I’m sorry. I don’t know what I was thinking. I was there when Stanley brought him back and I walked straight up and buzzed him in.”
“What about the shoes?” Potter asked.
“We got two bloody footprints in Menge’s cell,” Daniels said.
“So?”
“So maybe Sobel didn’t wear his shoes to the service because they had blood on them,” he said, then looking back at Pitts, “What happened next?”
“While I was updating my logs,” he continued, “Sergeant Potter called the cell numbers of the inmates attending the Mass and I unlocked those cells and then a few inmates from medical came back and I buzzed them into their cells and then it was pretty quiet until . . .”
“Until Menge was served up as communion,” Potter said with a sophomoric smile.
Menge’s cell had now been cleared of all the agents except for the thin man dusting for prints. I watched as he methodically pointed his small flashlight in several directions at varying angles until he found what he was looking for. He then held the light with his mouth as he twirled the brush between his palms, dipped it into the powder, and then brushed the dust very lightly onto the surface that held the prints.
“Didn’t Menge always go to Mass?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Potter said. “He used to argue with the old priest during his sermons. Take up the whole damn hour sometimes.”
“Okay,” Daniels said. “I’m not here to bust anybody’s balls. You were understaffed and that’s not your fault. You were having to do too many things at one time. I understand. But I’ve got to figure out how this was done. Okay? So, tell me the truth and I’ll handle the heat.”
Pitts nodded.
“Could you’ve hit Menge’s cell button when you were letting the others out?”
Pitts thought about it.
“He always goes,” Daniels said. “You do it automatically. Same inmates every time. And you just hit the button. Coulda happen to anyone.”
Pitts looked up, squinted, and thought about it, then glanced over at Menge’s cell.
Having found and dusted another clean print, the FDLE agent was now pressing tape down onto it. Next, he lifted the tape in one quick motion that sounded like a Band-Aid being ripped off and pressed it down on the lift card. He then labeled the card and went off in search of others.
Pitts shook his head. “No, sir,” he said. “I’m not here all the time. I’m in D-dorm some too. So I wouldn’t’ve expected him to go—or anyone else for that matter. And I’m real careful over the cell door buttons. Real careful. Especially after Inspector Fortner told us about the threat.”
“And the truth is,” Potter said, “the cell doors are usually left open until lights out. This is a self-contained quad. It’s not confinement. The inmates come out and watch TV or play cards or go to church service. Only reason we were on lock-down tonight was because we were told to. So no one would’ve been used to opening any cells for church anyway.”
Daniels nodded. “Okay,” he said. “I believe you. Is there any way the inmates could’ve opened it—either from inside or out?”
“Once that door is locked, they can’t get it open.”
“So you’ve never had one open before without you doing it?” I asked.
“Well, sure we have,” Pitts said. “Almost every time we have a thunderstorm, some of them open. The lightning shorts the locks out or something. I’m not sure.”
“But there wasn’t any lightning tonight,” I said.
“We’ve had a couple of inmates keep their cell doors from locking before,” Potter said.
“How?” Daniels asked.
“By putting a plastic spoon between the lock and the latch,” he said.
Daniels raised his eyebrows.
“But we haven’t used spoons down here in over a year,” Pitts said. “No one down here would have one.”
“Yeah,” Potter said. “I’m sure of that. Anyway, I checked all the doors when I went by for count.”
“When was that?” Daniels asked.
Potter shrugged. “Right after the priest got here and just before you and the chaplain came down.”
“Wait a minute,” Pitts said, his face suddenl
y lighting up. “You said Sobel went back to his cell to get his shoes.”
Potter nodded. “Yeah?”
“I didn’t buzz him back into the cell,” Pitts said.
“You sure?” Daniels asked.
“Positive.”
“Then just how the hell did he get back in?”
Chapter Six
It was the morning following the murder, and though I had yet to sleep, the adrenaline in my blood, the questions in my brain, and the shower I had just taken made me feel awake and alert.
I was walking down the compound with Anna Rodden to interview Chris Sobel. She was his classification officer.
If happiness is not wanting to be any place other than where you are, then I was truly happy. Happy to be in prison. Happy to be alive. Happy to be in the presence of Anna. I have that same thought every time I’m near her. It’s as certain as the dread I feel as our time together approaches its end.
The early morning air was chilly and damp, the unseen sun illuminating the vibrant colors of the tender young flowers all around us, their delicate petals drooping beneath the weight of the thick dew. Inmates in pale blue uniforms assigned to inside grounds were already busy working on the only source of beauty—besides Anna—and their greatest source of pride in this desolate place. The care they lavished on the small, vulnerable plants showed in their abundance and lushness.
As usual, the inmates on the compound stopped what they were doing to watch Anna. They did the same thing every time an attractive woman was on the compound, but more so with her. The inmates gawked like teens who didn’t know any better, but in fairness, most men and many women stopped to watch Anna—we just weren’t as obvious about it.
“Does it bother you?” I asked.
“Whatta you think?”
I knew it bothered her. What I really meant was how much, but I didn’t pursue it.
There was far more to Anna than what the inmates were seeing, her true attractiveness having more to do with qualities that couldn’t be seen. Or, if they could, it was only intangibly, through their effects—the way she held herself, the way she moved, the way intelligence and compassion blazed through her bright eyes.
The Body and the Blood Page 4