Had I been sober I would have married her back when we were both single. As it happened, I moved off to Atlanta after high school and the next time I saw her she was married.
When I moved back to Pottersville a little over a year and a half ago, thinking I was divorced, being around Anna was excruciating, and now, finding myself still married didn’t make it any easier. Being so close to her was torture—cruel and unusual punishment. And there was nowhere I’d rather be. By definition I was a happy man.
A pang of guilt, unbidden but not unfamiliar, rumbled inside me like distant thunder, and I wondered how I could be happy so soon after Justin Menge had been so violently murdered. How could I be so glad just to be in the presence of a woman not my wife?
“How are things with you and Susan?” she asked, as if reading my mind.
“Good,” I said. Very good actually. “We’re different—and so’s our relationship.”
She nodded and smiled as if she knew something I didn’t. “You think this is it?”
Unless you tell me it’s not. “It could be. Who would’ve ever thought?”
“Not me.”
The silence that followed accompanied a change in her posture and presence. Without breaking stride, she stiffened slightly and withdrew from me somehow.
After a year of thinking I was single, it was nice to find myself back on a more emotionally level battlefield with this woman who in love was both enemy and ally. In some stunted sophomoric place inside, I felt a tiny bit triumphant at being able to make her feel some semblance of what I had felt in the recent past, and it disturbed me to be confronted with how shallow and immature I could still be.
After a while, she said, “Will you be moving back to Atlanta?”
I hesitated. “I’m not sure. I came running back here as a failure, not knowing where else to go. I’ve got a broken down mobile home and a downwardly mobile job, but . . . I love it. Love the space and solitude. Love the stripped-down way I live. Love being here with you. I’ve never been happier.”
I was wearing a charcoal-gray suit with a thin pin stripe and a black clerical shirt with full collar. Anna was wearing a black sheath dress. We looked like a couple, or given our matching chestnut-colored hair and dark brown eyes, like brother and sister. Either way, we looked like we belonged together.
So why weren’t we? I wish I knew. It was complicated and had a lot to do with timing.
Growing up, Anna had been my older sister Nancy’s best friend. In high school, when our attraction began to blossom, the two years that separated us seemed insurmountable. After graduation when Nancy fled our family, Anna left for college. Four years passed before I saw her again and, by that time, she was married. I was devastated.
Several years later, following the breakup of my life and what I thought was the breakup of my marriage to Susan, I came home, began rebuilding, and not coincidentally became the chaplain at the same prison where Anna was a classification officer.
“I love having you here,” she said. “Actually look forward to coming in here every day because most days I get to see you—be with you. But I can’t see Susan living in Pottersville.”
“I know.”
Susan was a city girl, unsuited for my rural, Spartan existence.
“Certainly not the way you’re living.”
“And she shouldn’t have to,” I said.
She turned her head and looked up at me with raised eyebrows. “I guess Sarah shouldn’t’ve had to follow Abraham into the wilderness either.”
“Not the same thing.”
She held up her arms and gestured to the prison around us. “You saying this ain’t the Promised Land?”
Many of the inmates marching in orderly lines all around us were able to convey their contempt for life just in the way they moved, their careful avoidance of Anna as conspicuous as those ogling her.
“Seriously,” she added, “you do believe God called you here, don’t you?”
Lured is more like it, I thought, and guess who she used for bait?
“You’re the one who told me you gotta go through the wilderness to get to the Promised Land?”
I nodded. “No other way to get there. Thanks for the reminder. You give good argument.”
She smiled, something flickering in her eyes.
“That come from being married to a lawyer?”
“No,” she said with a mischievous smile, “from having Sarah envy.”
* * * * *
“What can you tell me about him?”
We were seated in the interview room of G-dorm, waiting for an officer to escort Sobel to us.
As Sobel’s classification officer, Anna was responsible for classifying and managing him as well as writing his progress reports, determining his custody level and work assignment.
“He’s got good adjustment,” she said, using the vernacular of her position. “Hasn’t given me one minute’s trouble. Quiet. Sticks to himself—except for Menge. He’s in on a drug charge and he’s really worked hard on recovery. He’s in AA and NA as well as the drug treatment program.”
I nodded.
“He’s very religious,” she said. “Catholic. But I’m sure you know that.”
“I was surprised when he showed up for Mass late.”
“You think it’s because he was busy killing Justin?”
“It’s crossed my mind.”
The interview room was roughly the size of a cell, most of which was used as a storage closet. A rickety folding table sat at its center, two rusted folding chairs on each side. Laundry lockers ran along one wall, shelves lined with bottles of cleaning chemicals on another, and a damp, musty smell emanated from the mops and buckets in the back corner.
“He’s short, too,” she said, which was prison speak for an inmate with very little time remaining on his sentence. “He’s only got about sixty days left.”
“Unless he killed Menge.”
“Do you really think it’s possible?”
“Do you?”
“You mean is he capable? Who can ever say? But my intuition says no.”
“Well, that says a lot,” I said. “Did you know they were lovers?”
“Well, not know know, but yeah, I’d heard they were. That’s not something either of them would ever tell me. In here love’s a crime.”
She was right. But I had never thought of it in quite that way.
“But I could be wrong,” she added. “I’m not saying he didn’t do it. And if he’s using again, then I’d say it’s quite possible he did. What have you got on him?”
“Their relationship for one,” I said. “This kind of crime is usually committed by someone close to the victim.”
“We hurt those we love,” she said, playfully, but then quickly grew quiet.
We were silent an awkward moment.
“Do we hurt each other?” she asked.
“Faithfully.”
We fell silent again, each of us retreating into our own interior worlds.
Eventually, she said, “What else?”
“He didn’t come to the service until after it had started. He wasn’t wearing shoes—and somebody’s shoes have blood on them. Since he had to go back to get them, he passed Menge’s cell several times. And Pitts never popped his cell door—or so he says. Pitts also said it was Sobel and not Menge he let into the cell the first time. Only changed his story later after Potter persuaded him to.”
“Pitts could be setting Sobel up,” she said.
“Sure. Or Potter. And there were other guys who passed by his cell, but we’ve got to start somewhere.”
The door opened and Chris Sobel shuffled in, cuffed and shackled, and sat down in the chair across the table from us.
“Chaplain, Ms. Rodden. I’m so glad to see you both. I’m really scared. I mean really. I haven’t even been able to be upset about Justin because I’m so frightened.”
“Of what?” Anna asked.
“That whoever killed Justin is either going to kill me or
set me up for killing him.”
“You think you’re being set up?” I asked.
He nodded.
“How?”
“I’m not sure. It’s more a feelin’ than anything. But I’m perfect for it. Everyone knew we were in love. My cell’s close to his. I overslept Mass. I’ve never done that before. I think maybe someone drugged my food. ‘Course, I don’t even know how it happened. Maybe I’m way off base here.”
It was amazing how much Chris Sobel looked like Justin Menge. They weren’t twins, but like Anna and me, they probably could’ve passed for siblings. He was thin, with little muscle and no fat, and his inmate blues hung loosely on him. His eyes were light brown with a faint metallic quality like rust in water set beneath full, coarse hair of the same color.
Anna leaned over and whispered, “Are you sure he’s Chris Sobel and not Justin Menge?”
Chapter Seven
“You’re not?” I whispered back to her, looking at him again.
“I’m not,” she said. “I never realized how much they looked alike before they started wearing their hair the same way. Could Menge have killed Sobel and taken his place because he’s about to get out?”
“Prints say no. It possible their records were swapped?”
“It’s next to impossible.”
It occurred to me again just how many of the inmates look alike. Like the girl “band” in Robert Palmer’s iconic video of “Addicted to Love,” very disparate looking people can look nearly identical when dressed and made-up alike. With inmates, it’s even more extreme. Not only do they have the exact same uniforms, but they all have the same bad haircuts, pale skin, and the thickness that comes from too much starch and too little exercise. But for all the similarities of inmates in general, the particular likeness of Chris and Justin was staggering.
Like all couples, the time Chris and Justin had spent together enhanced their similarities. Not only did they look alike, but their mannerisms, voice, speech, gestures, expressions had all become eerily identical.
It was like talking to a dead man.
“You know you don’t have to talk to us,” I said to Chris.
“No, I want to. I really do.”
“Okay. Start with why you really missed the first part of Mass.”
“I told you. I was asleep. I’ve never missed Mass before—”
“Exactly. On the one night you miss most of the service a murder is committed.”
“I know how it looks, but I swear. That’s why I think someone’s setting me up.”
“I can’t help you if you lie to me.”
“I’m not. Please.”
“And what was that shit about holy ground? You’ve never attended the service without shoes before. Now all of a sudden you decide the ground is holy and you can’t wear shoes to Mass.”
“Ah, I’m, I’d been reading about Moses. I know it sounds crazy, but I really did have a sense that God was meeting with us in that quad and that I needed to hallow the fact.”
I shook my head. “Even if I believed that, which I don’t. I’d expect you to wear your shoes to the service, then take them off when it started.”
He didn’t say anything.
“You sayin’ the whole quad’s holy ground?”
“I don’t know. I’s just trying to honor God.”
“Think about the timing. You did this on the night that Justin was murdered. Never before. It means you passed by Justin’s cell at least three times. That’s more than anyone else.”
He shook his head, appearing frustrated. “I know how it looks, but I swear I didn’t kill him.”
“We’re going to test your boots for blood. Sure you don’t want to tell me now?”
“I don’t have boots, just tennis shoes, but they don’t have blood on ‘em. I swear it. I went back, put them on and then came back to the service. If they had blood on ‘em, I’d’ve tracked it out onto the floor.”
“We’re checking it, too,” I said.
“Well, if you find any, it won’t be from my shoes. I loved Justin. We were planning on spending our lives together. Hoping to get married someday soon.”
“That’s great. And I’m sorry that won’t happen now. I truly am. But your story doesn’t add up. Sure you don’t want to change it to the truth? It’ll go a lot better for you, if you get in front of this.”
“I can’t believe you don’t believe me,” he said. “I’m telling the truth.”
“Then, tell me this. Officer Pitts didn’t buzz your cell open when you went back for your shoes, so how’d you get in?”
He opened his mouth to say something, then closed it. Tears formed in his eyes and he began to shake.
“Tell me.”
“Just believe me,” he said. “I didn’t kill him.”
“I’m gonna need a little more than your word.”
“I can’t,” he said. “I just can’t. I’m sorry.”
* * * * *
When he’d left the room, Anna sat tapping a pencil against her pursed lips for a long moment. Finally, she said, “Whatta you think?”
“He’s not giving us much,” I said, “and lying about what he is. Gonna have to figure out a different way to come at him.”
She nodded, then dropping the pencil down on the table, stood up and said, “What’s next?”
“I’ve got to go tell Paula Menge her brother was murdered, and—”
“How’re you able to switch gears between investigating and ministry so easily?” she asked, shaking her head.
“You didn’t let me finish.”
“So finish. You’re going to tell Paula Menge her brother was murdered and . . .”
“And ask why it happened on the only night she’s visited him in the past four years.”
* * * * *
As I pulled up in front of Paula’s house, my phone rang.
It was Susan.
“Morning handsome.”
“Morning,” I said.
“How’d you sleep?”
“I didn’t.”
“Because I’m not there? That’s so sweet.”
“Can I call you back in a little while?”
“Sure. I miss you.”
“I miss you,”I said, and as I walked up Paula’s driveway, I thought about just how much.
Having a second chance with Susan was a grace, and I was doing my best to be truly grateful for the opportunity. I was falling in love with her all over again, feeling in many ways like I had when we were newly together—except far more mature and selfless, far less desperate and needy.
Chapter Eight
“I knew something was wrong,” Paula Menge said. “It’d been a long time, but I could still tell.”
One of the more difficult parts of my job involved death notifications. As the chaplain, I notified inmates of deaths in their families and families of the deaths of inmates. Each had its own ministerial challenges, but when the bereaved was also a suspect it was especially difficult. I still had yet to find a way to fully integrate the seeming incompatibility of compassion and suspicion.
I was seated in Paula Menge’s small living room in the soft glow of the early morning light streaming in through the windows.
Her house was small, but in the right neighborhood not far from downtown Panama City, and very nicely decorated with spotless white carpet and exquisite furniture with surfaces so polished they looked like mirrors.
Both the house and furniture looked inherited. Nice, but old—not old enough to be antique and too uniform to have been bought piecemeal recently.
“I’m so sorry,” I said. “I can’t help thinking that if I’d just checked on him sooner . . .” She shook her head.
We sat in silence for a moment, tears trickling down her cheeks.
She was wearing long white silk pajamas, her delicate tanned feet gathered up beneath her in the chair. Only the tips of her toes were still visible and I could see that the perfectly applied pink polish matched that of her fingernails.
; Not for the first time I regretted not carrying a handkerchief. “Can I get you some tissues or—”
I broke off in mid-sentence, my awe-struck eyes coming to rest on the painting across the room.
She turned and followed my gaze.
The white frame on the white wall held Chagall’s “White Crucifixion.”
Oil on canvas, the painting stood over five feet tall. At its center, an unblemished Christ is on a cross, a prayer shawl wrapped around his waist. He is surrounded by revolutionary red flags, a Nazi desecrating a synagogue, Ahasverus, the wandering Jew stepping over a burning Torah scroll, refugees in a boat, as figures from the Hebrew Bible hover overhead, lamenting in the desolation and darkness.
“You like it?” she asked, wiping her cheeks.
“It’s my favorite Chagall, and I love Chagall.”
“At first I thought it didn’t provide enough contrast for . . . but now—”
“It’s perfect. It’s not the—”
“Original? No.”
“It looks like it.”
“Justin did it,” she said.
I shook my head. “I knew he was talented, but I had no idea he was . . .”
“He can paint like anybody,” she said. “But to me, his own stuff blows them all away. I own a small gallery downtown, you should drop by. I have a lot of Justin’s work.”
Interviewing women was never easy, but when they were beautiful, bereaved, and vulnerable—and wearing white silk pajamas, it was virtually impossible.
“How do you have so many of his paintings?”
Her brow furrowed. “I don’t understand.”
“You said you hadn’t seen him in four years. I didn’t think you were close.”
“I had them before he went in. Justin’s not one to hold a grudge. He’s written me this whole time—even when I wouldn’t write him back. Even when I wasn’t sure whether he was guilty or not, he still let me be the exclusive rep of his work. I guess if I had more integrity I wouldn’t have been making money on a man I thought might be guilty of child molestation, but . . .”
She sniffled.
“I was going to ask you if I could get you a tissue or . . .”
The Body and the Blood Page 5