Flesh and Blood

by Michael Lister

  “My Mema lives next door.”

  “Give me her name and number and I’ll call her to come stay with you,” I said.

  After I got off the line with Kayla’s grandmother, Stone said, “It’s her, isn’t it?”

  “Could be,” I said. “No way to know for sure yet.”

  Pete had stepped a few feet away and was talking on his cell phone.

  “We’re fucked,” Patterson said.

  “We’ve got to call FDLE,” Stone said.

  “You think Joe’s on the run?” Baker asked.

  “No,” Pete said, snapping his phone shut and walking up to us. “He’s in D dorm pulling a double.”

  With Pete waiting with the body until FDLE arrived, and Patterson and Baker returning to the security building to check in, Stone and I were headed to D dorm to talk to Joe Wynn.

  “What the hell you think’s going on?” Stone said.

  “I have no idea,” I said. “I really don’t.”

  “You know more than you’re saying,” he said. “Always do.”

  I smiled. It was the closest thing to a compliment he had ever given me.

  “Not this time,” I said.

  “You guessed the identity,” he said.

  “Only when I considered it might be someone from outside the institution,” I said, “and we still don’t know for sure it’s her.”

  “It’s her,” he said. “And you know it as well as I do.”

  I nodded.

  “You think the husband killed her?” he asked.

  “We just don’t know enough to even guess,” I said, “but it’d be an anomaly if he doesn’t have something to do with it.”

  He tapped on the glass of the D dorm door and gripped the large metal handle, waiting to be buzzed in by the officer in the wicker. “Thanks for helping with this,” he said.

  “You’re welcome,” I said, as the door was buzzed open and we walked inside.

  The barrack-style dorm had an officer station or wicker in the center with glass on all sides for observation and two long wings spanning out from it, each with about seventy bunks in them. The bathroom and day room were next to the wicker.

  The nearly one hundred and fifty inmates inside had been locked in since breakfast and were restless. They filled the day room watching TV and playing checkers, lay on their bunks and read or slept, sat on their bunks playing cards with the man in the bunk beside them. The dorm smelled of sleep, sweat, urine, and the burning twang of cheap tobacco—even though it was a non-smoking dorm.

  Many of the men approached us, attempting to redress the warden, but he rebuffed them, telling them now was not the time. We were buzzed into the officer’s station, stepping up the few short steps into a cool, fresh, air-conditioned oasis in the center of the dorm.

  “Warden,” Wynn said, “Chaplain.”

  We both spoke.

  The other officer, a short Hispanic man with salt-and-pepper hair said, “Warden, what’s going on out there? Why are we on lock down?”

  “Could you excuse us a moment,” Stone said to him. “We need to talk to Sergeant Wynn alone.”

  “Sure,” he said, and stepped down to the door.

  Wynn buzzed him out, then looked at us, fear in his eyes. “What is it?”

  Joe was soft and rotund with curly blond hair, a wide, full face, and glasses. His voice was wet and nasally, his mouth always full of saliva, his nose perpetually congested. Until recently, his wife, Melanie, had been large and shapeless, too, but following a hysterectomy, she had lost nearly all her excess weight—and with it her interest in Joe, or so the town talk had it. Town talk also had it that she was proud of her new boobs, tucked tummy, processed hair, and straight teeth—and showed them off to any man she could—even if she had to drug his drink and tie him up to do it.

  “Do you know where your wife is, Sergeant?” Stone asked.

  He shook his head. “In her classroom I guess,” he said. “She teaches first grade at the elementary school. I’m pulling a double. Haven’t spoken with her. Is something wrong?”

  “She didn’t show up for work,” I said. “We called your home and your daughter answered. She had overslept and missed school and said your wife wasn’t there.”

  “What?” he asked. “Kayla’s home alone?”

  “Not now,” I said. “Your wife’s mother is with her.”

  “Do you have any idea where she could be?” Stone asked.

  He shook his head. “We’re separated,” he said. “Well, we still live together until I can find a place—I’m sleeping on the couch— but I’m about to move out.”

  “Do you mind if I ask why?” Stone said.

  “Because,” he said, “she cheated on me.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  He shrugged. “It happens.”

  “How do you feel about her?” Stone asked.

  “Sir?”

  “Do you still care for her?” he asked. “Any chance for reconciliation?”

  He shook his head.

  “We’ve got to tell you something difficult to hear,” Stone said.

  “As long as Kayla’s okay, it won’t be too difficult,” he said.

  “Kayla’s fine,” I said.

  “We’ve found a body on the rec yard,” Stone said.

  “Okay,” Wynn said, but it sounded uncertain, almost like a question.

  “We think it might be your wife.”

  He shook his head. “Can’t be,” he said. “She doesn’t work here. Never been inside. I told you, she’s a school teacher.”

  “We think it might be,” Stone said. “Will you come look at it and let us know?”

  “Sure,” he said, “but it ain’t her. It can’t be.”

  When Joe saw the battered face of his wife, he started crying.

  “How the hell …? What is she doing in here? Why is she wearing a CO uniform?”

  “We were hoping you could tell us,” Stone said.

  “No,” he said. “I have no idea. How …? I mean, there’s no way she could … . It can’t be her.”

  “But you’re saying it is,” Stone said. “Are you sure?”

  He nodded. “It’s Melanie.”

  “How’d she get in here?”

  “I have no idea,” Joe said. “I can’t believe it. Why would she even want to?”

  “Is that your uniform?” Stone asked.

  Because there were no controls in place for tracking and accounting for CO uniforms, there was no way to know whose uniform Melanie was wearing. It could’ve been almost anyone’s—except someone like Joe.

  Joe looked down at his girth and then at the warden with an incredulous look. “Are you kidding? Look at me… . Look at her.”

  “She’s changed a lot lately, hasn’t she?” I asked.

  He nodded. “She’s like a whole different person since her surgeries.”

  “What happened?”

  He was quiet for a long moment before responding. “I think she finally felt … you know, like she had options. I mean, look at her.”

  I did. Even without the battered face and blood, she wouldn’t have been my type. She had that fake, plastic, Barbie Doll look. She appeared sad, even pathetic more than anything else—a middle-aged woman trying to pass for a pop princess.

  Feeling guilty for my harsh assessment of Melanie and sorry for Joe, I nodded, and said, “She’s very beautiful.”

  “Look at her now,” he said. “Who could’ve done this to her?”

  It was cruel to make him stand here staring at his dead and disfigured wife for so long, but he was our most likely suspect. Most forensic profilers say that when a victim’s face has been beaten, their killer was someone close to them—or at least knew them. Most closers, cops who specialized in getting confessions from suspects say that having something of the victim’s in the room breaks the killer down.

  “What’s she doing in here, Joe?” I asked. “Just tell us. We’ll understand. I’ve been divorced. I know how hard it is to be married
, how cruel beautiful women can be.”

  “She wasn’t difficult,” he said. “She was just a little lost, but she was trying to get better, seeing a counselor, trying to break things off with her boyfriends. I always thought we’d wind up together.”

  Just a few minutes before, he had indicated there was no chance of reconciliation.

  “How did it happen?” I asked. “It was obviously an accident. You didn’t mean to kill her. Everyone’ll understand. This kind of thing happens all the time.”

  “You think I—I didn’t kill her,” he said. “I swear on my daughter’s life. I’ll take a lie detector test—whatever you want, but I didn’t kill her.” He looked up from the body, turning toward the rec yard gate. “I’ve got to go be with Kayla. She doesn’t know, does she?”

  “She’s fine,” I said. “She doesn’t know.”

  “I’ve got to be with her,” he said.

  “You can in just a little while,” I said.

  He shook his head. “No,” he said. “Now.”

  “Just help us understand how your wife got in here,” I said, “and what happened to her.”

  “I didn’t do this,” he said. “There’s nothing I can tell you. I swear to God on my daughter’s life. I wouldn’t say that if I had done this. I love Kayla more than anything in this world. I’m going to be with her. If you want to arrest me, then arrest me and get me a lawyer. If not, let me go check on my girl. I know my rights.”

  “Don’t you want to help us figure out who did this to your wife?” Stone asked.

  “Of course I do,” he said, “but I’m not stupid. I know you think it’s me. Hell, I’ve watched enough cop shows to know. Husband’s always the number one suspect.”

  “Because he’s usually the one who did it,” Stone said.

  “Well, not this time,” he insisted. “I told you—give me a lie detector test.”

  “Tell you what,” I said. “Just give us your clothes and the names of the men your wife was seeing and you can go be with your daughter.”

  Stone looked over at me, eyebrows raised, frown deepened.

  “More like boys,” he said. “Some of them half her age.”

  “Any of them work here at the prison?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “Probably, but I’m not sure. I wasn’t her pimp. I didn’t keep up with who she was sleeping with, but according to some busybodies it was half the town.”

  “We need names,” I said.

  “I don’t have any,” he said, but I knew he was lying. He had heard the same small-town gossip we all had. “You might want to talk to Brother and Sister Clark. She was going to them for help.”

  Roy Clark was the pastor of Eastside Baptist Church in Pottersville. He and his wife Gwendoline lived in the parsonage next to the church out on River Road.

  Stone and I were heading toward it in his state-issued warden’s car. He was driving.

  FDLE had arrived and was processing the crime scene, the D dorm wicker, and Joe Wynn’s uniform.

  “Pete should be here, not me,” I said.

  “The inspector’s happy to be dealing with FDLE,” he said. “He knows he’s not very good at this, and he doesn’t seem to mind you helping. But even if he did, it doesn’t matter. We can’t worry about protocol or hurt feelings. We’ve just got to find out how a civilian got into our institution and got killed.”

  I nodded, and we rode along in silence for a while.

  “You think he did it?” Stone asked.

  I shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “Do you have a feeling either way?”

  I shook my head. “Not really.”

  “What if he runs?”

  “We’ll know he did it,” I said.

  “But—”

  “Pull in the co-op up here and I’ll get Dad to put someone on him.”

  Forgotten Coast Electrical Cooperative consisted of a large redbrick office building in front and an acre filled with light poles, transformers, cable, trucks, a warehouse, and utility sheds in back— all surrounded by a tall chainlink fence.

  Dad was on the side near the large gates where the vandals had broken in. Stone stayed in the car while I got out to talk to him. The two men, each king of his respective kingdom, had often been at odds over the role of the sheriff ’s department in criminal investigations inside the prison. They didn’t care for each other, and didn’t seem to care much that I was often the one caught in the middle of their conflict.

  “Your warden doesn’t want to get out and talk shop a while?”

  “What’s going on here?” I asked, attempting to change the subject.

  “What happened to the good ol’ days when kids’ idea of joy-riding was taking their parents’ car around the block?” Dad said.

  I didn’t say anything.

  “They used bolt cutters they stole from Linton’s to get in here and Whitehurst Timber Company,” he said. “Drove some of the trucks around and defaced them with spray-painted stick figures and misspelled obscenities. Why they broke in up here instead of around on the other side, I’ll never know.”

  The large, double front gates were well-lit and right off the main highway, but the small, single gate on the side was dark and hidden.

  “Nothing scarier than a brilliant mind bent on crime,” I said.

  He smiled.

  “Get this,” he said, “they wiped everything down, but left the Potter Elementary School gym shirt they used.”

  “Just make sure they have to take art and spelling at boot camp.”

  “Whatta you got?” he asked. “Why you slumming with the warden?”

  I told him.

  “You think Wynn’s gonna run?” he asked.

  I shrugged. “Can you put someone on him without him knowing?”

  He nodded. “I’ll call you if he runs.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “Sure,” he said, “just tell the warden he owes me.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “I’ll be sure to do that.”

  I got back in the car, and we continued toward the Clarks’.

  “What’d he say?” Stone asked.

  “That since it was you, he’d do it,” I said.

  His perpetual frowned deepened again.

  “He’ll call us if Joe runs,” I said.

  “You think they can handle it?” he asked. “Looked like that vandalism was taxing them.”

  “Dad’s a good sheriff,” I said, “and he’s got a decent department.”

  He didn’t comment, and we rode the rest of the way without speaking.

  Gwendoline Clark was a large woman with enormous breasts and a slightly masculine manner. She dressed in loose clothes meant to help conceal her bulk, but their formlessness gave her a shapeless appearance that had the opposite affect.

  “Hey, Warden, Chaplain,” she said when she opened the door. “Come on in.”

  She knew both of us from various prison events and the annual volunteer banquet.

  Ushering us into a livingroom and offering us coffee, Gwen acted as if she were genuinely glad we had dropped in unannounced. This gift of hospitality made her popular among her husband’s parishioners, who felt their preacher and his family were as much theirs as the home they lived in.

  It’s how most congregations feel, and one of the reasons I wasn’t suited for pastoral ministry and why Susan had chafed at being a pastor’s wife when we were together in Atlanta and serving a large church.

  Of course, I was fairly certain the Clarks were happy to have the little parsonage. The church paid Roy so little that even without a mortgage, Gwen had to clean businesses in town at night to keep them just slightly north of the poverty line.

  “Roy’s over at the church,” she said. “Let me give him a call. He can be right over.”

  “Thank you,” Stone said.

  She called Roy, then poured coffee for all of us, bringing it into the living room on a coffee-and-cream-ringed serving tray.

  “Ma’am, we’re here to talk to you and y
our husband about Melanie Wynn,” Stone said when she sat down across from us in a faded recliner that bore the indentation of her generous backside.