“You figured out who strung him up yet?” he asked.
Though attempting to sound like his normal playful self, he wasn’t quite pulling it off. I could hear it in his words and the tension in his voice.
“You okay?” I asked.
“Don’t take a clerical detective to deduce I’m not, do it?”
“Well don’t make me try to figure out what it is,” I said. “Just tell me. What is it?”
He looked down the compound, gazing into the distance, his jaw muscles flexing beneath his dark skin. As I watched him, I realized that I had come to see him as invincible—both physically and emotionally impenetrable, and it was only on a rare occasion like this one that I was reminded otherwise.
“Everybody—including my mama—will tell you it was just a nightmare,” he said, “that I just dreamed the whole thing, that I was too young, just heard about one and it bothered me so bad that I couldn’t deal with it, but when I was little I saw a lynching.”
“Around here?”
“In the woods behind our house,” he said. “Well, really it was behind the church next door to our house. Preacher used to come from Marianna twice a month. I don’t know what he did, probably spoke to some white woman while he was getting gas or something, but they beat him unconscious, put a noose around his neck, pissed on him to wake him up, then yanked him up and let him swing.”
“How old were you?”
He shrugged. “Four or five. Maybe. Don’t know for sure.”
I shook my head. “I’m so sorry, man,” I said. “Why haven’t you ever said anything?”
“Wouldn’t’ve said anything now if I hadn’t been acting the damn fool.”
I waited, wanting him to say more, wanting to comfort or reassure him, but unsure how.
Seeming anxious to change the subject, he said, “What do you know about the river nigger?”
“Next to nothing,” I said. “No ID, no evidence, no autopsy yet.”
“Why hang him way down there? You think the escaped con did it? What’s his name?”
“Jensen,” I said. “Don’t know enough about him or why he ran yet. Can’t rule him out though.”
He nodded.
“Guess I better get on over to the south gate so I be ready if a riot break out,” he said.
“If you want, we can try to find out who killed the preacher you saw and where they put him,” I said. “What was his name?”
“Last thing I heard him called was nigger,” he said. “Just another dead nigger.”
Chapter Seventeen
I entered the enormous building that housed the inmate library and made my way through the dented metal shelves that held the worn paperbacks, their pages ripped and torn, their tattered covers half hanging off the bindings.
Inmates filled the comfortable, air-conditioned building the way they did the chapel on hot days like these, browsing the shelves for something they hadn’t read ten times, donning headphones and listening to audiobooks, meeting with one of the inmate law clerks in the law library along the back, but mostly just prolonging their stay in the cool, quiet environment. It was one of only a few oases in the hot, humid, noisy wasteland that was PCI.
When I first became a chaplain every prison library in the state had a qualified librarian. Now many of them were overseen by non-degreed officers with little or no training. Of the officers who regularly rotated through the library, many of whom approached it as a babysitting job, the very best was Sandy Hartman.
A reader himself, Sandy was knowledgeable and helpful, quick with a recommendation or a review. I found him in the librarian’s office reading a paperback without a cover.
He stood when I walked in and placed the book on the desk.
“They already read the cover off that one?” I asked.
He smiled, his face red from his time on the river the day before. “Actually this one came that way,” he said. “We have a bunch of them that do.”
“Really?”
“You keep a secret?” he asked. “When paperbacks don’t sell, the bookstores don’t ship them back like they do hardcovers. They strip the covers off and return them and throw away the actual books. I think the shipping costs more than the book is worth.”
I recalled seeing the warning in front of many mass market paperbacks about coverless books.
“When I told the manager of one of the bookstores in Panama City how small our budget was out here,” he continued, “she said she knew a way she could help, but if it got out she’d lose her job. I’ve been picking up her trash ever since.”
He waited but I didn’t say anything.
“I know it’s wrong,” he said, “but the thought of all these books being thrown away when they could do so much good here … It just bothered me.”
I nodded.
“They found Jensen yet?” he asked.
I shook my head.
“What about your plane?”
I shook my head again. “Thanks for your help searching for it,” I said. “Sorry to waste the team’s time.”
“You didn’t. Usually not finding anything is a good thing. Hopefully it didn’t go down.”
I nodded. “Must not have. Somebody would have seen or heard something or reported it missing by now.”
“Sorry for how the guys act,” he said.
“The SAR team? I’m used to it. Hell, one of ’em’s my brother.”
“He’s not too bad. Not compared to the others. Some of them … I really like to dive and I’m pretty good at it––and I want to help, you know, make a difference, but I just can’t deal with all their … bullshit anymore. I resigned yesterday. Anyway … I know you’re not here to talk about any of that. How can I help you?”
“I’m looking for a book of Salvador Dalì’s work.”
“I’ve got a couple. Right this way.”
He led me to a large wooden bookcase inmates had built just outside his office. It had oversized shelves and held large, heavy art, architecture, and photography books.
He found three Dalì books and pulled them from the shelves.
“You looking for something in particular?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I said, turning toward him. “A painting called—”
I broke off abruptly, unable to continue when I saw the small scar on his neck. Nearly an inch long, the scar tissue rose off the skin, red and wormlike, just beneath his jaw line.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Let’s go back in the office,” I said.
When we were inside I closed the door.
“The scar on your neck,” I said. “How recent is that?”
He shrugged, his whole demeanor changing, as if he were shrinking in on himself.
“You feel like talking about it?” I asked.
“How do you know about it?” he asked, his eyes moistening.
“I’m trying to find out who’s doing it,” I said.
He shook his head. “It’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to me in my entire life. By a long shot.”
“Where’d it happen?” I asked.
“In Medical. I was just going to get a snack out of the vending machine from the break room in the back. It was supper time and the sandwich I brought just wasn’t enough. He jumped me from behind. I never saw him.”
“No one was in the infirmary or the nurses’ station?”
“If they were they didn’t say or do anything,” he said, anger at the edge of his voice.
His breathing became more erratic and his chin quivered.
“He tackled me. Grabbed a handful of my hair and slammed my face onto the tile floor over and over again. Broke my nose, chipped my tooth—this one’s a crown,” he added, pointing to one of his front teeth. “He was so strong. Pinned me to the floor with his whole body, pressing down on me so hard I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t move. I tried. I tried so hard to get away, but I couldn’t. I was dazed, maybe even unconscious a moment.”
He paused, trying to regain control. I
waited, nodding in an attempt to be reassuring.
“He kept whispering,” he said, looking down at the ground. “The whole time. Just whispering. I could feel his hot breath on my ear. God, it drove me crazy. It was almost the worst part. That and what he made me do to myself.”
I reached out and put my hand on his shoulder. He jumped when he felt it, but recovered quickly, then put his hand on mine and patted it. It was something no man had ever done in all my years of comforting and counseling the broken and bereaved.
“Have you talked to anybody about it?” I asked.
He shook his head.
“Would you be willing to?”
He gave me a small shrug. “Who?”
“How about Ms. Lopez?”
“How about you?”
“Sure.”
“I was so scared,” he said. “I thought he was going to kill me. You think you’d rather die than have some sick prick butt fuck you on the floor—until you’re in the situation. Then all you can think about is surviving, doing whatever it takes to stay alive. I did just what he told me. He said if I did, not only would he let me live, but he wouldn’t rape me.”
I nodded, trying to reassure him and encourage him to continue.
Several inmates had stopped what they had been doing and were now staring at Sandy. They couldn’t hear what he was saying, but they could see how upset he was—something that excited the predators who were always looking for a vulnerability to exploit. I felt like we should move, continue this in a more private place, but didn’t want to interrupt his cathartic flow.
“He made me hold my hand behind me,” he said. “Took my index finger in his mouth in a very sexual way, then he told me to finger myself or he’d slit my throat and fuck me up the ass while I bled to death.”
He hesitated a moment, took in a deep breath and let it out slowly.
“I did it,” he said. “I did that to myself. I would’ve done anything. There are worse things I thought. Far worse. Better me than him, right?”
I nodded.
“He then took the shank away from my throat and gripped my larynx so hard I thought he was going to crush it and made me stick the butt of the shank up my … up into … my … self. And I did it. He said that’s all I had to do and he’d let me go, so I did it.”
I waited for a long moment but he seemed to be finished.
“I’m so sorry,” I said. “No one should ever have to endure anything like that. I’m so, so sorry.”
He nodded and gave me a tight-lipped half smile.
We were quiet a long time. I walked over and stood near the front of the office next to the glass and stared at the gawking inmates until one by one they returned to what they were doing before they saw blood in the water.
“You okay?” I asked when I turned back toward him.
He nodded and really seemed like he was.
“Feel like answering a couple of questions?”
He narrowed his eyes and nodded very deliberately. “If it’ll help you catch and castrate him.”
“You sure it was a shank?”
“Positive. It was homemade. I could feel it. It had tape on the handle and it was sharp underneath it. Even with the tape it cut me.”
I tried not to wince.
“You get a look at him? Any part of him? His hands? Arms? Anything?”
He shook his head. “He put some kind of hood over my head. I didn’t see anything. You think if I did he’d be breathing without a machine right now?”
I understood how he felt, but such sentiments coming from someone so soft spoken and gentle sounded hollow and kind of sad.
“Did he have a smell you can remember?” I asked. “A certain sound? Did he use poor grammar? Could you tell what race he was? How old?”
He closed his eyes, seeming to strain to put himself back into his nightmare.
“He had a fruity smell, sort of citrusy, like orange or lime-scented lotion,” he said. “And his breath smelled of coffee. I’ve always pictured him as a young white guy, but don’t know why.”
I nodded and neither of us said anything for a long while, just sat there in the psychic reverberations the recounting of such a traumatic experience had produced.
“I’m sorry I had to ask about it,” I said, “but the information will help us catch him.”
“You’re not going to tell anyone, are you?” he said, his voice pleading.
“No,” I said. “I’m not.”
A touch of relief seemed to relax him a little.
“This helped,” he said. “Can I come talk to you again sometime if I need to?”
“Of course. Anytime.”
He stood and handed me all three Dalì books. “Just take these. Keep ’em as long as you need.”
I stood and took the books. “Thanks,” I said. “I’ll bring them back soon.”
When I reached the door and was about to open it, he said, “Chaplain, you know all that stuff he made me do to myself?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“I did everything he told me to.”
I nodded.
“And when I had done every last thing he told me to he raped me anyway.”
Chapter Eighteen
I had the Dalí book on the desk in front of me, opened to the painting “Young Virgin Autosodomized by her Own Chastity” when DeLisa Lopez walked into my office.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“Salvador Dalí painting,” I said. “What the rapist is doing reminded me of it.”
She leaned over the desk to study the painting. I turned the book toward her so she could see it better.
In the Surrealist painting of subconscious shapes juxtaposed with recognizable ones, a young woman with wavy blond hair, naked except for sheer seamed stockings and 1950s-style black patent ballerina shoes, is leaning out of a window-like box, holding herself up by a dancer’s bar. Several horn-shaped objects are floating around, two of them merging with her butt cheeks, one directly behind her upturned rear end ready for penetration.
The caption on the page next to the painting quotes Dalí saying, “The horn of the rhinoceros, at one time the uniceros, is in reality the horn of the legendary unicorn, the symbol of chastity. A young virgin can rely on it, or play moral games with it, as well as she would have done in the days of courtly love.”
“Bizarre,” Lisa said. “But most of his stuff is, isn’t it?”
“I like Dalí,” I said.
“You do?”
I nodded.
She looked back down at the painting. “I can see why it made you think of our sicko.”
“If you’re going to use psychological jargon I won’t be able to keep up,” I said.
She smiled.
“So what does it mean?” she asked, nodding toward the image.
I shrugged. “I’m not sure exactly.”
She gave me a wide-eyed expression beneath arching brows as she sat down in the chair across from me.
“You just gonna sit and stare at the picture until it comes to you?” she asked.
“It would have already if you hadn’t interrupted me.”
She smiled again. “Sorry.”
“Since you’re here,” I said, “how about answering a few more questions.”
“It’d make me feel better about interrupting such important investigative work,” she said. “Did you talk to Dil?”
I nodded.
“And?”
“And I have some more questions for you,” I said.
“Sorry,” she said. “Shoot.”
“How many men would you say have confided in you about this?” I asked.
Her eyes narrowed and she looked up toward the ceiling. “I’m not sure exactly. Five maybe—but they’ve all told me there are others.”
“Why haven’t you reported it?” I asked, the surprise showing in my voice.
Like me, she was required by law to report all crimes or plans to commit crimes.
“Wasn’t sure I even believe
d the first couple,” she said. “They wouldn’t submit to a physical. I thought they might be lying—especially since it was the same story. Then the next couple made me swear I wouldn’t and their confidence in me is more important than me keeping my job. Besides, I told you and you’ll catch him.”
“And they all told pretty much the same story?”
She nodded.
“Did they all have a mark on their neck?”
She nodded again. “They call it the mark of the beast.”
“That would have been helpful to know,” I said.
“Sorry,” she said.
“After they did what he told them to,” I said, “to themselves, did he rape them anyway?”
She shook her head. “If he did they didn’t say so.”
“None of them?”
“None. I got the feeling the guy’s impotent.”
I thought about it.
“Why?” she asked.
“I talked to a victim who said he did everything the guy told him to and he still raped him.”
“Who talked to you?” she asked.
I frowned at her. “I can’t say.”
“Right,” she said. “Well, maybe he’s able to sometimes. And maybe some or all of the men I’m seeing are lying about that part of it.”
“Maybe,” I said. “Were your guys all attacked in the same place or various locations?”
She pursed her lips as she thought about it. “Different places.”
“The guy I talked to said it happened in the back hallway of Medical.”
“Well now, wait a minute,” she said.
“What?”
“Hold on,” she said. “I’m thinking.”
She narrowed her eyes in concentrated thought again, but looked down instead of up.
“They did all happen in or around or very close to the medical building,” she said. “One was the greenhouse, one was near Confinement—both of those are right behind Medical—two were in Classification—and that’s the other side of the same building. I think the other was in the infirmary.”
I nodded, thinking about what it meant.
“So it’s Medical, right?”
“It certainly sounds like the place to start,” I said. “What about the times it happened? Were they all at a similar time?”
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