The Body and the Blood Read online

  The Body and the Blood

  a John Jordan novel by

  Michael Lister

  Books by Michael Lister

  Power in the Blood

  Blood of the Lamb

  Flesh and Blood

  North Florida Noir

  Double Exposure

  Thunder Beach

  Florida Heat Wave

  The Body and the Blood

  The Big Goodbye

  Blood Sacrifice

  Burnt Offerings

  Separation Anxiety

  The Meaning of Life in Movies

  Finding the Way Again

  Living in the Hot Now

  The Body and the Blood

  a John Jordan novel by

  Michael Lister

  Pulpwood Press, Panama City, FL

  You buy a book. We plant a tree.

  Copyright © 2010 by Michael Lister

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Any similarities to people or places, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Inquiries should be addressed to:

  Pulpwood Press

  P.O. Box 35038

  Panama City, FL 32412

  The Body and the Blood by Michael Lister

  Book #4 in the John Jordan Mystery Series

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-888146-93-6

  For Micah and Meleah

  Thanks for the best childhood a dad could ever have! It’s a Wonderful Life.

  Table of Contents

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-one

  Chapter Forty-two

  Chapter Forty-three

  Chapter Forty-four

  Chapter Forty-five

  Chapter Forty-six

  Chapter Forty-seven

  Chapter Forty-eight

  Chapter Forty-nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-one

  Chapter Fifty-two

  Chapter Fifty-three

  Chapter Fifty-four

  Chapter Fifty-five

  Chapter Fifty-six

  About the Author

  Acknowledgements

  Thanks to all those who’ve believed in and supported me and John over the years, especially, Lynn Wallace, Bette Powell, Cricket Freeman, Margaret Coel, Lou Boxer, Kim Ludlam, Carolann Johns, Jamie Smith, Rich Henshaw, Terry Lewis, Dan Nolan, Dayton Lister, Phillip Weeks, Tim Whitehead, Bruce Benedict, Michael Connelly, Pam, Micah, Meleah, Mike, and Judi Lister.

  Chapter One

  “How much does prison change a man?”

  That one stopped me—I had just been thinking about how much PCI was changing me—and if the question hadn’t, the woman asking it would have.

  Unlike so many of the unsophisticated and impoverished family members who braved a visit to the big house, the attractive young woman exiting Potter Correctional Institution wore designer clothes, moved with the lissomeness of a runway model, and spoke like an anchor person.

  I had stopped at the gate before reentering the institution to stand in awe of the setting sun—a feeble attempt at stress relief and mindfulness—and had only glanced at her before turning my attention back to the western horizon.

  It was nearly dusk in mid-October, and the sinking sun backlighting the tall slash pines and cypress trees to the west resembled a child’s Halloween drawing—black craggy crayon trees on bright orange construction paper.

  “Immeasurably,” I said almost to myself.

  I was tired and wanted to be somewhere else—anywhere enjoying the spectacular sundown in silence, my only companion an ice-cold Cherry Coke or Dr. Pepper. It had been a long hard day already and I wouldn’t still be here if not for the possibility of preventing a murder.

  Potter Correctional Institution had the reputation for being one of Florida’s most brutal prisons. Officers at the north Florida Reception Center tell stories of inmates crying when they discover this particular hell is their destination.

  “Are you the chaplain?” she asked.

  The chaplain of hell, I thought, and it amused me in a slightly perverse way. Talk about downward mobility, the parish no one wants.

  The truth was, I had never felt more fulfilled, never been happier—though what that says about my life before I came to hell I’m not sure. The happiness came from getting to spend so much time with my best friends, Anna and Merrill, and the sense of fulfillment I felt at finally finding a job that gave me opportunities to minister and investigate, disparate vocations not normally brought together in a single position.

  “Yes. John Jordan,” I said, extending my hand.

  “Jordan. You related to the sheriff?”

  I nodded.

  Growing up in a law enforcement family, I worked as deputy in my dad’s department, and had nearly completed a degree in criminology before everything changed and I dropped out mid-semester and entered seminary. I put myself through school working as a cop with the Stone Mountain Police Department. When I graduated, I traded my gun and badge in for a Bible and a clerical collar. Periods of my life were spent as an investigator, others as a minister, but returning to the Panhandle and becoming a prison chaplain was the first time I had made an attempt at doing both simultaneously. Of course, attempt was the operative word. The two vocations were difficult to reconcile and I rarely got it just right—or even close to right.

  I really looked at the young woman for the first time.

  Though not short, she wasn’t as tall as her heels made her seem. She looked to be in her early to mid-thirties, her sun-streaked blond hair contrasting nicely the tops of her darkly tanned shoulders. Her head was tilted back and she was looking up at me with green cat-like eyes.

  “I’m Paula Menge,” she said with an impatient edge in her voice, and I could tell she was accustomed to the full attention of whoever was fortunate enough to be in her presence.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I was distracted by the sunset.”

  She slunk toward me with feline fluidity, and I realized that her eyes weren’t all that was cat-like about her. Her sleek, sinewy body looked to have the athleticism and agility required for pouncing. Feeling uncomfortable so close, and fearing she might curl her tail around my leg, I leaned back slightly and looked at the sunset again.
r />   She let her gaze follow mine and we both stood there in silence and watched as construction paper orange turned to flamingo pink before becoming pastel peach in the sunset-softened sky.

  “It is overwhelming,” she said, and something about the way she said it made me think her next line had she not left it unspoken would have been, But so am I—a sentiment with which most men and many women would agree.

  “You don’t really look like a chaplain,” she said. It sounded like a compliment.

  “Well, I don’t really try very hard,” I said.

  Her immediate frown was quickly replaced by a knowing smile and her eyes lit up intelligently.

  I took a deep breath and waited.

  Fall, what little there is in north Florida, comes late and leaves early, but over the past few days it had begun to arrive, and what I breathed in was far more than cool, crisp air. It was football games and pep rallies, a new school year and season premieres; burning leaves and bonfires, first love, freshman dances, and long kisses in heated cars on cold nights.

  “I just finished visiting my brother,” she said.

  My mind finally finished connecting the dots, and I realized who she was.

  “Justin Menge’s your brother?” I asked.

  She nodded. “You know him?”

  I nodded. “I’m surprised I haven’t seen the two of you together before,” I said. “I can really see the resemblance.”

  “He’s in protective management,” she said, “so I have to visit him alone at night, but to tell you the truth this is my first visit.”

  “Really?” I said. “He’s been here quite a while, hasn’t he?”

  She pursed and twisted her lips, then frowned. “It’s a long story.”

  “I’ll be seeing him in just a few minutes,” I said. “I was just headed down to the PM unit.”

  “You are?” she asked, her voice filling with hesitant hope. “Could you check on him for me?”

  “Didn’t you just see him?”

  “I know it’s the first time I’ve seen him in four years, but he’s so different, and I wondered if it’s just because of prison or if it’s something else. How much does it change them?”

  “It doesn’t just change them,” I said, “it changes us all. How much depends on the person. But no one is ever quite the same.”

  I thought about how hardened I’d become, how I had allowed the daily assault of this place on my senses to pull me back toward the darkness, toward the man I didn’t want to be again. At various times in my life, rage had taken the place of alcohol as my primary addiction, and if there were a better place than PCI to bring that about again, I wasn’t aware of it.

  “That’s a truly disturbing thought.”

  “I guess it is,” I said, “but more than change us, it brings out what’s inside us already.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve given this a lot of thought. It’s as if prison’s a cauldron that brings the impurities of our souls to the surface.”

  She smiled. “You may not look like a chaplain, but you sure sound like one.”

  Regardless of what I sounded like, or the title on my business card, I was just a man trying to be a better man, and though at some point I thought it would get easier, so far it hadn’t.

  Beyond the chain-link fence and razor wire, the institution was unusually still and quiet. The compound had the eerie feel of a small town whose inhabitants had all suddenly and mysteriously vanished. The evening meal completed, the inmates were in the dorms sitting on their bunks for the evening master roster count.

  Nestled on Florida’s forgotten coast between Panama City and Tallahassee, PCI is quickly becoming the largest prison in the state. It’s already nearly double the size of Pottersville, and rumors persist that eventually death row will be housed here.

  “He hasn’t just changed,” she said. “I’d’ve expected that. I mean he’s completely different. I wouldn’t’ve recognized him if we’d met on the street.”

  “How was he different? Physically? Did he talk differently? Was it his countenance? Was he harder?”

  “I can’t explain it, but I’m worried. Will you check on him?”

  Her questions came across as demands, and I sensed that her aloofness emanated from a sense of superiority more than insecurity. As sensual as she seemed, I suspected her sexuality was more about power than pleasure, that it, like everything she possessed, was always in the service of something else—something she probably wasn’t even ware of. Of course, I had known her all of ten minutes, and I had been wrong about women a time or two before.

  “Sure,” I said.

  “Just see if you notice anything strange about him.”

  As the day grew dimmer, the light coming through the tinted glass of the control room seemed to intensify, and I could see the sergeant and the officer scurrying around to clear count.

  “Four years is a lot of time,” I said.

  “I know, but I also know my brother. He’s very different—and, in addition to everything else, very scared.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Any idea why?”

  She shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t know. We ran out of time. Right now I just want you to check on him.”

  “Okay,” I said, “but maybe he was just nervous about seeing you.”

  “But you’ll check on him? You don’t think I’m crazy?”

  “Of course not.”

  I had received an anonymous note earlier in the day claiming that a murder would take place during the Catholic Mass in the PM unit later that night. It was why I was reentering the institution after having already put in a full day, and why I didn’t think she was crazy.

  We were silent for an awkward moment, neither of us knowing what else to say.

  Finally, we said goodbye and she began to walk away, but after just a few steps I called after her.

  “Four years is a long time,” I said again. “Why so long?”

  “I just couldn’t see him the way things were.”

  “What changed?”

  She gave me a tentative tight-lipped smile. “I found out he was innocent.”

  Chapter Two

  The death of the day was now complete, and as I made my solitary walk down the empty upper compound, the chapel, chow hall, and infirmary on either side of me were merely massive black shapes in the darkness. The cold wind whistling around the vacant buildings stung my eyes, and I shivered—though not from the wind alone—as if there were small slivers of ice embedded in my spine.

  Count had yet to clear, which meant the whereabouts of all the inmates was uncertain. It also meant an unseen predator, shank in hand, could be stalking me right now, waiting for the right moment to leap from the darkness and pounce on me, his unsuspecting prey.

  Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death . . . .

  There was no moon, just a smattering of faint stars distorted by the clouds that shrouded them—small shards of illumination like light refracted off broken glass set against the slate night sky.

  Fifty yards ahead a single flood lamp made a small pool of light in the sally port between the center gates that separated the upper and lower compounds, and I followed it like a guiding star. It was getting colder, and my earlier warm feelings about fall now seemed a season away.

  Was Justin Menge innocent? Or was that just a sister’s wishful thinking? The latter was far more likely, but something inside me wanted it to be the former.

  Beyond the center gate, through the slight fog that had set in, the street lamps scattered throughout the lower compound looked to be a distant port town seen from the dark waters offshore.

  I thought again about the ways in which I was changing, the extent to which the two sides of my convictions and calling—compassion and justice—were so often in conflict, out of balance. This happened most often when I was involved in a homicide investigation—I had yet to recover from a recent one involving a little girl named Nicole Caldwell—but it was always a strugg
le.

  The effort it took for me to put one foot in front of the other reminded me of just how tired I was. Then I realized, I’m not just tired. I’m weary—in every sense of the word—which is a dangerous state to be in, especially in a place like this. It made me far more vulnerable, susceptible—not just to the environment, but to my own weaknesses and failures of faith.

  Unbidden and unwelcome, thoughts of Paula Menge’s sexual potential invaded my mind—she was as elegant and enigmatic as any feline I had ever encountered. I tried to banish them, though not right away, and not very hard.

  People who don’t really know me are often surprised that a man of the cloth is as preoccupied with sex as I am. I tell them I’m a man first, I’m not a Puritan, and sexuality is a big part of spirituality.

  But I couldn’t entertain thoughts like those for long—not even out of mostly innocent, never-to-be-acted-on curiosity. I was a married man—sort of. My ex-wife had failed to file our divorce papers and after a year apart we were attempting reconciliation. It was going well. We were different people and it just might work this time. I was committed, trying to be as faithful in my heart as I was with my body, but interactions with women like Paula Menge certainly didn’t do much to help the cause.

  “Where the hell are you?”

  The voice jolted me from my thoughts.

  I looked up. In the small circle of light in between the center gates, I could make out the thick-bodied figure of Tom Daniels.

  Tom Daniels was the Inspector General of the Florida Department of Corrections, and I was almost as surprised to see him at our institution as I was to see him sober. Like me, he was a recovering alcoholic, but his recovery was still so recent that I hadn’t gotten used to it yet.

  “What?”

  In his late-fifties, Daniels was an inch or so taller than my six feet, which meant I always had to look up to meet his eyes. His brown hair had the slightest of waves in it—perhaps it was more wiry than wavy—and formed a widow’s peak at the top of his forehead. Though he was in remarkable shape for a man his age, he had gotten much thicker over the last few years. But he carried it well, and there was nothing about him that seemed soft.