JJ08 - Blood Money Read online

  “No way this doesn’t cost me my job,” Dad said. “No way.”

  Before either of us could respond, his phone rang. “Sheriff Jordan.”

  We waited while he took the call.

  Dad didn’t say anything, but based on his expressions and reactions, he was receiving some shocking news.

  “You’re not gonna believe this,” he said when he ended the call. “This night just keeps gettin’ better and better. The hearse from Kent Clark carrying the victim to the morgue was forced off the road and the body was stolen at gunpoint.”

  “Who the hell would steal a . . .” Jake said. “And why? The fuck they want with––”

  “The killer most likely,” I said. “Probably thought he left something incriminating behind.”

  “He probably did too,” Dad said. “Dammit. And now it’s gone.”

  “I’m sure there are other reasons too,” I said. “To conceal her identity . . . to . . .”

  “But why display her the way he did just to steal her back a little while later?”

  I thought about it. Nothing came to mind. “There had to be something––something he didn’t think of until later after he staged the body the way he did, something important, urgent enough to make him risk stealing it back, but I can’t think of what that would be.”

  “If we find him,” Dad said, “we can ask him.”

  Before we could respond or make a move toward finding the body thief, my phone vibrated in my pocket.

  I withdrew it to see that the prison was calling. “Chaplain Jordan,” I said.

  “Chaplain, it’s Nurse Stewart. We’ve had another suicide attempt. How soon can you get here?”

  “I’m on my way.”

  Chapter Seven

  The slackness in the rope pulled taut as the body dropped, his own weight tightening the noose around his neck.

  He kicked his feet, searching for purchase, flung his arms about, grabbing the air. Panic filled his wide eyes, and he flailed wildly as if falling from a great height.

  The short fall wasn’t long enough to snap his neck and crush his spinal cord.

  This wasn’t a hanging. It was death by strangulation.

  And it wouldn’t be quick.

  Thoughts sped through his mind in ever increasing rapidity, while everything around him moved in slow motion.

  Somebody screamed. Time passed.

  Nothing happened.

  A figure in white moved outside his cell like a series of still-frame photos being casually flipped through.

  The angel of death?

  Come to fly him away to heaven or fling him down to hell?

  He tried to inhale, but could not. The best he could do was small gasps of breath, none of which made it down to his lungs.

  The figure stopped at the door of the cell, unable to open it. Only a figure in brown would have a key.

  More footsteps clanged on the metal grate of the catwalk. Maybe they signaled the approach of someone who could unlock the door of this six-by-nine concrete-and-steel coffin.

  Maybe he’d survive this after all.

  But as the rope bit into his flesh and the ruby-red bruise necklace appeared around his neck, he feared they would not make it in time.

  Head pounding. Pressure building. Eyes bulging.

  A serpentine trickle of blood ran from his nose, slithered across his lips, and snaked down his chin.

  Can’t breathe. Can’t . . .

  More time passed. Time he didn’t have. It rushed past him like the final seconds in a midnight countdown on a death-chamber clock.

  This inhumane space he occupied was no longer just figuratively unbearable.

  Please, God. I don’t want to die. Not here. Not like this.

  More time.

  More passing. His passing.

  Where’re the keys? What’s taking so long?

  Light-headed. Sleepy.

  Sleep. Perchance to dream. Ay, there’s the rub. For in that sleep of death what dreams may come?

  Where had that come from? What class? Which teacher? Didn’t matter. Nothing did.

  Maybe they didn’t want to find the key fast enough.

  Maybe this was their idea of entertainment.

  Now he couldn’t breathe at all.

  The light in the cell began to dim, the figure in white beyond the door fading. As he lost consciousness, his head fell forward, his purplish face quickly becoming the color of his swollen, protruding tongue.

  Every thirteen minutes, someone in the United States commits suicide.

  Each year in this country there are over thirty-five thousand official suicides.

  Unofficially, many experts say the actual number could be three times that. Official suicide statistics are notoriously unreliable. Large numbers of suicides are never reported—often because of the lengths families will go to in order to hide the suicide of a loved one.

  Avoiding the social stigma or loss of life insurance benefits, many families hide suicide as if it were daddy’s empty booze bottles, mama’s pain pill addiction, or daughter’s eating disorder.

  Other suicides occur under such ambiguous circumstances that officials attribute them to accidents rather than the willful destruction of one’s own life.

  Actual suicides each year are more likely upwards of ninety-thousand—with attempts at eight to ten times that.

  Suicide accounts for more deaths each year than murder, and it ranks tenth among leading causes of death.

  Although women attempt suicide three times more often than men, men complete suicide three times more often than women.

  Suicide is self-murder. It’s different from any other death because those left behind cannot direct their anger at the unfairness of a random act or the brutality of a murderer. Instead, they grieve for the very person who has taken their loved one from them.

  Sometimes suicide makes a certain sense.

  Sometimes it’s the greatest mystery of all, more mysterious than death itself.

  And sometimes it isn’t suicide at all.

  Chapter Eight

  “I didn’t try to kill myself, Chaplain,” Lance Phillips said from within the Suicide Observation Status cell. “I’m not suicidal. My life’s never been better.”

  “Statements like that undercut your credibility,” I said.

  “It’s true.”

  “Do you know where you are?”

  He was in an empty isolation cell in the infirmary of Potter Correctional Institution, wearing nothing but a heavy canvas shroud over his pale, thin frame. The cell was located in the medical department inside the infirmary, and it was designed to house inmates who represented a threat to themselves or others—everything from infectious disease to suicide.

  “Nothing the state of Florida can come up with compares to the prison of addiction,” he said.

  I was seated in an uncomfortable and wobbly folding chair outside the cell, a solid metal door with two large panels of steel-reinforced glass windows separated by a food tray slot between us. We communicated through the open food slot, which we would have done even if he had been isolated because of an infectious disease. The cell was equipped with a negative air flow system.

  “The nurse said you tried to hang yourself.”

  Lance Phillips’s height didn’t match his weight. He was probably three inches or so over six feet, but weighed around a hundred and thirty pounds, and his hands and feet were small and feminine. His skin was pale and so were his too-small blue eyes.

  “Well, I didn’t.”

  I glanced down at the large white bandage around his neck and he followed my gaze. He reached up and touched his throat with his small hand and caressed the bandage gently.

  “I know you think I’m crazy, but don’t you see?

  That’s the beauty of it.”

  “Of what?”

  “Killing someone and making it look like suicide.

  Someone like me. An inmate? Especially since . . .”

  “Since what?”
/>   “Since . . . I’ve attempted suicide before.” I nodded.

  He was right. If someone were trying to murder him, it’d be the perfect cover. And if someone were really trying to disguise a homicide as a suicide—especially in a locked confinement cell, then that someone was a creative and cunning killer.

  “See,” he said, “you don’t believe me.”

  “I don’t disbelieve you,” I said. “I’m just listening, taking everything in.”

  The tension left his face for the first time, and he pushed his light brown hair up off his forehead. “I need your help. No one else in here gives a damn—that’s another reason this guy’s never been caught.”

  “You’re saying you’re not the first. We’ve had murders made to look like suicides?”

  He nodded.

  “Who’s doing it?”

  “Don’t know. Wish to God I did. I’d . . .”

  “Who tried to kill you? Start there.”

  “I have no idea. I can’t remember much. I went to bed. Woke up strangling with a noose around my neck.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Look, either you’ll look into it or you won’t. And if you do you’ll either find out someone’s trying to kill me or I’m delusional as well as suicidal. You might even discover other murders disguised as suicides.”

  I thought about it.

  “Ask the psych specialist about me. She’ll tell you.

  I’m not like the other guys in here.”

  “Oh yeah?” I said, waiting for yet another insistence of innocence.

  “I’m actually guilty. I had a severe drug and alcohol addiction. But I’ve been clean for over four years. I work my program hard. I get out soon. I’ve got a great job lined up. Family and friends waiting on me. I have absolutely no reason to kill myself.”

  “But you think someone does?” I asked. “Must.”

  His young, unwrinkled face filled with worry lines as he frowned deeply.

  “Any idea who?”

  “None.

  “Or why?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Having problems with anyone?”

  “Nothing major,” he said. “Just the normal bullshit.” I nodded.

  “Why don’t you believe me?” he said. “Why’re you so hesitant to help me? I thought you were different. I thought you––wait. There was a . . . in my . . . What if I can prove someone was trying to kill me?”

  “Can you?”

  “I just might,” he said. “I think the killer may’ve left a calling card.”

  Chapter Nine

  “It’s gotta still be in my property,” he said. “Go get it and I’ll show you.”

  “Go get what?”

  “My property.”

  Everything an inmate owned or was issued, such as uniforms and boots, was known as his property—and it was how everyone inside, both staff and inmates, referred to it. We even had a property room and a property sergeant.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Whoever tried to kill me slipped somethin’ in my pocket,” he said. “I’m sure it’s still with my property now. Officers probably just thought it was mine.”

  “Thought what was?”

  “I felt it in my pocket but I can’t be sure what it was.”

  I walked over to Confinement and searched through Lance’s property.

  It took a while—not because he had so much. He didn’t. But I was thorough, carefully going over every inch of everything he owned.

  I wouldn’t call my search a complete waste of time, because now I knew, but it yielded nothing helpful. There was nothing unusual or suspicious in the modest possessions the state of Florida allowed Lance to call his.

  I walked back over to Medical angry and frustrated—and only partly at Phillips. I should’ve known better.

  I was past the infirmary and nearly back to the SOS cell when I realized Lance had only one uniform. It didn’t stand out because nearly all searches of inmate property involve only one uniform—the inmate was usually wearing the other. But all Lance had on at the moment was a canvas shroud—the only thing permitted in the SOS cell. So where was his other uniform? It was a good question.

  Worth asking.

  “Where’s Phillips’s uniform?” I asked the small woman at the nurses’ station. “The one he was wearing when he came in.”

  She shrugged without saying anything, which made her seem even younger.

  She was a little less than five feet, so petite she probably did most of her shopping in the children’s department, and I was sure her nurse uniform had to be special ordered—that or she sewed it herself.

  “You have no idea?”

  “Wait,” she said, holding up her tiny hand. “Give me a minute.”

  “Take two,” I said. “It’s important.”

  “We bagged it up, but I don’t think it’s been sent anywhere yet. Let’s see . . . Check the back counter of the infirmary.”

  I did.

  As I walked back to the nurses’ station, my impatience ballooning, I tried to breathe up some zen. “It wasn’t there?” she asked.

  “Amazingly, no. Any other ideas?”

  “Wonder if this is it?”

  Without standing up, without much movement at all, she reached over and grabbed a clear plastic bag with an inmate uniform in it.

  I took the bag and began to empty its contents.

  The tag sewn onto the shirt had Lance’s full name and DC number on it. I looked through it, returned it, and withdrew his pants. A single playing card fell out and fluttered to the floor.

  Returning the inmate blues to the bag, I handed it to the helpful nurse, and bent to retrieve the card.

  It was from the Florida cold cases deck, a king of hearts—sponsoring agency seals on the back and information about Miguel Morales on the face.

  “What do you know about Miguel Morales?” I asked.

  I had just returned to the SOS cell from examining Lance’s property and was sitting in the rickety old folding chair again.

  He looked genuinely perplexed, his pale forehead making waves like a child’s depiction of water. “Who? Did you find—”

  “Morales,” I said. “Miguel Morales.”

  “Never heard the name before. Who is he?”

  “You don’t know?”

  He shook his head. “He who tried to kill me?”

  “A missing person. Hispanic male. Last seen in Sarasota three years ago.”

  “What’s that got to do with—”

  “I’ll be in touch,” I said.

  “What was in my pocket?” I stood.

  “You gonna look into this for me? I get out soon. I’ve worked real hard to be ready. I just want my second chance. I’ve almost made it. Don’t let them kill me. Not when I’m so close. Please.”

  Chapter Ten

  Suicide is an epidemic in prison.

  And though it has been on a sharp decrease since the 1980s, it still accounts for more deaths in prison than murder, accidents, and drug and alcohol overdose combined.

  In state and federal facilities, suicide accounts for about 6 percent of all deaths. In county jails it’s much higher.

  Because inmates don’t have easy access to drugs or weapons, they often employ methods that are as creative as they are torturous. The three most common types are strangulation, poisoning, and self-inflicted wounds. Strangulation is the easiest, poisoning the most difficult, self-inflicted wounds the most brutal. With asphyxiation you drift off to sleep. With poisoning, toxic cleaning chemicals damage your kidneys beyond repair. But with self-inflicted wounds, you cut and rip and tear and gash your own skin with makeshift blades and sharp objects and wait to bleed out.

  But maybe Lance Phillips didn’t try to kill himself.

  Maybe there had been fewer suicides at PCI than we thought.

  I looked at the cold-case king of hearts again.

  One card didn’t make for a good hand—no hand at all, in fact—but I was willing to bet on homicide
over suicide, and I was counting on the property sergeant to reward my wager.

  “Ever see one of these—” I began. “Of course.”

  I was holding up the cold-case king of hearts. “In the property of an inmate who supposedly committed suicide?”

  “Oh.”

  The heavy makeup on Sergeant Carrie Helms’s fifty-eight-year-old face emphasized rather than de-emphasized the laugh lines and wrinkles, but she had a youthful bearing, and her bright blue eyes still sparkled mischievously beneath her short gray hair.

  She took the card and examined it.

  Cold-case playing cards are created and distributed by several statewide law enforcement agencies, including the DOC, FDLE, sheriffs’ and police chiefs’ associations, and crime stoppers. Each deck features information about fifty-two unsolved homicides or missing person cases, with the crime stoppers toll-free tip line and the cold-case team web address. The decks are doled out to inmates in hopes they’ll come forward with information that’ll help solve the very, very cold cases.

  Thinking about the cold-case cards triggered something inside me, and I thought I recalled seeing a deck mixed in among the other playing cards on the poker table in the farmhouse at Potter Farm this morning.

  “Supposedly?” she repeated. “Seen any of these?”

  “I’m sure I have,” she said. “These decks are all over the place.”

  “Not a deck,” I said. “A single card.”

  Her eyebrows shot up, smoothing out the skin of her wrinkled forehead. “Hmm,” she said, eyeing me with a conspiratorial expression. “I’d have to check. What’s this about?”

  “It was with Lance Phillips’s property,” I said. “Not the deck. Just the single card. He says whoever tried to kill him and make it look like suicide slipped it in his pocket.”

  She looked at the card again, reading the information about Miguel Morales who went missing in Sarasota three years ago.

  “I’ll only have the property of recent suicides,” she said. “Older ones will already be gone.”

  “Do you mind checking?”

  “It’ll take a while. Probably tomorrow morning at the earliest. You think Phillips had something to do with Morales disappearing?”