Power in the Blood jj-2 Read online

  The superintendent said, “Why on earth would that matter?”

  “Because,” I said, “medical personnel would probably use a syringe, an officer might put it in food, and an inmate might give it to him in pill form as if it were some other kind of drug.”

  “I see,” Mr. Stone said. “Interesting. Well, Inspector, how was it administered?”

  Daniels’s face registered his obvious embarrassment. “He was unable to say conclusively. We should know shortly.” After this, Daniels, acting nonchalantly, made a few notes to himself on his legal pad. I was able to see that one of them read, “Ask ME dickhead’s question.” I assumed he was referring to me.

  “What else do you have?” the superintendent asked.

  “He had an abnormal amount of lacerations, even for an inmate. A few abrasions that were not related to his death.”

  Outside, a rather large female officer passed by the window. It looked like walking was difficult for her. She moved like she was on another planet with three times the gravity of Earth. I wondered how she would fair during a riot.

  “Where did the fatal blow strike him?” Stone asked.

  “Bottom part of his heart. The rod got stuck in his rib cage. Shutt broke several of them trying to get it free.” Daniels hesitated a minute for effect and then added, “But that’s not what killed him.”

  “What?” Stone asked.

  “ME says that the rod scraped the bottom of the heart, but really didn’t pierce it. The loss of blood would have killed him eventually. He lost a shitload of it in a hurry, but it still takes a while.”

  “What are you saying?” I asked, sick of the suspense.

  “I’m saying that he didn’t die immediately,” Daniels said.

  I thought about those lifeless black eyes and wondered if they were really lifeless or just drugged.

  “He died as the result of a blow to the throat that dislocated his windpipe,” Daniels said.

  I thought about falling on top of Johnson and wondered if I had landed on his neck. I tried to remember, but I couldn’t. Had I killed him? Did Shutt use me as a weapon like the rod?

  “Could the officer have done that or even known what he was doing?” Mr. Stone asked.

  “Maybe. I don’t know. Your prime witness is sitting right across from you. Why don’t you ask him?” Daniels said, tilting his head in my direction.

  “I’ll get to him in a minute,” Stone said with a quick glance in my direction. “What else can you tell us?”

  “He was a drug user. There were traces of crack and alcohol in his blood.”

  “Crack?” Stone said in shock. “I know we have the occasional marijuana smuggled in here, but crack-that is not possible.”

  Dust was visible in the sunlight shining in through the window. Specks danced around in the single shaft of light like performers in a spotlight. Amazingly enough, the dust seemed to avoid Edward Stone’s shoes.

  “Could his death be drug-related?” I asked, thinking that I should say something just to let them know I still could.

  “That’s an obvious possibility that we must consider,” Daniels said to Stone, as if he were the one who had asked the question. “As you say, it’s difficult to get drugs on the compound, crack especially.”

  “Aren’t drug screenings done periodically?” I asked.

  “Yes, they are. And to answer your next question, he was tested as recently as a week ago, and it was negative. Besides, he was in confinement most of the time, which makes it virtually impossible to get drugs -or anything else, for that matter.”

  As Daniels wiped his forehead again, the small piece of lint that was on his left eyebrow fell down and landed on the end of an eyelash, bobbing up and down as he blinked. It was very distracting. I found myself looking at it more than anything else in the room.

  “That’s not what I’ve heard,” I said.

  “Oh really, and just what have you heard?” Mr. Stone asked.

  “I’ve heard that some very strange things go on during the first shift around here,” I said, then added, “especially in confinement.”

  Daniels started to speak, but Mr. Stone lifted his hand and when he does that, as easily as a cop stops traffic, people stop talking. “I’ll get to you in a minute,” Mr. Stone said to me. Then looking back at Daniels, “Okay, drugs, what else?”

  “He was a faggot. He had AIDS. Of course you already knew that. There were traces of dried semen around the anal region. It is being processed at FDLE. Maybe we’ll get lucky and get something from it. Who knows?”

  “Pardon my ignorance, but who has unprotected sex with an inmate who has AIDS?” I said.

  “There are other inmates who have AIDS so they have nothing to lose, inmates who do not know because the other inmate has kept it secret, and then there are plenty of inmates who do not have unprotected sex.”

  “There are condoms on the compound?” I asked.

  “No, of course not,” Daniels sighed with impatience. “But many of the inmates use the latex gloves they wear when working in medical, food services, or caustic cleaning-and that’s with no lubrication.”

  “Ouch,” I said, giving Daniels the response he was looking for. He smiled.

  “Sounds like your FDLE crime lab is working overtime,” Mr. Stone said.

  “They’re good. Very good. Probably the best state lab in the country,” Daniels said proudly, not realizing that Stone seemed to be saying that the lab was working hard but Daniels was not.

  “How about you, Chaplain?” Stone asked. “Have you discovered anything useful?”

  “I have more,” Daniels said, playing it for all it was worth.

  “Let’s have it.”

  “The lab also found some unusual trace evidence-a PRIDE chemical, on his blues. It may very well give us an idea of where he was before he wound up in the trash heap. Which in turn may give us insight into who was responsible for him winding up in the trash heap.”

  “Thank you, Inspector. Now what did you learn around here today? All of this information seems to have come from the lab.”

  Daniels stopped smiling. “As I said earlier, your staff was not cooperative. Perhaps if you spoke to them.”

  “Perhaps I will. Chaplain, did you make any inquiries today?”

  “A few rather discrete ones.”

  “Discrete?” he asked in shock. “That little fiasco in confinement wasn’t very discrete.”

  “No, sir, it didn’t turn out that way, but it was intended to be discrete.”

  “The road that leads to the opposite of where your boss lives is paved with good intentions. Well, no matter. But, did you meet with resistance from the staff?”

  “No, sir, I can’t say that I did, but I only interviewed a few of them. I just tried not to do it like an interview.”

  “What about you being our prime witness? Can you tell us anything else about the actual stabbing yesterday?”

  “I really don’t think that I can add anything to what I’ve already said. In fact, the further I get away from it, the more difficulty I’m having remembering it.”

  “Should Shutt be looked into?” he asked.

  “Yes, sir. To eliminate him as a suspect if nothing else.”

  “Okay,” he said, and then he looked at Daniels again. “Have you ever heard the old saying, ‘You can catch more flies with honey than vinegar’?”

  “Sure, I’ve heard it,” he said.

  “Well, the chaplain here is your honey. He is well liked and respected, and he knows at least half of the staff pretty well. So, you are to work with him and not without him or you are not to work in this institution at all. Understand?”

  “Yeah, I understand,” Daniels said in a tone that said, I’m not an idiot.

  “Understand, Chaplain?” Stone said to me.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good. Now both of you get out of here. And go find out what’s going on in my institution.”

  Chapter 11

  Nights were the worst. The t
in man alone in his tin house. Loneliness, fear, isolation, and guilt tormented me mercilessly. I couldn’t sleep. When I first got married, I found it rather difficult to sleep with another person in the bed. Every time she tossed, I turned. Every time she turned, I tossed. And the sounds that she made-the breathing, the little grunts and moans-I would lie awake in the dark listening to them. And then I got used to it-needed it, in fact.

  After the divorce, I had many nights in which I would lie awake in the dark listening to the silence, trying to readjust to sleeping alone. I tossed and turned in the huge bed. Susan and I shared a king size, which dwarfed the double bed I did not sleep in now. Every move I made rumbled like a voice in a deep well; my movements were exaggerated and echoed in the absence of someone to absorb them.

  At night, too, the demons came. I faced my greatest fears: those of meaninglessness-no hope, no future, no God, no purpose. Self-doubt and accusation rumbled in my head like thunder in a canyon. Also, the desire to drink was overwhelming. Alcohol offered a baptism into its depths that would cause the fears, demons, and, most of all, the loneliness to drown. I wanted to drown beneath the golden ripples of its surface and never come up for air. I didn’t, but I don’t know how I didn’t. This, more than anything else in recent memory, convinced me of the existence of God. Alone, I could not stay clean and sober. And I was completely, utterly alone.

  Earlier that night, I had gone to an AA meeting. I drove into the next county to attend it to ensure my anonymity. It helped, but not enough. I returned home and, in the absence of the prospect of sex with anyone other than myself, went jogging. Actually, much of the time I ran. I ran away from the case, the bottle, the loneliness that eventually chased me down and overtook me, no matter how fast or how far I ran. As I did, I thought about Bambi. She wasn’t the answerI knew that-but it doesn’t mean that she couldn’t be part of the answer. I came home, showered, changed, ate, and watched It’s A Wonderful Life on cable-none of which occupied enough time. I then scratched out some notes on a legal pad, which I had recently heard was no longer used by the legal profession. I thought of everything I knew about the case and then wrote it down. It didn’t take long.

  After doing all of these things, it was only ten after ten. So I read, prayed, and ironed my clothes for the following day. At midnight, I turned the lights off. That’s when the ugly neon lights inside my head came on. I looked at the clock: it was twenty after twelve. I rolled over and tried to direct my thoughts in a single, more productive direction. The phone rang.

  Saved by the bell.

  “Hello,” I said, my voice sounding much sleepier than it was, probably because I hadn’t used it for several hours.

  “This the chaplain what work at the Potter Prison?” an elderly black woman’s voice asked. I could hear a loud television and a dog barking in the background.

  “Yes, ma’am, it is. John Jordan.”

  “This is Miss Jenkins. I’m Ike Johnson’s aunt.”

  “Yes ma’am. I’m so sorry about Ike.”

  “Thank you. We’re planning the funeral and wondered if you would do it.”

  I was stunned. I didn’t know what to say. I just continued to listen to the background noises. I picked out another one. It sounded like wind blowing into the phone, but it was intermittent. She must have had an oscillating fan.

  “We not really church peoples,” she continued. “And Ike’s grandma, Miss Winger, said you was the nicest white man she’d ever spoken to.”

  I had spoken to Grandma Winger earlier that morning to tell her that her grandson, the one she had raised like a son, had been killed. At the time, I thought he was killed while trying to escape. She refused to believe it. She said that they were coming to visit him this Saturday, and he knew it. According to her, he liked prison and had no desire to leave. He told her that it was the best he had ever lived. I believed that, and it made me mourn even more.

  “When are you planning on having the funeral?” I asked. I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  “Saturday, if you was able to make it.”

  I was silent. The light from my clock cast a green glow at a fifteen-degree angle on part of the bed, the back wall, and the ceiling.

  “Listen, Preacher, we know Ike was no good. We not asking you to say stuff that ain’t true.”

  “Good, because I couldn’t. And about Ike being no good, I’ve never met anybody that had no good in them.”

  “Well, he was close,” she said.

  “God loved him,” I said.

  She was silent. And then she said, “You really believe that? You just saying it?”

  “I really do. Sometimes it’s all that I do believe, but I never seem to be able to shake it. Probably because I need to believe it.”

  She didn’t know what to say to that. I had said too much again. I often found myself telling strangers what I needed to say, though what I needed to say was often very personal and painful and often made them feel uncomfortable. I went to confession wherever I could-wherever it was safe and anonymous.

  “Can you do it Saturday?” she asked, her voice sounding slightly desperate.

  “Yes, I can. I will.”

  “Thank you, Preacher.”

  “You’re welcome. Good night,” I said after she gave me the time and place of the funeral on Saturday in Tallahassee.

  I rolled over after hanging the phone on its cradle and stared up at the ceiling. It hadn’t changed. The wind outside caused the aluminum of the trailer to bend in and out, sounding like a whip cracking. I looked at the clock to watch the minute change. It seemed to take far longer than sixty seconds.

  I sat up and looked at myself in the mirror on my dresser against the wall across from the foot of my bed. It was dark, but enough light came in the window from the streetlight and in the door from the bathroom down the hall so that I could see myself in shadow. It looked artistic, like a low-lit black-and-white photograph. I lay back down and looked at the clock again. Everything I had just done took less than a minute. I decided to get up and work on my funeral sermon for Saturday. My thinking was that the challenge might exhaust me so I could fall asleep.

  Preparing the funeral sermon of a stranger killed under suspicious circumstances was challenging. I grew weary, but I still couldn’t sleep. At one point it got so bad, in fact, that I went into the den and watched nearly an hour of infomercials. I had to do something about this.

  On my way back to bed, I stopped by the bathroom-mainly for something to do. Looking in the mirror, I discovered that I looked as tired as I felt, which wasn’t good. As I turned to head back to bed, I noticed a small pile of clothes near the shower. It was about two day’s worth. I smiled as I thought of how Susan hated that. Having that thought gave me a strong urge to leave them there, which I only overcame because if I left them in reaction to her, she would still be controlling my life. I bent down, scooped them up, slinging one sock between my legs as I did. When I reached for it, I saw something that froze me in sheer terror.

  On the back of my left leg, there was a cut about two inches long.

  I dropped the clothes and bent down even farther to take a closer look. It wasn’t very deep, but it was deep enough-deep enough for AIDS-infected blood splattered on it to get into my bloodstream.

  My heart, racing up until this point, seemed to stop altogether. I grew faint and nearly fell over, but was able to catch myself on the towel rack. Suddenly, I had the urge to jump into the shower and scrub the cut.

  I did. In the shower, I inspected my body for other cuts and scratches. There were none. At one point, I stared at the violent scars on my upper body. It would be tragically ironic to survive a gunshot wound to the chest, a knife wound to the abdomen, and then die of a narrow two-inch long cut to the leg.

  For the rest of the night I asked myself one question over and over, When did I get the cut?

  Please, God, let it have been today.

  At two thirty I was lying on my side in bed with my eyes closed counting deer
, each looking like a female version of Bambi. I could feel my exhausted body giving in to the approaching sandman. My breathing became heavier and slower, and I was actually on my way to the land of dreams, or so I thought. As it turns out, I was headed to the land of nightmares-the waking kind.

  The nightmare began when I found the cut and continued when, for the second time that night, my phone rang.

  “Hello,” I said after fumbling around with the receiver for a few seconds. I sounded sleepy again. This time I was.

  “John John,” the voice said.

  My heart started racing and I could feel the first of what I knew would be many waves of nausea coming over me. I wanted desperately to hang up the phone, but it was too late for that now. A new rule: From this point forward, I would not answer the phone after midnight.

  “John John,” the voice said again. That voice was slightly slurred, slightly desperate, and very scared.

  It’s amazing what can trigger a memory: a single smell, a song, or a voice. And this voice, above all others, triggered memories that I would pay to have surgically removed. It was the voice that haunted me at night.

  The voice was the voice I heard within the sound of my own when I had been drinking. It was the voice of my mother, and she only called me John John when she was drunk. I hated her. I hated her for who she was, but I hated her even more for who I was. The fact that she had called at nearly three in the morning meant that she was in a detox center and wanted me to come and get her out. I didn’t know which detox center because I didn’t know which city she was in these days, but she had been in them all. When she and Dad had divorced, I had actually believed that she was out of my life, but like a recurring nightmare, she always forced herself back in and always at night.

  “John John, answer me. Are you there?” she asked like a little girl lost in the woods at night.

  “I’m here,” I said, and that was the truth. I was here, and she was there, and that was the way it was going to stay.

  “John John,” she slurred again, “they got me locked up again. I’m dying. You got to come and see me.”

  “Mom, you’re not dying; it just feels like that. You’re just having withdrawals. Remember? How could you forget? You’ve done this many, many times. They’ll pass eventually.”