The Body and the Blood (13 page)

Chapter Twenty-five

I loved to watch Anna work.

Actually, I loved watching her do anything, but seeing her work was something special.

Like everything she did, it consumed her. Her concentration was amazing, her focus complete. She was confident without being cocky, tenacious without being tyrannical, persistent without being pushy.

She was on the phone, the federal judge’s order allowing Sobel to go to Menge’s funeral on the desk in front of her. Trying to reach the judge who had issued the order, she was getting transferred from one end of Atlanta to another—and not liking it.

Refusing to relent, she continued to speak calmly, saying the same thing over and over to different people as if it were the first time she’d said it.

When I’d entered her office on this rainy Monday morning, she looked up and smiled, but quickly returned to the task at hand. Now, still consumed, she picked up the court order from her desk and tossed it to me.

I looked at it. It looked real to me, but I wouldn’t have known if it weren’t. Anna, soon to finish her law degree, said it looked legit to her.

Finally, after nearly an hour, she got through to the chambers of the judge who issued it. While she talked with an assistant, Tom Daniels walked in.

He looked tired and stressed, but still sober.

Anna hung up.

“We go away for a weekend and y’all can’t keep track of our prime suspect.”

“Don’t look at me,” she said. “I’m just a girl.”

Anna had always accused Daniels of being sexist, which he was, though seemingly less so these days. The recently sober Tom Daniels was far less racist, sexist, and homophobic. In fact, he was generally just less of an ass. It was probably less a result of a change of heart than the return of inhibitions, but whatever the cause I was in favor of it. Maybe fake it ‘til you make it could work for tolerance too.

“Fuckin’ feds,” he said.

Expecting his faux-tolerance to extend to feds was just too much to ask.

“‘Scuse my French,” he said to Anna.

“No,” she said, “I agree.”

“What’d you find out?” I asked.

She closed her eyes and shook her head. “It was issued on Friday by Judge Joe Paul in response to Sobel’s attorney’s petition.”

Daniels shook his head. “I’d like to know what the hell he was thinkin’.”

“Well, you never will. He died on Wednesday.”

“Two days
before
he issued the order?” I said.

“Yeah,” she said.

We each sank back into our seats in silence.

“How the hell do they explain that?” Daniels asked.

“I faxed a copy of it to Judge Paul’s secretary,” Anna said. “It didn’t come from there—before or after he died. It’s a forgery. A very good forgery, but forgery nonetheless.”

“That’d take some juice,” I said.

Anna nodded. “His secretary said it was almost good enough to fool her. And there’s something else. Chris Sobel doesn’t have a brother.”

I nodded.

“With what’s happened, doesn’t come as much of a surprise,” Daniels said. “Just who in the hell is this Chris Sobel?”

“I plan to find out,” Anna said.

“Any thoughts?” Daniels asked, looking over at me.

“None worth mentioning,” I said. “If she’s willing, I think we should let Anna continue to work Sobel’s past while we work the other aspects of the case.”

“Yeah,” he said, “just because he escaped doesn’t mean he killed Menge—he could just be scared.”

“Would you mind?” I asked Anna.

“You kidding? I’m gonna do it anyway. No reason for both of us to.”

“Thanks.”

Almost to himself, Daniels asked, “Why do it now when he was so close to getting out?”

“Well, either he killed Menge,” I said, “or he’s afraid of who did and he’s trying to get away from him.”

“Maybe he didn’t plan to escape at all,” Anna said.

Daniels looked puzzled.

I thought about it. “Someone could’ve gotten him out just so they could get to him,” I said, nodding. “That’s good. If it were just an escape, why go to the memorial service?”

“Exactly,” Anna said.

“Of course,” I said, “he could’ve loved Justin so much he was willing to risk it.”

Daniels said. “Are we sure he did?”

“So far I only have Paula Menge’s word for it,” I said. “But I felt like she was telling me the truth.”

“
Felt
?” he asked.

I nodded and smiled.

“His intuition is as good as mine is,” Anna said.

Daniels frowned.

“If Sobel’s out of the picture Paula gets everything,” Anna said.

“Oh,” Daniels said, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a small pad. “With all the excitement about Sobel, I forgot to tell you. We found a uniform with blood on it.”

Anna and I exchanged wide-eyed looks.

“Inmate or officer?” I asked.

“Officer,” he said.

Beyond the streaks of rain on Anna’s window, the rose bushes in the beds between classification and the center gate were rocked back and forth by the force of the wind, their leaves curling, their rain-soaked petals tearing off and littering the soggy ground beneath.

Because of the weather, the yard was closed, the inmates locked in the dorms. We had all the time in the world.

“Where?”

“In a garbage can in the parking lot of the institution. Blood’s same type as Menge’s.”

The effects of Daniels fully immersing himself in the case and maintaining his sobriety were obvious. His eyes were clear and bright, his clean-shaven face, taut and still tanned.

“Who found it?” I asked. “When?”

“Outside grounds crew officer named Melvin,” he said. “Friday afternoon.”

“And you didn’t mention it this weekend?”

“I promised Sarah I wouldn’t say a word about work. I’m too worried about her right now to risk—well, anyway, she means more to me than any goddam case.”

I realized the real reason he hadn’t retaliated against Martinez. He was too worried about her to risk getting caught. She was in no condition to lose him after having lost so much.

“So,” Anna said, “a CO uniform with Menge’s blood on it—does that mean Sobel didn’t escape because he did it?”

Daniels shrugged.

“It doesn’t make any sense,” I said.

“What?” he asked.

“Any of it. If an officer killed Menge, why leave the uniform here?”

“Keep blood out of his or her car.”

“Her?” Anna asked.

“Why not?” Daniels asked.

“Because there wasn’t one down there.”

“There was
one.
”

“She wasn’t wearing a uniform,” I said.

“She could’ve been when she was killing Justin. Put it over her clothes to keep the blood off. I don’t know; it feels like a woman to me.”

“
Feels
?”

“You’re rubbing off on me.”

“Thank God,” Anna said.

“I keep coming back to Paula Menge,” he said. “She was here. She could’ve done it. Maybe even worked with Sobel and is now double-crossin’ him. We know she benefits the most from her brother’s death.”

“She already has, but there’s no way she could get down to the PM unit from the visiting park. Besides, we were down there. Did you see her?”

“We didn’t see anybody do it, but somebody killed him. So the fact that we didn’t see her doesn’t mean she didn’t do it.”

“She was leaving the institution when I was coming back in,” I said.

“Doesn’t mean she did,” he said. “Besides, she could’ve just come in to slip her brother a drug or somethin’.”

“I’m not ruling her out,” I said. “She might even be behind it, but no way she could actually get down there to do it. It’d be next to impossible from the VP. It’s impossible from outside the front gate where I saw her when I was coming back in. No way a civilian got through the four gates and three doors required to kill Menge in PM.”

Daniels said, “Dorm
and
the quad doors were unlocked.”

“Still got two gates,” Anna said.

“Sure,” Daniels said, “but if she had a uniform on . . . . It was a very dark night.”

“Speaking of her drugging him,” I said, “was there anything in his stomach that might help us establish time of death?”

He shook his head. “He hadn’t eaten anything since lunch, so if she did drug him it went to work fast.”

“Too early for us to have tox tests back, isn’t it?” I asked.

He nodded. “They’ve finished the presumptive, but the confirmatory will be a while longer.”

When testing for drugs, toxins, or poisons, most labs follow a two-tier approach. They do initial screenings known as presumptive tests, which are faster, easier, and cheaper than those of the second tier. If the first tier tests are negative for a particular substance, further texts are unnecessary. If any of them are positive, indicating that a particular substance is possibly present, then confirmatory testing is done. The second tier testing is more accurate, but more expensive and time-consuming—and though a lot had happened, we were still less than five full days from the murder.

“So the screening showed something?” I asked.

“Guy was real vague. Used the word ‘possibly’ a lot. Doesn’t want to commit to anything until he’s finished, but yeah, my guess is they’ve found something. We should know for sure by the end of the week. Of course, I hope we’re finished with this thing before then.”

“If Justin was drugged it’d explain a lot.”

“Yes it would.”

We were quiet a moment, and the raindrops pelting the window seemed suddenly louder.

“You realize that whether it’s Michael Pitts or Paula Menge helping him,” he said, “we still keep coming back to Sobel.”

I nodded.

Anna’s phone rang, and we waited while she answered it. As she listened her eyes grew wide. When she hung up, she spoke very softly. “Maybe it wasn’t Sobel
or
Paula.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because,” she said, “they just found the shank they believe may be the murder weapon in Mike Hawkins’s cell.”

Chapter Twenty-six

“I’m bein’ set up,” Hawkins said. “Which means somebody’s fuckin’ with the wrong white man.”

I was locked in Mike Hawkins’s cell with him, but a short Asian correctional officer with wet-looking spiky black hair was just outside the door. Thinking I would get further with Hawkins alone, Daniels was having FDLE test the blood on the blade while I did the interview. Anna was waiting for me by the quad door.

“Excuse the language, preacher, but I’m mad as hell right now. I know it ain’t you, but you’re a part of this corrupt system, and that big black boy that killed the white officer is a good friend of yours.”

The weak light from the gray day filtering through the narrow pane of thick glass was inadequate to illuminate the cell and only added to its illusion of colorlessness. The only advantage to the cell being a pale gray haze was that the absence of light also de-emphasized its smallness.

“You think there’s a racial motivation behind your being set up?” I asked.

“He
is
the one who searched our cells.”

“Sergeant Monroe didn’t find the weapon. Another officer did.”

“I didn’t say he found it—how would that look? I’m saying he planted it. The views of my family and the good people of Pine County aren’t exactly a secret. Now, don’t get me wrong, we don’t go lookin’ for trouble, but if it comes our way, by God, we know how to deal with it.”

Mike Hawkins was maybe five inches shorter than my six feet, with a stocky build and a full face and neck. His inmate haircut was worse than most with nicks and gashes that revealed virgin white scalp. His eyes were big and dark, but not really a color I could define in the dim light. They were hard and slightly crazed.

“What’s the black population in Pine County?” I asked.

“Enough to cut the grass, clean the houses, and keep the jail full.”

I shook my head in disbelief. Unlike many of the things inmates said to me for shock value, he was expressing genuine sentiment. He was actually serious.

“My family and I never miss church,” he offered. “I’m a Bible-believing Christian. I do all I can to usher in the kingdom of God.”

He was smiling now, being both charismatic and charming. He didn’t look like the devil. Listening to him I was reminded of how many seemingly decent people were just as racist, though not as up-front about it. I recalled an incident from childhood and how sick it made me.

When I was in the third grade, my Cub Scout troop met at the Baptist Church. We had one African-American kid whose mom made him come, though he obviously didn’t enjoy it. I’m not sure any of us really did. At one of our meetings a kid fell into the aluminum covering of a return air duct and bent it. When two of us were sent to the parsonage to tell the preacher what had happened, his son, a kid just a few years older than us, answered the door. His first words were, “Did that nigger do somethin’?” I was so shocked I couldn’t speak.

I can’t understand racism. It’s hard for me to truly believe people like the Hawkins family exist—and I wouldn’t if I weren’t confronted by them on an almost daily basis.

“When the kingdom comes,” he continued, “it won’t be filled with a bunch of blacks and Jews.”

“You just left out nearly everyone in the Hebrew Bible and everyone in the New Testament, including Jesus, the most famous Jew who ever lived.”

“You oughta be careful how you talk about our lord and savior.”

I found myself amazed again that two people so different, so diametrically opposed as the two of us, could both consider ourselves in some sense Christian.

Mike Hawkins and the well-meaning, more subtle racists like him proclaimed in the name of Jesus everything that Jesus was against, and it nauseated me. But I was as likely to change his world view as he was mine, so I decided not to cast any pearls before this swine.

“If it wasn’t Sergeant Monroe, how do you think the weapon that killed Menge got into your cell?”

He thought about it for a moment. “You tell me. They moved us outta there as soon as it happened. I’ve been over here ever since. Anyone coulda put it in my stuff. Anyone of the officers, that is. All the PM convicts’ve been over here locked down twenty-four-seven.”

“Anyone in particular you think it might’ve been?”

“Well, if not Monroe, then Pitts. He hates my white ass too.”

“Why’s that?”

“Jealously.”

I was able to keep from laughing, but I couldn’t suppress the smile on my face.

He shook his head. “You’re a real disappointment. I expect more from a man who calls himself a minister.”

“More what? Racism, hatred, ignorance? What exactly?”

“I’d be careful I was you. My daddy not a man to mess with, and he has a lot of powerful friends in this great state.”

I was surprised. “You
like
Florida?”

“Until about Orlando,” he said.

“Menge was in here for sexually assaulting a member of your family,” I said.

He shrugged.

“What?”

“Got nothin’ to do with me. My fuck-up brother’s kids. I could give a damn. Him, his kids, or his whore dog wife. None of ‘em’re any good. Hell, I think he musta been adopted.”

“So you didn’t have a score to settle with Menge?”

“If he’d a killed the little rugrats, he’d’ve been doin’ our family a favor. Whatta I care he felt them up a little?”

I didn’t respond to his hollow bravado.

“Let me give you a little piece of advice. Stay out of this. Back off this whole thing. You seem like a pretty good guy. I’ve never heard of you doin’ anybody wrong. So, it’d be best just to get away from those messin’ with me, ‘cause, well, you know what the good book says: eye for eye, tooth for tooth.”

I nodded. “I figured you an ‘eye for an eye’ man.”

“Can’t argue with the book.”

“You
can
read it carefully. If not, you make it say whatever you want it to. What about turning the other cheek?”

The change in him was as severe as it was surprising. In an instant his charming, nice guy persona was discarded, the snarling rage of the wolf beneath revealing its teeth.

“That’s
not
how I read it. Somebody fucks with me, I’m gonna fuck with them. Somebody fucks with my family, my family’s gonna fuck with them.”

“That’s a convincing argument,” I said.

He nodded as if it were obvious, his sense of pride and superiority palpable, but he stopped smiling when I added, “For why you’d kill Justin Menge.”