The Body and the Blood (9 page)

Chapter Sixteen

“I didn’t have any reason to kill him,” Jacqueel Jefferson said. “Hell, I even help make that little home movie of his.”

We were seated in the entrance of the security building while the transport officer pulled the van into the sally port. Jefferson was cuffed and shackled and would soon be transported to Broward County for an outside court hearing.

“I heard about that,” I said. “Any idea where the disc is?”

He shook his head. “If I did, I’d tell you. I liked Justin. I didn’t have any reason to kill him.”

“Doesn’t mean you didn’t do it. Someone could’ve hired you.”

“I’m not that type of ho. Someone did offer to pay me to eighty-six his narrow white ass, but I told ‘em I’d rather earn my money the old-fashioned way.”

Jacqueel Jefferson was so emaciated, his skin stretched so tightly across his bones, I wondered if he was terminally ill. He peered out at me warily from sunken eyes, his bald head gleaming in the dull flourescent light. He was in his mid-twenties, but looked to be dead.

“How’s that?”

“Blow jobs,” he said with a big smile. “Takin’ it up the ass. I make a good livin’ in here eatin’ sin. Didn’t need his money.”

I was sure his explicit comments were supposed to shock me, so I didn’t even blink. It wasn’t just that I heard far worse every day, I didn’t want him controlling the interview.

“Whose?” I asked.

“Whose sin?” he asked.

“Whose money?”

“Mike Hawkins.”

“You sure gave him up fast,” I said.

He shrugged, his chains rattling against each other. “I don’t like his racist ass. Lot of black folk go missin’ in Pine County. Hawkins’s old man done most of ‘em, but I hear old junior’s done his fair share.”

Through the steel-reinforced glass of the door and the chain-link fence and razor wire of the pedestrian sally port, I watched as the front gate of the vehicle sally port opened and the transport van pulled in, the second gate never opening, never giving the inmates inside even a glimpse of a world without steel. The front gate then rolled back to its closed position as the officer parked and secured the van.

“So Hawkins wanted him dead? But who did it?”

He shrugged. “Don’t know. I still don’t know
how
they did that shit.”

“Whose smart enough to pull it off?”

He shook his head. “Theys some dumb motherfuckers in this place.”

I smiled. “Don’t be so hard on yourself.”

“You go ahead and think I’m stupid if it means I won’t take the fall for cuttin’ that cracker up.”

“Anybody else we should be lookin’ at besides Hawkins?”

“His bitch.”

“Whose?”

“Menge’s,” he said.

“Who’s that?”

“Sobel. What if he got tired of being the woman? Or what if Menge been lookin’ at some fresh meat?”

“Had he?”

He shrugged. “Don’t know. But he was one horny bastard. Wore Sobel’s ass out. Shame, too. Such a fine ass.”

“But as far as you know, they got along well?”

“Enough for con queens. I never heard either of ‘em complain. And they never gave me the time of day. Guess they don’t like dark meat.”

“Anyone else?”

“Potter.”

A loud electronic hum and click sounded as the new chief correctional officer of the institution, Colonel Rish, was buzzed into the holding area where we sat. He glanced at me when he walked by, but didn’t say anything. He walked over to the door of the hallway that led to his office, but surprisingly, the officer in the control room became distracted with paper work and forgot he was there.

“Sergeant Potter?” I asked.

He didn’t answer at first. He was too busy trying to scratch his nose, which with his cuffed hands chained to his waist wasn’t easy to do.

When the lock finally did buzz, the colonel snatched the door open, marched through it, and slammed it shut.

“He the dirtiest son of a bitch in here.”

“Who?”

“Potter. Worse than any convict. Do whatever the hell he want. Gets away with anything.”

“What does that have to do with Menge’s death?”

“Menge wrote his ass up,.\ Wasn’t gonna take it no more. Justin never act like no inmate. Always fightin’ for this or that. Potter threaten him all the time.”

“Did you see a woman in the PM unit on the evening of the murder?” I asked. “Before the Mass.”

He nodded.

Not many women went into the PM unit. It was probably a classification officer, a psyche specialist, or someone from the business office. There was a good chance he knew her.

“You recognize her?”

He shook his head, seemed uninterested. “Naw.”

“She an employee? Someone you’d seen before?”

He shook his head, then looked over at the door.

The transport officer was buzzed into the holding area. “It’s time to go, Jefferson.”

“It’s a convenient time to be going to outside court,” I said.

“Yeah. The entire criminal justice system is conspiring to get me out of the institution so when you finally figure out I the one what killed him I’a be workin’ on my tan in Miami.”

“You had to know about this the night of the murder.”

He raised his eyebrows in appreciation. “You may be right. But seriously, try to have this thing wrapped up by the time I get back. I hate confinement. Bein’ alone all day. Nothing or no one to do.”

“I imagine it
is
tough on a people person like yourself,” I said.

Chapter Seventeen

“I used to work for your dad,” Brad Rish said. “Back before they built the prison. I hadn’t been out of high school long. I was a deputy for almost three years.”

Brad Rish, the new colonel of PCI, was a well-built man in his early forties with fine, wispy hair and a thin mustache. Almost the opposite in every way from the previous chief correctional officer he replaced, Rish was friendly, intelligent, and a native.

“Your dad’s a good administrator,” he continued. “I try to pattern my leadership style after him. He puts his people first and always backs ‘em up.”

We were under the small covered area behind the security building. Rish was seated on the aluminum bench, which, like all the chairs, benches, and tables in the institution, was bolted down. He was smoking a short cigar and watching as inmates came up to the property room window to send out packages or settle property disputes. I had been walking back to the chapel from talking to Jacqueel Jefferson when, without preamble, he had started talking to me.

For a moment neither of us said anything.

Finally, as if it had just occurred to him, he said, “Was inmate Jefferson botherin’ you?”

Now we came to the real reason he had stopped me.

“We were just talking.”

“About what?”

I shot him a look. The question was inappropriate, and I tried to let him know. “Various things.”

He nodded.

The inmates in front of the property window were unusually quiet and orderly, the sergeant inside calmer and more patient. The colonel’s presence, even while taking a smoking break, had a potent effect.

“You working the Menge homicide?” he asked.

“Just helping Daniels,” I said. “His case.”

He nodded. “He told me you were. You two’re related somehow, aren’t you?”

I nodded, but didn’t say anything.

“They say you’re a good investigator,” he said. “You’d just moved to Atlanta when I went to work for your dad and all I heard from everyone was what a loss not having you was.”

There didn’t seem to be anything to say to that.

“But I’d think it’d be hard to be a good chaplain
and
conduct an investigation.”

“Never said I was good.”

“Everyone else around here does. Everywhere I go I hear how good you are—no matter what you do.”

His voice had filled with what sounded like a challenge.

“Don’t believe everything you hear,” I said.

“I don’t,” he said, then smiled, but a hardness had changed the timbre of his voice. “And I wouldn’t want you to lose that good reputation of yours.”

“Well, thanks for looking out,” I said, and started to leave.

“Wait,” he said, standing and extinguishing what was left of his cigar. “Step in my office for a minute.”

Without waiting for a response, he opened the door to the security building and walked in. I followed.

When we were seated in his office, he said, “I understand my predecessor gave you some trouble.”

“He wasn’t crazy about me helping out with investigations.”

“Well, I just wanted you to know that as long as your chaplaincy duties don’t suffer, you won’t have any problems from me, and if I can ever help you I will.”

Though he was responsible for the overall security of the institution, I didn’t answer to Brad Rish—I worked with the assistant warden of programs and answered directly to the warden—and his comments were overreaching and challenging.

“I’ll take you up on that. Officer Pitts and Sergeant Potter were both in G-dorm the night Menge was killed.”

His forward leaning face and raised eyebrows told me he wanted more.

“What can you tell me about them?”

“Nothing. I’m still trying to meet everyone. I wouldn’t know them if I ran into them out of uniform.”

Unlike the previous colonel, Rish kept his office clean and organized. Nothing was out of place. None of his many marksman trophies or numerous framed citations had even the slightest hint of dust on them. There were no piles of paper, no stacks of file folders, no indication that any work actually took place here, though I knew it did.

“Why was it just the two of them?” I asked.

“I asked the OIC about it . . . Said it couldn’t be helped. They were just so shorthanded they were operating in critical. He called several officers at home, but couldn’t find anyone willing to come back in.”

“I thought if it was critical they didn’t have a choice?”

“Well, maybe they didn’t answer their phones. Point is, he had to work with what he had. I’m sure if he spoke to officers that weren’t willing to come in, he wrote them up.”

“Did Menge write Potter up recently?”

His gaze quickly darted over to the grievance on the corner of his otherwise empty desk. Realizing his mistake, he quickly looked back at me, but it was too late.

“No,” he said, but it lacked conviction.

“You sure?”

“Positive,” he said.

“What about Pitts?”

He shook his head.

“There’s a rumor of a video showing Pitts giving Menge a particularly brutal tune-up.”

“I’ve heard.”

“And?”

“I’d like to see it. But until I do, it’s just a rumor. Prison’s full of them. I’ve heard a few on you.”

I smiled. “But you don’t believe everything you hear.”

“Let me tell you what I
do
believe. I believe in backing up my men. Just like your dad. The single worst thing for morale in such a difficult job is having a colonel who won’t back you up.”

I understood what he was communicating, and it contradicted what he’d said earlier about being supportive and helping me when I needed it.

“But there’s a big difference between backing up and covering up,” I said.

He twisted his lips, raised his eyebrows, and shrugged. “Sometimes not as big as you might think.”

Chapter Eighteen

When I stepped out of the security building, Merrill was waiting for me with a big smile on his face. His expression was one of genuine pleasure, and it made him look like the little boy I had known in childhood.

“Guess who’s in the infirmary with cuts and scratches?” he asked.

“One of the inmates in the PM quad the night Menge was murdered.”

“Yeah. Carlos Matos. And guess who lined up a little two on one interview with him?”

“You.”

“And guess who gonna play the bad cop?”

“You again,” I said. “It’s a lot harder to pull off in a clerical collar.”

“You good at this game. We need to get your ass on Jeopardy or some shit like that.”

As we walked toward the medical building he said, “You goin’ to Atlanta this weekend?”

“Leave later today.”

“Things workin’ out between you and your new old lady?”

“Better than I ever would’ve expected,” I said.

The inmates walking along the sidewalk toward us split apart like the Red Sea for Merrill to pass through as if he were Moses himself, but it wasn’t the rod of God they feared. Some of them spoke to him, but he didn’t acknowledge any of them, just continued talking to me. I nodded to them, but it didn’t seem to be any consolation.

“So you not gonna do anything about Anna?”

“What can I do?” I asked. “We’re both married.”

“What marriage got to do with destiny?”

I stopped, a broad smile spreading across my face in reaction to the man who never ceased to amaze me. “Romantic bastard, aren’t you?”

“Some kind a bastard,” he said.

“I’ll always love Anna, but what I now have with Susan—or have the potential to have is . . .”

He nodded.

We walked along in silence for a while, both of us seeming oblivious to the prison and prisoners around us, though neither of us were. But as alert as I was, Merrill was more so.

“You need me to do anything while you’re gone?”

“You could take a little closer look at Hawkins,” I said, “Find out what’s going on in Pine County.”

“I was hoping you’d say that.”

* * * * *

“
Habla Ingles
?” Merrill said to Matos, when we walked into the infirmary.

Carlos Matos was lying face down, his shirt off, on the first bunk of the otherwise empty infirmary. His skin, the color of tobacco stains, ripped and torn, was covered with a clear salve. He looked up in surprise and fear at Merrill.

“What?” he asked.

Speaking slowly in a loud voice, Merrill said: “Do you speak fuckin’ English?”

Merrill had slipped into his bad ass CO persona. He would be brutal, uncaring and unrelenting. He pulled it off as well as anybody at the prison. The difference between him and the others who also did it was that for Merrill it was a persona, a role—one he could slip back out of again just as quickly and effortlessly as he had slipped into it. For many of the others, they soon became the persona.

“English?” he asked.

“
Si
,” Merrill said.

“Yes,” Matos said. “
Si
.”

Carlos Matos was about five and a half feet tall, thick and meaty, but not quite muscular. His dark hair matched his eyes, and his nose spread over much of his round face. His teeth were small and very white with space between them.

“So you understand me when I ask who cut you the fuck up?”

He nodded. “I fell in my cell. Scraped my back on the wall and my bunk.”

“How you say bullshit in Spanish?” Merrill asked. “I thought you said you understood my question?”

“I did,
señor
,” he said.

“I don’t think so,” he said. “Did I say fuck with me?”

“No, sir.”

“Oh,” Merrill said, as if he suddenly got it. “You just did that on your own. You improvisin’ and shit?”

“It is the truth.”

“
The truth.
You don’t tell me the truth, they gonna have to call the doctor back in here.”

All but the outside wall of the infirmary was steel-reinforced glass, and though the nurse doing paperwork in the nurses’ station could see everything, she kept her head down, conspicuously paying no attention to us.

Carlos looked at me, fear in his eyes.

I shrugged and gave him an expression like
what can I do?
This was Merrill’s interview. I was just along for the ride. We had different roles, different approaches, but we’d probably get the same results either way—lies, misdirection, and misinformation.

“I look like I could stop him?” I asked. “I mean, without a gun?”

Merrill slapped Carlos on the back with his open hand. Carlos jumped and screamed in pain.

I winced, but neither of them saw me. Matos seemed so vulnerable, so helpless, it was easy to forget what he was capable of. A hardened gang member with assault and battery charges, among others, his current condition was deceptive. Merrill’s approach was probably the best one to take with him. It was truly amazing how many of the men in here didn’t respond to anything else, and I understood how having a strong, even menacing, warden and security presence ultimately made for a safer compound—which protected inmates as well as staff. I was just glad he was here to do it because I didn’t think I could.

“Did that hurt?”

He looked at Merrill in obvious pain, sweat pouring from beneath his coarse and shiny black hair.

“Did that hurt?” Merrill asked again.

“Si, señor, Very much.”

His black eyes looked glazed and watery.

“Then you got what we call a low threshold of pain,” Merrill said, wiping his hand on Matos’s shirt and tossing it on the floor. “Now, what I’m gonna do to you next—well, let’s just say it’s made some tough motherfuckers cry, so I’m pretty sure it’s gonna kill your sensitive ass.” While Merrill continued to chat with Matos, I stepped into the nurses’ office and called Daniels.

“They find anything under Menge’s fingernails?”

“No,” he said. “Evidently, he didn’t put up much of a fight.”

“What about blood? Anybody else’s in his cell?”

“Looks like just Menge’s. Just about all of Menge’s, though. What’s this about?”

“I’ll tell you later,” I said.

“Okay. Okay,” Matos was saying when I walked back into the infirmary. “I tell you. I got into a fight.”

“No shit,” Merrill said. “Was it with Menge before you killed him?”

“No. No. I swear.”

An extremely overweight nurse from the meds desk lumbered down the hallway toward the break room and the candy bars and chips it held. Gasping for breath from the effort required to walk, she alternated between glaring at Merrill and giving Matos a look of maternal pity.

“Then who?”

“I cannot say. Maybe he kill me.”

“Maybe I kill you,” Merrill said. “And I’m here.”

“He got to Menge,” he said. “You don’t think he could get to me?”

“Who?”

“Juan,” he said.

“Martinez?”

“
Si.
I refuse to kill Menge for him, so he had me cut. Teach me a lesson. I disobey him again, I die.”

“You two part of the same gang?” I asked.

He nodded. “Juan is the leader.”

“And he killed Justin Menge?” I asked.

He shrugged. “I do not know.”

“But he wanted you to?”

“He wanted him dead before he could testify. He was tryin’ to set up Juan on some bullshit charge for the chief inspector. He’s really got a hard-on for Juan for some reason.”

“If you’ve been lying to me, you’re dead,” Merrill said as we began to leave.

“Since I told you the truth I am dead. Either way I die.”

Merrill smiled broadly and said, “Then next time somebody ask, say ‘No
Habla Ingles.
’”