I thought about the broken and beaten-down man I knew and wondered if his transformation was the result of lengthy incarceration or a relationship with Bunny Caldwell.
“Yeah,” he said. “He was very charismatic-and I don’t mean in the spiritual sense. All the cats who knew him from the street said he was a real player.”
“He’s nothing like that now,” I said. “I know growing up, and especially doing time, can take the starch out of a man, but-”
“He fell apart when I had him reassigned,” he said, “and until this moment I never could figure out why it changed him so much, but now…”
“You think it had to do with Bunny?”
“She’s the one who asked me to reassign him,” he said. “They had been close up until then-a lot closer than I knew at the time, I guess-but then Bobby Earl came to work for me and they began to get close. One day she came to me and said Cedric was making her uncomfortable. Being too familiar and forward with her. I hated to hear it because he was one of my best clerks, but she was staff and I had to let him go.”
“So she gets involved with Bobby Earl and, to break it off with Cedric, she has him reassigned, which leaves him devastated because he really loved her?” I asked.
“I’d never thought about it that way until now, but it fits,” he said.
We both grew quiet a moment, and as I thought about what he had told me, my other line buzzed.
“Can I put you on hold a moment,” I said. “I don’t have a secretary-and now I’m not sure I want one.”
He laughed and I took the other call. It was the infirmary. They had an inmate who needed to see me.
When I punched in Chaplain Rouse’s line again, I said, “If Cedric is Nicole’s biological father and Bobby Earl or Bunny killed her, do you think they’d go after him?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Why?”
“He’s in the infirmary,” I said. “He’s just been attacked.”
CHAPTER 25
I watched from the nurses’ station through the steel reinforced glass as Cedric Porter was wheeled into the infirmary and helped onto one of the beds. His head was wrapped in a large white bandage quickly turning red from the blood seeping into it.
The infirmary was a rectangular room with two rows of beds on each side and an open bathroom area at the end. Windows on all sides prevented any privacy, and bright white tile floors made it seem cold, sterile, and uncomfortable. It was not a pleasant place. Inmates were not encouraged to come here. Cedric was the only inmate in the infirmary. Through the windows on the far side I could see that the suicide cells running along the hallway were empty, and in the hushed quiet of the enclosed space there seemed to be no sound.
When the nurse had returned to the station, I asked, “What happened to him?”
“Assault,” she said. “Somebody tried to kill him.”
Like an unusually high percentage of the nurses at PCI, she was obese, perpetually breathing heavily and moving slowly.
“How?”
“An old standard,” she said. “Lock in a sock. Happened in the bathroom of his dorm.”
“Do they know who attacked him?” I asked.
She shook her head. “The officer heard something from inside his station-that’s how hard the lick was- everyone else was at chow. Anyway, he ran out of the wicker, interrupting the attack, and the killer ran away. The officer saved Porter’s life.” As I turned to walk back into the infirmary, she added, “He wasn’t too happy about it either.”
“The officer?”
“Porter.”
I understood the feeling well. I often encountered it in the bereaved. But, as much as Cedric may not want it to, the feeling would pass. He would want to live again. We just had to keep him alive until then.
“How are you?” I asked as I walked up to him.
He opened his eyes slightly, closed them again, and said, “Not quite bad enough.”
“Did you see who did it?”
He started to shake his head, winced in pain, and said, “No, sir. I didn’t.”
“Well, I’m gonna find out,” I said. “Anything I can do for you in the meantime?”
“Get him to come back and finish the job,” he said. “I’d rather be with Nicole.”
“You will be,” I said. “But let’s not rush it. You just lie here and rest. We’ll find out who killed her, and though that can’t bring her back, it’ll help you feel better. I guarantee it.”
He frowned his disbelief.
“I just spoke to Chaplain Rouse,” I said.
He didn’t say anything.
From the open bathroom at the far end, a slow, steady drip echoed out across the tile floor of the mostly empty room, the source, no doubt, of the damp air and the smell of mildew.
“Why haven’t you applied for a chapel clerk position since you’ve been here?” I asked.
“Don’t want one.”
I nodded. “He said you were never the same again after you lost your position there.”
“I didn’t lose it,” he said. “It was taken away from me so that Bobby Earl and Bunny could have some privacy.”
“You loved her, didn’t you?”
“Carrying on with him up there when my baby’s in her belly,” he said. “Yeah, I loved her, but all she love is money. Why they perfect for each other.”
CHAPTER 26
Like most small southern towns, there was no shortage of churches or bars in Pottersville. And both institutions were divided along lines of doctrine, class, and race. Some believed in sprinkling; others in baptism by immersion. Some preferred contemporary music while others would accept nothing but traditional. Some were extremely exclusive, while others were inclusive to the point of completely blurring any discernable distinctions. And leading each, whether behind the pine pulpit or the oak bar, were spirit-men who ranged from evangelist to counselor to one of the crowd.
The Sports Oasis was more of a mainline main street establishment, its congregation boasting the upper crust of the faithful. Unlike an east side or south side congregation, there was social status to being a member of the chosen who attended its gatherings. It was located downtown in the second story of a converted turn of the century inn with an assortment of store fronts beneath it attempting to be quaint.
Atop a florist, beauty shop, and antiques boutique, the Sports Oasis had the open feel of a converted warehouse. A curving bar ran the width of one wall and a stage dominated the other, tables and a large dance floor in between. All this, and there was still room for three pool tables and four dart machines along the wall on the left side of the bar.
I arrived at the Oasis at a little after five, hoping to talk to Alice Taylor before she got busy, but the place was already hopping with the after-work crowd. Even before I ascended the stairs, I could hear the distorted blare of Allan Jackson from a jukebox being asked to perform above its volume capacity. When I opened the door, I was enveloped in a whirlwind of country music, spirits, and smoke; and it carried me to the far end of the bar. This was definitely a full immersion congregation.
Scattered along the bar, men and women in their early thirties lounged casually, their loosened neck ties, coat-draped chairs, wrinkled shirts and skirts evidenced their tough day at the office. They all spoke or nodded to me, though I knew most of them only in passing. When I left Pottersville over a decade ago, I knew everyone;
