several miles in both directions. It was scarred and pocked and had deep ruts caused by loaded log trucks. I was surprised Tim would put his new car on it.
“How long have you had it?” I asked.
“Just got it,” he said.
Payment for a job well done?
Pulling a handkerchief out of his pocket, he wiped a speck of dust off the front quarter panel. “I wasn’t about to park it in front of Rudy’s and get oyster shell dust all over it.”
Glancing over at my old Chevy S-10, he said, “About time for you to get a new one, isn’t it?”
I smiled. “I haven’t gotten my other one broken in all the way yet,” I said.
“Seriously,” he said. “As a man of God, what you drive and where you live reflects on God. Brother Bobby has an eight-part teaching on prosperity that you need to hear. It’s in the chapel library. You should listen to it.”
“Speaking of Brother Bobby,” I said, “you sure you didn’t see his security guard that night? Maybe on the compound or-”
“I’ve told you,” he said. “I didn’t see him. You sure he was even there?”
“What about in the bathroom?” I asked. “Someone said he was in the bathroom the same time you were.”
“You were in there,” he said. “Did you see him?”
“They said he was in the stall.”
“Well, I didn’t look in any stalls,” he said. “Who’s they anyway? You talkin’ ’bout some inmate?”
I didn’t answer.
“I gotta go,” he said. “Colonel Patterson’ll chew my a-behind if I’m late getting back from lunch.”
He jumped in, cranked and revved the loud engine, and turned around. I smiled when I saw the little Jesus fish on his bumper, but stopped as I caught a glimpse of the Louisiana license plate beneath it. Was all his religiosity, like Malcolm’s extreme racism, just a cover?
I motioned for him, and he rolled down the window.
“You went all the way to Louisiana to get your car?” I asked.
He nodded. “It’s where I could get the best deal.”
As he peeled off and sped away, I said, “I bet.”
CHAPTER 30
I loved the intensity with which children played, though watching them had always been a disturbing mixture of pleasure and pain. As I stood near the fence and watched the raucous play of the wild angels of Pottersville Elementary School, I had to blink back tears.
For several years I had been unable to see a child without thinking of Martin Fisher, but today, as I watched the children on the playground, it was Nicole I thought I saw among the others playing with such wild and reckless abandon.
After watching for as long as I could, I turned and walked down the sidewalk toward the inmates from the public works squad. They were repairing a section of the fence under the watchful eye of city employees.
I was used to seeing inmates working around Pottersville. Each year public works squads saved the city tens of thousands of dollars in labor, and only offenders without violent crimes could participate in them. Now I looked on the scene of inmates working so close to children with fear and suspicion, each child becoming as trusting and vulnerable as Nicole. Technically, the work crew wasn’t at the school, and they were probably far enough away from the children to satisfy the regulation, but it was a lot closer than I would have liked.
“Did somebody die, Chaplain?” one of the inmates asked when I walked up.
I shook my head.
“Then what’re you doin’ here?” he asked.
I walked past them and over to Phillip Linton, the city employee in charge of maintenance.
“How’s it goin’, JJ?” he asked.
“Okay,” I said. “You?”
“I’m great,” he said. “Never better. If it got any better I wouldn’t know what to do.”
That was always Linton’s response, and it always sounded the same way to me-like he was trying to convince himself as much as me that what he was saying was true.
“What brings you out here?” he asked.
“I need to speak to one of your inmates for a few minutes,” I said.
“Sure,” he said. “Which one?”
“Porter,” I said.
“Cedric,” he yelled. “Chaplain needs a moment of your time.”
“Yes, sir,” he said.
I walked down the sidewalk next to the chainlink fence to meet him.
“You got out of the infirmary awfully quick,” I said. “I was surprised when they told me you were already back at work.”
He shrugged. “I just a convict. I can work with a headache.”
“Let’s move down this way a little,” I said, leading him away from the earshot of the others and further away from the children.
“You found Nicole’s killer yet?”
“No,” I said. “But we will. And again, I’m so sorry but I need to ask you a few more questions about the night she was killed.”
“I hope y’all catch him soon,” he said, “’fore he finally kill me.”
“Who?”
He shook his head at me in disbelief. “Bobby Earl.”
“You think he’s the one who tried to have you killed?” I asked.
He nodded. “More than once,” he said, pulling up his shirt to show me a jagged scar running down the side of his abdomen.
“Why haven’t you checked in?” I asked.
If an inmate felt his life was in danger-for any reason: gambling debts, refusing to perform sexual favors, retaliation from an officer-he could check himself into protective management, where he would be locked in a cell and watched closely while the inspector investigated the matter.
“’Cause,” he said. “If I in a cell, I can’t run or hide or fight back. Least out here I can see ’em comin’. Anyway, don’t worry about me. You just find out who killed my little girl. Then he better be the one lookin’ over his shoulder.”
I didn’t say anything.
“You said you wanted to ask me about the night she was killed,” he said. “What about it?”
“How long were you in the bathroom?”
“What?”
“We’re trying to establish everyone’s movements during the time when Nicole was killed,” I said.
“You know where I was,” he said.
“How long were you in there?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Don’t know, but it was a while. My stomach was real upset. The later it got, the sicker I got. I missed work the next day. You can ask Mr. Linton.”
“Who all’d you see while you were in the bathroom?”
“No one,” he said.
“No one?”
“It was empty when I went in,” he said. “Once I was in the stall, I couldn’t see anyone. I heard a few people, but I didn’t see anyone.”
“Well, who’d you hear?”
