shirt as if he had come from a GQ photo shoot rather than a Florida state prison. His son’s suit matched his, and his wife and daughter wore matching navy dresses with white lace collars. They were the picture-perfect young American family.
When he saw me, his face lit up, and he rushed over and wrapped me up in a hug that included his son.
“I can’t believe you’re here,” he said. “Honey, this is Chaplain Jordan, the one I was telling you about.” He looked at me. “This is-”
“Honey,” I said, and took her outstretched hand.
“I’m Trish,” she said with a smile. “And this is Moriah.” She touched her daughter on the head. I held my hand out and she took it.
At the mention of Moriah, I couldn’t help but think of Abraham and Isaac; Bobby Earl and Nicole.
“And this is Dexter, Jr,” she added with a big smile.
“What’s up, DJ?” I said, and held my hand up for a high five, which he gave me with no hesitation.
When I looked back at Dexter, he was shaking his head, and staring at me. “Thanks so much for coming, Chaplain. You’ll never know what it means.”
“You’re welcome,” I said. “You have a beautiful family.” I winked at Moriah.
“Thank you,” she said, as she shrugged her shoulders and looked down, an embarrassed grin spreading across her adorable face.
Standing there with Dexter’s family, attempting to offer support and perhaps comfort in their time of crisis, I thought about how strange it was. Only a sometime-investigator and all-the-time prison chaplain would be caught in the seeming contradiction of trying to minister to one of a handful of suspects in a murder he was investigating.
“Am I early?” I asked.
Dexter shook his head. “Everyone else is running on CPT,” he said.
“That’s Colored People Time,” Trish explained.
“Oh,” I said, and winked at Dexter.
He shook his head. “Honey, he works in a prison that runs on CPT. He knows words and phrases Chris Rock doesn’t.”
I smiled. “I’m going to slip back there,” I said, nodding toward the back, “and give you all some time together.”
“Thank you,” he said, “but I’d like for you to sit with us. We don’t have any other family.”
“I’d be honored to,” I said.
After the funeral and interment, I stood with Dexter and his family beneath the canopy of a towering oak tree in front of the small church as they underwent the tearing of their souls at having to say good-bye again so soon. The air wasn’t as cool as it had been, but the gentle breeze made the shade beneath the shelter of the oak tolerable.
I was facing the church and Dexter when I saw the expression on his face change. I turned to see what was behind me.
A Greensboro City police car crept by, as if in slow motion, the two young, white police officers inside glaring at Dexter in a manner that indicated they had no intention to protect or serve.
I looked back at Dexter. The muscles in his jaws were flexing and his eyes had narrowed to slits. Trish continued to hug him, only now it was about restraint as much as affection. “Don’t,” she said. “We’re not going to let them keep us apart one more day than we have to.”
He seemed to relax a little, and when I turned back, the police car was gone.
“The one in the passenger’s side is Larry Lassiter, my brother,” Trish explained. “He’s the one who set Dexter up.”
I nodded.
“We better get you back,” she said to Dexter.
“Okay,” he said.
“Would you mind if I followed you?” I asked.
“Mind?” Trish said. “I was going to ask if you would.” We walked over to our vehicles. “Now that Mama Freeman is gone,” Trish said, “we’ll be moving, too. We’re going to get away from them. If we can just make it until then.”
“An actual innocent inmate,” Anna said. “I’ve become so jaded I didn’t really believe they existed.”
I had called Anna from a convenience store in Greensboro and asked her to check with FDLE about Larry Lassiter. What she had discovered, that Lassiter was under investigation and Dexter was believed to have been set up, so surprised her that she had rushed up to tell me the moment I arrived at the institution. I had just been buzzed through the sally port when she rushed up and gave me the news.
“They gonna get Dexter a new trial?” I asked.
“It has low priority,” she said. “They’re not going to do anything until they arrest Lassiter. Don’t want to warn him.”
“So Dexter could EOS before anything happens,” I said.
She nodded and frowned. “At least it’d be taken off his record.”
I shook my head. “That’s not enough,” I said.
“Not much we can do.”
“I’ll talk to Dad, see what he can do.”
She shook her head to herself in disbelief again and said, “An actual innocent inmate.”
CHAPTER 32
In seminary, I had read
I had watched helplessly as the initial denial began with the first shake of their heads as the doctor delivered the grim prognosis, listened as they shared with conviction the opinion that this was a mistake, just a mix-up of records or an invalid test result. After a while, the light of their denial burned out, and then, like a lightning flash in a dark sky, their anger bolted out of nowhere and struck with rage at whatever happened to be in its path. I was usually called in on the next stage, for when it came to bargaining, everyone wanted to talk to the ‘Man upstairs.’ I heard confessions and received numerous vows that would be kept if only God would allow them to live. When this failed, which of course meant I had failed them as much as God had, they sank slowly into the quick-sand of depression, emerging much later, as if from baptism, new and clean in their acceptance.
My mom, who would die soon from the disease of alcoholism if she didn’t receive a liver transplant, was in the midst of a lengthy stage of bargaining, and had grasped the religion of the dying with all the fervor and desperation of a falling rock climber clinging to the last safety line.
When I arrived at Mom’s, an extremely overweight lady in illfitting polyester pants and an untucked religious T-shirt that read “Turn or Burn” over fiery flames met me at the door. She wore thick glasses, and her labored breathing whistled out of the numerous gaps between her too few teeth.
“You the son who’s a preacher?” she asked with a smile that scrunched up her face, lifted her glasses, and narrowed her eyes.
“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “I’m John.”
“I’m Sister Bertha,” she said. “Come on in. I came over here to pray for her. You wanna join us?”
“You go ahead,” I said. “I’ll-”
“You’re a preacher, aren’t you?” she asked. “Prayin’s what you’re paid to do.”
