with me. I’m looking into this very unofficially.”
“I understand, sir,” he said. “I’ll answer any question you ask.”
“Thank you,” I said. “But please call me John. I was just about to walk down to classification. If you’re headed that way we could talk while we walk.”
“Yes, sir,” he said. “That would be fine.”
We walked down Main Street Institution, alone because it was still early and the inmates had not been released from the dorms yet. The cloud-covered compound was even more depressing than usual, and the humidity came at you like the small side spray from a slight breeze blowing through the stream of a water hose.
“In the early morning hours of Tuesday, two weeks ago from today, two inmates started fighting, according to Nurse Strickland,” I said. “She said that you were not at your desk and that she and Captain Skipper broke them up.”
He nodded.
“Where were you?” I asked.
“I’m surprised they didn’t tell you,” he said. “When Captain Skipper came into the infirmary, he sent me to confinement to pick up an incident report. When I got back, he was gone. Nurse Strickland told me that Captain Skipper had left word for me to take Jacobson to confinement. So I turned right around and went back to confinement, this time with Jacobson in tow.”
“So you took Jacobson to confinement per Nurse Strickland’s message that Captain Skipper said to do so, but you never heard it from the captain.”
“Right,” he said. “The strange thing was she made me fill out the DR. Said Captain said for me to do it. I didn’t want to, but I did it. I know how to follow an order. Later, when everything went down in the sally port, I was glad that I was not in the infirmary just before it happened.”
“What time did you get back to the infirmary that morning?” I asked.
“I didn’t,” he said. “I was in confinement until a few minutes before seven. When I walked back up to medical, Officer Straub was about to go in to begin his shift. I gave him a report of the night’s events. He went in. I walked up front.”
“Who else was in the medical building that night?” I asked.
“Nurse Anderson, and the orderly, Jones . . . and another inmate was there for a while.” He tilted his head back and closed his eyes to concentrate on recalling the nearly forgotten name. “Thomas. Anthony Thomas was there for a while, and that’s it.”
“Thank you,” I said. “I appreciate your help and the way in which you do your job.”
“You’re welcome, sir,” he said. “And thank you, sir.”
I felt as though I should salute. I did, however, suppress the urge.
When I entered Anna’s office, I told her about all the things that were twirling around in the whirlpool, or perhaps cesspool, of my head-all the things related to the case. I didn’t mention that I was dying.
“Even before you realized that Skipper didn’t have the opportunity to commit the murders, you thought he was innocent,” she said. “Why?”
“I never said he was innocent, just that he didn’t commit those particular murders. The reason had to do with motive. I couldn’t see how killing Johnson or Maddox could have benefited Skipper in any way. Maddox was his best customer, and Johnson was his best product. He was making his own kind of killing on the little arrangement, so there was no reason for him to do any killing. He would have been putting an end to a serious paycheck, so why do it?”
“Maybe they were going to tell.”
“I don’t think so. Maddox wouldn’t because it was his secret, too. A secret that he more than anyone wanted to keep quiet. Not to mention that it was a crime and he would have lost everything. And Johnson’s an inmate. Nobody would believe him, and he didn’t seem to mind it too much. He was being treated like a king: drugs, alcohol, no work, and no trouble.”
“There’s always the possibility of a motive that we can’t see.”
“There’s always that, but I don’t think so. It feels wrong.”
“What do you mean?”
“If it were just motive, that would be one thing, but it’s means, as well. I mean, if someone like Skipper wanted to kill an inmate, he wouldn’t do it in the garbage truck. He would do it by having him killed on the rec field or shot during an escape attempt or beaten to death in confinement.”
“Like he tried with you.”
“Exactly,” I said. “But, there’s more. All but one of the murders were particularly bloody, and the third would’ve been. I think Skipper interrupted that one. They were all stabbed and disfigured. It’s personal, not business. A business kill is a dispassionate single gunshot wound to the back of the head, but personal is more like beatings, knives, and pain. This is a nice cold dish of revenge. It reminds me of love,” I said. Anna looked puzzled. “What is the opposite of love?” I asked.
“Hate,” she said.
“No. Disinterest is the opposite of love. Hate is closely related to love. Both are passionate; both burn white-hot. Those we hate most are often those we’ve loved most at some point.”
“Like a parent that betrayed us or a spouse,” she said.
“Right. Divorce, when amicable, is because there is no passion, but when it is heated, it means at least one still cares or is hurt so deeply precisely because he or she cared so deeply.”
“Damn, you
“Maybe. Or maybe I’ll just be lucky to get out of this one alive and should go back to just ministering.”
“There is a distinct contradiction in the two things,” she said, “but you are both of them. You, like most of us, are not just one person. I think you must do both or you will be miserable.”
“There’s always that,” I said.
“So who do you think did it?” she asked.
“Someone who has a very personal stake in all of this,” I said. “This is about love and hate, not money or cover-up. Unless, of course, it was made to look like something it wasn’t.”
Anna’s eyebrows shot up into twin peaks. “Do you think all the brutality could be a cover?”
That same bolt of enlightenment surged through my head. That was it. “I don’t think so,” I said. “But it could be. I still think it’s twisted love, passionate revenge. Because even when something is made to look like something it’s not, it usually still feels like what it really is. I said something to Molly Thomas the other day that reminds me of this. When she was explaining why she had made the accusation against me, I told her that Anthony was lucky to have someone who loved him so much, and I had the same feeling I’m having now. Like that’s the key.”
“You don’t think Molly had it done, do you?” she asked.
“No, but she wasn’t the only one who loved him. I need to find out who else did.”
“How are you going to do that?”
“This is prison. People know things, and people can be persuaded to talk about things.”
“In other words, you don’t know,” she said.
“In other words, I don’t know,” I said.
After leaving Anna’s office, I walked out into the waiting room where a dozen inmates stared at the blank wall in front of them in silence. A couple of them nodded to me. I nodded back. A few of the inmates were engrossed in paperbacks. I recognized Zane Gray, Robert B. Parker, and Stephen King. I started to walk out when I heard the faint tappings of an electric typewriter coming from behind the door to medical. I pulled out my keys and opened the door.
Standing next to the storage room where the typewriter was, Nurse Anderson jumped when I opened the door. The door to the storage room was parted slightly, and she moved in front of it.
“Chaplain,” she said as the typing stopped. “How are you today?” she asked, her tone returning to its normal loud volume.
“Who’s in there?” I asked.
