JJ08 - Blood Money (18 page)

She was not a lipstick lesbian.

Jamie
Lee looked like what she was—an overweight, middle-aged gay
woman.
She had short hair shaved in the back, a certain soft androgyny, and the build of a linebacker
who’d
stopped working out a decade
ago.

Of course, middle-aged gay
women,
like middle-aged straight women, had an infinite variety of looks, and generalizing was wrong, but
Jamie
Lee had the look that most people associate with lesbianism, her loose-fitting green nurse uniform adding to the effect.

“I’m about to take a cancer
break,”
she said.
“Wanna
join me?”

“You
bet.”

We
walked through the side door of Medical and out into the bright afternoon sun.

“You
know what they say about second-hand
smoke,”
she said.

“The pleasure of your company makes it worth the
risk.”

She carefully withdrew one of the slim cigarettes from the pack, placed it in her mouth, and lit it. After inhaling deeply with obvious pleasure, she withdrew the cigarette from her mouth and held it between her
two
fingers in a dainty manner.

Smoking was by far the most feminine thing she did.

Across from us the inmates assigned to inside grounds were sweeping the sidewalk and street that ran down the center of the compound. The blue uniforms the inmates
wore
were big and
baggy
and hung off them the
way
kids
wore
their jeans on the street. The plastic bags hanging from their back pockets were filled with the tiny bits of trash they had picked
up,
and because there were so many workers and so little trash, the bags fluttered in the breeze.

“Unfortunately, this cigarette
won’t
last long,” she said. “So . . . let the interrogation begin.”

“No interrogation. Just a little chat about Danny
Jacobs.”

“You
heard I spent a lot of time with him and wondered if I killed him?”

“I know you killed him. I want to know
why.”

“
Danny and I were having an
affair,”
she said. “I know
it’s
against the rules and that I
shouldn’t have,
but God, the rod on that man.”

As she talked, she
moved
her hands about, the cigarette making small smoke signals in the air around them.

“You
ever even seen one?”

“I’m a nurse for fuck
sake,”
she said. “Besides, I’ve got a couple of special . . . ah . . . objects that look just like ’em. Or so the package said.”

“I know this is gonna make me sound like one of the homophobes around here, but can I get a straight answer about Jacobs?”

“That’s
a hell of a thing to say to
me.”
I laughed.

“Okay,
I’ve had my fun. The truth
is,
Dr.
Alvarez asked me to
watch
Danny closely after he got out of the infirmary. But I would’ve anyway because I liked him. He was a good kid.
Troubled.
Tormented. But good.”

“You
saw him the night he died?”

“Yeah,
I did. I
wasn’t
supposed
to.
I mean,
I’d
just seen him, but he seemed really down. I thought I might cheer him
up.
In fact, I thought I did, but . . . I feel bad about it.
It’s
not like we were close or
anything.
I just liked the kid. Sorry, but
that’s
it. All I
know.
Didn’t
see anything suspicious, no one lurking around with a
noose.”

“This would be so much easier if you
had.”

She nodded and we were quiet a moment, but when I saw how little of her cigarette was left, I pressed on.

“What about Lance Phillips?”

“Same
way,”
she said. “Got to know him in the infirmary. Cared for him while he recuperated.”

“Danny was in
Lance’s
bunk when he died.”

“That significant?”

“If Phillips
didn’t
try
to kill
himself,”
I said.
“You
don’t
think he did?”

I shook my head. “I
don’t.”

“Well,
that may be true, but I was there. I saw what he tried to
do.
And he was in a locked confinement cell
by
himself. So how could someone . . . I came up shortly after it started. I saw him swinging from the rope. No one else was around. Seemed like a suicide attempt to
me.”

“Maybe,”
I said, “but if
so,
where’d
he get the rope?”

E
mile Rollins
worked
on an outside grounds crew cleaning and caring for the parks of
Potter
County.
I caught up with him at the south gate as he was being patted down to reenter the institution. Unlike the other inmates around him, he stood perfectly still and kept quiet throughout the procedure. When he did
move,
it was in smooth, economic motions. He wasted no energy, and there was a certain fluidity to everything he did, a physical grace.

It was evening, everything lit
softly.
The setting sun ducking behind the slash pines to the west etched their tops with fire and ignited the horizon beyond, streaking the bottoms of the
cirrus
clouds with swaths of Spanish orange and salmon.

But it
wasn’t
just the quality of light, sound too had a softness I associated with the transition of day into night.

After the officers had finished with Emile, I motioned him
over
and he moved toward me without hesitation or expression.

Standing before me, I could see how deceptive his build
was.
He was tall and thin, but very muscular. Every inch of him looked cut and ripped, pure muscle pressing out against the skin—not something easily achieved with the long muscles of a tall person.

His uniform was loose, and at a glance he looked to be anorexic, but it was an illusion. Huge veins popped out of the skin on the undersides of his forearms, and the well-defined muscles beneath them turned and twisted like steel cords as he moved his arms. “Rollins?” I asked.
“Yes,
sir.”

His voice was soft and slightly higher than I expected but bore no Southern accent.

“I’d
like to ask you a few questions.”

“Of course.”

“Tell
me about Lance Phillips, Brent Allen, and Danny
Jacobs.”

“Whatta you wanna know?
We
all sleep next to each other in the dorm—or did. I knew Danny the best. Still
can’t
believe he did
it.”

He looked down, but there was no sign of sadness on his face.

The officers checking in the inmates were tired and ready to
go
home, but the inmates were not cooperating. They were mouthing off, getting out of line, and moving slowly—seemingly on purpose, and the more the officers showed they
didn’t
like it, the more the inmates did it.

“What about Lance? He tried to—”

“Says he
didn’t.
I
don’t
know.
You
can never tell with Lance, he probably just wanted to get out of Confinement, but I thought Danny was doing good—well, good for
him.”

“Do you know of anyone who would want to hurt either of them?” I asked.

He shook his head.

“You
a member of their club?”

“What club? Gunners?”

Gunners were inmates who masturbated in front of female officers.

“Suicide
Kings.”

“Don’t
think
so.
They may’ve made me an honorary member or something ’cause
we
hang out, but I told ’em I
ain’t
ever gonna kill
myself.”

I nodded. “What can you tell me about
Danny’s
death?”

“Nothing,” he said. “Just a normal night.
We
all went to bed. When we
woke
up he was dead.”

He said it with no feeling. Just stating the facts.

Perhaps like so many of the men in here, he was incapable of attachment. Or maybe all associations inside were ones of need and convenience, and
didn’t involve
anything like
empathy.

“Anybody
out of the ordinary in the
dorm
that night?”

“It’d
be quicker to tell you who
wasn’t
there.
We
had more traffic than we’ve ever had before. By a long shot. A nurse came
by.
And the doctor, but not at the same
time.”

“Baldwin?” I asked.

“She was there
too,
at some point, but I was talking about the medical
doctor.”

“
Alvarez
?”

He nodded.
“And
the psych
lady.”

“You
already said
her.”

“Not
Dr.
Baldwin. That other one.
What’s
her name?”

“Ling?”

“Yeah.
Small, black-haired Asian chick. They all talked to
Danny.
Every one of ’em. All at different times. All pretty late. Before lights out, but . .
.”

The officers finished checking the inmates in and they all began to
move
toward the internal gate of the sally port to be buzzed back in to their dorms.

We
fell in line with the others and walked through the gate after it was buzzed open by the officer in the
tower.

He shook his head. “People thinking I’m a Suicide King mean I’m in danger?”

The large gate rolled back into place, clanging loudly as it reached the other side. Everyone was locked in again. Another day without an escape.

It was dark
now,
the only light coming from a street lamp near the maintenance building on the other side of the fence and a flood light shining down into the sally port from one of the tall poles supporting the south gate.

“You
think of any reason someone would want to kill the Kings?”

“No,”
he said. “I
can’t.”

“Well,
I’d
keep thinking about it, I were you. Might turn out to be valuable information one
day.”

“Y
ou
didn’t
tell me you were in A-dorm the night Danny died.”

Across the table from me Hahn stiffened, then sat perfectly still for a moment.

She had come to my office to
go
over
the list of Suicide Kings and tell me what she knew about each one. “I
didn’t?”
she asked.

“Why
didn’t
you?”

She
shrugged.
“It never came
up,
I guess. I’m not
sure.”

“I
can’t
believe you
didn’t
mention
it.”

“
You
don’t
suspect me, do you?”

“Of what?”

“I
don’t
know.
I just . . . I’m
sorry
I
didn’t
say anything
sooner.”

“
Sooner
?
You
didn’t
say anything at all.
I
brought it
up,
remember?
You
don’t
think
that’s
a little suspicious?”

“I think
you’ve
been around criminals too
long.
The only suspicious thing is your mind.
What’s
so odd about me visiting A-dorm?”

“You
don’t
do it that often, it was at night so
you
were off, and it just happened to be the night someone
was
killed down
there.”

“Can we talk about something else?” she said. “
Seriously
?”

“There’s
nothing to tell . . . and I
have
information for you that might actually help you figure out
who’s
doing
it.”

I shook my head, but she looked down at her notes and pressed on.

“Of the original Suicide Kings, only three are left inside—Lance Phillips, Brent Allen, and Emile
Rollins.
One, Myer Goodis, finished his sentence and now lives in Fort
Walton
Beach. And
two
are dead—Danny
Jacobs
and Ralph Meeks. According to everything official, they both committed suicide. Everyone I spoke to says there
was
nothing suspicious about
Meek’s
death. It was definitely suicide.”

“How long ago did—”

“Nearly
two
years. Hard to see it having anything to do with
what’s
going on
now.”

I nodded.

“What
is
going on now?” she asked. I
shrugged.

It was evening, just minutes after the end of our
work
day,
and we were at a little convenience store not far from the prison.

In addition to the normal beer, gas, junk food, and lottery
tickets,
the small store had a deli that served fried chicken, pizza, and hot wings––all of it as bad as any I had ever tried.