JJ08 - Blood Money (28 page)

It was all so similar, but from the moment I walked up to the
body,
I knew this death was different.

The fixed
lividity,
which was wrong for the position of the
body,
and the marks made by the rope were inconsistent with the
way
his neck hung in the noose.

“Maybe we been watching the wrong convict,” Merrill said.

He was standing near me, looking at the
body.
I frowned and shook my head. “Maybe
so.”

“Maybe
not,”
Officer Wilder said, edging
over
toward
us.
“He was sleeping in
Phillips’s
bunk.”

Derek Wilder, an evening shift officer who had no reason to be in here, had been listening in on our conversation since it started—something I found annoying until he stepped up with useful information.

I called Lance
over
from where the
dorm
officers had the inmates lined up preparing to relocate them to one of the empty
T-cell
dorm
quads.

“Brent was in your bunk last night?”

Lance reached up and rubbed his neck. “I was so sore and stove up from what happened in the chapel, he traded bunks with me.
I’s
having a hard time climbing up on the top
bunk.”

“Fucker really did want to
die,”
Merrill said. “He thought he was invincible, but
honestly,
we
didn’t
even think about it. I mean, I
wouldn’t’ve
been down here if I
didn’t
think it was safe. No one thought anyone would
try
something here again. And we figured the
dorm
officers would be watching us—this back corner—a lot more closely
now.”

I turned and looked across the
dorm
at Donnie
Foster.

“I just
don’t
get you dumb
bastards,”
Merrill said.

Lance
shrugged.
“I
don’t
want to die. Never did. I’m not sure any of us did—but a few
didn’t
seem to care
much
either
way.
Brent was one of ’em. None of this should’ve ever happened. It was just something to
do,
a
way
to pass the
time.”

I shook my head.

Merrill said, “Lawson and company gonna be here any minute. Anything else you need to—”

As if on cue, the door opened and Mark Lawson walked in. Merrill and I began walking out. No reason to
have
him kick us out when
we
could leave
voluntarily.
We
met him halfway between where
we
had been and the
door.

“Chaplain,” he said in a congenial
voice.
“Just the man I was looking
for.
I’ve been told to eat some humble pie and ask you to help us on this
one.”

I was so surprised I
didn’t
know what to
say.
I
was
also suspicious as hell.

“Come
on,”
he said, beginning to
move
toward the back of the
dorm
and the body awaiting him there.
“Let’s
take a look and see what
we
got.”

Merrill and I both followed him.

I had guessed that Mark Lawson
would
be the kind of man to make jokes at a crime scene, and when he began I was disappointed I had been right about him.

“Don’t
understand why everybody’s killing
themselves,”
he said.
“We
doing something wrong? They not happy here?”

We
didn’t
respond.

“So’s
this guy part of the suicide club?” I nodded. “The Suicide
Kings.”

“I’m thinkin’ we need to ship the rest of ’em off to a psych
camp.
Keep ’em from killing
themselves.”

“He was murdered,” I said.

“How can you be so sure?” Lawson said. “They
haven’t
even done an autopsy on
him.”

“Lividity
doesn’t
match the position of the
body.”
He took a closer look at the
body.
“I’ll be damned.”

Brent’s
lividity was fixed. The entire front portion of his body was bruised, and his feet, which were the lowest points in his current position,
weren’t
any darker than any other part of him. The body had been moved after he
was
murdered.

He had been lying facedown when he was killed.

After he was dead, he had been left that
way
for a while—probably as the killer waited for the right time to string him up—and it was long enough for the lividity to become fixed. Later, when he was moved, tied up in the position he was in
now,
the discoloration of his skin from the facedown position he had been killed and left in
didn’t
change.

“Look at the marks on his
neck,”
I said. “See how the bruise is in a straight line like a ring?”

Lawson looked.
“Yeah?”

“If
he’d
really been hung, it
wouldn’t
be a circle, but a
V.
The pressure of the rope where
it’s
tied
above
the head causes it to pull
up.
Looks like he was strangled facedown on his bunk or on the floor, killed, left there for a while, then hung from the
bunk.”

W
alking
over
to Donnie
Foster
in the far corner of the dorm, I said,
“You’ve
been avoiding
me.”

“Sure I
ain’t
the only
one.”

“
Oh really?”

“You
jam people
up.”

“Actually,
he help people
out,”
Merrill said. “Got nothin’ I need help with,”
Foster
said. “Got anything you could get jammed up for?” I
asked.

“No.
Haven’t
done
anything.
Haven’t
seen
anything.

Don’t
know
anything.
Don’t
want any trouble.
Won’t
say anything
else.”

Merrill stepped toward him.

“You
can’t
scare me or threaten me or coerce me into telling you something I
don’t
know.
I
ain’t
gonna make shit
up.
And I
won’t
stand here and just keep saying the same thing
over
and
over.”

He then walked
away
and we let him.

C
larissa was crying.

The small apartment was sad and dingy and smelled of years of cheap food, cigarette and pot smoke, dogs, cats,
birds,
people, paint, perms, bleach, air freshener, carpet cleaner, and a thousand other things in layer upon layer of lives lived in a cramped, inexpensive place.

The apartment was right off Balboa in
Panama
City,
just a couple of miles from the college.

Clarissa King lived here now and was adding a new layer of her own.

She was a short, round black girl in her early twenties, nearly as wide as she was tall.

I was here because she had filed a missing
person’s
report recently of a young man I was pretty sure was the victim who had been found by the loggers in the hunting trailer.

His name was Andy Bearden. He was her roommate.

And the more she told me about him, the more I became convinced it was him.

“But Andy
didn’t hunt,”
Clarissa said. “He
wouldn’t’ve
been out there
hunting.
He could never shoot anything.
Couldn’t
hurt a
fly.
One of the gentlest souls
you’d
ever want to meet.”

I nodded.

“Do you really think it could be him?” she asked, dotting tears from the corners of her eyes with the tips of her fat fingers.

“That’s
what I’m tryin’ to find out.”

“But who would kill him? No one would kill him. He
didn’t have
an enemy in the
world.”

“When was the last time you saw him?”

She thought about it.
“Can’t
be sure
exactly.
Our schedules are so different and
we
stay so busy and I just got back from visiting my people in Louisiana. I’ve been gone a week and it was probably a few days before that. I’m just not
sure.”

“Tell
me some more about
him.”

“He was the sweetest, kindest
boy,”
she said.
“Don’t
get me wrong,
he’d
fight like hell for the underdog, for what he believed in. He was sort of
scrappy,
but he
couldn’t
do much. He was so little.”

“He been scrappin’ with anyone in particular lately?”

She shook her head. “I
don’t
think
so.
But he
was
always taking up lost causes, helping the helpless and hopeless, sharing and giving what he had until he ran out. Perfect example––this is his apartment.
He’s
just letting me stay here and pay what I can, which
isn’t
a lot.
We’re
in college together
over
at Gulf Coast.
He’s
on
scholarship,
gets grants and shit. Me, not so much. He shares it all until it runs
out.”

“What’s
he studying?”

“Theater.
We
both are.
It’s
how we met.
He’s
such a great performer. So dramatic. So
brave
and committed.
Was
always blowing me
away
with the places he
would
go––so vulnerable, so
brave.”

“Are
you
two
romantically involved?”

She laughed a little and shook her head. “I
don’t
really
go
for white guys––especially if they weigh less than one of my legs––and he
didn’t
go
for girls of any color or
size.”

“And
you
can’t
think of anyone
who’d
want to hurt
him?”

“No.
No
way.”

“Nothing he was mixed up in that might
have
caused him to cross paths with dangerous people?”

“No.
Absolutely not. He was a straightedge, a real clean kid, you know? Never got
involved
in anything illegal or even
sketchy.
Only thing he ever did that was the least bit
edgy
was gay pride stuff.
Marches.
Sit-ins. Protests.

Marriage equality
rallies.
Stuff like that. But even then, he was so sweet about it, so gentle and kind––even to the ignorant assholes on the other side of the
issue.”

“Does he
have
a boyfriend?”

“He’s
single. Has been a long time.
He’s
got friends. Lots of them. He sleeps with some of ’em sometimes, but
it’s
more cool and casual than you can imagine.”

“Where’d he
work?”

“Full-time student. I mean, he did some performances.
Shows, plays,
musicals. Like that. Never makes more than beer money and he actually loses money when he does the drag shows at places like the Fiesta in town and Splash Bar on the beach. The costumes are so elaborate and expensive.
Wait.
I just thought of something.”

“What’s
that?”

“He’s
got a thing for straight guys and . . . oh
wow
. .
.”

“
What is it?”

“Where’d you say he was killed? He used to meet a closeted country
boy
from Pottersville out in the
woods
between here and there. Called him Roughneck Redneck.

This
was
a while back.
Hasn’t
mentioned him in forever . . . I thought he had stopped seeing him. Think he had. But what if he met him again?”

“Can you think of anything else about him? A name? Description? Anything?”

She thought about it.
“It’s
been a while. He
was
married. Paranoid. Petrified of being found out. Ron. I think one time he said
Ron
the
Roughneck
Redneck . . . but I
can’t
be sure. Got the feeling he was a pretty big
guy.
Or maybe he just had a big dick. I
can’t
remember. I’m
sorry.”

“You’ve
been very
helpful,”
I said. “Thanks for taking the time to talk to
me.
If
you
think of anything else . . . please
give
me a call.”

I gave her my number and a hug and left.
Walking
back to my car, I called Richie
Cox.

“Don’t
tell me
we’ve
got another political
event,”
he said. “I honestly think
I’d
shoot myself in the face rather than face another one of those dreadful
things.”