JJ09 - Blood Moon (8 page)

I knew she had been reading the law book. Though she wasn’t practicing and wasn’t sure she would, Anna had recently graduated from FSU Law School and was fascinated with all things criminal justice. With the upheaval in her life, and being with child, I knew it was too much for her to think about just now, but I hoped one day she would practice law, because I knew how good she would be at it.

I hadn’t known she was also reading the relationship book. But it didn’t surprise me. Not at all. Of course she would want to have the best divorce possible. Of course she would want us to have the best relationship possible. Of course she would do all she could to make both of those things happen.

I wondered if the experience of being shot and almost dying and the possibility of Anna never coming back to him would change Chris at all. He obviously cared about her. Could he get past the rejection and blow to his ego that her leaving him was? Would he ever take responsibility for his affairs and mistreatment of her?

It’s all moot if you don’t get her back.

Placing the books back just like they had been, I laid my head on her pillow and breathed her in, the smell of her shampoo and perfume creating an olfactory experience that simultaneously heightened both her presence and absence here.

I missed her so much. I was so tired, so sleepy, so spent in every way, I wanted to stay here like this, drift into the gentle oblivion of unconsciousness with the sweet smell of her swirling around me, but I forced myself to get up and do what I came home to do.

Going into the little living room, where on every wall were stacks of my books, I got pen and paper and wrote a note explaining everything to Merrill and asking him to square things if I failed to.

A certain hollowed-out hopelessness still sat at my center, but writing the letter––having someone like Merrill to write it to––made me feel better.

When I opened my front door to leave, I saw, to my surprise, Chris Taunton easing into the yard in a car I didn’t recognize.

He pulled in sideways, placing the vehicle perpendicular to the trailer, and rolled his window down.

“Don’t make me try to get out,” he said.

“The hell are you doing?” I asked.

He was leaned way back in the seat, sitting stiff and gingerly, and looked a half step above dead. When he reached up to put the car in park, he winced in pain.

“Something against doctor’s orders,” he said, “but I want to help you find her and get her back. I have to.”

“You’re jeopardizing her life just by being here. What if they see you? What could you do to help anyway?”

“I can’t lay there thinking about all the ways I did her wrong.”

“Maybe that’s exactly what you need to be doing.”

“Punish myself? For how long? The rest of my life?”

“No. Reflect. Repent. Learn.”

“Repent? I’ve already asked God to forgive me a thousand times.”

“Means nothing. I’m talking about making changes. Repent means to go in a different direction.”

“That’s what I’m trying to do. By the way, what happened to my car? You seen it?”

My phone rang.

I held up my hand and gave him a look that said be quiet.

“Are you back at the prison?” the caller asked.

Would you know if I wasn’t?

“Nearly.”

“Nearly isn’t good enough, John. Not nearly good enough.”

“I will be soon.”

“Why aren’t you following my instructions? Don’t tell me I overestimated your care for your wife.”

Chris mouthed,
What is he saying
?

“You did not. I’m trying to do everything you asked. Just like you want it done.”

“Doesn’t seem that way to me,” he said. “I want this to have a happy ending for all of us, but I’m not playing games, not making idle threats. You saw what we did to the guy who tried to be a hero. Don’t make me kill her. I honestly don’t want to. But know this––I will if I have to. Then I will find someone else to do what I need done. Understand?”

“I do.”

“I will call you again in fifteen minutes. You better be back at the prison.”

“I will be.”

I hung up.

“I’ve got to go,” I said to Chris. “You need to go back to the hospital. If there’s anything you can do I will let you know. But for now, you can’t be seen.”

I didn’t wait for him to respond. Just jumped into Anna’s Mustang and sped away.

As I raced toward the prison, I tried to formulate a plan for getting back in.

I kept coming up short, but the irony of going from working so hard to figure how to break an inmate out to now trying to devise a plan to break back in wasn’t lost on me.

At a minimum I would be at the prison when the kidnapper called back. I could go inside the admin or training buildings, which were outside the fence, if nothing else. If anyone asked what I was doing, I could say I came back because I wanted to meet with the warden about my future.

Of course, I’d be surprised if anybody but Randy Wayne, the warden and maybe his secretary even knew anything about my suspension.

I arrived at the institution with one minute to spare.

The warden’s office was on the far left side of the admin building closest to the front gate of the prison, so I entered through the front door on the opposite end, something mostly only visitors did, and was greeted by Brandy Jean Bateman, the buxom blonde with perpetual relationship dilemmas, who was forever soliciting advice she never took.

“Just the man I wanted to see,” she said. “I’ve got a question for you.”

“I’ll be right back to answer it for you, but I have to run take care of something first.”

“Sure,” she said, sighing with a certain wistful resignation, as if all men made her wait. “Take your time. I’ll be here.”

I rushed past her as my phone started ringing.

Answering it as quickly as I could, I ducked into the Mens to take it.

“Are you back at the prison?”

“I am,” I said, entering the first of the two small stalls and closing the door.

“What’s that echo?”

“You really want to know?” I asked, trying to think of something to say.

“Wouldn’t’ve asked if I didn’t.”

“I’m in the restroom. All this has my stomach messed up.”

“Sorry,” he said, and he sounded liked he meant it, “this will all be over soon.”

“Speaking to Anna will help.”

“Here she is.”

“John?” Anna said.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. I really am. I just miss you so much. They’re treating me very well. All I need in the world is to be back with you . . . and a nice long bath.”

“You’ll have both very soon. I’m gonna get you out of there.”

“I know how you are,” she said. “But take care of yourself too. Not just me and everybody else. Are you eating? Have you slept any at all?”

“I’m okay. I’ll be great as soon as you’re back safe and sound.”

“I love you so much,” she said.

“I love you. See you soon.”

There was a rustling sound on the phone and she was gone.

“Why are you risking your wife’s life, John?” the kidnapper asked.

“What?”

“I told you to do exactly what I say and not to ever lie to me.”

“I––”

“Why would you tell me you’re at the prison when you’re––”

“I am. I told you.”

“You lied.”

“I didn’t.”

“You’re not there.”

“I told you,” I said. “My stomach is . . . I had a . . . an emergency. As soon as I got back, I ran into the closest bathroom. I’m in the men’s restroom in Admin right now. It’s where I’ve been since the moment I got back.”

“I meant for you to be in your office. In the chapel.”

“I will be. I just had to––”

“You better not be lying, John.”

With that he ended the call.

“What the
hell
are
you
doin’ here?”

As I pulled the restroom door open and stepped out, I walked into the warden.

Anger reddened his fleshy face, flared his nostrils, furrowed his brow.

Bat Matson was a man who expected to be obeyed.

“Answer me,” he said, his jowls shaking a bit as he did.

“I asked him to join us,” Carrie Helms said.

I turned to see Helms, Randy Wayne Davis, and Pine Tree Peavey walking down the narrow hallway toward us.

Carrie Helms was in front, Randy not far behind her, Pine lumbering after them, eclipsing everything behind him.

Pete Pine Tree Peavey was the largest man I’d ever seen in person. Not just tall, but wide, he wasn’t a narrow, quick-growing slash pine but a massive, thick-bodied loblolly pine.

“
Us
? Who? The chaplain is on suspension.”

“He won’t be after you hear what Pi––Sergeant Peavey has to say,” Randy Wayne said, adding, as if an afterthought, a subtle smartass “Sir.”

“He’s an eyewitness,” Carrie said.

“To what?” Matson asked.

“What happened in H Dorm the night Ms. Ling was killed,” Pine said. “I was on duty. Saw the whole thing.”

“My office,” Matson said. “I’ll be there in a minute. Sergeant Davis, tell Crystal to call Inspector Peterson and tell her to meet us there.”

Matson entered the restroom and the rest of us headed toward his office, Pine in front now.

“Think you’d ever see a cavalry that looked like the four of us?” Carrie asked.

“You literally can’t see anything on the other side of him,” Randy Wayne, who was right behind Pine, was saying.

“Four?” I said.

Carrie and Randy Wayne started laughing.

“Yeah,” she said. “Merrill’s on the other side of Pine.”

Merrill, Carrie, Randy Wayne, Pine, Rachel Peterson, and I were all crowded into Matson’s office.

Of course, had it just been Pine, it would’ve still been crowded.

“What’s this about?” Rachel asked.

“That’s what we’re here to find out,” Matson said.

“We don’t understand why Chaplain Jordan has been suspended,” Randy Wayne said. “Sergeant Monroe corroborated his account of what happened in H Dorm the night Hahn was killed.”

“Let’s just say we’re not sure Sergeant Monroe is the most reliable witness where his best friend, the chaplain, is concerned,” Rachel said.

“Well, how about the sergeant who was on duty in the dorm that night?” Carrie said.

“I assume you mean Sergeant Peavey,” she said.

“I do.”

“Are you a good friend of the chaplain’s too?” Rachel asked.

“Barely know him at all,” Pine said. “I know of him. We both grew up here, but he’s at least ten years older than me, so we really didn’t even go to school together, and––”

“I was being facetious,” she said.

“Oh.”

“Give us your account of what happened in H Dorm the night Hahn Ling was killed,” Rachel said, snapping on her recorder and holding it out toward him.

He did.

And it matched what Merrill and I had already told her.

“Did anyone coach you on what to say?” she asked.

“No, ma’am.”

“Not in any way?”

“I was just called up here from the compound,” he said. “Had no idea what was going on.”

Rachel looked at Matson. He frowned and shrugged. “Think maybe you should’ve spoken with the officers on duty in the dorm that night before suspending the chaplain?” he said.

“The suspension was your idea,” she said.

“Based on what you told me your investigation was revealing,” he said.

She shook her head and sighed.

As if suddenly realizing we were all still in the room, Matson looked at us and said, “Get back to work. All of you. You too, Chaplain.”

“Thank you,” I said to Carrie as we walked from the admin building toward the control room.

“Thank Randy Wayne. It was all him.”

“Thank you,” I said to him. “Thank you all.”

He and Pine, who were a few steps in front of us, slowed and turned.

“Just did what was right,” Randy Wayne said. “I hate a bully. The new warden’s a bully. And you do so much good around here, Chaplain. And I don’t ever see anyone thanking you.”

“Thank you,” I said again.

When they turned back around, Carrie Helms lowered her rough, scratchy voice and said, “What can you tell me about what happened to Chris Taunton? I heard he was dead. Shot to death.”

That afternoon I counseled with an officer whose wife was leaving him.

“She says I’m a different person from the one she married,” he said.

He was a meek and mild-mannered young man with closely cropped brown hair and sad, sagging brown eyes.

“Says working here has changed me.”

It probably had. It was a difficult job in an inhumane environment, a daily assault on civility and humanity. Incidences of alcohol and drug abuse, depression, anxiety, and domestic violence all increased among correctional officers.

“Has it?” I asked.

He seemed to think about it for a moment, then frowned, shrugged, and nodded. “Yeah, guess it has.”

“It’s a dark, difficult place,” I said.

“But . . . our vows were for better or worse.”

“How much worse is it?” I asked.

He didn’t respond right away.

My mind kept wanting to wander back to Anna, to the plan and preparations, and I had to keep bringing it back to this moment, to helping this man, to being present––something I was finding challenging in the midst of everything else I was doing these days.

“It’s not bad all the time,” he said. “But . . . I do have a shorter fuse these days. I don’t know, it’s like I’m always on edge. Sometimes I just lose it. Definitely drink too much. Not sure what all I do to her when I . . . when I’m drinking.”

“Have you hit her?”

“No. Nothing like that. I wouldn’t blame her for leavin’ if I ever did anything like that. And I won’t.”

We talked for a long time after that, but the more he talked the more futile it all felt. It wasn’t that he couldn’t make the monumental, fundamental changes needed to save his marriage. It was that, like most of us, he
wouldn’t
make them. He wanted
things
to change, but there are no things. There is only us. We change us––our thoughts, words, and deeds––or we change nothing.