The Body and the Blood (24 page)

Chapter Fifty

“I figured I’d find you here,” Pete Fortner said.

He had entered Rudy’s a few moments before holding a file folder, and motioned me over to the opposite side of the diner. We were now standing near the last booth, as far away from everyone else in the restaurant as we could get.

“You found me,” I said. “Pete Fortner. Ace detective.”

He let out an unpleasant sound that could have been a sarcastic laugh.

His bushy mustache needed trimming, the shadow of his beard on his face was dark, and behind his glasses his eyes looked hollow and weary.

“How are you?” he asked.

“I’ve been better,” I said. “How about you?”

“Daniels has completely shut me out of this thing,” he said. “Had me running all over the place. Even got me sitting in his chair in Central Office answering the damn telephone while he’s over here.”

I shook my head. “Sorry.”

“How’s it going?”

“May finally be getting somewhere.”

“You got any idea where he is now?”

“Who?”

“The inspector.”

“Home, I guess,” I said.

He held up the folder. “This came for him today. Tox report.”

“May I?” I asked, taking the file without waiting for his response.

He nodded. “I’d rather give it to you than him anyway.”

I studied the contents of the folder.

“He was drugged up pretty good, wasn’t he?”

I nodded. “He sure was. The killer made it easy on himself. Gave him barbiturates to make him sleepy and easy to control and heparin, which according to this is an anti-coagulant.”

“Blood thinner?”

I nodded. “Made him easy to manage and thinned his blood, then put him face down on his cell floor, slit his throat, and just let him bleed out.”

Pete shook his head. “Sick son of a bitch.”

“Maybe. Definitely smart son of a bitch. He knew just what he was doing.”

* * * * *

A few minutes later, while Carla was clearing the dishes from the table and I was trying Susan again, Merrill walked in, Sharon Hawkins following closely behind him. After I left a second message for Susan, I joined them at the table.

Susan should have been here by now—or called. I wasn’t worried yet, but I was getting there.

When I returned to the table, Merrill nodded at Lisa. “Counselor here say she just gave you a clue.”

I nodded, then told him about the tox results Pete had dropped off.

“You got it?”

“I think so. Need to talk to Paula Menge to be sure.”

“Well, give her a call and let’s get this shit over with.”

Sitting across from each other, Sharon and Lisa seemed to be looking into an emotional mirror, each reflecting the other’s fear. As I looked at them, realizing that two different men were the cause of their terror, I wondered how many women lived in fear, a heavy sense of dread and detachment distancing them from everything else because of the men they had allowed into their lives.

Merrill reached across the table and handed me his cell before I could ask for it. I punched in Paula’s number and waited. As I did, I noticed something taking place between Sharon and Lisa I didn’t quite understand. They seemed to be measuring each other, figuring on whether the other was friend or foe. It would seem there were some instincts not even fear could suspend.

It took Paula several rings to answer the phone, and her voice sounded soft and sleepy.

“I wake you?”

“Chaplain Jordan?”

“Yeah.”

“I must’ve dozed off. Too much wine. I’m glad you called. I could’ve drowned. I’m in the tub.”

“How’re you holding up?” I asked.

“Good days and bad,” she said, as if she had said it a thousand times.

“If it’s okay, I need to ask you one more question.”

“Sure. Fire away.”

“Are you sure Justin ate during your visit?”

“Positive. Told you. He ate a ton of junk out of those vending machines.”

Her words made my heart sink and my temples throb.

“I bet I fed ten dollars into those machines. I think it was because we were so nervous, but we ate and drank a lot—especially Justin. He must’ve really developed an appetite in there. Before, you couldn’t get him to eat, but that night I couldn’t get him to stop.”

“Thanks.”

“Why does it matter?”

“I’ve got to go right now, but I’ll tell you soon. I promise.”

Merrill unzipped his black leather jacket and turned the collar down. Lisa’s eyes widened at how big his neck was.

Ending the call with Paula, I punched in Susan’s number again and got her voicemail. Without leaving another message, I called her office and found that she had left at the normal time. I then punched in Sarah Daniels’s number, worried, but still hopeful.

“Oh, John, thank
God.
Where
are you?”

“What’s wrong?”

“Get back to the prison right away. Tom called and told me goodbye. He sounded so bad. I think he’s being held hostage. He was making an arrest. Please. You’ve got to help him. Please.”

“Tell me exactly what he said.”

Susan pulled into Rudy’s parking lot, and relief began to join the dread inside me.

“He said he was finally able to get the man who . . . attacked me, but ran into trouble when he went to arrest him. I think somebody had already killed him.”

“I’m on my way.”

I ended the call as Susan was coming through the door. I looked over at Merrill.

“See if Pete’ll keep an eye on them,” I said, nodding toward Sharon, Lisa, and Carla.

He headed toward Pete’s table as I went to meet Susan.

“What’s wrong?” Susan asked.

“I need to talk to you and I don’t have a lot of time.”

“Okay.”

“Come over here.”

I led her over to an empty area in the back.

“What is it?”

“It’s gonna be hard to hear. I wish I didn’t have to tell you—wish I had more time, but I want you to know before I do anything.”

“God, you sound so ominous.”

“You know I love you,” I said. “Everything’s going to—”

“Quit with all the build up. Just tell me.”

“I just want you to know—”

“I mean it, John, just tell me.”

“I love you. I’m here for you. We can get through this together.”

“Tell me now or I’m walkin’ away.”

“I’m pretty sure your dad killed Justin Menge,” I said.

Chapter Fifty-one

“What?” she asked in shock. “No.”

“I’m sorry, but he did. Justin decided not to testify and—”

“He was with
you
when it happened,” she said, her voice soft, pained.

“He was with me when we discovered what had happened, not
when
it happened. It had happened a while before that. That’s why the changes in the body and the blood never matched the time of death. Of course, the blood thinner your dad gave him kept the blood from clotting all the way so that helped it look like the time of death was more recent than it was, but it was still obvious that something was wrong with it. I kept wondering why he didn’t seem concerned about time of death, why it didn’t bother him that the body and the blood contradicted what we thought we saw, why he kept saying that
we
established time of death, not the autopsy.

“When I first saw your dad he had already killed Justin—he even let it slip that he had just seen him, but caught himself and said it was Sobel. My guess is the syringes he used to drug him, the shank he used to kill him, and the CO uniform he wore over his clothes to keep the blood off him were in his satchel. He said he left his notebook in PM—that was his excuse to return to the quad with me—but he never got it when we got down there, never mentioned it again.”

She shook her head, refusing to hear what I was saying, refusing to allow for even the possibility it could be true.

“I’m sorry,” I said, “but it’s true. He went into his cell, caught him off guard, overpowered him, filled him with drugs, then laid him on the floor, and slit his throat so that nearly all of the blood drained onto the floor under his body.”

“John, I’ve heard y’all talk about this so much I know exactly what happened. You two were standing there when Menge walked back to his cell. You saw him go in. Dad never left your side. He couldn’t’ve—”

“That wasn’t Menge. It was Chris Sobel. He’d gone to meet with Paula so Justin could stay behind and meet with your dad in secrecy. It’s why Paula said Justin seemed so different. It wasn’t Justin. It was Chris Sobel.”

“There’s no way. You’ll never make me believe it—never.”

“I wish I couldn’t prove it, but I can.”

“How?”

“By Justin’s stomach contents,” I said, deciding to share with her everything I now knew in hopes of convincing her. “The autopsy shows his stomach was empty. The ME said he hadn’t eaten anything since lunch, but the person visiting with Paula ate several items from the vending machine in the visiting park. That was Chris Sobel, not Justin. Justin was already dead by then. It was Chris we saw walk into the quad, not Justin—Pitts even said that’s who he buzzed in at first.”

She took a step back from me.

Across the diner, Merrill looked to be finishing up with Pete. As Merrill spoke, Pete continued to eat.

“You forget how well I know this case,” she said. “Sobel’s prints were in Menge’s cell. He went to Mass late, didn’t have shoes on,
and
he escaped. Why would he escape if he was innocent?”

I’m so sorry—and I wish I had more time—but I need you to trust me.”

“No.”

“I’m sorry, but I’ve got to get to the prison. Either your dad’s in trouble or he just killed Juan Martinez.”

“And of course you’d rather believe he killed someone than—”

“No. Please. Listen to me.”

“Why’re you doin’ this? she asked. “If you don’t want to be with me just say. Don’t—”

“ If you want to ride to the prison with us, I can take you through it step by step.”

She nodded, Merrill walked up, and without saying anything, the three of us made our way toward my truck.

In the dark parking lot, Susan said, “Start with motive. What possible motive could he have? Why would Dad kill his star witness?”

Merrill’s eyes widened, and he looked at me. I nodded, and he shook his head.

“Justin had decided
not
to testify against Martinez and instead
to
testify against your dad.”

“So Dad
killed
him? Do you know how many times witnesses have decided not to testify over the years?”

“You’re right,” I said, trying to make my voice as soothing as possible. “But this is the first one that could hurt him.”

“What? How?”

We reached the truck and quickly climbed in.

“This was a crime to cover up another crime,” I said,
which is why I kept thinking about what David did to Uriah
. “Menge could testify against your dad for manufacturing evidence and suborning perjury. And I think he was going to. In an attempt to take revenge on Martinez, your dad committed crimes that wouldn’t just cost him his job, but his freedom. He was trying to help and protect your mother. He wasn’t about to let Justin take him away from her. He did this to cover up his previous crimes.”

I pulled out onto the empty, rural highway and began racing toward the institution.

“He wouldn’t do that,” she said. “He wouldn’t risk prison.”

“He was already at risk—exposed because of what he’d done. I think he saw this as his best chance to escape it. He had a good plan, he executed it well, and he’d be the one investigating it. He even asked me to help him—something he had never done before—so he could keep me close, keep an eye on me. The odds were in his favor. He controlled the investigation, kept other agencies out, kept us from getting information from the lab.”

“Sobel’s the one whose plan’s working. He’s got you believing he didn’t do it and Dad did.”

I thought about how strong Susan’s denial was. It seemed impenetrable, and I knew it came from years and years of living in a dysfunctional family where everyone pretended everything was okay and denied that Daddy had a drinking problem.

“He
does
look good for it,” I said, “because when he came back into the quad pretending to be Menge, he had to go into Menge’s cell. He stepped into the dark cell, unable to see because your dad had disabled the light earlier when he had killed Justin. It’s why Father McFadden couldn’t see inside, said it was darker than the other cells. It’s also why Sobel’s prints were on the light. He had to hook it back up. And when he did, what he saw made him cry out. That’s who we heard. He’s a killer, but we’re talking about someone he loved. I’m sure he was shocked, but he pulled it together very quickly and knew what he had to do to keep from being implicated right then and there.”

Squeezed between Merrill and me in the seat, she looked up at me, tears filling her big brown eyes, and I could tell that what I was saying was beginning to chip away at her defensiveness.

“Chris and Justin had swapped uniforms and IDs. Chris ripped his name label off his shirt Justin was wearing. That’s why Chris was missing one. It was also why there was a square patch with very little blood on it on the shirt Justin had on. The blood was on the label. He then moved the body of his lover onto the bed and covered him up—that’s how his body was in one place and his blood in another. It actually helped your dad be truer to what the flyer said—except lividity was already set and couldn’t change. And since death occurred before we thought it did, the blood was already changing colors, the serum separating by the time we entered the cell. Chris got blood on the uniform he was wearing—Justin’s—so he took it off, wadded it up and left it in the corner. There was blood on his boots, too. He took them off and put them under Justin’s bed. He then put on Justin’s only remaining clean uniform, ripped the tag off, and swapped ID’s with him—which is why Menge’s didn’t have any blood on it, but I guarantee there are traces of Justin’s blood on Sobel’s even though he washed it off. For a while he waited, then he called out Menge’s cell number and went to Mass. When Potter sent him back to get shoes, he came back to Mass wearing tennis shoes, not boots—and he hadn’t been buzzed into his cell because it was already unlocked—rigged so he could slip into it after trading uniforms with Justin when he got back from his visit with Paula.”

I paused for a moment from building the case against her dad clue by clue, but she didn’t say anything, just looked at me with a mixture of anger and disbelief.

Beside her, Merrill remained silent, as well.

“Your dad’s also the one who planted the murder weapon in Hawkins’s cell. His mistake was doing it
after
Merrill had searched it. We knew it had to be planted, but it couldn’t have been done by an inmate. They were locked in another quad by then. All of this fits the evidence. Otherwise, we have a murder being committed in a locked cell in which no one went into or came out of.”

She shook her head, tears streaming down her cheeks now. “What are you gonna do?”

She looked so vulnerable, so completely helpless, which, along with the fact that she was pregnant, made her pain all the more unbearable for me, and I wanted to take it away. I wanted to comfort her, but there was nothing I could do.

“I’ll give your dad a chance to prove me wrong.”

“And if he can’t?”

“I’m sure a jury will show compassion because of what happened to your mother.”

Merrill nodded, but still didn’t say anything.

“So if he can’t prove to you he didn’t do it, you’re gonna turn him in?”

“Susan, he killed an innocent man.”

“To protect Mom. Do you have any idea what they’ve been through? He’s all she’s got. She needs him.”

“He should’ve just taken the hit for suborning perjury. With Menge’s testimony he would’ve lost his job, but served very little jail time. I’m sure he didn’t want what happened to your mom to become public knowledge, and he thought he wouldn’t have any problem killing Justin and setting up one of the other PM inmates for it. I think he was trying to leave it as an unsolved—which is why he went to such lengths to make it seem like an impossible crime and not frame any one person—which was brilliant. At one time or another, he said he was convinced that nearly all our suspects had done it—including Lisa Lopez.”

Merrill’s phone started ringing.

“Whatever he did,” she said, “he did for her. He’s all she’s got. If she loses him . . .”

“She’ll still have us.”

“
Us
?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“You really think I could be with someone who could do this to us after all we’ve been through? You think I could just be your wife, have your baby, and pretend you didn’t destroy what’s left of my mom and dad? “

“What’re you saying?”

Before she could answer, Merrill said, “Juan Martinez has been shanked. He’s dead.”

I nodded.

“They think Hawkins did it.”

I shook my head.

“Say he then attacked Daniels.”

“Is he okay?” Susan said.

“Hawkins got the worst of it. Your dad’s just a little bruised and scratched up.”

“We’ve got to stop him,” I said. “He’s out of control. He took Martinez out—setting up Hawkins for it.”

She shook her head. “Who are you?”

“May wanna turn around,” Merrill said, “They on the way to Bay Medical.”

I slowed the truck, pulled off the highway, made a U-turn, and sped back in the direction of the hospital.