Michael Lister - Power in the Blood

“I don’t trust me to do that.”

“I do,” she said, her voice full of certainty. “This is not Atlanta. I’m not convinced that was your fault anyway, but even if it was, it’s time to move on. You’re very good at what you do-at all the different things that you do. I trust you to take care of me, to solve this case, and to continue to do the work of God, too.”

“And on the weekends, I could bring about world peace,” I said.

“It is a lot, but you can do it. I’m serious.”

I could tell that she was. “Thank you,” I said. “I want to talk to you more about the whole Stone Cold Killer thing. Not now, but soon. I know you need to. For now, I want you to be very careful. Play it safe, okay? Don’t go anywhere or do anything alone inside here, okay?”

“Okay. It’s going to be all right. I’m going to be fine. You’re going to figure all of this out. Once again, save the day.”

We drank a little more. I knew that we needed to get on with our search, but I was content just to be in her company. She was refreshing. If being happy is being unable to think of another place you’d rather be than where you are, then I was happy.

“I need to look in some of the rooms down here, and I need someone to cause a distraction, and, honey, you are distracting,” I said.

“You asked me down here just to be a distraction? I’m insulted. I am more than just another pretty face.”

“Without question. You’re a versatile woman who can do anything. And the anything that this situation calls for is distraction. Another time and in another place, you can use your other assets.”

“As long as you don’t forget that I am woman, phenomenally,” she said, alluding to Maya Angelou’s poem, which I wouldn’t have known had it not been for her.

“Phenomenal woman, that’s you,” I said completing the line of the poem. “Now, what I need is for you to talk to the officer in the infirmary. And be as distracting as you can.”

She was.

I decided to look in the caustic storage closets first since this was where the cleaning chemicals were stored. They were both locked. I reached in my back pocket and whipped out my Visa card, slid it down the side of the doorjamb, and the door opened-too easily. Someone had done this before-many times.

I glanced at my Visa before I put it back. It had a tear in it that broke the magnetic strip. I smiled. It was maxed out anyway.

The first closet had a single metal shelf that looked like it should have been in someone’s garage. It was filled with boxes of garbage bags, paper towels, toilet paper, and rubber gloves. The very bottom shelf was filled with white plastic bottles of PRIDE chemicals: wax, stripper, floor cleaner, and glass cleaner. There were also two cans of the cleaning spray that kills HIV and hepatitis on contact surfaces like toilet seats.

I got down on my hands and knees to take a closer look. I resisted the urge to touch them, which made it tough to see well. I moved to the side of the shelf, and then I saw it. On the back side there was a bottle of cleaner leaking, the liquid standing around the base of the bottle, the shelf, and the floor. I had not done a lot of detecting lately, so I wasn’t sure, but I thought this looked a lot like a clue.

Amazingly enough, I was right. It was another reason I had faith-anything’s possible. I was so thrilled about being right and finding an actual physical clue that I decided not to check the other closet.

Daniels would do it with crime scene investigators who were equipped to process it.

I walked back up towards the front. In the long corridor that led up to the infirmary, the elderly inmate orderly named Jones was mopping the floor. He was so quiet and his moves so understated that I probably wouldn’t have noticed him except that he was whistling. It was a very soft, airy whistle. I wasn’t sure, but the tune sounded like “As Time Goes By.” When I arrived at the infirmary control room, Anna was still beguiling the young officer, Ron Straub. He never had a chance.

“How you doing?” I asked him when I walked in.

“Fine. How are you, Chaplain?” he said, not bothering to mask his irritation at the intrusion-the second one in as many days.

“Do you have an inmate in the infirmary named Anthony Thomas?”

He looked away from me very quickly, but it was in the direction of the infirmary, so I couldn’t tell if he was just looking to see if Thomas was in the infirmary or if he was startled by the question.

“Jones,” he yelled to the orderly, “wasn’t Thomas put in confinement Tuesday morning?”

Through the windows of the control room, I could see the inmate slowly walking up the hallway toward us.

“Yes, sir,” he said when he reached the door. And then he walked back.

“He’s in confinement,” Straub said.

“Thank you. I’ll see him there. Have a good day,” I said and began to walk away. When I began to leave, he smiled. When Anna joined me, he stopped.

“What did you find?” Anna asked when we were seated in her office again.

“I just may have found where the body was stored until the trash was taken out.”

“Where?”

“In one of the caustic storage rooms at the end of the hallway past the infirmary. It would make the perfect place. That hallway is almost always empty, and next to no one goes into that closet.”

“What made you look in there in the first place?”

I told her.

“Why did you ask about Anthony Thomas? I mean, does it have something to do with this case?”

“I honestly don’t know. Why?”

She smiled that smile from ear to ear and shrugged as if to say, What canary ? “Well,” she began, “some men, most men, will brag when given the opportunity to do so to an attentive female.”

“I quite agree.”

“So, I gave Ron my full attention and just a hint of thigh and he sang like a Pointer sister.”

“A Pointer sister?”

“They’re making a comeback.”

“I wondered where they had gone. I figured they found a man with a slow hand and just couldn’t quite get back on the road anymore.”

“I think he left them. Anyway, Ron told some tales, and one of them was about an inmate who was having an affair with one of the nurses.”

“Thomas?” I asked

“Thomas,” she said. “So I wondered how he figured into all this.”

“I don’t know how or if he does really. Did he say which nurse it was?”

“No. I don’t think he knows. He was just showing off and probably feeling me out as to whether or not I would go with an inmate.”

“I see. Well, what now?” I asked. “You’re going to be extra careful. Lock your doors; don’t go anywhere alone. Play it safe.”

“And you,” she said, “are going to continue your search-that is, if you are handling it as well as you seem to be.”

I stood to leave. “It is no illusion. So far, I’m okay. But you go right on asking because it makes me feel looked after.”

“I try,” she said.

“No,” I said. “You succeed.”

Back in my office, I sat entering all of the information I had about the murder into my computer when Merrill Monroe walked in.

He didn’t knock, which meant he had asked Mr. Smith if anyone was with me. He would have knocked otherwise. He walked in and took a seat in the same way he did everything, with natural rhythm-like he was made to do it. I knew it to be over a hundred degrees outside, but not because Merrill showed any signs of it. He moved and looked as if he had just come in from an invigorating walk in the cool, crisp air of a fall morning.

“’s up?” he said when he was seated in front of me.

“Got me,” I said. “You’re looking at the man who knows the very least about the way things work around here.”