Michael Lister - Blood of the Lamb

“And Officer Whitfield came in at the end,” I said.

“Oh, that’s right,” he said. “I forgot. He got back just in time for the… well, you know.”

“So,” Pete said, “you got any idea who did it?”

“No,” he said, “but Stone might as well have. He’s the one who tied her to a stake like bait down there with all the predators.”

When Edward Stone welcomed me into his office, something he had never done, he closed the door, something he had often done. He then invited me to take a seat and offered me coffee, something he never did, and when I declined, he frowned deeply, something he often did.

“I assume your father and Inspector Fortner have both asked for your help,” he said.

I didn’t respond. He had warned me not to investigate after the last case I had worked.

“It’s okay,” he said. “I’m about to do the same thing. We need your help on this one. You’re a good investigator, you have a unique position that allows you to move about between both the inmates and the staff comfortably, and you are respected by both groups.”

“What was she doing in here?” I asked, my voice raw and accusatory. “How could you have let her? Why would the people who’re supposed to be her parents even want to-”

“They weren’t supposed to be her parents,” he said. “They were her parents. She was loved and cared for by-”

“People who used her race to further their cause? People who subjected her to the fatal dangers of prison to gain greater acceptance from the large black population?”

He shook his head. “You of all people should understand ministry,” he said. “You do anything for God.”

“For God?” I asked in shock. “Bobby Earl’s ego is his God.”

He winced, the furrow between his eyes deepening into dark crevices, and I could tell that my words had seemed blasphemous to him.

“Bobby Earl serves the same God I do,” he said. “And there’s nothing we wouldn’t do for him.”

“Including offering up your child?” I asked.

I knew it was a low blow before I said it, but I didn’t realize how low I was for saying it until I saw the anguish in his eyes. Though I was unaware of any of the details, I knew he had lost a son as a child and I wanted to wound him for what he-what I-had allowed to happen to Nicole. The outrage I felt at his culpability in Nicole’s death filled me with a self-righteous indignation that made me thoughtless and cruel, and, gripped by a familiar guilt, I cringed to come face to face with the man I had so often told myself I no longer was.

He took a deep breath and sat more upright in his chair. As he straightened the vest of his dark suit, the bony fingers of his hands shook. He always wore a three-piece suit, and I had never seen him take off his coat. His suits weren’t expensive or particularly nice, but they didn’t have to be. The way he held himself, the way they fit him, made them look as though they were-at least until today. Today his suit looked cheap and ill-fitted for his narrow frame, as if in the course of one night he had shrunk somehow.

“Why not?” he asked. “Abraham did.”

“God wasn’t asking for Isaac’s blood, but for Abraham’s love. In the story God provides a lamb.”

“That reminds me,” he said, opening the center drawer of his desk and withdrawing a page from a coloring book. “This is for you. It was found in your office near… ah, her body. They gathered it with the rest of the evidence.”

Tears stung the edges of my eyes as I took the wrinkled picture from him. The color-crayon image, made blurry by my tears, was of Jesus just as Nicole had promised. It was her rendition of the portrait that hung in the Sunday School rooms of my youth: Jesus, his dark eyes intense, his long dark hair flowing, with a lamb draped across his shoulders. In the bottom corner in red that glistened like blood as one of my tears fell on it, it read: To: Chaplin JJ. From: Nicole.

Images of Jesus praying alone in the Garden of Gethsemane flashed in my mind. I heard his trembling voice begging for his life, and the cold, cruel silence that followed. Where was God then? Where was God now?

Where are you?

“I realize you have a job to protect,” I said. “One that would be in jeopardy if central office finds out what really happened, but why did you let an ex-offender and a minor into the institution without proper background checks and safety procedures?”

“So you know,” he said, shrinking in his chair without any outward movement.

I nodded, waiting, watching, measuring his response.

“You’re right, I did all that, but there’s a good reason. I’ve known Bobby Earl for many years. He’s conducted services in all my institutions.”

“And he’s related to-”

“The regional director,” he said.

“Your boss?”

His nonverbal admission was a few small nods of his head.

I waited for a moment, but instead of saying anything, he took off his glasses, withdrew a silk handkerchief from his inside coat pocket, and slowly wiped them with it. Without his large glasses to cover much of it, I could see more of his face. His skin was dark-not quite the blued-black of a Nigerian, but very black, and shiny, and far more lined than I remembered.

“But your enthusiastic endorsement of him led me to believe that you two-”

“He was incarcerated at Lake Butler when I was the assistant warden there,” he said. “I’ve never seen such a dramatic change in anyone. He made a believer out of me. He’s the real deal.”

“Still,” I said, “it seems more personal than that.”

Stone glanced down at the picture I held in my hands and then turned and looked at the one behind him on the wall. “Bobby Earl helped me and my wife through a very difficult time in our lives.”

I nodded, even though he couldn’t see me.

Still staring at the picture as though it gave him the strength to be vulnerable, he said, “He’s given my nephew, DeAndré, who became like a son to me when mine died, a place to belong, a purpose. Got him off the streets. Kept him out of prison. I owe Bobby Earl Caldwell more than…”

“I understand,” I said.

“I made a mistake,” he said, as he turned back to face me. “And I don’t want to lose my job, my career, over it. But more than that I want to find and punish the man who did it.”

He paused for a moment, took a deep breath, and let out a long sigh. “Will you-”

“I will,” I said. “No matter who it is or how it makes you, me, or this institution look.”

He swallowed hard without saying anything, his nod seeming not one of approval, but of recognition, as if reconciling himself to the statement’s inevitability.

When I got to the chapel, I tried to say my morning prayers, but found I was unable to concentrate on anything except what had happened to Nicole. Leaving the silence of the sanctuary, I walked to the storage closet next to the unoccupied office I was using since mine became a crime scene and grabbed a handful of sharpened pencils and a new legal pad. Back in the small office, I sat down at the desk and began to make some notes on the case.

Making a list of the suspects, I considered each of them carefully.

Paul Register, Dexter Freeman, Cedric Porter, Bobby Earl and/ or Bunny Caldwell, Abdul Muhammin, Roger Coel, Theo Malcolm, Tim Whitfield, and DeAndré Stone.

The Caldwells were the most likely of the lot.

Even if they didn’t actually kill their daughter, they could be behind it. Why didn’t DeAndré come back in with them? Why have security if you’re not going to guard your daughter when she’s surrounded by several hundred convicted felons?