Michael Lister - Blood of the Lamb

And then it hit me like the hardest punch in boxing-the one you don’t see coming.

What if Bobby Earl gave DeAndré the night off precisely because he didn’t want his daughter to be guarded? Could he be that wicked? Was this crime that calculated and premeditated?

I’d have to figure out a way to ask Bobby Earl, but for now I could start with the suspects at my door.

I found Abdul Muhammin at his post in the chapel library, preparing to open it to the inmate population. Like most inmate orderlies in the prison, he had a proprietary interest in what he believed to be his library, but that was okay, because it motivated him to do a good job. Only on occasion did I have to remind him that the people using the library were more important than the library itself.

“Bet we’ll be busy today. Everybody wantin’ to see the scene of the crime,” he said, shaking his head to himself. “Sick bastards. I still can’t believe it happened.”

“Me neither,” I said.

“It’s all they’re talkin’ about on the pound.”

“I bet.”

I sat on the edge of a folding table across from the small desk where he continued to stamp cards and insert them into books.

“How did it happen?” he asked.

Muhammin was a thick, light-skinned black man in his late twenties. He had bulk, but no muscle, and he was fleshy, almost puffy, without being fat.

“I’m still not sure,” I said. “You have any ideas?”

“Has to be Bobby’s bitch, doesn’t it?” he asked, and I could tell he wasn’t even conscious of how demeaning he was being to Bunny. In fact, I was sure to him he wasn’t being. In his world the sky is blue, water is wet, and women are mamas, bitches, or whores. “Who else could’ve done it?”

Like most libraries, this quiet room smelled of dust, glue, and ink, but unlike most libraries, there was a monotonous uniformity to the materials it held. Try as I did to compensate with the small budget I was given each year, the majority of books and tapes that lined the shelves were donated by puritanical people with a particular point of view-for the evangelistic compulsion to convert and proselytize was felt most strongly by those most conservative. Ironically, those with the least to say usually say the most and the most outwardly religious were often the most theologically unsophisticated.

“What about Bobby Earl?” I asked.

His face wrinkled into a slack-jawed mask of incredulity, as if what I had suggested defied a natural law that everyone knew to be as certain as gravity.

“Bobby’s no child killer,” he said. “His conversion was real-I saw it-but even before he was born-again or whatever y’all call it, he was no killer. People either are or they ain’t, and he ain’t.”

“Did you get to talk to him?” I asked.

He shook his head and frowned. “After what happened, I didn’t even try.”

An unopened box from Bobby Earl Caldwell Ministries sat next to a rack of pamphlets and tracts, and I wondered again about the complex motivations of a man like him-why he did what he did the way he did it, but soon found myself contemplating the more pertinent subject of what a man like him was capable of doing.

“I was surprised to see you without your koofi,” I said, attempting to make it sound like curiosity and not accusation.

“Just showin’ a little respect,” he said. “Keepin’ everything on the down low.”

I nodded as if I not only understood but appreciated what he had done.

As if just making a casual observation, I said, “I saw a lot of people last night I don’t normally see-especially in those type services.”

“Lotsa men here to see Bunny,” he said. “But a few of the sick pricks were here to see that little girl. Did you see the way that little Chester was hanging around outside your door? Hell, he’s pressing his nose against the glass like it’s the fuckin’ candy store.”

“Paul Register?”

“You shoulda seen the bulge in his pants when she was singing on stage,” he said. “He looked like he was goin’ to whip it out any minute and lay hands on it. Hell, if the door wasn’t locked, I’d say he did it. You know how those nasty bastards can’t resist little chicken tenders. Break in there, Chuck and Buck her, then ice her ass so she can’t tell.”

I could tell he was disappointed that I didn’t react to his callous comments or ask what Chuck and Buck meant, but long before I heard the term on the compound, I’d seen the low-budget independent film it had come from. Even if I hadn’t been familiar with it, I wouldn’t have asked. I wasn’t about to give him the perverse pleasure of saying anything else so crude about Nicole.

“I ain’t tellin’ you how to do your job-or whatever it is you’re doin’, Chap,” he said, “but you see a little Chester motherfucker dry humpin’ the door a little girl’s on the other side of, and a few minutes later she dead, you start with him.”

Paul Register was the kind of inmate for whom prison was most difficult. He was small, resembling a teenage boy more than a twenty-three year old man, and, like his hands, his voice was soft. His pale skin, curly light blond hair, and weak gray eyes made him look colorless, which is what he might as well have been, for he remained nearly invisible among the colorful inmates at PCI, as nondescript as the pale gray walls of the institution.

But he preferred it that way. When unable to blend into the nothing gray of uniformity, he stuck out like a small buck in an open field during hunting season, which at PCI was year-round.

He was easy prey.

Paul Register was a sex offender, not a vicious rapist of women who demanded jailhouse respect, but a molester of the little boys he so closely resembled.

“Hey, Chaplain,” he said, the tone of his voice matching his welcoming smile. “What are you doin’ here?”

“I need to talk to you,” I said.

I had talked to Paul on several occasions, though never in his cell, but more than talking, I had listened to him; listened for hours as he recounted his abuse and how he became an abuser. Tearfully, with what seemed to be a genuinely contrite heart, he had made his confession-telling the truth and finding what I had hoped was at least a spiritual freedom, but now I wasn’t so sure.

Suddenly his face clouded over, distress replacing happiness. “Oh, no,” he exclaimed. “Is it my mother? It’s my mother, isn’t it? Oh, God. I thought I’d be ready, but I’m not.”

“No,” I said. “It’s not your mom. Nothing to do with any of your family. I just wanted to ask you some questions about what happened last night.”

The relief rose over his face like the sun reappearing after a storm. “Oh, thank God. I’m sorry. It’s just I’m so worried about her, and I know it won’t be long until I get that call to your office.”

That call , I thought. What would my job be like without that call? And then I realized again as if for the first time: I spend my days dealing with other people’s crises. And I wondered if it was just an elaborate way of avoiding my own.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I get that reaction a lot.”

“It’s okay,” he said. “I know one day you’ll be calling me up there. I’m obviously not ready. But ready or not, I’m glad you’ll be the one.”

“Thank you,” I said. “How have you been?”

“Okay,” he said. “But I’m glad you’re back. I’ve missed our sessions.”

I nodded.

The cell seemed smaller than its six by nine foot dimensions- perhaps it was the bunks, sink, and toilet closing in on us-and we stood closer than we normally would have because of it.

Unlike closed custody cells, Paul was in a cell only because the open bay dorms were full, so his door stayed open, permitting him the freedom afforded to the entire open population.