Michael Lister - Blood of the Lamb

“What?” I asked.

“You sure you don’t want me to file for you, Anna?” Lisa asked.

“I’ve got the damn files,” she said. “Go take another break.”

“But, I’ll-”

“NOW,” Anna yelled.

Lisa huffed out of the office, her cheap heels clicking hollowly on the over-waxed tile floor.

The small vault, dusty and smelling of mildew, seemed to shrink in on us, the naked flourescent bulbs above us making everything look flat and dull.

“Last night what?” I asked.

“That’s not the John I know,” she said, still without looking at me. “It’s not anyone I want to know.”

I nodded.

“I’m doing my best to forget last night,” she said. “I’m gonna try and just remember the John I knew, the John that could never talk to me like that.”

“Just a little too flawed for you?” I asked.

“You can believe that if you want,” she said, looking up at me for the first time, her eyes swimming in the mixed drink of anger and pain.

“So if it happens again,” I said, “you won’t come looking for me?”

“No, John,” she said. “I won’t. I’ve got a sober husband at home, and though he doesn’t need taking care of, I think I’ll do it anyway.”

At three, when his shift had ended, Merrill Monroe stopped by the chapel.

He found me in the hallway outside my office, looking in.

“Lock yourself out?” he asked with a smile.

I laughed.

We had been friends since junior high school, and though on the surface we had little in common, with the exception of Anna there was no one whose company I enjoyed more.

“Actually,” I said, “I was trying to remember where everybody was last night. Walk through it and try to follow everyone’s movements. Pete just walked into the library to get Whitfield.”

“Library?”

“Listening to Bobby Earl tapes,” I said. “Feedin’ his soul before he takes his post.”

Merrill smiled to himself appreciatively as if at an inside joke.

Standing in front of the main doors, he eclipsed the light coming through their glass panels. His upper body was a perfect V, broad shoulders tapering down into narrow hips. His light brown CO shirt stretched tightly over the dark brown skin that covered the muscles in his shoulders, chest, and arms-especially the large round biceps which appeared perpetually flexed.

A moment later, Pete and Tim joined us in the hallway.

“It’d help me to have a visual as I’m thinking through this whole thing,” I said. “I’ve called for Coel, but until he gets here, why don’t you be him, Merrill?”

Merrill snapped to attention, saluted, and did his best whiteman’s walk into the sanctuary.

“Was the door closed?” he asked.

I nodded, and he closed the door. Through the glass of the door, he could still see the entire main hallway and we could see him, which meant the murderer could, too.

“He can see everything from there,” Pete said.

“Yeah, that’s the point of the glass,” Tim said.

“So how could anyone get into that locked office without him seeing them?” Pete asked.

“That is the question,” I said, then, turning to Whitfield, asked, “How long were you here?”

“I got called out almost immediately,” he said. “The service hadn’t even started yet.”

“To escort the education inmates back down to the dorms?”

He nodded.

“And when’d you make it back?” I asked.

“I had just gotten back when you saw me in the bathroom,” he said.

“Okay,” I said. “For now, you just be one of the inmates.”

“Which one?”

“Register,” I said. “And, Pete, you be Freeman. Go in the sanctuary, sit down, and then in a moment, slip out here again.”

The door behind me opened, and I turned to see Roger Coel walking in. In another moment, Coel was in his place inside the sanctuary and Merrill was playing Muhammin.

One by one, Tim, Pete, and Merrill slipped out of the sanctuary and into the hallway. They got water, stretched their legs, and went down the smaller hallway to the bathroom.

“Now, Bobby Earl was preaching,” I said to Coel, who was still in the sanctuary, “and he’s pretty loud and dramatic. Could you have gotten wrapped up in his performance and not seen what was going on out here?”

“Hell, no,” he said. “I didn’t get caught up in Bobby Earl. Not even for a second. Now, Bunny’s a different story.”

“Okay,” I said. “So just watch like you did that night.”

He did.

And as he did, Tim Whitfield darted out of the small hallway, crossed the main one, and into my office.

Coel wasn’t even looking into the hallway at the time, but still saw him in his peripheral vision.

“He wasn’t even looking and he saw him,” Pete said. “And that was with the door unlocked, which we know it wasn’t.”

I nodded.

“I take it you were a little more distracted when Bunny and Nicole were singing.” I said.

“Well, yeah,” he said. “Bunny’s a beautiful woman, but not enough not to see the hallway at all times. Besides, if I ever did get distracted by Bunny, it was when Nicole was on stage with her, and she wasn’t killed on stage.”

“The only time you left your post was when Bunny called you to the other office door?” I asked.

“Which was less than twenty seconds,” he said. “And I was looking in the office at her.”

“So no one got in that office from this hallway,” Pete said. “Which means we know who killed Nicole.”

“Who?” I asked.

“Bobby Earl or Bunny.”

“Which one?” I asked.

“Both, maybe,” he said with a shrug. “I don’t know. But it’s got to be one of them. No one else could have.”

“That’s not necessarily true,” I said.

“Of course it is,” he said. “No one could’ve gotten into your office without Coel seeing him.”

“Even if that’s true, it doesn’t mean they did it.”

“Who else?” he asked in frustration.

“There’re a lot of possibilities,” I said. “But the most obvious is that the killer could have already been in there.”

Pete looked like he had been hit. He started to say something, but stopped.

“Where?” Tim asked.

“Hiding in the bathroom,” I said. “Or under the desk. It’s not likely, but it is a possibility. And there are others. We’ve got to figure out what really happen, not just assume it was Bobby Earl or Bunny by process of elimination.”

Since I couldn’t work where Nicole’s blood still stained the floor, Merrill and I went into the staff chaplain’s office, which was vacant now and would be until we actually got funds appropriated to hire a staff chaplain.

Merrill was sweating heavily, and the dark skin of his face and arms glistened under the harsh flourescent light. When he sat down, his large frame dwarfed the chair across from the desk, and he looked like a parent sitting down to a child’s tea party.

I opened the bottom right drawer of the desk, withdrew a couple of paper cups, and poured orange juice from a can into them.

“So,” he said. “You know whodunit yet?”

I shook my head.

“I can’t even get my mind around a motive,” I said. “I mean the most obvious would be sexual-”

“She been messed with?” he asked.

I shrugged. “I haven’t seen the prelim autopsy report yet, but- ”

“I ain’t talkin’ ‘bout her murder,” he said.

I had been so focused on her murder, I hadn’t even considered that she might be the victim of molestation, which would be a powerful motive.

“Bobby Earl?” I asked.

He nodded.

My mind began to race.