Before I turned on the light, the still, stale air of the room was as dark and dank as a tomb. The wet copper smell of blood was in the air and breathing it in left a bad taste in my mouth.
I felt a presence in the room. As it swept past, its touch felt like the shredded gown of a gothic ghost floating above us, and the hair on the back of my neck stood on end. I wondered if Pete sensed it. No longer was this room my sanctuary from the insanity and brutality of prison, but a haunted and defiled death chamber, and turning on the light did nothing to vanquish the spiritual and psychological pain echoing through it.
“My God,” Pete said. “It’s worse now than when it happened.”
We spent the next few moments in silence looking around the room, trying to breath shallowly and only through our mouths.
It didn’t feel like my office anymore. It looked pretty much the same-especially if you avoided the blood-stained carpet, but it wasn’t, and I wondered if it ever could be again.
“We found her body there,” he said, indicating the bloody outline on the floor. “The envelope and cash next to it there,” he continued, “the card there, and the candy there.”
“That’s just where they were when I came in,” I said.
“Still no coloring book and crayons,” he said.
The statement was so obvious I couldn’t think of a response that wasn’t sarcastic, so I didn’t say anything.
“You think the killer took ’em?” he asked.
“If he did,” I said, “it tells us a lot about him.”
“Whatta you mean?”
“Many sexual murderers and serial killers take something belonging to the victim in order to relive the experience over and over again.”
He shuddered. “That would point away from Bobby Earl to Register or one of the other inmates.”
“Or it could point to someone close to her,” I added. “Were Bobby Earl and Bunny searched before they left the institution that night?”
“No,” he said. “They had just lost their daughter. They were victims at that point, not suspects.” He shook his head. “The stuff could’ve been inside Bobby Earl’s Bible cover.”
I moved past him, edging around my desk to take a better look under it, but froze when I reached its corner.
“What is it?” Pete asked.
“Look,” I said, pointing to the piece of paper on the floor. It was another page Nicole had colored and removed from her book.
“What the hell?” he said in shock. “That wasn’t here before, was it?”
I shook my head, still pondering what it meant.
“And there’s no way we’d’ve missed it,” he said.
I didn’t say anything, just continued to stare at the picture.
“It’s not the one she did for you, is it?” he asked.
I shook my head.
“You think it was in here somewhere-bookshelf, desk, chair, and fell down after we left?”
“No.”
“Me neither,” he said. “I’ll be damned.”
We were quiet a moment. I stepped around the picture and searched the desk and bookshelf thoroughly. No crayons. No coloring book. Nothing.
“This means someone’s been in here since we have,” he said.
I nodded.
“Her killer?”
“Possibly.”
“Well,” he said, “it was pretty damn dumb. Now we know it had to be a staff member with access to keys.”
“Not necessarily,” I said. “See how close it is to the door? It looks like someone could’ve slid it right beneath the door.”
“But there again, that points away from the Caldwells,” he said. “Bobby Earl hasn’t been here.”
“No,” I said, “but DeAndré has.”
CHAPTER 40
I found Theo Malcolm sitting at his desk grading papers, his inmate orderly, Luther Albright, standing behind him with his arms folded like a bodyguard. From a boom-box in the corner, the aggressive sounds of gangsta rap polluted the air in the room. When he had said, “Enter,” and I walked in, he briefly looked up, shook his head, and looked back down at his papers.
“You don’t seem happy to see me,” I said with a big smile.
“I’m very busy,” he said. “What can I do for you?”
The rapper was rapping about killing white policemen in the war of the streets-about takin’ his nine and smokin’ the pig’s cracker ass until they were all just traces on the pavement.
I shook my head.
“If you don’t like our music,” Albright started, but Malcolm held up his hand.
Our music? Was Albright an orderly or a buddy? Getting overly familiar with an inmate was a dangerous decision to make. I had seen more than a few careers destroyed because of it, and I wondered if Malcolm realized how foolish he was being.
“You probably think that African Americans believed OJ was innocent,” he said.
“Actually,” I said, “I don’t.”
“Well, we didn’t,” he said, as if contradicting me. “We’s not’s dumb as y’alls thinks we is,” he said in his best slave dialect, before gliding smoothly back into his regular condescending tone. “We knew he was guilty. We didn’t care. We were glad he got away with it. Killing a white woman and a white man-even a cop-can’t come close to the multitudes of young black men y’all’ve killed.”
Albright smiled.
I shook my head. “Are you for real?”
“An eye for an eye, brother,” he said.
“Leaves everybody blind,” I said.
“It’s very good that you know the quote, though the quote itself is naive,” he said, “but do you know who said it?”
“Dr. King. Will that be on the final?”
“Well, if you all really believed it, I guess you wouldn’t have shot him down like a dog, would you?”
“Actually,” I said, “I had nothing to do with it.”
Malcolm stood, walked over, and stopped the music. When he turned to face me again, Albright put his hand on his shoulder. “I don’t have time for this,” he said. “I’m really busy. If you need something, you better ask now.”
“Have you been back to the chapel or my office since the night Nicole died?”
“No, why?”
“I found something in my office that wasn’t there before,” I said.
“Well, I haven’t been back,” he said. “Is someone saying I have?”
Ignoring his question, I said, “On the night Nicole was killed, why’d you stop by the chapel? I mean beside to check the program for racism.”
“I was there to see Bunny,” he said.
“What?”
“We worked together at Lake Butler,” he said. “We’re just friends.”
“Did you see her?” I asked.
He shook his head. “She was on the stage singing, so I left.”
“Did you see Officer Coel standing at the sanctuary door?”
He shook his head.
“Did you see anyone in my office?” I asked.
“Just Nicole,” he said. “And she was fine when I left. If you suspect me of her murder, you’re wasting valuable time you could be using to find the real killer.”
“You sound like OJ,” I said.
“Look-” he began angrily, but I cut him off.
“What’re you trying to hide?” I asked.
“I have nothing to hide.”
“Why was I attacked right after I talked to you last time?” I asked. “And why were you the only suspect they told me to stay away from?”
Before he realized what he was doing, he glanced at Albright.
“I thought I recognized your voice,” I said to Albright.
He didn’t say anything, just glared.
“I’ll be in the chapel if you want to give it another go,” I said.
“We know where to find you,” Albright said.
“And vice versa,” I said.
When I got back to my office, I called Chaplain Rouse at Lake Butler again.
“Chaplain Rouse,” he said after the second ring.
“Where’s your secretary?” I asked.
“I’m in between secretaries at the moment,” he said.
“You have two?” I asked.
“Huh?”
I wasn’t sure if he didn’t get it or didn’t approve of the humor, so rather than taking the risk of being sued for sexual harassment, I let it go.