Figuring there was a reason she had sought me out, I didn’t prod, but instead waited for her to tell me in her own time what she had to say.
“There’s a few things I want you to know about Bobby Earl,” she said.
“Okay.”
“He’s not like me,” she said. “When he gave his life to the Lord, he did it all the way. He really is a new creature in Christ. I’ve never seen someone change so completely. I mean, yeah, he spends too much money and he’s still a kid in many ways, but he really is one of the good guys now.”
The woman sitting next to me was different from the one I had met in the institution just two weeks ago, as if in addition to aging her, grief had stripped her of all illusions. She was now disillusioned in the most positive, if painful, sense of the word.
“He judges people-especially inmates-by what happened to him,” she continued. “If they say they’ve changed, he believes they have.”
“And the ones who work for him…”
“Haven’t,” she said. “For the most part anyway. Not like him. Some, not at all. His transformation and love blinds him. He can’t see what’s going on around him-and that includes the things I do.”
She didn’t elaborate and I didn’t press her.
The three towers of the cathedral and the cross on the center one were now silhouettes backlit by the soft orange gleam behind them, as all around us candles on the tables of palm readers blinked on like the first stars of twilight.
When I caught her looking over her shoulder again, I asked, “Who are you afraid of?”
“No one,” she said. “Why?”
“Who gave you the bruises on your arms?”
“He said if I say anything, he’ll kill Bobby Earl,” she said. “Who?”
“DeAndré.”
“Did he come back into the institution with you the night Nicole was killed?”
She nodded.
“Have you ever worked at Lake Butler?”
“In the chapel,” she said. “It’s where I met Bobby Earl.”
“And Nicole’s father?”
She whipped her head around and stared at me in shock. After a few moments, she nodded. “Yeah.”
“What about Theo Malcolm?”
She squinted, her brow furrowing, then began to shake her head.
“He’s a school teacher.”
“I don’t know him,” she said. “Why?”
In between the intermittent breezy sound of traffic on Decatur behind us, the whinnying and clip-clop of horses could be heard.
“Chaplain Jordan, I didn’t kill my little girl,” she said.
I was inclined to believe her.
“But I’m responsible,” she said. “We should’ve never taken her in there.”
“Why were y’all there?” I asked. “What’s a guy like Bobby Earl gain from preaching in a prison?”
“He has a heart for inmates,” she said. “Though we weren’t scheduled to go back to PCI for quite a while, DeAndré begged him. Bobby Earl saw it as doing a favor for DeAndré and his uncle, but I think DeAndré just wanted an excuse to go in there and deal with Cedric.”
“Nicole’s father?”
She nodded. “I thought he was going to pay him off or something, but maybe he meant to kill him,” she said. “I don’t know. I do know Bobby Earl likes preaching in prison because of what happened to him when he was inside. But we should have never taken Nicole. We just didn’t-”
Breaking off abruptly, she stood up and said, “I’ve done a stupid thing. I should’ve never gotten involved with-he’s always been insanely jealous-even of Nicole. Just seeing us talking together like this-be very careful.”
As she began to walk away, I looked to see who had spooked her. Across the square, seething beneath a street lamp, was DeAndré Stone, a look of unadorned rage on his face. When I turned to stop her, Bunny was gone, having disappeared in the darkness. Deciding to settle a little business with Stone, I spun around, but found that he had vanished, too.
CHAPTER 47
“Where the hell you been?” Tom Daniels asked as he stormed into my office.
I was back in my office because he had removed the crime scene tape and had it cleaned, and he had asked me to meet him there.
“Miss me?” I asked.
There was no evidence that an unspeakable act of violence had taken place here, no blood crying out from the ground about the murder of innocence, but I felt uncomfortable, as if a residue of horror hung in the room like a lost spirit hovering aimlessly.
“You better not have been screwing around in my investigation,” he said.
“Wasn’t within a hundred miles of it,” I said with a smile.
“Don’t get cute with me, dammit,” he said. “I’m not your buddy.”
“We may not be buddies,” I said. “But we are family.”
He shook his head.
“Susan and I-”
“That’s just a technicality,” he said.
“Actually, Dad, we’re trying to patch things up,” I said.
He started to say something, but instead shook his head, his contempt seeming to indicate the comment wasn’t worthy of a response.
“I’m not your enemy,” I said. Then amended, “Well, you’re not mine. Why’d you even notice I was gone?”
“I’ve got some questions for you,” he said, pulling a pen out of his wrinkled suit coat and opening a file folder. His movements, like his words, were often exaggerated, a compensation for his alcoholinduced unsteadiness. “You’re a witness. This thing happened right here in your office. Hell, you’re a suspect.”
“A suspect?”
“You had access to this office. Hell, it’s yours. You were here. What can you tell me?”
“I didn’t do it,” I said.
He laughed. “Well, who did?” he asked.
Outside my window, the last of the first shift officers ambled past the last of the second shift arrivals rushing to their post. Both groups carried lunch boxes or small coolers to help them get through their eight-hour shifts in posts they could not leave.
“Was she sexually assaulted?”
“Let me explain how this works,” he said, holding up his pen. “I ask the questions, you answer them.” When he noticed that his pen was shaking, he pulled his hand down and rested it on the folder. “Now, let’s try that. I ask. You answer. Got it?”
“Is that one of your questions?” I asked.
His eyes narrowed into bloodshot slits, his face turning red and strained as if his blood had become mercury and was rising.
“Look,” I said. “I’ve just got a couple of questions. If you answer them, I’ll answer all of yours.”
He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, then let it out very slowly. He then sat there in silence for a long time before he opened his eyes again. When he did, they seemed calmer, if not clearer.
“I’ll cooperate either way,” I said. “But I’d really like to know just two small things.”
“You got anything really good you could trade me for them?” he asked as if we were on a school yard.
I nodded.
“Let’s have it,” he said.
“Was Nicole sexually assaulted?” I asked.
“No,” he said.
“Was there any indication that she ever had been?”
“Inconclusive,” he said. “But we don’t think so.”
“Was-” I began.
“That’s two questions,” he said.
“Actually,” I said. “That was two parts of the same question.”
“You really are a sneaky SOB,” he said wearily. “What’s your other question?”
“Was there blood in my office bathroom?” I asked. “Nicole’s blood?”
“Yes,” he said.
“There was a greeting card and a wad of cash under the desk,” he said. He pointed at the small stack of greeting cards on the corner of my desk. “Tell me about those.”
“Each month I give the inmates cards to send to their families and significant others,” I said. “Did it match one of the ones on my desk?”
He nodded. “I think it fell off while they were struggling,” he said. “But what about the money?”
“I don’t give it out,” I said.
A metallic clanging drew my attention toward the window. Outside two inmate-powered push mowers were beginning to cut the grass between the chapel and visiting park. The dew on the blades of grass and rose petals glistened in the morning sun, and the wet clippings stuck to the metal mowers.