I shook my head. For I knew what we were about to discover in the fated green bag.
“I trace the wrong person?” he asked.
“No. Jones was a killer. Strickland, too. They just weren’t the only ones,” I said as I bent over to finish ripping open the bag. Plastic slipped from my grip, and warm blood bathed my fingers as I split open the bag to reveal the lifeless, bloody body of Matthew Skipper. His vacant blue eyes were filled with far more peace in death than they ever had in life.
I looked back at Merrill. His facial expression was a complex mixture-weary of the violence and bloodshed in general, yet deeply satisfied at this violence and bloodshed in particular.
“Inmates?” he asked.
“Probably,” I said.
“Jacobson got out of confinement last Thursday.”
I looked down toward the compound. Beyond the medical and security personnel running toward us, a small group of inmates had gathered in front of the medical building. There in the midst of them, straining to see like the others, was Jacobson, a wide grin seeping across his face like blood from an open wound.
“That look like poetic justice to me,” Merrill whispered as officers and medical staff began flooding the sally port. “What’s it look like to you?”
“Divine justice,” I said and then bowed my head and said a silent prayer for Ike Johnson, Matthew Skipper, Sandy Strickland, Allen Jones, and Mr. and Mrs. Anthony Thomas-all of whom were now sinners in the hands of a merciful God.