“I . . . I just—” I began, but broke off. “What is it?”
I had the urge to tell him just how much I loved and appreciated him, but resisted because of the environment we found ourselves in and how uncomfortable it
would
make him feel.
I hoped it
wouldn’t
one day be an addition to a long list of things left unsaid
I’d
deeply regret.
I
walked down the gleaming tile floor of the medical corridor, past the SOS cells and the infirmary, to the medical conference and break room. It was
empty.
After buying a Cherry Coke from the vending machine, I walked down the other hallway leading to the back exit and found
Walter
Williams rinsing a mop out in the caustic storage closet.
“’Sup,
Preach?” he said when he saw me.
“Got a few questions for
you,”
I said.
“About
Danny
Jacobs.”
“Don’t
know nothin’ about no Danny
Jacobs
or anything else, and if I did, I
ain’t
fool enough to be tellin’
you.”
“You
sleep in the bunk right next to
Jacobs,
don’t
you?”
“Not anymore. Motherfucker checked himself outta
here.”
“You
see anything?”
“That’s
all I’m
sayin’,”
he said. “So
don’t
waste my
time.”
Time’s
all he had. Prison time. The slowest moving, most elongated, most excruciating time humans had yet to create.
He switched off the spigot, slung the clean mop back down in the bucket of dirty
water,
and walked past me into the
hallway.
“Anything
you say’ll stay between
us.”
He jerked around toward me. “I told you.
Ain’t
sayin’
shit. And you
can’t
make me. Why
don’t
you just leave shit the fuck alone?
You
gonna get your ass shanked.”
He turned around quickly and bumped into Merrill, who had just walked
up.
Merrill slapped him across the face with his open hand. It was a hard
slap,
and Williams stumbled back, clutching his cheek as he did.
“What the fuck?” he said, bowing
up,
but then quickly backing down and lowering his voice as Merrill came into focus.
I knew he
would
be helpful now and it made me once again question my convictions. I
didn’t
believe in violence. At least I
didn’t
want
to.
I
didn’t
want the
world
to be a place of violence and dominance and the use and abuse of
power.
I believed in the noble tradition of non-violence that included Jesus and Gandhi and Martin Luther King, but I lived and
worked
in a world where in certain circumstances the use of force seemed the only option, the only solution.
“Chaplain’s
got some questions for
you,”
he said.
“You
don’t
mind answering a few questions, do you?”
“No,
Serg.
’Course not. What you wanna know?” Merrill looked at him and shook his head.
“About
Jacobs,
right,”
Williams said. “He
didn’t
seem suicidal to me. I mean, hell, he was always a little out there, but not all sad and shit. Night was pretty normal.
We
all went to bed. He
woke
up dead.
That’s
all I
know.
I’m a heavy sleeper––you can ask the doc. I’m on medication that makes me sleep
hard.”
“He say goodbye to anyone or
give
any of his stuff
away?”
I asked.
“Don’t
think
so.
Didn’t give
shit to me. Somebody say he
give
his stuff
away?
Who got it?”
“Who else was around his bunk that night?” I asked. “Brent
Allen,”
he said. “He sleeps
above
me. So he was up there across from
Jacobs.
Jacobs
was in
Phillips’s
bunk. Lance come in real late from Medical,
Jacobs
was
asleep,
so he just get in
Jacobs’s
bunk. Emile Rollins was on the other side on the
top.
No one was on the bottom of that
one.”
“Did
Jacobs
hang out with anyone that night?
Anyone come to his bunk to talk to him?”
He closed his eyes, his face scrunching into what I assume was supposed to be deep thought.
Finally,
he shook his head and reopened his
eyes.
“Pretty
much
stuck to himself—’cept for the psych lady and the
nurse.”
“Which ones?”
“Nurse Lee seen him a lot. ’Specially since he got out of confinement, but no one saw him more than the psych
lady.
Doctor.
What’s
her name?”
“Hahn?”
He shook his head. “Lopez?”
“No, sir,”
he said. “The old ugly
one.”
“
Baldwin?” I asked.
“Yeah,”
he said. “She was with him all the time. He always going up to her office. She always coming down to the dorm.”
“They both came down the night of his death?”
“
Yeah.”
“Anyone
else
go
near him that night?”
“Yeah,”
he said. “The serg in the dorm.
Foster.
He did rounds that night.”
“He
doesn’t
usually?”
He shook his head. “CO usually do it while the sergeant sit in the officers’ station. Seem like he stop by
Danny’s
bunk a time or
two.”
“Anyone
else?”
“May’ve been. I
didn’t
pay much attention to his life.
Living my
own.”
“And
doin’ a damn fine job of it
too,”
Merrill said.
“Anyway,”
Williams said, “Baldwin who you wanna talk
to.
She the one that always with him. She act like his damn mother or girlfriend or some shit like that.”
“I
t’s
the policy of the Florida Department of Corrections to do all we can to prevent
suicides,”
Bailey Baldwin said, beginning her suicide prevention class in the training
building.
“That means we all
have
to pay close attention to threats, gestures, and actual
attempts.
We
have
to take them
seriously,
even if we
don’t
think they are. If you ever
have
any doubts, act on them. Refer them to
us.”
Bailey Baldwin,
PhD,
was the senior psychologist and the head of psychological services at PCI. She
was
DeLisa Lopez and Hahn
Ling’s
supervisor, so I probably knew more about her than most. I
knew,
for instance, that she was moody and slightly paranoid and practiced
CYA
like a religion. I also knew she constantly had tumultuous, troubled relationships, and had probably been
involved
with every one of the
Ten
Men
Who
Mess Up a
Woman’s
Life
from
Hahn’s
book. Many of them more than once.
“How can you know if an inmate is thinking of taking his own life?” she asked
rhetorically.
“Some of the most common indicators are: saying goodbye, giving
away
his things, writing letters to friends and
loved ones.
In essence, wrapping up his
affairs.
If you see any of these key indicators, call
me.”
She sounded to me as if she liked to hear herself talk, and she did it with certain flair, but her hands shook
slightly,
and she
didn’t
seem to know where to put them, and her searching eyes betrayed the fragility of the persona she was projecting.
She was standing behind a podium in the large, dull, utilitarian room, her voice echoing off the tile floor and white windowed
walls.
In front of her, correctional officers and a few assorted support staff personnel sat at rows of narrow tables––very few of them seeming to be paying attention to anything she was
saying.
“Now
let’s
talk about depression, the leading cause of actual suicide,” she said, removing the red jacket that matched her skirt and unsteadily draping it
over
a nearby
chair.
“Depression equals
loss,”
she said. “Loss of interest, loss of energy, loss of concentration, loss of appetite
—
physical or sexual.” A streak of crimson crawled up her neck when she said
sexual
, and the correctional officers, who had been nodding off, came to life, smiling and snickering.
It was obvious that, among other things, Bailey Baldwin was insecure and suffered from feelings of inferiority, something working in such close proximity to the sultry Lisa Lopez and the alluring Hahn Ling had to heighten.
“Sometimes,” she continued, “a suicidal inmate will be agitated or restless, sometimes he’ll be sluggish, and almost always he’ll be pessimistic and
hopeless.
“What I’ve just described is a dangerous time in the life of an inmate, but the
most
dangerous time is when he seems to feel
better.
It’s
when he gets a little better that he has the energy to kill
himself.”
She paused and looked around the room
nervously.
“Any
questions so far?” she asked when she seemed to lose her place in her
notes.
The officers who comprised the majority of the class, sitting with their arms folded in front of them, many with their heads down, others whispering or laughing,
didn’t
even acknowledge she had said
anything.
“Okay,”
she said, still looking down at her
notes.
“Like I said, most threats or even attempts of suicide in prison are attempts at manipulating the system, usually in hopes of getting a transfer.
However,
others are cries for
help,
and all are dangerous. I
can’t
tell you how many people kill themselves each year who
don’t
actually mean to succeed at suicide. Self-injury and injury to staff is a serious matter, and if you observe any inmate displaying any of the characteristics I’ve mentioned, please, for
God’s
sake, refer them to
me.”
When she dismissed the class, everyone scattered more quickly than at quitting time, and I walked up to where she was gathering her things.
“Hey,
Chaplain,” she said.
“How’re
you?”
“Good,
thanks,”
I said. “I enjoyed your presentation.
Very
informative. But I was surprised you
didn’t
mention the suicide
we
had here last night.”
She nodded as if she could see
why
I
would
wonder that. “I felt that it was too soon. And the truth
is,
we
don’t
know enough about it yet. Perhaps with some time and distance . . . healing and objectivity will allow me to use it as an example, but
that’s
a good question.”
I wondered if she was going to pat me on the head.
“Was
Jacobs
undergoing psychological care?”
“
Some,”
she said. “He tested well and
didn’t
seem to be much of a threat to himself or anyone else. Sometimes
that’s
the best
we
can
do.
It’s
a
mystery.
Death always
is.
Anyway,
there will be a psychological autopsy to determine what happened and why . . . see if there was anything else we could’ve done. I doubt they’ll find anything. I saw him as often as I could—more often than his case required.”
A psychological autopsy is a procedure for investigating an
inmate’s
death by reconstructing as
much
as possible what the person thought, felt, and did prior to taking his life. The reconstruction is based on information gathered from classification, medical, and psych documents, the institutional inspector’s report, the
ME’s
report, and interviews with staff and inmates who had contact with him leading up to his death.
“Did you see him last night before he died?” I asked. She shook her head. “I
don’t
believe I did.”
“You
sure?” I asked, trying not to sound
accusatory.
“You
were down in his dorm,
weren’t
you?”
She looked
up,
seeming to concentrate all her mental energies on remembering.
“That’s
right. I
was
called in for an
emergency.
And I did
go
to A-dorm, but I
didn’t
see
Danny.”
“You
didn’t?”
“I mean, I may
have
seen him, but I
didn’t
speak to him. I
didn’t
see him as in having an appointment with him or
anything.
Now that you mention it, I
did
see him talking with Jamie Lee. Seemed fine at the
time.”