“Well,
they are,
aren’t
they?”
“Thought they do what they
want.”
“
Well,
they
do,
don’t
they?”
“Thought you were one of them,” I said.
“A
least for a night.”
He hung his head. “Guess I did. I mean I
didn’t.
Not like that
exactly,
but I guess
that’s
what it comes down
to.”
“No
way
this
doesn’t
cost me
my
job,”
Dad said. “No
way.”
Before either of us could respond, his phone
rang.
“Sheriff
Jordan.”
We
waited while he took the call.
Dad
didn’t
say anything, but based on his expressions and reactions, he was receiving some shocking
news.
“You’re
not gonna believe
this,”
he said when he ended the call. “This night just keeps gettin’ better and
better.
The hearse from Kent Clark carrying the victim to the morgue was forced off the road and the body
was
stolen at gunpoint.”
“Who the hell
would
steal a . .
.”
Jake
said.
“And
why? The fuck they want with––”
“The killer most
likely,”
I said. “Probably thought he left something incriminating behind.”
“He probably did
too,”
Dad said. “Dammit. And now
it’s
gone.”
“I’m sure there are other reasons
too,”
I said.
“To
conceal her identity . . . to . .
.”
“But why display her the
way
he did just to steal her back a little while later?”
I thought about it. Nothing came to mind. “There had to be something––something he
didn’t
think of until later after he staged the body the
way
he did, something important, urgent enough to make him risk stealing it back, but I
can’t
think of what that
would
be.”
“If we find
him,”
Dad said, “we can ask him.”
Before we could respond or make a
move
toward finding the body thief, my phone vibrated in my pocket.
I withdrew it to see that the prison was calling. “Chaplain
Jordan,”
I said.
“Chaplain,
it’s
Nurse Stewart.
We’ve
had another suicide attempt. How soon can you get here?”
“I’m on my
way.”
T
he slackness in the rope pulled taut as the body dropped, his own weight tightening the noose around his neck.
He kicked his feet, searching for purchase, flung his
arms
about, grabbing the
air.
Panic filled his wide eyes, and he flailed wildly as if falling from a great height.
The short fall
wasn’t
long enough to snap his neck and crush his spinal cord.
This
wasn’t
a
hanging.
It was death by strangulation.
And it
wouldn’t
be quick.
Thoughts sped through his mind in ever increasing
rapidity,
while everything around him moved in slow motion.
Somebody screamed. Time passed.
Nothing happened.
A figure in white
moved
outside his cell like a series of still-frame photos being casually flipped through.
The angel of death?
Come to fly him
away
to heaven or fling him down to hell?
He tried to inhale, but could not. The best he could do was small gasps of breath, none of which made it down to his lungs.
The figure stopped at the door of the cell, unable to open it. Only a figure in brown would
have
a
key.
More footsteps clanged on the metal grate of the catwalk. Maybe they signaled the approach of someone who could unlock the door of this six-by-nine concrete-and-steel coffin.
Maybe
he’d
survive this after all.
But as the rope bit into his flesh and the ruby-red bruise necklace appeared around his neck, he feared they would not make it in time.
Head
pounding.
Pressure
building.
Eyes
bulging.
A serpentine trickle of blood ran from his nose, slithered across his lips, and snaked down his chin.
Can’t
breathe.
Can’t
. .
.
More time passed. Time he
didn’t have.
It rushed past him like the final seconds in a midnight countdown on a death-chamber clock.
This inhumane space he occupied was no longer just figuratively unbearable.
Please, God
.
I
don’t
want to die. Not here. Not like
this.
More time.
More
passing.
His
passing.
Where’re the keys?
What’s
taking so
long?
Light-headed.
Sleepy.
Sleep. Perchance to dream.
Ay,
there’s
the
rub.
For
in
that
sleep of death what dreams may
come?
Where had that come from? What class? Which teacher?
Didn’t
matter. Nothing did.
Maybe they
didn’t
want to find the key fast enough.
Maybe this was their idea of entertainment.
Now he
couldn’t
breathe at all.
The light in the cell began to dim, the figure in white beyond the door fading. As he lost consciousness, his head fell forward, his purplish face quickly becoming the color of his swollen, protruding tongue.
E
very thirteen minutes, someone in the United States commits suicide.
Each year in this country there are
over
thirty-five thousand official suicides.
Unofficially, many experts say the actual number could be three times that. Official suicide statistics are notoriously unreliable. Large numbers of suicides are never reported—often because of the lengths families will
go
to in order to hide the suicide of a loved one.
Avoiding
the social stigma or loss of life insurance benefits, many families hide suicide as if it were
daddy’s
empty booze bottles,
mama’s
pain pill addiction, or
daughter’s
eating disorder.
Other suicides occur under such ambiguous circumstances that officials attribute them to accidents rather than the willful destruction of
one’s
own life.
Actual suicides each year are more likely upwards of ninety-thousand—with attempts at eight to ten times that.
Suicide accounts for more deaths each year than murder, and it ranks tenth among leading causes of death.
Although women attempt suicide three times more often than men, men complete suicide three times more often than
women.
Suicide is self-murder.
It’s
different from any other death because those left behind cannot direct their anger at the unfairness of a random act or the brutality of a murderer. Instead, they grieve for the very person who has taken their loved one from them.
Sometimes suicide makes a certain sense.
Sometimes
it’s
the greatest mystery of all, more mysterious than death itself.
And sometimes it
isn’t
suicide at all.
“I
didn’t
try
to kill myself, Chaplain,” Lance Phillips said from within the Suicide Observation Status cell. “I’m not suicidal. My
life’s
never been
better.”
“Statements like that undercut your
credibility,”
I said.
“It’s
true.”
“Do you know where you are?”
He was in an empty isolation cell in the infirmary of
Potter
Correctional Institution, wearing nothing but a heavy
canvas
shroud
over
his pale, thin frame. The cell was located in the medical department inside the infirmary, and it was designed to house inmates who represented a threat to themselves or others—everything from infectious disease to suicide.
“Nothing the state of Florida can come up with compares to the prison of addiction,” he said.
I was seated in an uncomfortable and wobbly folding chair outside the cell, a solid metal door with
two
large panels of steel-reinforced glass windows separated by a food tray slot between
us.
We
communicated through the open food slot, which we
would have
done even if he had been isolated because of an infectious disease. The cell
was
equipped with a negative air flow system.
“The nurse said you tried to hang
yourself.”
Lance
Phillips’s
height
didn’t
match his weight. He was probably three inches or so
over
six feet, but weighed around a hundred and thirty pounds, and his hands and feet were small and feminine. His skin was pale and so were his too-small blue
eyes.
“Well,
I
didn’t.”
I glanced down at the large white bandage around his neck and he followed my gaze. He reached up and touched his throat with his small hand and caressed the bandage
gently.
“I know you think I’m
crazy,
but
don’t
you see?
That’s
the beauty of
it.”
“
Of what?”
“Killing someone and making it look like suicide.
Someone like me. An inmate? Especially since . .
.”
“
Since what?”
“Since . . . I’ve attempted suicide
before.”
I nodded.
He was right. If someone were trying to murder him,
it’d
be the perfect
cover.
And if someone were really trying to disguise a homicide as a suicide—especially in a locked confinement cell, then that someone was a creative and cunning killer.
“See,”
he said, “you
don’t
believe
me.”
“I
don’t
disbelieve
you,”
I said. “I’m just listening, taking everything
in.”
The tension left his face for the first time, and he pushed his light brown hair up off his forehead. “I need your
help.
No one else in here
gives
a damn—that’s another reason this
guy’s
never been caught.”
“You’re
saying
you’re
not the first.
We’ve
had murders made to look like suicides?”
He nodded.
“Who’s
doing it?”
“Don’t
know.
Wish to God I did.
I’d
. .
.”
“
Who tried to kill you? Start
there.”
“I
have
no idea. I
can’t
remember much. I went to bed.
Woke
up strangling with a noose around my
neck.”
“That’s
it?”
“Look, either you’ll look into it or you
won’t.
And if you do you’ll either find out
someone’s
trying to kill me or I’m delusional as well as suicidal.
You
might even discover other murders disguised as
suicides.”
I thought about it.
“Ask
the psych specialist about me. She’ll tell you.
I’m not like the other guys in
here.”
“Oh yeah?” I said, waiting for yet another insistence of innocence.
“I’m actually
guilty.
I had a severe drug and alcohol addiction. But I’ve been clean for
over
four years. I
work
my program hard. I get out soon. I’ve got a great job lined
up.
Family
and friends waiting on me. I
have
absolutely no reason to kill
myself.”
“But you think someone does?” I asked. “Must.”
His young, unwrinkled face filled with worry lines as he frowned
deeply.
“Any
idea who?”
“None.
“Or why?”
“No,
sir.”
“Having problems with anyone?”
“Nothing
major,”
he said. “Just the normal bullshit.” I nodded.
“Why
don’t
you believe me?” he said.
“Why’re
you
so hesitant to help me? I thought you were different. I thought you––wait. There was a . . . in my . . . What if I can
prove
someone was trying to kill me?”
“Can you?”
“I just might,” he said. “I think the killer may’ve left a calling card.”
“I
t’s
gotta still be in
my
property,”
he said. “Go get it and I’ll show
you.”
“Go get what?”
“My
property.”
Everything an inmate owned or was issued, such as uniforms and
boots,
was known as his property
—
and it was how everyone inside, both staff and inmates, referred to it.
We
even had a property room and a property sergeant.