He rushed me again. I braced myself for impact and crouched in a defensive stance with my knees bent slightly and my arms up. About halfway to me, his feet flew up into the air and he came crashing down to the floor in a hard thud. He had slipped on Anna’s blood. Her blood saved my life.
He got to his feet again, though, his face registering the stunned feeling he was experiencing. He rushed me again, only slower this time. Just before he reached me, he stopped, his eyes focusing on something behind me.
I spun around to see Merrill Monroe, my friend.
Merrill pushed open the door and stood with an officer’s baton ready to do battle against the forces of darkness.
“Come on, nigga’,” Merrill said in his don’t-fuck-with-me voice as he stepped in front of me. “Let’s get it on.”
Jones’s eyes widened, and just before he started his run towards Merrill, he looked like a rabid dog I had once seen. He ran towards Merrill with his knife in his right hand, extended up and pointing towards Merrill’s heart, unaware that Merrill didn’t have one when he was in these situations. Merrill seemed to wait until it was too late. Jones was right on him before he brought the baton down on his head furiously. Jones stopped, bent down, and dropped the knife. Blood continued to pour from his nose and cheek. He did not, however, fall to the ground. His mistake.
Merrill brought the baton back and down across the left side of Jones’s face. His whole head jerked back to the right, and blood and teeth spewed out in that same direction.
“Don’t fuck with my only white friend,” he yelled. And that was that.
“She cut Anna,” I said, gesturing toward Sandra Strickland as I ran over to Anna’s bed. “We’ve got to get her to a hospital, now.” Reaching down to apply pressure on her wound, I felt her long, elegant neck, her precious warm blood, which there was a lot of, and a faint pulse. I felt a pulse.
“We’re in a hospital. Let’s see if we can wake somebody up around here,” Merrill said as he dashed off to get some medical personnel to come and help save our friend’s life.
Which they did. Not, however, without laying me on a bed beside her and taking some of my blood and pumping it into her. My precious, powerful, virus-free, life-giving blood.
Chapter 47
Perception is reality.
Like the family member who breaks out of the dysfunctional cycle, Merrill and I were viewed as troublemakers at best and traitors at worst. We had delved into the sewer, and we wreaked of it. Those investigating the matter felt that the smell of the sewer on us pointed to our guilt. Like rape victims, we were being blamed for what had happened.
The next three days were filled with interviews, inquiries, and reports with both the DOC and the FDLE. They grilled us for hours- they smelled smoke and were diligently searching for fire. Merrill and I were treated with suspicion and sarcasm. It was as if we were inmates who were suspected of committing a crime. When they finally finished with us, they said that although they couldn’t prove that we had committed crimes, they did, however, hold us responsible for Sandra Strickland’s death.
I held me responsible, too. I just didn’t see it coming. Not once did they mention her crimes. Through it all, Tom Daniels avoided being in the same room with me, and when that failed, he avoided eye contact and interaction.
I did not, however, lose any sleep over Tom Daniels.
It was late Friday afternoon, and I was seated on the edge of Anna’s hospital bed. The sun, refusing to go quietly into the night, shone brightly through the open shades, striping the bed and warming the room with a natural heat that made me long for an afternoon nap in a hammock. The door was closed, and we were alone.
Anna was wearing an oversized cotton nightshirt with bouquets of violets against a soft yellow background. Her hair hung straight down to the smattering of dark freckles just above her breasts and had the fluffy look of having just been blown dry. The bandage on her neck was smaller than the one the day before, and when we had hugged, I had smelled the slightest hint of her perfume.
“Thank you,” she said when I had pulled back from our embrace. Her voice was soft and had a sleepy quality that matched her relaxed mood and heavy, slightly hazy eyes. She was seductive without trying to be, a rare combination of purity and sensuality.
I reached out and ran the back of my fingers across her face and down over her wound. When I reached the wound, I let my hand linger on it lightly while I prayed for her. When I finished praying and opened my eyes, I saw the faint outline of her breasts pressing against the soft cotton of her nightshirt. My hand wanted to continue its journey . . .
I pulled my hand back to safety, but before I had it on the bed beside me again, Anna grabbed it.
Pulling my hand up to her mouth and kissing it gently, she said, “You’re blood’s in my veins.”
“Yeah, I know,” I said. “I can’t quit thinking about that.”
“Me neither.”
We were silent for a long time as we experienced a connection beyond words.
Later, after the moment had passed, an elderly man in a pale blue hospital outfit brought a food tray and set it on the table beside Anna’s bed. When she smiled at him, he blushed, and I could tell he did not want to leave her room. When he left, she asked me about the events that led up to my confrontation with Strickland in the infirmary on Tuesday night.
After I had given her a brief account of what had happened, she said, “You suspected Strickland over the other nurses, even before you saw the tape. Why?”
“There were several reasons,” I said. “She was the first one to appear on the scene that Tuesday morning in the sally port. At first I thought that the medical department had just responded quickly, but the more I thought about it, the more I knew there’s no way they could have gotten there that quickly.”
“Why was she there?”
“I think she was there to make sure that Johnson was dead. If he were just injured, she could finish the job. And that’s exactly what she did. She smashed his windpipe. She was the only one who could have. She climbed on the back of that truck not as a healer, but as a killer.”
Anna was silent as she pondered what I was saying. Then she said, “What else?”
“Julie Anderson could have only done it if she and Jones were connected somehow, and that didn’t seem likely. Also, she really just didn’t seem capable.”
“Exactly how did Strickland it?”
“She had Hardy take Jacobson to confinement so she could drug and dispose of Johnson. She put him in the caustic storage room, then locked it so that Jones couldn’t get in. Then she spilled a urine sample in the exam room and had Anderson supervise Jones cleaning it up. When Shutt pulled up and knocked on the door, she didn’t answer it. When he walked over to laundry she carried the bags out and put them in his truck.”
“My God,” Anna said. “She was so cold-blooded.”
“I kept remembering what Strickland said to Officer Shutt. She said, ‘I am so sorry-’ like it was her fault. And it was. She also came to us with her concerns about Skipper at a very convenient time. I just kept wondering why she did it when she did. She had so many other opportunities. And, she was genuinely concerned about Anthony Thomas. That’s what she was doing: asking me to protect him.”
As she nodded, she squinted slightly and I could tell that she was picturing everything I was saying.
“And also, I really had a feeling,” I said. “You know, an impression, that she was involved somehow.”
“That’s not fair. You cannot use divine intervention and expect the criminals to have a fighting chance.”
“Of course, when I saw the video, I knew it had to be her and then I also knew why. And it doesn’t mean as much as it once did, but poison is historically a woman’s method of murder. Both of her victims were poisoned or drugged. The violence was never direct, except, of course, for Anthony Thomas.”