JJ09 - Blood Moon by Michael Lister Read Free Book Online

it.”
    “K.”
    “Thanks. Thank you.”
    “You said no questions asked, but . . . This not somethin’ I can be involved in before one?”
    “Wish to God it were,” I said.
    Rachel Peterson had been lingering by her car, evidently waiting for us to reach her.
    “Workin’ on your story?” she asked.
    “We’re caught in a trap,” Merrill said.
    Her eyes widened.
    I smiled.
    “Can’t walk out,” I said.
    “Why can’t you see what you’re doin’ to me?” Merrill asked.
    I could see it dawn on her, followed by what was almost a smile twitching in her lips. “Cute,” she said. “But my mind is only suspicious of suspicious people.”
    “Of course it is,” Merrill said in his most condescending you’re-full-of-shit voice.

Chapter Sixteen
    “Were you told to stay out of the investigation into the apparent suicides here at the institution?” Rachel Peterson asked.
    “I was.”
    “By who?”
    Whom popped into my head but not out of my mouth. I wasn’t in the habit of correcting anyone’s grammar, and no matter how hostile this interview might become, I had no plans to resort to anything like that.
    “The warden and the interim institutional investigator,” I said.
    We were in my office at my insistence, an accommodation she seemed willing enough to make.
    I wanted to be here in case the kidnapper called my office phone, but she probably thought it was so I could feel more comfortable and secure. That she was willing to conduct the interview here demonstrated her confidence in my guilt and in her ability to break me. I had told her it was because I was the only chaplain on duty and needed to be in the chapel to supervise the inmates and be available for emergencies.
    She was sitting across the desk from me in one of the two chairs normally occupied by inmates, a small digital recorder between us, its red indicator light on. She wore dark well-fitting jeans, a white button-down, and round-toed Justin Gypsy Roper boots. Her longish brown hair was gathered into a ponytail, and she looked more like a modern cowgirl than the IG of the Florida DOC.
    “Did you?” she asked.
    “Did I what?” I asked.
    “Did you still investigate?”
    “Some, maybe, but not really,” I said. “I didn’t have access to the investigation so I was on the outside. Wasn’t much I could do.”
    “But you still did some investigating on your own?” she said.
    “A little, yes, but––”
    “Even after you were told not to?”
    “Yes.”
    “What were you about to say?” she asked.
    “Huh?”
    “You said but like you were about to say something else.”
    “Oh.”
    “You seem distracted. Are you okay?”
    She held nothing, never looked at a note, never wrote anything down, just kept her brilliant blue-green-gray eyes intently trained on me.
    “I was going to say that at a certain point in the investigation the interim inspector asked for my help and began to involve me more.”
    “He did?”
    I nodded.
    “Verbal responses for the recording, please,” she said.
    “Yes,” I said. “He did.”
    “It’s your testimony that the institutional inspector asked the chaplain to help with his investigation?”
    “He asked me. I’m the chaplain. So yes.”
    “Why would he do that?” she asked. “Why would he and the warden tell you to stay out of the investigation and then ask you to join in? Why would a trained investigator ask a chaplain to assist in a possible homicide investigation?”
    “Because of my background. I was an investigator before I became a chaplain. As to why he changed his mind and asked for my help after telling me he didn’t want it, you’d have to ask him. He told me it was because he needed help with the investigation, that he really wanted the job of institutional inspector and he thought clearing his first case would help him get it.”
    “But he didn’t clear it. You did.”
    I shrugged. “It was a group effort. His case. His clear.”
    “I’ve interviewed Inspector Lawson,” she