Free JJ09 - Blood Moon by Michael Lister Page B

were alone.
    “I owe you,” Jake said. “So I ain’t gonna ask what you’re using this for, but I can’t think of anything good you could be doin’ with it.”
    I nodded.
    “You sure about this?”
    I nodded again.
    “Is it something I can help you with?” he asked.
    I shook my head. “Thank you, though. That means a lot.”
    “Okay,” he said, frowning and shaking his head.
    He withdrew a small clear vile from the pocket of his green deputy’s uniform pants and handed it to me.
    “You’re doing it here?” I asked in surprise, quickly tucking the vile in the pocket of my suit coat. “Like this?”
    “John, no one thinks a sheriff’s deputy and a chaplain are doin’ a drug deal in the prison parkin’ lot.”
    “What is it?” I asked.
    “What you asked for. An incapacitation and memory loss agent. Date rape drug. Either rohypnol or ketamine. It’ll put whoever you give it to in a trance state or actually sedate them and they won’t remember it.”
    I wondered if he got it out of the evidence room or off the street, but didn’t ask. “And you’re sure it works, it’s––”
    “It works like a motherfucker. It’s powerful and potent and I wish there wasn’t stuff like it in the world.”
    “Okay. Thanks.”
    “What the fuck are you up to, John?”
    “I’ll tell you when I can. I promise.”
    “Okay. You and Dad are the only two people on the planet I’d do something like this for.”
    “I know. I really appreciate it.”
    “Be careful,” he said. “I’m just getting to where I kinda like your odd ass.”
    It was the nicest thing he had said to me since we were children, and I stepped forward and hugged him.
    “The fuck you doin’?” he said, but he hugged me back a bit, then pushed me away.

Chapter Twenty-three
    My entire plan hinged on this.
    I was in the warden’s office first thing the next morning following another mostly sleepless night, with a special request for Emmitt Emerson to enter the institution as a one-time volunteer to speak at the Christian worship service in the chapel later in the day.
    “I’ve heard about this young man,” Matson said. “Very impressive. Powerful testimony. Now see, this is the kind of thing I like to take place in my prison. This is the kind of program I’ve been askin’ you to do. Gives me hope. Maybe this most recent scare about your job did you some good.”
    I just listened and nodded, didn’t say anything.
    I should’ve known he would have heard of Emmitt Emerson, a former high school football star who had spent all his time since graduating drinking, doing drugs, and having sex with girls who were still in school, who had recently undergone a dramatic conversion experience for which he was receiving lots of attention.
    In addition to speaking at virtually every church in the Panhandle, Emerson had been on nearly all the local radio and TV shows telling how he should be dead but God had a greater plan for his life, and hawking the small, poorly written self-published paperback with the bad cover that told his story, or as he and Matson would call it, his testimony.
    When it had occurred to me just how much Emmitt Emerson looked like Ronnie Cardigan, I too became a believer. God did have a greater plan for Emmitt’s life––helping me get Anna back.
    “This will do the inmates some real good,” Matson was saying. “To see a young man not unlike themselves saved by the grace of God, to hear how he was going down the same path as many of them . . .”
    He signed his approval on the memo granting Emerson permission to enter the prison with a large looping signature, as if he were as proud to do so as John Hancock was the Declaration of Independence.
    This was far easier than I had ever dreamed. Emerson was not only available but grateful for the opportunity to come in and speak to the men, and Matson was only too happy to let him.
    Now if only every other aspect of the plan could come off as smoothly.
    “What time will he