“It’s perfect.”
“We’ll be close to my parents.”
“We’ve got to do something for your mom.”
“I know,” she said. “But Dad’s doing well, isn’t he? He’s an amazing man. Always has been, but since what happened to Mom, he’s been extraordinary. We can help them. I know this place’ll take a lot of fixing up, but so did we and we’re doing that.”
“I realize the sacrifice you’re making,” I began, but she covered my mouth with hers.
“We’re family. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you. Nothing.”
Later that night I had a dream so vivid, seemingly so real, that it was more like a portent, as if a vision of a future moment I would someday experience with the most profound sense of déjà vu.
The last of the setting sun streaks the blue horizon with neon pink and splatters the emerald green waters of the Gulf with giant orange splotches like scoops of sherbet in an Art Deco bowl.
A fitting finale for a perfect Florida day.
My son, who looks to be around four, though it’s hard to tell since in dreams we all seem ageless—runs up from the water’s edge, his face red with sun and heat, his hands sticky with wet sand, and asks me to join him for one last swim.
He looks up at me with his mother’s brown eyes, open and honest as possible, and smiles his sweetest smile as he begins to beg.
“Please, Daddy,” he says. “Please.”
“We need to go,” I say. “It’ll be dark soon. And I’m supposed to take your mom out on a date tonight.”
“Please, Daddy,” he repeats as if I have not spoken, and now he takes the edge of my swimming trunks in his tiny, sandy hand and tugs.
I look down at him, moved by his openness, purity, and beauty.
He knows he’s got me then.
“Yes,” he says, releasing my shorts to clench his fist and pull it toward him in a gesture of victory. Then he begins to jump up and down.
I drop the keys and the towels and the bottles of sun screen wrapped in them, kick off my flip flops, and pause just a moment to take it all in—him, the sand, the sea, the sun.
“I love you, Dad,” he says with the ease and unashamed openness only a safe and secure child can.
“I love you,”
I take his hand in mine, and we walk down to the end of his world as the sun sets and the breeze cools off the day. And we walk right into the ocean from which we came. A wave knocks us down and we stay that way, allowing the foamy water to wash over us.
He shrieks his joy and excitement, sounding like the gulls in the air and on the shore. He plays with intensity and abandon, and for a moment I want to be a child again, but only for a moment, for more than anything in this world, I want to be his dad.
We forget about the world around us, and we lose track of time, and the thick, salty waters of the Gulf roll in on us and then back out to sea.
33
The next morning before the yard opened, I asked one of the officers to escort Juan Martinez up to my office so I could talk to him in private. So far, I had left him to Daniels, and I still would. This wasn’t about the murder—I probably wouldn’t even mention it. This was about what he had done to Sarah Daniels. After so closely witnessing her deteriorated condition, I had to confront him.
While I waited for him to arrive, I tried to pray. As usual, being involved in a murder investigation had caused my spiritual life to suffer—and this time it wasn’t good to begin with.
A few minutes later when the escort officer appeared at my door, I motioned him in. He opened the door and Juan Martinez, his hands cuffed in front of him at his waist, walked in and sat down across the desk from me.
“I’ll be in the VP,” the officer said. “Call me when you’re finished with him.”
“Thanks.”
He then closed the door and walked out, leaving the two of us alone.
I stared at Martinez for a long time.
“I did not do it,” he said. “Menge did not have anything on me—”
“But you did commit a murder of a different kind. A much slower, more painful one, a violation of the soul as much as the body.”
“You sound like Daniels. Talkin’ all this shit to me.”
“She picked you out of a photo array,” I said, not wanting to call her by name. “She was also able to identify your scars and tattoos.”
He smiled, his whole demeanor changing suddenly. His expression, posture, and body language defiant, cocky. “You know why he hates me so much? I gave his old lady a taste of a real man, and now he can’t satisfy her.”
It was nothing short of an admission. He felt untouchable now that Justin was dead. I had such rage for him I could feel a physiological change in myself, the spike in adrenaline already making me jittery.
On unsteady legs I got up and walked over to him. Without saying a word, I took his cuffs off and dropped them on my desk.
“Stand up,” I said.
He did.
“What did you say?”
He smiled.
I had the urge to knock the nasty little smile right off his face.
I went with the urge—a right hook to the head. I could feel teeth cut into the flesh of my fist.
His head whipped away from the punch and snapped back, but he didn’t go down. He steadied himself against the wall behind him and glared at me. The smile was gone, but he made no move to hit me back like I had hoped he would.
“You scared?” he asked, as he wiped blood and spit from his mouth.
“Of what?”
He slung a long string of blood-laced saliva onto the floor. “I’ll do the same to his daughter.”
I hit him again.
And again.
And again.
Three quick punches that bounced his head off the wall behind him and landed him on the floor. Tears streamed down his face as blood dripped from his nose.
It took him a minute, but he climbed back to his feet and grimaced, then he gave me an obnoxious smile, a sickening red film of blood covering his teeth.
“You hit pretty good for a priest,” he said. “‘Course, never been hit by a priest before.”
That jab hurt far more than a physical one would have—even coming from him. A stab of guilt and shame sliced through me.
I had just unleashed all my anger and frustration onto another human being, something I had refrained from doing for a very long time now, but in my current condition my normal restraints weren’t in place. I had just stepped over the line between justice and vengeance, losing not only my religion, but my credibility—if not as an investigator, certainly as a minister.
Sure, I could use what he had done to Sarah to justify my actions, his admission of guilt, his implied threat against my wife, but the truth was those were all excuses—and had nothing to do with why I had done what I had.
I had hurt the man who had hurt Sarah, who had threatened to hurt Susan, yet I felt worse than I did before he came into my office. And it wasn’t Martinez I was worried about. He deserved far worse, and Daniels would make sure he got it. It was me, the state I was in, the way in which I was regressing.
I realized that he would not hit me back. He was demonstrating his superiority over me, both morally and physically, by his enormous control, and it was amazing the power it seemed to give him.
I drew back my fist, and he flinched, the smile contorting, his mouth twisting it into a gaping wound.
I didn’t hit him. Instead, I leaned in close to his bloody face. “Know this. I wish you ill.”
He didn’t say anything, just squirmed uncomfortably.
“You’ll never leave this institution. Not in this lifetime. You’ll never hurt another woman again. Not as long as you live. Not ever.”
He tried his best but was unable to smile at that.
34
“I can’t do it,” Max Williams said. He was an earnest, young black man with kind eyes.
“What?”
“Be a C
hristian,” he said. “Not in this place.”
Obviously, neither can I, I thought as images of Juan’s blood-smeared smile flashed in my mind. It was later in the day, and I still felt enormous guilt for what I had done to Martinez, and anger and frustration over how he had responded.
“But you could somewhere else?” I asked.
His eyes narrowed in thought, then he nodded slowly. “I think so.”
Max Williams, as far as I could tell, was a good kid whose only crime was having brothers and cousins who were not. He had been with them when they were arrested, and taking the fall with them hadn’t given him the cynical world view you’d expect. Using the time he was doing wisely, he was the best Bible student I had—probably the best inmate who attended chapel. He was devout without being judgmental, spiritual without being overly religious.
“Tell me why that is,” I said.
“I’m not talkin’ about the way most of these cons—or even most people outside—practice it. I’m talkin’ about the real deal.”
“Which is?”
“What you’re always tellin’ us. First and foremost compassion. Fighting injustice. Loving God and loving our neighbors. But how can I when my neighbor’s a predator who doesn’t understand love?”
As I listened to him, I realized how little I lived out my faith—anywhere, but especially here. He was right. It was far more difficult in this environment. It wasn’t just that I was a part-time chaplain and part-time investigator. It was that I was, at best, only true to my faith part of the time. I was not fit to be this man’s chaplain, and if I had more integrity, I’d resign.
For quite a while now, my religion was one of compassion and justice—the attempt to feel what other people are feeling, helping them through it, and watching out for the weak and marginalized, attempting to protect the powerless from the powerful. But lately I had been losing sight of my message and my mission, falling into old patterns and thought processes I had believed were no longer part of who I was.
“How can I turn the other cheek when it’s gonna get me killed?” he asked.
I didn’t answer.
“How can I fight against injustice when I’ll suffer the retaliation of an untouchable officer with all the power?”
I nodded my understanding, but still didn’t say anything.
“How do you do it?” he asked.
I was speechless. I thought about how I had neglected my chaplaincy duties, how I had blood on my hands from the violence that deep down I enjoyed.
“I don’t,” I said.
He looked confused and distressed. “What? Sure you do.”
“No I don’t. Not even half the time. And I don’t have it half as hard as you.”
He was silent a long time.
I was sure what I had done to Juan Martinez had already made the rounds on the compound. Pain and incomprehension filled Max as he glanced back in the direction of the dorms. Now, the same distress joined his look of dawning comprehension.
“So it’s true?” he asked. “Was I right? It can’t be done in here?”
“It can be done. I just don’t do it.”
“But you tell us to . . . You—how can you tell us to do things you don’t?”
“I shouldn’t.”
He was silent again, a perplexed look on his face, his eyes misting. “We need somebody to show us how to do it, not just tell us.”
“I know,” I said, mist in my own eyes.
“Who do we look to?”
“Only one obvious answer.”
“But he wasn’t in prison,” he said.
“Sure he was. To humanity, to poverty, to tyranny. And he was imprisoned—arrested, tried, sentenced, and executed. It just all happened very quickly.”
He thought about it for a minute. “So you’re saying a Roman soldier and a correctional officer aren’t that much different? So it can be done?”
I nodded. “When we’re willing.”
“Willing?”
“To risk it all. Everything. Being willing to suffer and or die.”
He looked puzzled.
“There’re a lot of wolves in here. If you live like a lamb . . .”
“You get eaten,” he said.
I shrugged. “Sometimes. Sometimes not. But you’ve got to be willing to . . .”
“I’m not willing to do that yet.”
“I guess neither of us are,” I said. “Maybe we will be one day—if we continue to grow . . . find the courage to live out our convictions.”
He nodded, then fell silent, and when he walked out a few minutes later without saying another word, I realized I alone was responsible for the look of disillusionment on his face.
Whether it was a spiritual impression or something surfacing from my subconscious I wasn’t sure, but I had a thought that I couldn’t help but believe was one of the keys to solving the case. It happened as I was praying in the sanctuary, and it was a grace—a surprising, unexpected, undeserved blessing—considering the state I was in and what I had just done. Of course, that’s what grace is—an unconditional gift.
Later in the afternoon I was supposed to teach a Bible class on the parables of Jesus, but as I walked around the sanctuary, my mind kept coming back to a parable told to Jesus’ great, great, great grandfather. It concerned the love triangle between Israel’s greatest king, David, his loyal servant, Uriah, and the woman they both loved, Uriah’s wife, Bathsheba.
As I thought about the familiar story, pulse quickening, mind racing, I felt that some aspect of it held the solution to Justin Menge’s murder. Like most things spiritual, I didn’t know how or why I thought it. It was vague and ambiguous, but I knew that in time, like a developing photograph, it would come into focus.
Turning it over and over in my mind I went through the story line by line.
In the spring, at the time when kings go to war, David stayed behind, sending his men, including Uriah, under the leadership of Joab to fight the Ammonites.
One night, while walking on his roof, David saw Bathsheba bathing, and, even though he was told she was the wife of Uriah the Hittite, he sent for her. She came to him, and they slept together, which was nothing short of rape on his part since she couldn’t refuse the king even if she wanted to—though nothing in the story suggests she did.
When David discovers that she’s pregnant with his child, he sends to the front lines for Uriah, hoping that he’ll believe he got his wife pregnant while on leave. But Uriah, loyal to the king and faithful to his fellow soldiers, refuses to even go into his house while the other men are in danger on the battlefield.
Finally, David dispatches Uriah back to the battle with a letter instructing Joab to put him on the front line where the fighting is fiercest, which he does. Uriah dies, David marries Bathsheba, and after losing their first child, they go on to have Solomon, who not only becomes the wisest of all men, but a direct antecedent of Jesus of Nazareth.
What was it about this story that revealed Justin’s killer or killers? What aspect of it was relevant? If Justin Menge was the Uriah character, then who was David? And who was Bathsheba?
At the moment, I couldn’t see what the story had to do with the case, but I knew eventually I would. I just needed to meditate on it and remain open, which I committed to do.
35
“I love you,” I said to Anna.
We were seated on the top of a picnic table at the state park during our lunch hour. All around us, oak and magnolia leaves and pine needles drifted toward the ground in the cool October breeze.
We were the only two people in the park.
She had packed a lunch for us, but neither of us had eaten. There were things we needed to say to one another, and it was obvious that both of us could think of little else.
“But?” she said.
“But?”
“Yeah,” she said. “That sounded like an I-love-you-but.”
“It wasn’t. It was just an I love you, Anna.”
She smiled.
&n
bsp; “For as long as I can remember you’ve been the woman in my life,” I said. “The woman by whom all other women are judged. The woman whose company I most enjoy. The woman I most want.”
“Now comes the ‘but,’” she said.
My half-frown and raised eyebrows expression told her she wasn’t wrong.
“You know, you could just stop right there, and this would be a perfect day.”
I nodded.
“But you can’t, which is why I love you. Well, one of the many reasons. But I love your integrity most of all. Well, maybe not most of all, but it’s up there.”
I smiled at her.
“I admit it. I’m stalling.” She took a deep breath and let it out, her elegant shoulders rising and falling. “Actually, I’ve got a couple of things to tell you first. I may not be able to after I hear what comes after your ‘but.’”
I nodded.
“First,” she said. “DeLisa Lopez is rumored to be having a relationship with Carlos Matos.”
I looked off at the small pine needle-covered hill in the distance and thought about it.
“She came up here because she had a bad breakup with a boyfriend who started stalking her. He’s an ex-offender, and though they were never caught, everyone I talked to believes their relationship started when he was still inside. I bet she was down there that night seeing Matos and is trying to keep it a secret.”
I nodded. “Thanks.”
“The other significant thing I uncovered was that Potter has a history of violence against gays.”
That came as no surprise.
“One of his victim’s said he kissed him before he beat him up.”
I shook my head.
“Several of the assaults were at gay bars. Potter claimed he went in mistakenly and went crazy when he was hit on.”
“Funny how he keeps making that same mistake over and over again, isn’t it?”
“What if he was attracted to Menge? And either because he doesn’t want to be, or he’s jealous, or because Justin turned him down, he kills him.”
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