by Elle Gray
“Welcome, brother. Welcome to the Everlasting Fire of Christ Church,” he greets me warmly. “I don’t believe I’ve seen you at fellowship before.”
“That would be because I haven’t been to fellowship before,” I reply with a grin.
“A newcomer. Wonderful. We love having new faces join us for worship.”
I have to admit; I’m surprised by how open and friendly they are. When I was reading about them online, I actually did expect either paper robe-wearing zealots preaching about their alien overlords or grizzled men with an arsenal of guns drawing down on me. Seeing the EFCC live and in-person is making me realize my own biases and ignorance. I’m not nearly as open-minded as I’ve always thought. I obviously have much to learn still.
“Actually, I was hoping to speak with the pastor here,” I say. “Would that be Jacob and Karen Perry?”
He cocks his head and looks at me. “Oh, heavens no,” he says. “I’m David Miller. My father, Aaron, is the pastor and leader of the EFCC. Who are Jacob and Karen Perry?”
“Probably before your time,” I reply with a small smile. “Is your father around? I’d like to speak with him.”
“Of course. He’s in the chapel,” David says. “Follow me.”
I follow him into the barn and appreciate the way it’s been converted into a church. Everything is clean and polished, the hardwood floors and pews sparkling in the light. Tapestries bearing symbols, inspirational quotes, and Bible passages hang from the loft and are mounted on the walls, and over to the right is what looks like a coffee area. Like The Pulpit, the EFCC has repurposed everything and turned it into a warm, welcoming place. I can’t help but admire it.
There is an older man standing at the front of their chapel, just below a massive wooden carving of the cross and flame taking up nearly the whole wall. He’s down on his hands and knees, polishing the wood dais by hand to a glossy shine. He looks up as we approach and gets to his feet, wiping his hands on his rag, a warm smile on his face. He’s wearing a dark coverall with a white t-shirt beneath, and a red bandana wrapped around his neck. Not exactly the garb I’m used to seeing on a preacher.
“Who’s your friend, David?”
The younger man turns to me. “You know? I never did catch your name.”
“Sorry,” I say. “I’m Paxton.”
“Well Paxton, it’s nice to meet you. I’m Aaron Miller,” he greets me with a strong handshake.
“It’s nice to meet you, sir,” I nod.
“I’ll leave you two to it then,” David says, then turns and heads out of the barn.
I find myself still looking around, admiring the chapel, as well as the sense of peace and calm that permeates the area around us.
“I like what you’ve done with this place,” I note. “The whole place. It’s ambitious and yet, simple.”
“Well, some of us prefer to live a simpler life.”
“I can see that,” I reply. “I can see the appeal. Entirely self-sustaining?”
He nods. “We run on solar power and have a hydroelectric set up that runs from the river too,” he says. “We’ve got a freshwater well, and a small aqueduct from the river.”
“That’s impressive.”
Aaron smiles. “I’m assuming the heir to the Arrington media empire didn’t come down here to talk about our set up,” he says. “What can I do for you, Paxton?”
The fact that he recognizes me sends a shockwave through me. I turn to him but don’t recognize his face. I know I’ve never met this man before. Seeing my confusion, he laughs.
“I knew your father a bit. A long time ago. Another life, actually,” he tells me. “I was an investment banker back then, but I gave it all up to run this place. Saw your dad socially every now and then. I even saw you around a few times.”
I nod. “I’m sorry, I—”
“Oh, we never officially met. I just remember your dad singing your praises,” he says. “It’s not every trust-fund baby who gives up a cushy life as a media mogul to become a cop. It’s an impressive story. I admire what you did.”
“Thank you.”
I guess in a way; my story mirrors his. He gave up a comfortable life for something simpler. And I have to say, he looks happy. Content. He looks like a man who’s satisfied with his lot in life.
“There’s always room for one more out here,” he tells me.
“I’ll give it some thought,” I say and mean it.
“When you’re ready, we’ll be here.”
“Thank you. I appreciate that,” I reply. “As for why I’m here, I wondered if you recall Jacob and Karen Perry? I guess they used to be pastors here before you.”
“Only by reputation. And let me tell you, it wasn’t a good one,” he tells me. “They were long gone when I bought the farm and refurbished it. The place had fallen into severe disrepair and needed a lot of work.”
“Well, you did a pretty amazing job of bringing it back to life.”
“Hard work is its own reward,” he says. “But tell me, why are you asking about the Perrys?”
“Just doing some legwork for a case,” I say. “I’m a PI now.”
“Interesting work,” he nods. “Also interesting that you’re choosing to serve others.”
“You can blame my wife for that.”
“Oh, she could have only shown you the door that already existed in you,” he says. “You’re the one who needed to open it and walk through it.”
“I suppose so,” I nod. “Do you happen to know what happened to the Perrys? I can’t find any records on them after they left this place.”
“I wish I could tell you,” he shrugs. “I never met them personally, only heard the stories. But it’s like they up and disappeared one day. Some of their— congregants— took over and tried to keep the farm going for a while, but…”
He doesn’t need to finish the statement. I know how it went. He swept in with a fistful of dollars, probably paid pennies on the dollar for the land, and built his perfect utopia. I don’t begrudge him one bit for it though. Being a Captain of Industry is a cushy life, but it takes a toll on you eventually. Wears you down. Walking away from it with a fat bank account while you still have your health and sanity to live in an idyllic world like this is not a bad idea.
It’s as I feared it might be though. Another dead end. I’d hoped to be able to track them down and give them my profile to see if it jogged their memory of somebody who might fit the description.
“Personally, I think those old hippies skipped on down to Mexico and are livin’ free and easy on the beach down there,” Aaron chuckles.
“That’s a distinct possibility.”
“Oh, but that reminds me,” he says. “I have some boxes of stuff that belonged to them. After I bought the place, I had it all boxed up and stored. Just in case they ever came back. Been down there forever though. Maybe there’s a clue to where they went in all that stuff.”
That small spark of hope inside of me that was guttering and threatening to go out suddenly springs back to life.
“Excellent. Would you mind if I took a look?” I ask.
“Hell son, you can take the boxes for all I care,” he shrugs. “If they haven’t come back for them by now, they’re not coming back. I’ll have the boys load them up for you.”
“Oh, that’s not necessary,” I say. “I can—”
He waves me off. “Like I said, hard work is its own reward,” he says. “Besides, I caught the boys smoking behind the barn, so they need to work off their punishment anyway.”
He flashes me a grin, and I follow him out of the barn. As the boys load the boxes into my Navigator, Aaron walks me around the compound a bit, telling me about it all. It’s fascinating to me, honestly. He really has built his own little Eden out here on the outskirts of Kirkland. They’re doing good works, helping a lot of people. It’s admirable.
“How do you fund this place?” I ask. “If you don’t mind my asking.”
“Not at all. To be honest, between
buying and renovating this place, installing all of the solar, and the aqueduct system, it ate through a big chunk of what I’d made in my career,” he says. “I’ve still got a decent portfolio, but I’m hoping to save that for a rainy day. So mostly we rely on the tithing of the parishioners to keep our school and our drug programs going.”
“Apparently, living simply is expensive,” I remark.
Aaron laughs heartily. “Quite so,” he says. “But still. I’d rather be broke living out here where I’m genuinely happy instead of having more money than God and being miserable.”
“I admire you, Aaron,” I say. “I have all the respect in the world for you.”
“Kind of you to say so,” he replies. “And I’ve got just as much respect for you, son. I admire what you did as well.”
“I guess in our own ways, we were both called to serve.”
“Exactly right,” he smiles. “Well, I should get back to it. Hope you find what you’re looking for in those boxes.”
“Thanks, me too. I appreciate you giving them to me.”
He waves me off. “They were just taking up space in the cellar anyway.”
He turns and starts to walk back to the chapel but stops and turns back to me.
“While I’m thinkin’ about it, on the third Sunday of every month, we hold a barbecue and fellowship,” he says. “I’d love it if you came by.”
I nod. “I’d like that. Thank you.”
He gives me a smile, then turns and heads for the barn again. I watch him go for a moment, secretly envying the look of absolute peace and happiness he had on his face. I wonder if I’ll ever get a taste of that kind of life again. I had it once. For a little while anyway. But then Veronica died and it evaporated.
With a sigh, I walk out to my car. Maybe I’ll have that life again someday. But for now, I have a mystery to solve and a good friend to save. And the clock is ticking.
Twenty-Seven
Arrington Investigations; Downtown Seattle
“What is it we’re looking for exactly?” Brody asks.
“Let you know when we find it.”
“That’s helpful.”
I wish I could be more helpful, but I really have no idea what we’re looking for either. I have all twelve boxes Aaron gave to me set up on the table in the conference room. We’ve slowly and methodically been working our way through them, examining everything closely, looking for something that will tip us off to Hayes and Blake’s whereabouts— or about anything, really.
I glance at the clock and see that it’s just past three. A little under nine hours to go. And with every tick of the clock, the deadline is looming larger. I have no doubt that if I don’t find Hayes by midnight, that he will kill Blake. He is, after all, a man of his word. At least, he is when he chooses to be. And I won’t gamble with Blake’s life that this is one of those times.
“These boxes really stink.”
“What do you expect? They’ve been in a cellar for almost twenty years,” I point out. “It’s not like he went down there and freshened them up every week.”
“He’s filthy rich. He should do that,” Brody remarks. “I’ve seen rich people do stupider things with their money.”
I laugh, knowing he’s right. “Except that Aaron’s not rich anymore,” I tell him. “At least, not monetarily. He sank his fortune into the EFCC.”
“I still can’t believe he did that,” Brody sighs, almost sadly. “That man was worth a mint. Like a literal mint.”
“Hey, he’s happy. You can see it in his face,” I shrug. “He’s the kind of satisfied and content we should all strive to be.”
“I dunno man, that’s a super weird vibe out there. You sure they weren’t cannibals?”
“I promise they weren’t cannibals.”
“And you saw the kitchen? No bodies in the freezer?”
“I saw the farm.”
“All I’m saying, man. Don’t expect me to come riding to the rescue when it’s your literal butt on the grill.”
We both laugh. It’s nice to have Brody here, even as stressful as this situation is.
“Honestly, the more I think about it, it does sound nice. But were there even any chicks out there?”
“Can’t go wrong with a farmer’s daughter.”
Brody looks at me in wide-eyed surprise. “Wow. An hour at that place and you’re loose enough to make sex jokes,” he says. “I think you need to go live out there for a month. Who knows? Maybe you’ll learn to laugh again. Or at least you’ll make a nice dinner spread.”
“Funny guy.”
He shrugs. “I’m only half kidding.”
“Yeah well, I’m only going to half kick your butt if you don’t start digging through those boxes,” I say. “We’ve got nine hours to save Blake’s life.”
The remainder of the running clock casts a pall over the conference room. We lapse into a grim silence and redouble back to work, examining the contents of the Perrys’ life. Or at least, what’s left of it. Maybe Aaron was right, and they cast aside all their worldly possessions to go frolic on the beach, living the life of a vagabond. Who knows?
Something inside me doesn’t think so. There’s just a nagging feeling growing inside of me, one that gets stronger with every box we open, that the Perrys never left that farm. Maybe having spent a decade seeing some of the worst of humanity, I’ve become jaded and cynical, automatically believing the worst in people. That’s a possibility. But something is telling me the Perrys are in a shallow grave somewhere on the EFCC land.
Who put them there is another question entirely. I don’t believe for a moment it was Aaron. I think in addition to making me cynical and jaded, ten years on the force also taught me to be a pretty keen judge of character. And I get nothing but a good feeling from Aaron. I truly believe he’d had enough of life at the top of the corporate food chain and just wanted something different. Something simpler. It’s an impulse I understand and long for myself. So when he tells me he never met the Perrys, I believe him.
No, if they are still on that farm, buried somewhere on the land, I am certain it was at the hands of somebody they knew. Maybe one of the people who took over the EFCC after they ‘left’. I’m certain it had to be somebody close to them. Somebody who stood to gain by their disappearance. But that is another case for another day.
Right now, the only concern I have, and the only case that matters, is finding out who Hayes really is and saving Blake. I toss the last of a bunch of useless papers into the box and slam the lid back down on it with a growl. I set the box down on the pile of boxes we’ve already gone through and grab the final one.
“If we don’t find something here, we’re screwed,” I sigh. “I don’t know what we’re going to do. We’re running out of time.”
“We’ve got a little less than nine hours,” Brody says. “We’ll think of something.”
I set my mind working on a Plan B as I take the lid off the final box. I dig out the first batch of papers, still not finding anything useful. Old magazine clippings, recipes, and other items. Nothing I can use. But then I pick up a manila envelope, open it up, and find a stack of old pictures. I feel a jolt of excitement in my heart even though I don’t know if these are going to be any more useful than the recipe clippings.
Holding onto the photos, I drop the envelope and start to flip through them. These have got to be the Perrys. Candid shots of them in various places, doing various things. I recognize the farm in the background of some of them. There are a few of them in their preacher get-ups, standing at the pulpit, preaching away.
I can tell by their sweaty, flushed faces in the photos that they were definitely the charismatic, revival sorts of preachers. All sorts of gimmicks and stunts and choreography. At least on Sundays, since passionate preaching is what usually fills a collection plate. A couple of the other photos show them hanging out with their congregants. Sometimes even with joints in their hands.
When I get to one of the last photos in the stack, an audible gas
p spills from my throat. I drop the rest of the photos and turn to Brody, showing him the picture.
“They had a son,” I say.
“Nothing we found indicates they had a kid.”
“And yet, there he is.”
The photo shows Jacob and Karen standing with a young kid, maybe eleven or twelve, or so, in front of the Sequoia trees. The kid is wearing a Flock of Seagulls t-shirt and flashing a gap-toothed smile at the camera as Jacob and Karen stand behind him. Even though Brody is right and we found no other mention of a kid, this has got to be a family photo.
“So they have a kid,” Brody says.
“This has got to be him. This has got to be Reuben Hayes,” I say. “This has got to be the bastard who has Blake.”
I go through my profile in my head and compare the timeline. Everything seems to fit. But we can’t prove it. We already did a records search for Jacob and Karen, and there was no record of birth. This kid, if he is theirs, doesn’t exist. At least not legally. No birth certificate, no social security number, no school records. Which means, if this is their kid, they had him at home. He wasn’t born in a hospital. Which, given their secluded lifestyle, doesn’t seem to be too far outside the realm of possibility.
“So how do we prove this is their kid? And how do we figure out who he is?” Brody asks.
“That’s a good question,” I say. “And we need to come up with a good answer pretty freaking fast.”
I study the picture closely and look at the date stamp in the corner. August 1983. The last reported Perry sighting was in 1986. All mention of them in any of the old articles I read stops in November 1986. After that, all of the op-ed pieces, letters to the editor, or actual articles decrying the existence of this ‘cult’ in Kirkland, refer to somebody else named James Moore as the pastor.
“Okay, so they fell off the grid in November 1986,” I say. “That would make the kid what, fourteen or fifteen, maybe?”
“Something like that.”