by Rob Byrnes
Hurley nodded silently. “It still makes me very uncomfortable. I don’t trust Platt. Not one bit.”
Merribaugh tried to be reassuring. “Don’t concern yourself with him, Oscar. I’ll take care of whatever needs to be taken care of.”
Past that topic, Hurley returned to a related concern. “There’s another thing we need to focus on. Now that Leonard Platt is no longer with us, we need a new bookkeeper.”
“I’m sure we can find volunteers from the congregation to help us out. At least in the short term. As far as a permanent replacement, well…you know that will be difficult. We can’t hire just anyone.”
“Agreed.” Hurley laid his palms flat on the Desk of Christ. “We’ve already made the mistake of hiring the wrong person.”
Merribaugh fidgeted on the couch. “In fairness to Leonard, he was a good bookkeeper. Hardworking, honest…”
“Nosy.”
Merribaugh nodded. “Too bad he turned out to be a Sodomite.”
“You hired him, Dennis.”
“I did, Oscar.” He leaned forward. “And I fired him.”
Hurley couldn’t argue with that. And it wasn’t really Dennis Merribaugh’s fault that Leonard Platt was discovered to be a snoop and a Sodomite. It was just…sad. And it left a huge hole in the Cathedral’s finance office. After all these years, Hurley didn’t want to become a micromanager again, but…
“And you’re sure that these church ladies you bring in—for the short term—will be up to the job? I don’t have to remind you this is a complex organization.”
“They’ll be up to the job,” said Merribaugh. “I’m sure we’ll have someone in place by the end of the month, and the summer is usually quiet. All they’ll have to do is handle some data entry and cut a few checks. I will take care of the cash.”
Hurley smiled at Merribaugh, who sensed the smile was more a display of iron will than agreement and reassurance.
“We will take care of the cash, Dennis. We.”
$ $ $
Despite his position as chief operating officer of the Virginia Cathedral of Love, the Rev. Mr. Dennis Merribaugh’s office was significantly less glamorous than that of Dr. Oscar Hurley. Both men were headquartered in a four-story former plantation house, now a warren of offices and conference rooms, known as Cathedral House. It was located a quarter mile up the road from the actual cathedral, but Hurley’s 750-square-foot workplace—with its accompanying reception area, wardrobe, full bath, and powder room, not to mention the security office just down the hall—took up a large part of the second floor at the top of a twin set of sweeping staircases framing the entryway.
Merribaugh’s workmanlike corner office was tucked up on the fourth floor, with the other administrative offices. A calendar and a dry-erase board—not expensive tapestries—decorated the walls. Heat was provided by a temperamental radiator, not a grand fireplace. The only celebrity photo was a cheaply framed picture of Merribaugh with Victoria Jackson watching over the office from atop a metal filing cabinet. Two threadbare chairs stood in for Hurley’s three couches. And there was no seal on the navy blue throw rug he’d purchased for $12.99 at Walmart.
And, of course, he only had a standard-issue desk of indeterminate wood veneer. It was decidedly not the Desk of Christ.
Still, it was comfortable and large enough, and the windows overlooked the side of the cathedral where architects had somehow managed to install five-story reinforced stained-glass panels across most of the length, width, and height of the church, breaking the effect only at evenly spaced intervals to allow for load-bearing columns. When the morning and early afternoon sun hit the stained glass, the beauty could take Merribaugh’s breath away. He’d even shed a few tears on occasion.
Spreading out from the rear of the cathedral was Dr. Oscar Hurley’s latest pet project, an addition that, in Merribaugh’s opinion, added nothing to the aesthetics of the cathedral. The new auditorium wasn’t ugly, exactly, but it also didn’t quite mesh with its surroundings. The squat two-story building—with a seating capacity of three thousand people and twelve concession stands—didn’t detract much from the grand cathedral, since half the ground floor burrowed into the hillside, but it also didn’t complement it. Although to be fair, at certain times of day the auditorium’s skylights picked up reflections of the stained glass, rendering it simply beautiful.
Merribaugh’s office also had a view of the church’s claim to fame: the Great Cross towering 199 feet above the grounds…although, come to think of it, most other people in this part of Loudoun County had that view. That was the point of having a 199-foot cross piercing the sky, after all.
The Rev. Dennis Merribaugh had certainly had his cynical moments over recent years—darkly cynical, more often than not—but when entering his office and looking at his view, he was almost always filled with the power of God. Those massive stained-glass works of art…the Great Cross…no matter what he had just done, he always felt a moment of redemption and joy.
But not on this day.
On this day, he walked into his office and booted up the computer without even glancing out the window. The old Dell slowly came to life, and he clicked on a desktop icon labeled “Project Rectitude,” then clicked again and waited—again, interminably—for a spreadsheet to open.
Finally it displayed the names and addresses of fourteen men and two women, the only people who had registered to date for Beyond Sin, the conference he’d scheduled for the beginning of the following month. Just weeks in the future…it might as well be tomorrow.
Hurley had been right: Project Rectitude was Merribaugh’s baby. If it failed, Merribaugh would have to face the consequences.
It had seemed like a no-brainer for a mega-church like the Virginia Cathedral of Love to host an ex-gay ministry, so Merribaugh had fought for it, and finally Hurley acquiesced. True, Project Rectitude hadn’t cost much money over its first few years—a few dollars here and there for soft drinks and doughnuts, mostly—but now that he’d taken the next step and moved forward with the Beyond Sin conference, tens of thousands of dollars—maybe more; maybe a lot more—were on the line.
Not to mention the potentially damaged reputations of Project Rectitude, the Moral Families Coalition, and the Virginia Cathedral of Love. That cost would come without a price tag.
And all Dennis Merribaugh had to show for it were sixteen names.
Sixteen names, when two hundred was the break-even minimum.
Fortunately, Dr. Oscar Hurley had not asked to see the report he’d held in his sweaty hands fifteen minutes earlier…the report that said, more or less, that the parishioners of the Virginia Cathedral of Love thought the gay issue was increasingly a big yawn. Hurley had been only too willing to believe Merribaugh when he told him the issue still trended as a hot topic, which—like his antipathy over Project Rectitude and Beyond Sin—had more to do with Hurley’s dislike of the very thought of homosexuality than with anything concrete.
The numbers—absent Hurley’s prejudices—didn’t lie.
Happily, Hurley’s prejudices outweighed mere statistics when it came to guiding the ministry.
And at least that bought Dennis Merribaugh a little breathing room. And a little more time to bring in the two hundred people he’d originally promised Hurley for Beyond Sin.
4
“So this is beautiful Northern Virginia,” muttered Grant, sitting in the front passenger seat as their car idled at a red light outside the sixth strip mall they’d come across in the past two miles.
“This is it,” Farraday confirmed, sitting behind the wheel of the dark blue—almost purple, in the wrong light—Mercury Mystique he’d stolen five hours earlier from a Manhattan side street near the Holland Tunnel. As he waited for the light, he half turned toward Leonard, sitting behind him in the backseat. “This is where we want to be, right?”
“Right. The Cathedral is just a few miles down the road.”
Grant drummed his fingers impatiently on the armrest. “Just drive pas
t ten more Walmarts and Home Depots and we should be there.”
But he was wrong. When traffic finally broke, the Mercury passed through the end of the commercial sprawl and they were soon traveling a few miles per hour over the speed limit toward the Virginia Cathedral of Love. Minutes later, Leonard leaned forward and pointed through the windshield.
“See the cross?” Grant, Farraday, and Chase looked out to the horizon and saw it towering over green hills pockmarked with signs announcing future development. “That’s the cathedral.”
Another several minutes passed, and Farraday was cruising down Cathedral Boulevard in Nash Bog, slowing almost imperceptibly as they passed the entrance to the Virginia Cathedral of Love. A signal light had been placed on the boulevard where it intersected with the six-lane road leading into and out of the grounds, indicating cathedral traffic needed some management. As the car rode over a shadow of the cross cast on the asphalt, Chase reflexively blessed himself, a learned habit he’d never quite been able to unlearn.
“Big church,” Chase said, stating the obvious and hoping to distract attention from his lapse into piety.
“Maybe too big.” Grant eyed a guardhouse set near the entrance. “Farraday, go down the road a bit and pull over. I need to eyeball this from outside the car.”
A quarter mile down the road, Farraday gently pulled onto the shoulder and stopped.
“Don’t make this too long, Lambert. I got no idea what the cops in Virginia will think seeing this car with New York tags parked on the side of the road.”
“I wouldn’t worry,” Leonard piped up from the backseat. “The Cathedral has an international following. All fifty states and more than thirty foreign nations. Out-of-state visitors are very common. If the police come by, I can tell them I’m giving you a tour of the area.”
“I’m not worried about us, Leonard. I’m worried about the fact this vehicle is stolen.”
“Oh.” Leonard slinked back into his seat and reminded himself that he was not dealing with the world as he was used to dealing with it.
Grant was first out of the car and motioned for Leonard and Chase to follow him, which they did. Then, Leonard leading, they walked back down the shoulder in the direction they’d come, stopping a few hundred feet from the main entrance, just out of sight of the guardhouse.
“I don’t know if I should be out here,” said Leonard, his hands fidgeting in his pants pockets. “If they see me, they’ll know something’s up.”
“Then don’t be seen,” said Grant. “But I want you with us in case we have questions.” He pointed to the grassy slope rising up from the side of the road, a berm forming the separation between church and traffic. “Up here.”
The three men scrambled up the slope, stopping at the top and taking in the view of the Virginia Cathedral of Love. The late-morning sun bounced off the massive stained-glass panels lining the front wall of the cathedral, which—along with a few smaller buildings—sat in the center of a basin ringed by green hills.
Grant looked at Chase. “How big, you figure?”
Chase sized up the property. “Farraday could do this better, but I make it to be about twenty city blocks from the road to the far end.”
“So a mile.”
“Yeah, give or take.”
“So that would put the cathedral about a half mile from the road, and that big cross maybe five-eighths of a mile.”
“’Bout that.”
While most of the land had been paved for parking lots and sidewalks, the acreage of the grounds still allowed for abundant greenery, although not the kind of coverage Grant felt they could use to their best advantage. The only heavy foliage was near the five-eighths of a mile point, where a concentration of trees and shrubbery lined four symmetrical walkways fanning out from the base of the mammoth cross.
Grant didn’t like what he saw. There was nowhere to hide out there except near the cross, but since that wasn’t where the money was stashed, it wouldn’t do them any good.
“The cross is huge,” whispered Chase, fighting the urge to bless himself again. “Even bigger than it looks from the road.” He took in the immense structure, the lower half encased in scaffolding. Because he was more practical than devout, he asked Leonard, “What’s the deal with the scaffolding?”
“In a place this size, there’s always something that needs fixing.” Then Leonard, who was trying to think like a criminal, figured he knew why Chase was asking. “You’re thinking of attaching a zip-line to the scaffolding and riding it to Cathedral House, right?”
Chase studied his face to see if he was joking. “No.”
“Pretending to be a day laborer on the repair crew to get access to the grounds?”
“Why would we do that? Anyone can walk in.” He patted Leonard on the shoulder. “Thanks, but you’d better leave the plotting to us.”
Grant carefully studied the nearly treeless landscaping and flat, paved parking lots. “I don’t know about this. Everything’s right out in the open.” He motioned to the old house set away from the cathedral at the far end of the property. “What’s that building?”
“Cathedral House,” said Leonard. “That’s where the administrative offices are located.”
“Meaning that’s where the money is.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Looks old,” Grant said.
“Almost two hundred years old. It used to be the manor house for a large plantation. Hurley had it completely restored when he built the cathedral.”
“And had it wired, I assume.”
Leonard looked at him. “You mean for electricity?”
“I mean for alarms.”
“Oh!” Leonard was still having trouble thinking like a criminal, but was starting to pick up the rhythm. “You’d better believe it. Alarms and cameras.”
Chase said, “And I’m sure they patrol the grounds…”
“Actually,” said Leonard, “it’s funny. They’re not fanatics about that. Not like a lot of the other mega-churches. At night, a security patrol drives through once every couple of hours, but they don’t have regular foot patrols.”
“Any patrols during the day?” asked Grant.
“Not really. There are so many people around, there wouldn’t be much value in it. Just the shack at the entrance, and some guards based inside Cathedral House.”
“Exterior cameras? Alarms? Motion detectors? Anything like that?”
“Nothing too elaborate, as far as I know,” said Leonard. “There are a few exterior cameras at the back of the property”—he indicated the far side of the campus, back by the old house—“but only because it isn’t visible from the road.”
Grant wrinkled his brow. “That doesn’t make sense, especially with all this cash you tell us they’re holding. Not to mention the money they’re collecting legitimately. Why not spend a few bucks on security?”
Leonard just shrugged. “I can’t tell you their reasoning, but Hurley and Merribaugh have focused almost all the security on the inside of Cathedral House. There are cameras and two security offices…”
Grant frowned. “Two security offices for a four-story building? I’m not crazy about those odds.”
“One’s in the basement. That office is manned around the clock, but not really staffed up. Usually five or six guards. Mostly, they watch the camera feeds. The other is on the second floor near Hurley’s office, but guards are only posted when he’s there.”
Grant shook his head. “None of this makes sense. You’re positive the only exterior cameras are in the back? There’s nothing trained on the front entrance or the grounds?”
“I’m positive.”
The three men were silent for a while until Chase, thinking it through, said, “I have an idea why all the exterior cameras are in the back. Maybe this Dr. Hurley doesn’t want his comings and goings captured permanently on tape.”
Grant shrugged. “That doesn’t make sense, either. If there are cameras inside the offices…”
“Cameras Hurle
y placed. And can probably have turned on and off at will. Is that the way it works, Leonard?”
“I…I really wouldn’t know. I was only the bookkeeper.”
Chase looked back over the expansive property, and seeing only the paved six-lane road running between the guardhouse at the Cathedral Boulevard entrance to the former plantation house, asked, “I take it this place only has one entrance?”
“This is it,” Leonard confirmed. “The other sides of the property are too hilly or swampy to build a road, so the church left it wild. Hills…trees…marshland…an occasional deer hunter during the season…That’s about it.”
“So if we grab the safe and try to make it out the back way…”
“You’d never make it. It’s forever wild.”
“There you have it,” said Chase, feeling a bit proud of his deduction. “Hurley can control what’s taped inside the buildings. A camera on the only entrance means there’d be a record of when he comes and goes…”
“And maybe,” added Grant, “what he leaves with.”
“Exactly.”
Grant thought out loud as he continued to survey the property. “We’re gonna need a few people on the inside. This ain’t gonna be as easy as driving a truck in, loading the safe, and driving away.” He took another look at the cathedral and converted plantation house. “Leonard, I’m gonna need a detailed layout of the administration building.”
“No problem.”
“Including the locations of the cameras.”
Leonard faltered. “I’m not sure I know where they all are. But I’ll try.”
“Do your best. Whatever you can remember. As long as it’s perfect.” Grant took another look at the grounds, then abruptly turned and started walking. “I’ve seen enough for now. Let’s get out of here before someone gets suspicious of Farraday parked out by the road.”