“I’ll take her and run a thousand miles away,” said Penelope. “You go back to your family. And our secrets can stay right where they are.”
“Oh, no, no, no, Pen. It’s way too late now.”
A chill down my scalp as I wondered what condition Reggie’s wife and children were in.
I lowered my arms by half. The circling of Atlas’s gun barrel had widened. He wiped his brow again, snapping the sweat to the floor.
“Don’t doubt that I will kill you,” said Atlas.
“I believe you will,” said Penelope.
“I don’t,” I said.
Which brought Reggie Atlas’s best smile to his face, his preacher’s, actor’s, can’t-resist-me grin. I’d never seen such derangement on a face, and I had seen a lot.
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“You’re too smart,” I said.
“You flatter me to control me.”
“No flattery, Reggie,” I said. “You’re the most repulsive human I’ve ever met. You really did it, didn’t you? You raped a girl of fourteen in a bus. Four Wheels for Jesus. Threatened her and your own daughter for years after. I think you should put that gun to your head and prove how sorry you are, once and for all. End your life with a shred of dignity instead of this groveling. Jesus would agree.”
“Roland, he’ll—” said Penelope.
Reggie gave me a concerned, cagey look. “Do you really think Jesus would agree?”
“I know he would,” I said. “And on a practical level, if you use that gun to do the right thing, you won’t spend a day in prison. You won’t have to face the world as a child rapist and a fake holy man and a murderer. You’ll be remembered as Pastor Reggie Atlas, a brave but troubled man who did what he had to.”
“Roland—”
“You know, you’re right,” said Atlas. “I can do what you suggest. It would address those issues head-on. But it wouldn’t be fair.”
“Give me one reason why it wouldn’t,” I said.
Atlas held the gun with both hands, but now the orbit of the barrel had lost its shape. The mad ellipsoids terrified me.
“Well, for one thing, I was innocent once,” he said. His voice wavered and desperation widened his pupils.
“Yeah? Explain that.”
“Did you tell him how you singled me out, Penelope? How you came to me for private moments of talk and fellowship? How your hands trembled in mine when we prayed? Did you tell him about the looks and the smiles you gave me, and the poems you wrote and the clothing you wore for me—the black sweater and the little pink skirt? The lotions and perfumes that smelled like coconut, because you knew how much I liked it? Because it smelled like the mansion on the sand, where you agreed we were going to live and produce holy children. You haven’t said anything about that? How you tempted and seduced me. Systematically? How you enjoyed what we finally did together? I know you did. You were eager. You were wet!”
I heard movement behind me, then Penelope stepped into my peripheral view. Reggie swung the pistol at her, then back to me, the breath in his nostrils short and fast.
“You know I was too drugged to fight,” she said, her voice seething with contempt. “I’ve told you and you’ve heard, Reggie. I was dizzy and afraid and trapped. I told you to stop. I hit you and nothing happened. Wet? That was my body’s defense against you! Autonomic, like throwing up a poison. It took me years of shame before I understood that. I wanted to be baptized. I wanted to be accepted and loved. I didn’t want to be touched like that, Reggie. It was the only thing I didn’t want you to do! You knew it, too. You one hundred percent knew.”
Again Atlas looked to her, then back to me, but this time left the weapon pointed at my heart.
“I loved you more than I’d ever loved any earthly person or thing,” he said. “And you loved me that much, too. I knew you wanted me and it was time. Our time. I never meant to harm you. In the big picture, I have not harmed you in any way.”
Penelope took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Her voice hitched into a sob and she continued. “You tricked me and raped me . . . You threatened me if I told. You tracked my daughter. No more, Reggie. Enough.”
“You seduced a humble man of God.”
“You used God’s name to fuck a girl.”
“I have suffered, too,” said the pastor.
“Tissue,” she whispered. Swung the white purse around and took out the strawberry-stained wad and pressed it to one eye, then the other.
“You used me,” said Reggie.
“I adored you,” said Penelope.
“You stole my soul and corrupted my flesh,” said Reggie, pointing the gun at Penelope again, the barrel wild. “I want them back.”
“Me, too,” said Penelope, stuffing the tissue into her bag and pulling out a plump pink derringer.
I saw his flinch and launched into Reggie with all the speed I had. Grabbed his gun in both my hands and forced it up and away so Reggie blasted the ceiling instead of Penelope. Her handcannon quaked the room, then boomed again as Reggie crashed back into the wall, his gun clattering to the floor. Eyes wide in the gunsmoke and breathing hard, blood blossoming through his clean white shirt, Reggie gazed down at himself with what looked like disbelief. Then collapsed, the wall behind him pocked by two closely spaced holes.
“Smokey only takes two rounds,” she said. “I’ll reload.”
“Not necessary,” I said.
I took her gun and ushered her into the kitchen, helping her into a chair at the small table. Her face white as snow and her body shaking badly. Over the half-wall I could see Reggie trembling on the living room floor.
“Now what?” she asked.
“Get ready to answer a lot of questions.”
“I’ll tell them the whole truth.”
“That’s all you need to do, Penelope.”
“The whole damned miserable truth.”
Back in the living room I knelt beside Atlas. Watched his breathing stop. Saw his eyes surrender their terror and then their light.
Through the blinds, I saw lights coming on in the houses across the street.
Stood and found my phone.
46
////////////////////////
IN spite of our accepted beliefs and earnest hopes, things really don’t happen for a reason.
There is no master plan, only private notions—both yours and others’—some of which work out well, while others explode like pipe bombs.
Everything else is out of your control.
So you wipe your eyes, chart your beliefs, and fly again accordingly.
I flew Hall Pass 2 up to the Bishop Airport, rented a Jeep in town, picked up some camping and fishing gear I needed. Turned off my phone and listened to the news station fading into static as I climbed into the Sierra Nevada mountains.
Fished alone, as I prefer, really nailed the browns on the East Walker, let the fish go free, ate canned food, and drank good bourbon. On the San Joaquin, I crawled out of my tent at sunrise just as a black bear swatted my coffeemaker off the fire-pit grill and into the trees, then lumbered away.
In Reno I took second place in the amateur all-ages category at the Reno Ballroom DanceDown, teaming up with a woman I found in the hotel bar whose regular partner had sprained an ankle just that morning. I’d been hoping for luck like that. Lenore was a delight to dance with, much better than me and utterly regardless about winning trophies, which, as a youngish male, I covet beyond reason. The trophy was a dandy. Our barely rehearsed country-swing dance to “The Last Worthless Evening” was good enough. Justine cut in for a few steps. Said she was proud of me for how I was treating Penelope and Daley. Sticking up for them. Giving them a second chance. Wished she could have a second chance, too.
Lenore, her partner Wayne, and I drank late on victory night, until Wayne, limping badly, took me aside and threa
tened to kick my ass all the way back to San Diego if Lenore looked at me like that again. I told him not to bother, I was headed home early the next day anyway.
* * *
—
AS I DROVE from Reno back down to Bishop Airport through the fragrant sage and the spotty cell signals, Burt and Penelope brought me up to speed.
Federal prosecutors were readying charges against Alfred Battle and several of his SNR henchmen/-women for kidnapping, conspiracy to commit murder, conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction. And more. Lark had declared the indictment would be “aggressive and comprehensive,” and there would likely be some very long federal prison sentences handed down. Lark told Burt off the record that Adam Revell was singing like a parakeet.
Penelope told me that Daley had been so shocked by her true bio/history that she had spent four days rocketing between belief, denial, and outrage. Threw a lot of things. The emerging mother and daughter had spent hours hiking the rolling hills of Rancho de los Robles, and hours in casita three cooking meals, listening to music, talking, arguing, crying, and remembering.
“My blood ran cold when she told me she’d sometimes wished that Reggie Atlas was her father,” Penelope said. “That he reminded her of someone wise and kind and probably a lot like the father she never knew.”
I’d wondered along those same lines: Might an unknowing daughter feel an instinctual recognition of her father? A blood instinct? Even dimly? And, believing that her father was another, what name would the daughter give that curious, strong, instinctual pull? Might she name it affection? Curiosity? Attraction, even? Might she pursue it? Was Reggie Atlas counting on blood instinct? Had he been using it against her?
“And, of course,” said Penelope through the static following me down Highway 395, “I have to forgive myself for taking a man’s life. Self-defense, yes. But still a man. A man whom I as a child once adored. Father of my daughter. A husband and father of his own children. My soul feels stained, Roland. I hope it fades some. The stain. I hope Daley can truly forgive me for what I did.”
“He came there to kill us both.”
“I know. But what I did changes everything about me. I think you know what I mean.”
Penelope went on to tell me she’d read to her daughter from some very long journals she had kept. She told me she’d waited a lifetime to do this. She told me that when the “waves of truth” had finally broken on Daley enough times, Daley surrendered her doubt and began to accept who she was and where she’d come from and the idea that, in some ways, she would be starting her life over again as a different person. With a different history and family. With a reviled father and a world eager to invade her past and exploit her privacy. Was there an upside? Penelope said the last few days had been better. And that Melinda and Daley had become close quickly, Melinda’s violent loss helping Daley handle her own wrenching changes.
Speaking for herself, Penelope said she was “elated and exhausted.” She and Daley would be returning home to Oceanside soon. Between Penelope and me there was much to be said, but little of it could be done by phone. She asked how the fishing was. Then ventured that she was glad her “second virginity” had ended with me.
Burt told me Connor Donald had been killed in a shoot-out with police outside the Newport Beach offices of Historical Review. On the link he sent me, Historical Review spokesperson Laurel Davis—the cool, bejeweled beauty who had harangued me at Alfred Battle’s White Power Hour—said that Donald was a security guard who occasionally worked for the Historical Review, and said the Review had no reason to believe he was involved in the Paradise Farm terror plot.
I came home a few days later to bad news: Frank, walking his bike up a narrow, tree-lined road in Fallbrook at the end of his workday yesterday, had been stopped by three MS-13 gangsters. He knew one of them from Puerto El Triunfo—El Diabolico, the kid he’d gone to school with who had connections to the people who had killed Frank’s father. The El Triunfo boys brought greetings from Frank’s two sisters in Salvador. They’d shown Frank machetes and a gun and asked him for eighty dollars to protect the girls. Gabriella was eight and Filomena eleven. Eighty dollars was exactly what he’d made that day, plus a sandwich, an apple, and a bottle of water for lunch. He’d told them he’d pay only this one time. Solo una vez. They had laughed and told him they’d see him here next week, and his old El Triunfo friend had given him back one of the twenties. He’d told Frank that he might want to change his mind about the one-time-only payment, then they had scurried off to their aging black Nissan.
“Thus, Frank has a meeting with them next Friday,” said Burt as we walked down to the patio that evening. “I’ve got some ideas how we should handle that, and Frank agrees.”
He gave me a mischievous but sincere welcome-home smile, leading the way to the palapa on short bowed legs.
The rest of the Irregulars greeted me with a smartphone concerto of the first verse of “Money for Nothing.” This, a common attack on my slowness to make improvements while still collecting the rent on time. There’s some small truth in it. So I stood there and took my medicine while four phones tinnily chimed the song so out of sync I could hardly tell what it was.
“Thank you,” I said. “Thank you very much.”
After the Irregulars had drifted off to their casitas, Penelope and I walked the pond in the minor moonlight. The October nights had lost their heat and the damp cool of fall hung around us.
“I’m taking Daley to New York tomorrow, early,” she said. “We have a nonstop out of San Diego.”
“I’ll take you, if you’d like.”
“I’d like. I hope I’m doing the right thing, Roland.”
“My offer stands,” I said. “You both can stay here. Dodge everybody, hang low for a few weeks, then get on with your lives.”
“They want me to do a silhouette interview on 60 Minutes, so nobody can recognize my face. I need to do this one thing, Roland. I need other people to know they don’t have to get raped and hide it forever. No matter how rich and famous and holy the rapers are. Just this one statement, then back to Daley and we’ll figure out our lives.
“Tell your story, Penelope. Daley will be fine here for a few days.”
“She wanted us to do this thing together,” said Penelope. “I wouldn’t let her.”
“Good call,” I said. “She needs to be a girl again. Not a cause.”
I thought of Jake, the young surfer at Old Man’s, who had looked through all of Daley’s inner turmoil and seen simply a cute girl he’d like to hang out with. I thought: She wouldn’t mind being that girl. Not at all.
“Are they going to turn me into a freak show?”
“Well, a show, anyway,” I said. “Just remember it’s your story. You tell it. Don’t let them put words in your mouth.”
“I’ve got plenty of my own words.”
“You’re going to be a busy woman for a while.”
“Yeah, a busy little me.”
I took her hand and rounded the water. Ahead of us, frogs plopped and barn owls screeched on the hunt. A light fog had rolled in, a bit of chill in it.
“You know the best part?” she asked. “I finally get to be a mom to my daughter. We’re going to get to know each other for the first time, as such. Under the banner of truth. I’m going to be a mom, Roland!”
“You’ll be outstanding,” I said.
“Roland? I do have one regret. You only got the stripped-down version of me. You got the base model. I want you to experience the limited edition. The best Penelope Rideout you can stand. Get it?”
“I think I can handle that,” I said.
I like her, too, said Justine.
“I’ll see you early, then,” said Penelope. “Tonight I need to spend some time with Daley.”
Under the palapa we held each other for a silent while, then she set off for casita three. She was wearing the same
black sweater as she had the night she’d searched downtown San Clemente so thoroughly—door-to-door—looking for some sign of her daughter. Tonight she had her arms around herself like she had then. Against the chill. Against the world.
Halfway there, she stopped and turned and gave me her hard blue stare. And that awkward wave of hers, part “Hi” and part “See you later.”
Then continued to the casita, worked the door lock in the halo of the porch light, and went inside.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
T. Jefferson Parker is the author of numerous novels and short stories, the winner of three Edgar Awards, and the recipient of a Los Angeles Times Book Prize for best mystery. Before becoming a full-time novelist, he was an award-winning reporter. He lives in Fallbrook, California, and can be found at tjeffersonparker.com.
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The Last Good Guy Page 29