“That’s true. But it wasn’t what I meant.”
“I didn’t hurt my son.”
Navarro is quiet for a moment as if he’s weighing whether to ask me the next question.
“All the time we were together, you never mentioned your brother or what happened to him. Not once. You never told me anything about your family either, just your Aunt Carol. Why is that?”
I try to avoid Navarro’s question and recall the two years we spent living above a taqueria in a one-bedroom tiny apartment in Mexicantown on the southwestern side of Detroit. Navarro was always the protector, and I never had any doubt that he loved me more than anything during our relationship. But at the age of twenty-five, I had a laser focus on my career and felt too young to accept his marriage proposal. And Navarro couldn’t accept me saying no. He dealt with the rejection by getting a barbed-wire tattoo that wrapped around his bicep and hitting the vodka bottle hard. He wouldn’t go back to how things were between us without a firmer commitment, and his drinking was becoming a problem. As much as I loved Navarro at the time, I had to leave.
“Earth to Julia,” Navarro says and raps his fist lightly against the console between the seats. “Why didn’t you ever tell me about Ben?”
“It just never came up.”
“That’s bullshit, Julia.”
“I don’t like to talk about it. That’s all.”
“Did David know the story about your brother?”
“He did. It wasn’t a good story to know.”
“You could’ve told me anything when we were together. I didn’t think we kept secrets.”
“It was a bad story with a monster at the end. It wasn’t anything I wanted to share at the time.”
“I’m sorry about what happened to you and your brother. If you didn’t want to tell me back then, that’s one thing. But now you need to come clean about every detail of your past and what happened to your brother if you haven’t already,” Navarro answers. “Coincidences in crime are rare. Your kid being taken on the anniversary of your brother’s abduction and the Indian arrowhead found at both scenes make it pretty damn certain the cases are linked.”
“I told you everything there is to tell about Ben’s case.”
“All right then,” Navarro answers, temporarily satisfied with my response. “The one thing that doesn’t connect is the amount of time that passed. Thirty years is a long time to wait for payback. If the person who took your brother was worried about you IDing them, they would’ve come looking for you a lot sooner. But I’ve got the guys searching for every sex offender in a three-hundred-mile radius and for anyone who might fit the abductor’s profile.”
Navarro looks over at the snaking line of sheriff department and police vehicles parked along my driveway to the street and starts again. “You’re a prominent crime reporter in the city. Who would have it out for you?”
“Fifteen years covering crime in Detroit? Plenty.”
“What about one of those freaks who followed Reverend Casey Cahill after he went nuts? You broke the story, and those fanatical religious guys are always the worst. Corrupts their minds more than money or drugs, if you ask me. You won some awards for uncovering what a psycho fanatic that guy turned into, right?”
“Yes, something like that,” I answer as I recall my ex-posé on Cahill and his free fall from grace.
Five years ago, Cahill was one of the biggest players on the national megachurch circuit. While other nationally syndicated pastors were mostly middle-aged white guys who preached damnation from an angry God’s judging hand, Cahill had a shiny hardcore shell of cool that oozed rock and roll. Cahill was a tattooed preacher who drove a Harley-Davidson around the city with an easily recognizable helmet that read GOD’S SOLDIER on the back. With his hip vibe yet conservative values on the pulpit, Cahill had achieved something most religious icons could only dream of attaining: massive crossover appeal. His popularity exploded with a national television show and standing room only during multiple weekly services at his megachurch, which glittered like a Las Vegas five-star hotel along I-75. But Cahill’s glory days were about to end. On the way to a Sunday service, Cahill’s motorcycle skidded across a sheet of ice along the highway and he crashed headfirst into a guardrail. He survived after coming out of a two-week coma, but rumors began to circulate that his increasing paranoid behavior and sharp turn to the fanatical right were a result of a dependency on pain pills and a head injury from the crash.
Despite his gutted popularity, Cahill thought he still had God, power, and all-encompassing celebrity on his side. And he blamed me for taking it all away. Based on an anonymous tip from a UAW employee’s girlfriend who worked part-time as a church secretary, I discovered Cahill had skimmed millions from his church and was having sex with several underage girls in his congregation. Cahill told his hundred or so “true believers” that they were handpicked to become part of his true Christian family. Cahill’s youngest conquest was nine, a tiny strawberry-blond child whose high-pitched voice quavered and broke during testimony after the prosecution played an audiotape taken from a video they discovered in Cahill’s safe that had shown the girl dressed in nothing but a cross necklace, screaming for her mother as Cahill raped her. I covered every detail of Cahill’s explosive trial, and his congregation hated me for it. After the guilty verdict was read, Cahill was stoic for a moment and then slowly turned his head toward the back of the courtroom, the tendons in his neck sticking out like angry cords. As soon as he saw me, Cahill leapt to his feet, raised his handcuffed wrists in my direction, and screamed, “Satan is among us!” before his defense attorney and the court bailiff wrestled the madman down.
Cahill was ultimately charged with tax evasion and sexual assault of three underage girls. And memories of the Rock ’n’ Roll Jesus of Motor City quickly disappeared when Cahill began his ten-year sentence.
Navarro checks the rearview mirror and inspects his teeth for any stray sunflower seeds. “There were a bunch of zealots in that church. Did you ever have run-ins with any of them? I’d go looking at Cahill as a suspect if he weren’t locked up already. Cahill and his lawyer said it was your fault he didn’t get a fair trial.”
“Members of Cahill’s congregation picketed the courthouse and swarmed me after the trial like a pack of jackals and condemned me to hell. But there were no more threats after Cahill went to prison,” I answer.
“Do me a favor. Come up with a list of anyone who may have thought you burned them with your coverage.”
“Linderman asked me about that too, but they have no connection to Ben and most of the people who really hate me are still serving time. But I gave him a few names to check. There’s Alejandro Rojas. He’s a local hood who I wrote an expose on that vindicated Salvatore Gallo. Gallo is the uncle of Nick Rossi, the big Detroit criminal I know you’ve been trying to bust for years. Rojas was trying to frame Rossi for a killing over a territory dispute, but the cops saw it differently and liked Gallo for the murder, since Rojas planted the body inside a car in front of Gallo’s house. My stories pinned Rojas for the murder. He got convicted, but I think he got out early. The only other person I can think of is that woman who killed her kids over in Elmwood Park. Kate Bramwood was her name. Her sister gave her up, but Bramwood got off on a technicality. She was a nut and swore she’d come after me. Please check them out, but there’s no way anyone I wrote about would’ve been able to find me here. I’m too careful.”
Being a female crime reporter, I always take precautions. In addition to my reporter’s notebook and tape recorder, I also keep pepper spray and a six-inch folding knife in my purse. After a local female TV anchor was raped and murdered, I made it a point to protect myself, and my family, from the dark side I often encountered on my job, including keeping my maiden name, Gooden, as my byline.
“Do you know who that is?” Navarro asks as Kim’s silver Volvo pulls into the driveway.
“It’s my best friend. David must have called her. Are we done?”
; “Yeah, for now. Go take care of your business.”
Kim somehow still looks flawless at the crack of dawn in a pair of pressed khakis and a soft pink linen shirt. She gives me a big bear hug that lasts for a good thirty seconds until I finally pull away.
“Oh, Julia, I’ve just been sick since David called. I told Alice and Leslie what happened, and they are just devastated. We’ve all been praying nonstop for Will’s safe return,” Kim rambles as she twists her hands together in nervous knots. “Do the police have any leads yet? Please tell me they do.”
“Nothing solid. The suspects left behind a package of cigarettes, and the police found a hair in Will’s crib. It looks like they got a good latent print on Will’s bedroom door.”
“Well, that’s something,” Kim says.
“It’s not enough. The chief is trying to expedite the hair sample. We don’t have the luxury of time right now.”
“Did they leave a ransom note? If you need money, just tell me.”
“No ransom note.”
“What does that mean?”
“They don’t want money. Whoever took Will has no plan to return him.”
“Oh, Julia,” Kim cries. Her usually pretty face contorts into a pained, twisted expression as though she is about to break down, but I don’t have the reserve to comfort anyone else but my own family right now.
“Kim, I need you to keep it together.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Come on, let’s go inside.”
Kim rallies and puts a protective arm around my shoulder, and we walk into my house, whose every surface is now coated with black fingerprint dust. I search for familiarity amidst the chaos and spot David and Logan, who are huddled together on the living room couch. David, all six feet and hundred and eighty pounds of him, somehow looks small and deflated as he stares with rapt intensity at an invisible point on the wall. I start toward my family when the screen door bangs open.
“Reverend Casey Cahill’s lawyer just called. Cahill insists he has to talk to you, Julia,” Navarro says. “You need to go down to the state penitentiary right now. Alone. Cahill will only talk to you.”
“Cahill?” His name slips out of my mouth like a snake rearing up unexpectedly across my path. “What’s this all about?”
“Cahill says he knows who took your son.”
* * *
“Relationship to inmate.”
I stare at the blank line on the prison pass and try to manipulate the unconnecting piece so it fits. But Cahill’s almost immediate knowledge of Will’s kidnapping makes no sense. Unless someone tipped him off from the inside.
I scribble down the word source on the prison pass, remove the wedding ring that I still wear despite my status with David and the silver heart-shaped locket engraved with the boys’ monograms, and place my jewelry on the conveyer belt. I hurry through the metal detector, and the prison guard stamps the back of my hand with ultraviolet ink.
“Have a nice day, sweetheart,” he says as I enter into the prison. I turn around and catch the guard staring at my ass.
“Some things haven’t changed,” I mutter under my breath.
The first time I came to the prison was to interview a serial killer who had murdered six nurses after they got off their swing shift at a string of hospitals across Detroit. That was twelve years ago. I was terrified to do the interview and painfully green. I tried to camouflage my nerves, but the prison guards caught on right away. They forced me to go through the metal detector twice and then claimed they had to search me. I could refuse, of course, but then I wouldn’t be able to go inside.
“I need to do this interview. I promised my editor. Could you please just let me go through?” I begged.
Then I heard a stranger’s voice from behind. “How’s your story coming along on corruption in the prisons? I think that’s going to be one hell of an article.”
I turned to see a handsome, dark-haired, brooding-looking man in a leather jacket. I looked at the stranger quizzically, but before I could respond, the guards let me through. Later, in the visiting room, the stranger approached me.
“Never let them see your fear. By the way, I’m Detective Ray Navarro.”
Something dark and broken drew me to Navarro back then, a stark vulnerability I detected beneath the swagger. One night, after finishing off a pitcher of margaritas that we brought upstairs from the taco place below our apartment, Navarro told me how he witnessed his father strangling his mother to death in the family’s kitchen. Navarro was eleven when it happened. I held Navarro as he wept and recounted how his father kept screaming that he shouldn’t have to come home to a goddamn cold dinner every night, yelling maniacally even after Navarro’s mother became limp and lifeless. I always figured Navarro became a cop to atone for not being able to protect his mother from what I discovered were years of abuse. I asked Navarro that night if he ever forgave himself for not being able to save the person I know was most precious to him. He said he never could. I never told Navarro, but I knew exactly how he felt.
* * *
I pace back and forth across the prison’s visiting room while I wait for Cahill. Since he is in a segregated part of the prison, we normally would be limited to a non-contact visit with a glass partition between us, and quite frankly, I would have preferred that scenario. But per Cahill’s demands, Chief Linderman pulled some strings with the head of the Department of Corrections to allow this face-to-face meeting.
At seven-thirty in the morning, the visiting room is empty except for a handful of cheap metal tables and chairs, several Bibles, and a copy of the Koran. I pick up a Bible and contemplate opening it. After Ben was taken, I prayed each night with every ounce of my being that my brother would come home. But when Ben didn’t, I stopped praying. And if God didn’t listen to me then, I’m convinced he wouldn’t hear me now.
The heavy door to the visiting room swings open and Cahill strides in, still charismatic and preening, despite the constraints of his handcuffs and blue-prison jumpsuit.
Cahill is tall, but more muscular now than I remembered, and his well-cropped brown hair has shoots of grey at the temples. Cahill’s left forearm still has the tattoo I first saw when I met him. The tattoo is a big black crow, its wings spread wide as a dozen or so smaller crows scatter in the air above their master.
A stocky prison guard stands at the door with his arms folded across his chest and watches Cahill’s every move as he approaches, but the supervision doesn’t seem to faze the former reverend at all. He looks pleased to have someone in his presence so he can preach again, even though it’s only to a potentially adversarial audience of one. I somehow temper my revulsion and the overwhelming urge to throw Cahill against the wall and start beating him until he tells me where my son is.
“Miss Gooden. I see that you are turning to God at this important time,” Cahill says, looking at the Bible still in my hands. “You do believe in God?”
I let the Bible slip through my fingers, and it lands with a tired thud on the table.
“At one time, I thought I did. But he never responded.”
“God only speaks to His chosen few.”
“Let’s be clear before we start. Everything I reported about your crimes and trial were facts. I wrote the truth. If this is going to be a debate or a one-sided lecture, I’m not playing.”
Cahill glares at me, and his blue eyes, flecked with hints of gold, don’t blink as he stares back at me with clear disdain.
“Those were lies you wrote, and you know it. You destroyed more souls than you can ever imagine.”
“What lies are you referring to? That you brainwashed hundreds of people and raped little girls?”
Cahill’s full lips pucker up into a displeased pout.
“I did no such thing. They were spiritual unions, ordained by God. You don’t understand. You live in the sins of the outside world. I live in the supernatural.”
“You’re right. I didn’t drink your Kool-Aid. What do you know about my son?”
Cahill’s mouth relaxes slightly, and he gestures me to a chair next to him. I choose a seat across the table instead and pull out my tape recorder.
“Oh, we don’t need that. No, no, no. We’re just going to have a conversation. No one likes to have conversations anymore. Everyone is glued to their computers and cell phones these days. Technology can be a blessing, but it can also lead us astray. There are many things of the devil in this world. Television and computers let the devil slip in, and he will snatch up our souls if we turn our faces from God for even a second.”
I take my recorder, shove it back in my pocket, and hit the record button. As a journalist, I am not supposed to tape sources without their knowledge or consent. But screw the formality. I’m not a reporter right now.
“Well, that’s better. Can you leave us alone for a while?” Cahill asks the guard, who ignores him. “We have some catching up to do.”
“You’ve got ten minutes,” I answer.
And then the inevitable preaching begins.
“I’m so worried about the world. Just look around. All the signs are there—the end is near. There are wars and rumors of wars, earthquakes, tsunamis, and tornadoes of Biblical proportion,” Cahill says, punctuating each new calamity with dramatic emphasis. “Are you ready for His return?”
“You told the police you have information about my son. What do you know?”
Cahill disregards my question and continues with his twisted sermon.
“It’s quite simple, Miss Gooden. God is not happy because people continue to turn their backs on Him. And when we turn away from the Creator, then the people will suffer. The homosexuals will suffer for their dirty sex. The women who rip babies from their wombs will suffer for snuffing out a life God breathed into those tiny souls. And the homeless and drug addicts will suffer for their weakness. And now you suffer, too. Do you know why?”
“I’m sure you’re going to tell me.”
“Because you have turned your heart from God,” Cahill warns. “You were born with sin, tainted with the original sin of Adam and Eve, and that is why He punished you as a child.”
The Last Time She Saw Him Page 7