Cahill catches me off guard.
“I’ve been praying for you and the safe return of your son. So horrible for this to happen to you again,” Cahill says.
“What do you mean by that?”
“One of my pen pals knows you. They wrote to me about your brother,” Cahill whispers and looks over his shoulder as though he is telling me a secret. “I’ve been praying all morning that your brother wasn’t raped and tortured for days on end. There’s so much evil in the world.”
I grab on to the chair so I won’t reach across the table and strangle Cahill.
“Who told you about my brother?”
“No need to be so angry. Just like journalists must protect their sources, I must protect those who come to me for guidance. As for your brother, I pray he didn’t suffer too long or call out your name in his last dying breath, just hoping to see his little sister one more time. Because his little sister never came. That must torment you to no end. The mind can go to very dark places sometimes. I can help you through the darkness if you’d like.”
The inside of my body feels like it turned into a block of black ice.
“Shut up about my brother. Understood?”
The prison guard glances over as my voice begins to escalate.
“Now, about your son. Will is his name?” Cahill asks.
“Yes,” I answer through gritted teeth.
“Poor little boy. I saw your son’s picture on the TV news. He doesn’t look like you. Such pretty white-blond hair for a boy. He must look like that lawyer husband of yours. Your husband used to work for the public defender’s office, didn’t he? I used to see him around here when I was still preaching at the Church of the True Believer, but it’s been a while.”
“What my husband does is none of your business.”
“I understand that type of work, defending such people who have committed unspeakable acts, was probably just too hard for your husband. It takes a soul touched by God to work with sinners, especially those of the caliber around these parts. God told me He brought me here for a reason, to help these sinners, just like so many prophets before me. I trust in His will and you should, too.”
“You’ve got exactly one minute, or I’m walking out of here and going straight to the police station. I’ll tell Linderman you’re withholding evidence in a kidnapping, and don’t think you won’t be charged with additional crimes.”
“I realize you’re under a great deal of pressure, but I don’t care to be blackmailed. You’ve done enough to me already. Innocent until proven guilty, isn’t that what they say? Not when you’ve already been convicted in the press.”
“You’re involved in this. That’s how you know who took my son. Is this payback?”
Cahill tilts his head to the side and gives me a toothy, made-for-television smile and the old Rock ’n’ Roll Jesus of Motor City flickers back to life for an instant.
“I forgave you long ago for those stories. And to answer your question, of course I’m not involved in your son’s kidnapping. I’m a man of the cloth and would never break the law.”
I realized Cahill was going to try and play me. He wants a captive audience, and if I take that away, he will be forced to give me what I want. I stand up and begin to head toward the door. But just as I expected, before I can take two full steps, Cahill’s voice beckons me back.
“The letters started coming last month,” he says. “It was wonderful to get letters again, such glowing letters about how I brought God into their life. Members of my congregation used to write to me religiously when I first got in here, but then most of them stopped writing. They will pay for their discourteous behavior.”
“I don’t care about your lack of fan mail. What did these letters say about my son? Were they from one of your parishioners?”
“Tens of thousands of my parishioners came faithfully to hear the word of God every Wednesday night, Saturday afternoon, and for all three of my Sunday sermons. What my daddy started as a tent revival bloomed into a world-wide ministry. If people couldn’t be there in person, I brought God to them through television. They could be saved right there in the comfort of their own living room. My ministry touched countless believers on every continent through my syndicated show.”
“That’s until the majority of your parishioners realized you stole their money and had sex with little girls. How old was the youngest, Cahill? Nine? You handpicked them from the video footage from your Sunday school, right? That’s pretty convenient. Those children will never be the same.”
“You know, I used to watch you in the courtroom, sitting there so pretty with your tape recorder and notebook, looking so serious,” Cahill says. “I prayed for you then that you would close your legs to men, but then I found out you had a husband. Are you a faithful wife? I’m so worried hell is waiting for you. I wake up at night and worry about you sometimes.”
“Don’t bother. So you’re telling me you don’t know who wrote the letters?” I ask.
“I would love to know every member of my congregation, I truly would, but when God has called a man to do an important job and deliver His message to the masses, a reverend just can’t know every member of his flock intimately.”
Cahill begins to drum his long fingers on the table for a moment as though he is calculating his next move in a game of chess.
“You need to make me a promise. I’ll give you what you want if you give me what I want,” Cahill says. “I have an important appointment coming up and I could use your support.”
“Your parole hearing? Let me guess. You help the police out with information on a child abduction case and this looks favorable with the parole commission.”
“I just like to help when I can, especially when it pertains to the welfare of a child,” Cahill answers. “Jesus said, ‘Suffer the little children to come unto me.’ And I will always be there to help a child who is suffering.”
“Don’t talk about my child suffering.”
“I’m going to help you find your child, but I need you to tell the parole commission how helpful I was to you during this most difficult time and that I provided you the spiritual strength you needed to carry on. I know you’re close to the chief of police and that detective who arrested me. You need to make them write letters on my behalf as well.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” I lie. “Now give me what I want.”
“You’re only as good as your word, so God will hold you to that,” Cahill says. “Now that we have an agreement, to the matters of your interest. The letters came to me on blue stationery, unsigned and unaddressed. The handwriting was so lovely, just like my mother’s own beautiful script.”
“Stop wasting my time. Tell me about the letters.”
“Your manner is most defiant,” Cahill says. “But I have to deal with you, so I will do just that. About a month ago, I started to get letters from a stranger. The letters said you were a sinner who crucified me with your stories. They filled me in on your tragic past about your poor brother and they said you deserved what happened to him.”
Cahill stops suddenly and looks up at the ceiling. “Would you like to pray with me?”
“Cut the shit or I’m leaving,” I answer. “What did the letters say about Will?”
“The letters said you were selfish. They said you were a dirty, selfish little girl. ‘Julia Gooden is a dirty, selfish little whore. Selfish is as selfish does.’ That’s what the letters said.”
Gooseflesh begins to creep up my arms. Logan said one of the kidnappers used those same exact words as they stood over his bed last night.
“What did the letters say about my brother? He was taken thirty years ago. Nothing has been in the news about him for a long time.”
Cahill turns his head to the side and looks at me as though he is humoring a silly child.
“Time is an illusion, Miss Julia, but you think it’s real. Time is your personal prison. What you think you see if you look backward may seem far behind, but it has come full circle a
gain. The clock keeps ticking on the wall, but nothing has changed. That is because God is karma, He is all, and you will never stop suffering. You’ve got darkness on the edges of your soul and the stain will never leave you, no matter how much time passes or how far you try to run.”
“Tell me what the letters said.”
“That you needed to be punished for what you did, that it is your turn to suffer again, just like when you were a little girl.”
“If you’re screwing with me, I’ll come back for you personally. The police will be here to collect those letters into evidence. Expect to be questioned, too. If you withhold any information, forget about your parole hearing.”
“The letters are with my attorney, of course.”
I dismiss Cahill and hurry to the visiting room’s exit to call Navarro. I am almost to the door when Cahill jumps up from his chair and walks briskly to my side. He leans in quickly before I can move out of the way, buries his face into the back of my hair, and inhales deeply.
“It’s so nice to smell something sweet and clean again. I’ll see you next week,” Cahill says pleasantly, as though we’ve just enjoyed a cup of sweet tea together on his front porch.
I hold back as hard as I can so I don’t punch Cahill in the face.
“You’re disgusting. Don’t ever touch me again.”
“I was just being friendly,” Cahill answers. He leans against the visiting room wall casually, steeples his fingers together, and looks as though he is studying me with amusement. “You appear to be so tough. But it’s all an act, isn’t it? Deep inside, you’re a scared little girl who is afraid of everything. I can see through your wall. It’s a thin façade. This concept of time that you believe in so fervently froze you thirty years ago. You’re still that little girl, left all alone and haunted. The darkness is following you, child, and you can’t escape.”
I hold Cahill’s gaze so he won’t notice the gooseflesh on my arms.
“If you get another letter, you call me personally, understand?”
I hurry out of the visiting room, feeling shaken and like I need a shower to cleanse myself from Cahill and make my way through the confines of the prison’s sterile concrete hallways.
I hurry to my car and snatch my cell from the glove compartment. One new message. I steel my nerves and press the play button.
“Hey, Julia, it’s Navarro. We’re all set for the press conference at eleven o’clock. The FBI is also working the case now. Sometimes they’re a pain in the ass, but we’ve got to push hard, so as long as they don’t get underfoot, I’ll welcome their help. I’m also bringing in Anita Burton to see if she can hit on anything. Anita is usually a last resort, but she’s flying out of town this afternoon, and we need to pull out all the stops to find your boy. We’ll be at your house when you get through with Cahill. Let’s hope he wasn’t trying to sell you a line of crap to get back in the spotlight again and actually had a legitimate lead.”
I smack my cell phone against the steering wheel in frustration. Navarro’s got nothing, and now he’s wasting precious time bringing in a psychic.
CHAPTER 6
I used to love the drive to the lake house. When I returned to what was then a weekend-only retreat after an intense Friday at the paper, the stressors of the day gradually dissipated as red-and-white striped barns and slow-moving tractors replaced Detroit’s crippled high-rises and the aggressive commuters leaning on their horns as they snaked their way through the buckled freeways, which were torn up from too many Michigan winters and not enough money to fix them. In recent days, the boys and I took leisurely drives past the single-room brick schoolhouse with its cast-iron bell and then over to the wooden Shaw Mill covered bridge by the south side of the lake and watched the fly fisherman in their rubber waders try and reel in a walleye or big mouth bass.
But since Navarro and his psychic friend are about to descend on my house without invitation, I tear through the country roads to get home before their arrival. I punch the gas hard as I check the speedometer, clocking in at ninety-five miles per hour. I glance back up for a fleeting second and spot something large and green spilling over the yellow dotted line in the lane in front of me. I slam on the brakes just in time and narrowly miss rear-ending a slow moving John Deere tractor lumbering painfully along at ten miles an hour, tops.
“Come on,” I yell. “Get off the road.”
I veer into the left lane to pass, and spot a pickup truck speeding right for me. I instinctively jerk the wheel hard to the right and just miss a front-end collision with the oncoming vehicle.
“Damn it,” I yell and pound the car horn with my fist. The farmer operating the John Deere gradually pulls into the adjacent cornfield and gestures me to go around him.
I suppress a strong urge to give the farmer the finger and hit the gas hard as I pass him. My speedometer races back up, and the tractor quickly becomes a tiny green dot in my rearview mirror.
“Please let me make it home before them,” I pray as I bank the turn into my driveway. No psychic, but David is perched on the top front porch step with his head buried in his hands.
I push my pulsing anger toward Navarro and the psychic aside and surface back up into the horror of my reality. I race toward David with a sense of foreboding panic. As I approach, David raises his head. His green eyes are moist and bloodshot.
“Jesus, what the hell happened?”
“There’s nothing new. I just feel so helpless,” David answers. “I’m usually the alpha dog, the one who’s always in control. But I’m completely powerless right now. I keep seeing this image of Will crying out to me, but I can’t save him. I’ve never thought of killing anyone before, but I swear, when the police find out who took our boy, I’m going to slit their throat. I don’t care if I go to jail. They’re going to pay for what they’ve done to our baby.”
I feel the ache of relief move through me, realizing there is no immediate bad news that elicited David’s emotional response.
“Keep it together,” I say softly. “We have to keep fighting and believe Will is all right and he’s coming home soon. Make that your focus. Thoughts of revenge are like an opiate. They’ll consume you if you let them.”
David breathes out hard as if exorcizing a demon.
“I guess you should know that more than anyone,” David answers and rubs his hands across his eyes like he is erasing the dark image of Will from his mind and regains his composure. “Okay. We have the eleven a.m. press conference. That’s going to help get the word out about Will.”
“And a useless psychic before that. Navarro is about to show up here with some big-haired floozy he worked with on a couple of cases. This is a colossal waste of time.”
David does his typical lawyer reaction and lets the news sink in for a second before he weighs in on his official opinion.
“I don’t think paranormal investigators are necessarily a bad idea,” David finally answers. “The officers are looking at every angle to find a suspect and this couldn’t hurt. The psychic isn’t that Burton woman who is always featured on TV, is she?”
“That’s exactly who it is. Anita Burton, the charlatan psychic who always has a camera-ready smile for any member of the media. I was surprised Navarro bothered with Burton until I met her a few times at the police station and saw her flirting with every officer that crossed her path.”
“What’s her story? Has she ever been accurate?” David asks.
“Burton gained notoriety when a young mother of three went missing. She claimed it was her tips that led the cops to discover the remains of the missing mother deep in the woods, buried a few miles away from her ex-husband’s home. Navarro swore Burton’s input was dead-on, but then again, I’m pretty sure he and Burton were sleeping together at the time.”
“That can skew a man’s judgment,” David concedes.
I stare down the driveway to search for Navarro’s car and feel the prickly annoyance of Burton’s pending arrival. Personally, I never gave Burton an ounce of credib
ility or coverage. Burton called once, asking if I would write a story about her, but I never returned her call. I never trusted psychics. And with good reason. Desperate to find Ben, I foolishly sought the help of a psychic when I was sixteen. She had a tiny storefront along the boardwalk that was dark on the inside except for some suffocated light that somehow made its way through thick purple drapes that hung across the shoebox of the room’s only window. In one hand, the psychic asked me to show her the hundred-dollar bill I’d brought along as payment for our session. She told me to close my other hand into a fist and make a wish. I didn’t make her guess. I was naïve and blurted out my only heart’s desire: to see my brother again. That was all the bait she needed. The psychic swore my reunion with Ben was imminent. In the end, I was out an ill-afforded hundred dollars and I learned never to believe in anything I couldn’t back up with facts.
“You’re back. How did things go at the prison?” Kim asks as she opens the screen door of the house. Her hands are covered with flour, and she wipes them across the apron I never wear.
“It was fine. I’ve been to the prison plenty of times. Where’s Logan?”
“He’s resting in front of the TV. I made him some sugar cookies. I tried to coax him into icing them with me, but he just wasn’t interested. Logan is just fine though, I promise. I found some clothes of David’s in the closet. I ironed a white shirt and a pair of his blue dress pants for the press conference. I laid them out on your bed and picked out a matching tie. And Aunt Alice just got here to help.”
“You don’t need to iron for us.”
“I put some fresh cut flowers on the kitchen table,” Kim continues. “They’re beautiful apple blossoms from the tree in your backyard. I thought they might make you feel better. I know these are probably absurd gestures at a time like this, but I want to help, and I don’t know how.”
“I appreciate everything you’re doing,” I answer. “Do me a favor though. If Detective Navarro shows up with some big-haired, big-busted woman, don’t let them in until I talk to Navarro privately, okay?”
The Last Time She Saw Him Page 8