The Undoing of Saint Silvanus

by Beth Moore

  “And I’ll know you’re a decent son, Lieutenant, if you can tell me right now that you have a bottle of cold water in the cup holder of that unmarked car.”

  “I’ll get to a convenience store before the morning’s up and see to it, since I’ll have to face the woman before the day’s out.”

  “Well, then, you might as well go to the one at St. Philip and Decatur,” the dispatcher directed. “That’s where your unit is. It was a holdup. Cashier dead. Appeared to be the only employee in the store.”

  “Not a good morning for one family.”

  “Sure isn’t, sir.”

  “On my way. Thanks, Dolores.”

  When Cal pulled up and parked, the perimeter was marked off with yellow tape and the scene was hopping with law enforcement. Cal walked behind the counter and saw the man facedown in a pool of blood. “One shot?”

  The officer nodded. “My guess is, the killer asked for a pack of cigarettes. The cashier turned his back and the dude drew his weapon and shot him. Where it hit, he’d have gone down instantly.”

  Cal glanced up at the corner of the ceiling. “Camera working?”

  “Yep. Baseball cap but one frame caught a pretty fair shot of his profile. Jawline’s distinct.”

  “Witnesses?”

  “Woman next door heard the gunfire,” the officer expounded. “A business owner down the street says he’s nearly positive the perpetrator walked right by his storefront. Said he noticed him and knew he was up to no good. Hid behind some merchandise but watched him. His description might prove more helpful than the videotape.”

  “Not a bad start to an investigation.”

  “This one shouldn’t be hard to close, Lieutenant.”

  “That’s what I want to hear.” Cal felt his phone vibrate in his shirt pocket and pulled it out. Before he glanced at the screen, he asked, “Anybody got ahold of the management?”

  “Owner’s on his way!” Sanchez called from the rear of the store.

  “Good. We’ll need an approximation of how much money he carried off.”

  “Should have that by midmorning, sir.”

  Cal glanced at the screen of his phone. Taken aback, he stepped into an aisle of the convenience store to read it. Hi. My name is Jillian. I’m an only child and an only grandchild. I was born to Jaclyn Slater, a single mom, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, about 75 miles from here. She relocated us and raised me in San Francisco, about 2000 miles from here.

  “Boss?” Another one of the officers.

  “Is it urgent?” Cal asked, a bit on the edgy side. “I need to finish something here.”

  “Just need a thumbs-up when you’re ready for us to contact the nearest of kin and how much you want us to tell the media.”

  “Proceed on nearest of kin. Hold off on media for now.”

  Cal stared back at the screen, reading and scrolling down with his heart pumping like he’d just run a 10K.

  We stayed in the city but moved around quite a bit. I went to 3 different public elementary schools, 1 junior high, and 2 high schools. I loved art like my mother did and spent most of my time drawing and coloring and sketching. By the 4th grade, I could pencil an impressive horse. Always wanted one. Never ridden one. I liked to swim. I played on the volleyball team in 7th and 8th grades, A team, 1st string. My coach said I was the best setter she’d ever had. I didn’t get to play in high school because we changed districts twice and I got behind and the coaches already had their key players. The team my senior year came in 2nd in the district. I sometimes liked to think that, if they’d let me on the team, maybe we’d have come in 1st.

  “Lieutenant?”

  Cal rubbed his forehead. “What is it?”

  “We think we have a name for the suspect.”

  “Excellent. Lock it down tight and go find him. Good job this morning.” Cal walked around to the next aisle and crouched down behind the beef jerky.

  I finished 2 years at City College waiting tables. I planned to pursue an art history degree but didn’t go any further when I got hired at a popular restaurant called Sigmund’s. My dad’s name is Rafe Fontaine. I’m told he loved me and that I once loved him. He died a year ago in June. I want to be a great chef someday and maybe own my own restaurant in New Orleans.

  I love flowers. I love to read. I love movies. I go to BABC and really like it. My best friend’s name is Caryn. I live with my grandmother and am assistant gardener at Saint Sans Apartment House. I have a crush on a guy I haven’t seen in a long while. Way too long a while.

  Cal stood, headed past the coffee thermoses and the hot dog condiments, and yelled, “Got something urgent I’ve got to attend to. Good job this morning, everybody. Say a prayer for this man’s family today. Bully, can you take this one from here and wrap it up?”

  “You know I can, boss!” The man still grinned like a nine-year-old boy.

  “Alright then.” Cal walked past him and patted him on the back. “It’s about time you got that weight put back on you. I don’t know what to do with you this slim.”

  “Working on it, sir!”

  “See that you do.” Cal pulled a twenty-dollar bill out of his wallet. “Sanchez, buy that man a twelve-inch shrimp po’boy later when he can stomach it, you hear?”

  “Will do,” she answered, sticking the bill in her pocket.

  Cal walked out the door of the convenience store and headed toward his car, picking up the pace. He gave way the last ten yards and ran. He flipped the ignition, threw the car into reverse, backed out, then put it in drive and headed up Decatur. Traffic was still congested and the drivers all looked stupefied by the heat. Every single one of them was reacting with the enthusiasm of a sloth. He laid his head on the steering wheel. “Come on, folks.”

  By the time Cal had sat through two green lights at one intersection and advanced four car lengths, he’d had enough. He turned the steering wheel hard to the right and headed down an alley, slowing just long enough to glance back at the text to make sure he hadn’t dreamed it. It was there alright. Not one word in all these months, and then all of a sudden today.

  He’d paused before he’d written that late August note, his heart weighing heavy in his chest, wondering if a wiser man would give on up. He’d written it anyway. What did he have to lose? If he never heard from her, he’d lost her months ago. When he’d gone to the cemetery with the note in his pocket and the old groundskeeper looked at him with so much pity, Cal almost couldn’t muster the courage to give it to him. Feeling a little ashamed, he’d said, “By now I guess you’re thinking I’m a crazy man, looking for the living among the dead.”

  “I ain’t stood workin’ here all these years ’cause I think what’s dead ain’t never raised.”

  Cal pulled the note out of his pocket and handed it over. That wasn’t even a week ago.

  He snapped back to attention when he saw something dart in front of his fender in the alleyway. When he swerved and threw on the brakes, a wiry gray-and-white dog scurried to the end of the alley, unharmed and not overly alarmed. Cal blew out a breath of relief and rolled his window down. “Boy, what are you doing way over here?” It was the stray that hung out with a homeless man Cal had often seen. The same dog he’d found Jillian feeding behind the café months ago.

  The dog stopped for a few seconds, panting with his ears perked up and his tail high, then took off like a shot. Cal made his way down the alley and took the one-way street left, detouring around the traffic on Decatur. He glanced to the left before rolling up his window and spied the stray again. There it was, plain as day, in front of an old church, tugging playfully at the end of a broom in the palms of a man sweeping the entryway stairs.

  “Can’t be,” Cal whispered under his breath. He was almost sure he’d seen that man before—one of the many homeless panhandlers on the corners of the quarter. But now the man’s weathered face was freshly shaved and his silver hair combed and slicked straight back. And his clothes? Well, they might have been secondhand—or more likely third—but they w
ere clean as a whistle.

  When the man began to sing through a mouth of missing teeth, the lieutenant recognized the voice. He’d heard it echoing late at night from that condemned monstrosity on Iberville.

  Passing by slowly with his window still down, Cal took one last look at the man sweeping the steps. Then he glanced above him at the modest marquee to the right of the church’s front door.

  Saints and sinners

  Welcomed home

  Hurry on now

  Past done gone

  A decent man knows when to heed advice. Lieutenant Cal DaCosta of the New Orleans PD turned on the dash lights on his Taurus, gave his siren a yelp, and made haste to a houseful of reluctant saints.

  A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

  DEAR READER,

  Thank you for the privilege to serve you through the pages of this novel. It’s novel to me in every sense of the word because I’m a nonfiction writer. But even as a child, I loved crawling into a corner from time to time and scribbling something creative. This was my chance to just go with it. To start weaving a story and see where it would take me.

  I prayed hard through the process of writing this book just like I’ve prayed for every other one I’ve written. I am driven to the marrow of my bones by a calling, and I have zero interest in wasting time on something of little eternal value. I asked God over and over to please dry up the story if it wasn’t something he could bless. Meanwhile, I wrote a fifteenth Bible study and a nonfiction book called Audacious. But during every breather, the characters of Saint Sans would start bouncing the dust off the Snapdragon again and off I’d go, chasing them down St. Charles until it was time to get back to Bible study. Until the last few months of writing, I really did not know if I’d ever finish. Then one day I knew how it was supposed to end.

  The story line is fictional, but the Savior is not. I have experienced no greater reality in all of life than Jesus Christ. My own story is different from Olivia’s and Adella’s and Jillian’s, but parts of it have been just as messy and much of it, equally complicated. Their stories were safer to tell than mine, precisely because their families aren’t real and their relatives can’t call them. (I write these words with a smile.)

  I’d like to have been the kind of person who could write a lighter story than what you found within these pages, but I haven’t lived a story like that. A writer has to be true to her experience, even in fiction. I have had many joys in this life and shared deep bonds—true and lasting loves—and laughed until my side hurt. I’ve also found life almost unbearable at times. No few times. Amid unending variables and uncertainties, I have found one constant. One absolute game changer. One perfect hero. He is more than I can keep to myself.

  Jesus created and perfected the art of storytelling. Over and over, he told stories to illustrate divine realities like the love of God, the Kingdom of God, the power of prayer, and the impact of faith. Those who first heard them, as well as those who read them now, are able to picture themselves in the parable, even shifting from character to character within a single scene to understand something deeper about God. The same person who might first see himself as the older brother in the Luke 15 parable of the Prodigal Son might meet himself in the mud with the pigs in the next go-round, still smelling to high heaven when he’s welcomed home by his dad. The invitation to relate is the beauty of it. The ultimate goal in Scripture is to allow us to relate to the one who offers redemption through his Son.

  Thank you for spending so much time with me. I don’t take it lightly. I hope you felt welcomed through the doors of Saint Sans. I hope you can picture yourself in an apartment down those halls. If you can’t fathom Jesus pursuing you as surely as he pursued these characters, my pen skidded dismally off the page.

  Jesus loves us. He is not scandalized by our failures. He is not limited in what he can do with what’s left after family disasters. Nothing is beyond his redemption when he is invited in. No one with a whit of breath left is beyond the reach of his grace. My prayer is that his relentless love for you reverberated from the rooftop of Saint Sans and landed securely in your soul.

  Love,

  For more information, free downloadable resources, and exclusive content, visit

  www.BethMooreNovel.com

  Also available as an audiobook from OasisAudio.com

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I’M A DYED-IN-THE-WOOL BOOK ADDICT. But no matter how anxious I am to crack the next spine, I rarely skip an author’s acknowledgment page. I think perhaps it’s because I’m a relational sort and find satisfaction in the symbiosis required in any major body of work. It’s God’s way, a slice of divine paradox, that we are unable to fulfill our own separate callings alone. In the words of 1 Corinthians 12:21-22, “The eye can never say to the hand, ‘I don’t need you.’ The head can’t say to the feet, ‘I don’t need you.’ In fact, some parts of the body that seem weakest and least important are actually the most necessary.”

  So many people proved necessary for this book to come to print. My heart sinks with the certainty of forgetting some, having written the manuscript piecemeal between Bible studies over an extended time. Forgive me in advance for every oversight.

  My mother, Aletha Rountree Green, liked to read more than she liked to eat. She was a two-hander, scouring a book in her right hand, holding a backup in her left. She loved both nonfiction and fiction and fostered this unquenchable affection in all five of her children. My father, Albert B. Green, ran movie theaters after retiring from the military. Our fate to forever love a story was sealed.

  I’m deeply grateful to Karen Watson, associate publisher at Tyndale House, who asked me casually across a table some five years ago, “Have you ever thought about trying your hand at fiction?” She somehow managed to make me feel safe enough to try it. By safe, I mean she agreed to these terms: “Karen, if you let me publish something terrible, I’ll absolutely murder you.” So if it’s awful, I blame Karen.

  Someone needs to pin a gold medal on Kathy Olson, my editor for this project. Because I wrote the manuscript in edges of time over several years, I paid no attention to its length. By the time I handed it over to Tyndale, it was a whopping 160,000 words. It fell to Kathy to trim this baby down by tens of thousands of words, and she did so with tremendous care. I have savored every exchange and learned so much from her. Her insight has been invaluable and her manner exactly what I needed for this project. She was a pleasure from beginning to end.

  I’m deeply grateful to Mark Taylor and Ron Beers for the opportunity to partner with Tyndale House in this novel. I have such a great respect for them both.

  Evangeline Williams was my head cheerleader throughout every moment of the on-again-off-again writing process. I do not believe I would ever have finished it without her encouragement, her unrelenting prayers, and her steadfast conviction that God cared about this book.

  I am almost without words to thank the original band of women from Franklin Avenue Baptist Church, including Evangeline, who embraced me, stole my heart, and caused me to fall in love with New Orleans. I will treasure them forever for throwing their arms wide open to this white girl. I’m grateful to Elizabeth Luter for her deep prayers for this manuscript and for taking the chance years ago of inviting me to serve the women of her church. I’m grateful to Karen Bias for adding some rich color to my understanding of Louisiana culture. I owe such a debt of gratitude to Caryn Rodgers-Battiste, Mary Frances Harris, Noel Braud, and Evangeline Williams for reading the manuscript and offering fabulous insights and helping me adapt my terminology in strategic places.

  I greatly appreciate retired NOPD officers Louis Colin and Greg Elder for the time each of them spent with me on the phone. They were vastly interesting and delightful.

  I love my friend Kathie Waldheim, who welcomed me to hide away in her family’s river house near Austin to gain some traction toward finishing the manuscript. I also thank the McElreaths for allowing me to rent their condo in Galveston to concentrate on the final chapters.

>   A monumental thank-you goes to Kimberly McMahon, my personal assistant at Living Proof Ministries. She helped me in a thousand different ways throughout the course of this project. For the life of me, I don’t know how I’d get anything written without my staff at LPM. I’m deeply grateful for all my coworkers and for a small handful of friends I swore to secrecy but asked to pray.

  Tears burn in my eyes every time I come to a place to thank my family. There are simply not enough words. The family of a writer pays a price. Mine has done so with tremendous grace and affection. I have the inestimable blessing of being married to a man who grabs me by the shoulders when I’m frantic over a project or in a cycle of self-doubt and says, “Woman, you can do this.” My firstborn’s particular love for fiction blew wind in my sails throughout the project. Amanda Jones would have been very involved in ideas, edits, and final readings had she not been busy at the time bringing my third grandchild into this world and into our anxious arms.

  I’ll wrap up these acknowledgments with words of gratitude for Melissa Moore, my final-born and my co-laborer in a number of nonfiction projects. Handing a manuscript of any kind over to a first reader is always difficult, but the vulnerability I felt with this fiction work was almost paralyzing. I’d carefully chosen a first reader outside my usual world for the sake of damage control. When he was unable to follow through, Melissa looked me straight in the eye during a walk in the woods and said, “I’m your reader, Mom.” I argued that she’d have too difficult a time critiquing it and being honest if it needed to be trashed. “Mom, I’m your reader,” she repeated adamantly. “I can do it.”

  And she did. She read every last word of it. Chimed in on it. Told me what she liked, helped me catch some inconsistencies, steeped perfect French-pressed coffee, and offered a toast of two words: “Publish it.” With that, I had guts enough to e-mail all 160,000 words to Karen Watson, who’d leaned across that table all those years earlier and asked, “Have you ever thought about trying your hand at fiction?”