. . . is doing the things you say. Having people murdered and raped, that’s impossible. With seven thousand people around him . . . no, millions, millions of people watch him and know him, and know what a good man he is. The things you’re saying are impossible.”
“Gwen, I’m sorry you don’t believe me. So be it. But it’s too dangerous, and I’m going to do it alone.”
“It’s not dangerous because it can’t be true. The only thing that’s dangerous is for you to keep thinking the way you’re thinking. So I’m going to go with you, and we’re going to find out the truth together, before you go around saying these things to anyone else, before you do any more damage than you’ve already done.”
“No.”
“If you try to do it by yourself, I’m going to march up there and tell Jeremiah you’re here. How are you going to stop me? Take out your gun and shoot me?”
“We’ll walk up separately,” I told her as we got out of the car. “And stay separate until we meet outside the restrooms and go for the private door. Act like you would normally act if I were away and you had come alone. Smile, normal, all fine. Understand?”
“Yes,” she said and started on her way, circling right as I went out to the left.
As I got closer to the Cathedral, there were more and more people. I tried to follow behind groups, not close enough so that anyone spoke to me but near enough to be a tree in their forest.
“Hey, how’s it going?” a cheerful voice said from my left. I looked over slowly, like a man half blind and in pain. It was Norton Cantine, a man I knew moderately well. A retired plumber who was very busy in church activities. A nice enough fellow. He looked at me closely, staring even.
Then he asked, “First time?”
I pressed my lips together in a sick man’s smile and nodded a silent yes, afraid the sound of my voice would give me away.
“Well, you’re in for a treat,” he said, enthusiastic as a Bible salesman. “Might do more for those eyes than any fancy surgeon. Jesus does miracles. Yes, he does.”
I nodded eagerly and gave him a big thumbs-up.
“See you inside, friend,” he said, slapping me lightly on the back. Fortunately, nice and high, so he was nowhere near my .45.
“Thanks,” I croaked in a whisper.
There was sweat in my pits and in my crotch. I smelled like fear.
As I got closer to the entrance, up in Parking Lot Acts, I began glancing into car windows, looking for unlocked cars with the keys left inside. Some people are bound to do that by accident, but a certain number of the congregation do it deliberately to prove to themselves how much better a Christian community is than the regular world outside, where you have to lock everything all the time, and they brag about it to their friends, ‘I leave my keys right in the car at CTM. And I drive a Lexus 450h!’ with a ‘How about that!’ expression. I guess they’re right. I’ve never heard of a car being stolen during services.
Well, I was prepared to do it. I had lost my faith, and moral relativism had already crept in.
I made it to the entrance of the Cathedral, wading through a morass of fear and pricked along by adrenaline. Getting inside pushed us all closer together, and I was suddenly near enough to Gwen to see her face and that she too was full of tension and fear. I wanted to pray that she would keep it together. But I had the weird thought that if I prayed, it would draw God’s attention to her, make Him aware of what was going on, and He might take the other side. Best to be quiet and try to sneak by Him. I know it’s childish to think you can sneak past God, but that’s what I felt.
Inside the lobby, there’s an information booth to the left. On the right, there are two cloak rooms, one where you can check things with an attendant and one where you can just leave things. Most people use that one, especially, it seems, for baby carriages. I saw one old man leaving a cane, one of those very medical, metal ones with four feet for extra stability.
I waited until he had hobbled off, leaning on a younger man’s arm. Then I stole it, adding one more level of infirmity to my disguise. I very much intended to return it before the services were over. Or if I failed to, maybe he would be healed and no longer need it.
As I shuffled forward to the internal doors to the auditorium, I spotted Gwen.
So did Jerry Hobson. He focused on her. Looked all around her to see if I was nearby. Then he headed straight toward her, his cop’s eyes checking her out.
I wanted desperately to get close enough to hear. Would he sense something was wrong? If he asked, would she be able to lie to him, to tell him that I would still be coming at midnight, stepping into his trap? Would she want to lie to him? Or did she think I was a dangerous loon and that for the good of God and God’s minister, it was best to tell Hobson that I was there in my foolish disguise?
The best I could do was get into a position where, if Gwen looked away from Jerry, she would see me. I circled around with my three-legged hobble.
I could tell that he was trying to hold her gaze. But she didn’t want to look at him, which is unlike Gwen. She mostly looks right at people when she speaks. Now, however, her eyes were darting around. Suddenly, they moved across me. When we look for someone or something, we look for what we’re used to seeing. The silly wig, the glasses, and the cane were not signals that said Carl to her. Then she remembered. Now that I had her attention, I made a gesture, reaching around behind my back where my gun was. Panic shot over her face.
Jerry caught it, and turned to look for what Gwen might have seen.
I turned to the right, showing him the profile with the big dressing on it, but behind my glasses, I kept looking toward him.
Jerry’s gaze jumped back and forth, at me, behind me, and around me, but it was like looking for someone at the mall on Saturday afternoon. You can’t actually look for faces; you look for hair color, known items of clothing, a familiar posture or way of walking, signs and symbols.
At last Jerry turned back to Gwen, said something with a fake pleasant attitude, touched her on the upper arm, and turned away. She had not betrayed me.
59
We each headed for the restrooms, then walked casually past them to the door that led to the backstage corridors. I left the cane behind before we went through. Surely someone would spot it, and it would find its way back to its owner.
We made it down the hallway, along the backstage corridors, to Plowright’s private elevator without incident.
I looked at my watch. I wanted to be in and out in twenty minutes. Services would last at least an hour and a half. They often went longer.
The elevator was on the ground floor. When Gwen punched in the code, it opened right away. As we rode up, I drew the HK from its holster. “Just a precaution. I don’t intend to use it,” I said softly and held it low, by my side and a bit behind me, so that anyone who might be up there in the office wouldn’t see it, and we could try the talking cure first.
As the door opened, Plowright cried out, “Here it is!” full of fervor and enthusiasm, as if he’d been waiting for us.
Reflexively, I brought the gun up, pushed Gwen behind me, and pointed it out in front of me.
There was music and applause. I realized it was the broadcast of the services down in the Cathedral. I took a long slow breath to still the beating of my heart. Then we began to move slowly into his office. There it was—there he was—on the big LCD TV.
The scene was on a wide shot.
A cross, fourteen feet tall, was just upstage of Plowright. He was pointing to his left at a gigantic display table covered by a cloth. A team of Angels appeared. Choreographed and rehearsed, they gracefully whisked the fabric away to reveal a three-dimensional contour map of the land on which we stood with a model of Plowright’s great dream built on top of it, the City on the Hill.
The Cathedral of the Third Millennium was at its center, at the highest point. Roads radiated out in all directions, like spokes, and circled around it in rings. There were all sorts of buildings, small and large,
private and commercial.
Miniature lights popped on and illuminated a cross alongside the tower. If it were to scale, the real one would be over two hundred feet high when it was built.
The cross on stage came to life simultaneously. It was made of a multitude of thin neon tubes, and once it stuttered to life, in silvery white, silvery blues, and a fine light gold, it was as vivid as anything Las Vegas could boast of, and it cast a halo of holy-looking light upon both the minister and his model municipality.
“This is it. This is the future. This is seed from which we will grow a truly Christian America!”
The crowd went wild, standing, applauding, calling out, “Amen!”
“The Lord has promised us dominion over the earth, Genesis 1:26–31. The Lord requires us to take dominion. Let us do as He commands!
“Our job is to reclaim America for Christ, whatever the cost. As the vice regents of God, we are to exercise godly dominion and influence over our neighborhoods, our schools, our government, our literature and arts, our sport arenas, our entertainment media, our news media, our scientific endeavors—in short, over every aspect and institution of our society.”
The applause and the voice grew even louder. Shining, fervent faces filled the screen. There was an upswell of music, and the Angels came forth to sing.
I looked around desperately for the controls and saw a remote sitting on Plowright’s desk, rushed for it, heedless of whether anyone was there or not, grabbed it, and hit the mute button. The silence was a great relief.
I reached up, tore off my bandages, and tossed them in a trash bin.
The cameras cut back and forth between audience shots of ecstatic faces as they sang along with the Angels and close-up details of the city to be: miniature office buildings, an expanded airfield with toy planes visible through the doors of model hangers, subdivisions with little trees and green-carpet lawns like a Lionel Trains display, and where the college was now, presently just four modest buildings, there was something much larger, large enough that it could call itself a university. There was a hospital with a Matchbox ambulance parked in front of an awning with a tiny sign that read “Emergency Entrance.”
In the silence, I turned away from the mesmerizing screen and looked and listened to determine if anyone was in the offices. Also to better understand the man I was dealing with.
When I’d been here before, Plowright had always been in the room with me, his presence, personable, energetic, visionary, dominating it, giving it a life. And I had looked at it through the eyes of an admirer, the eyes of a disciple. Now it was empty, and my eyes were cold.
Plowright had this whole top floor to himself—and for whatever assistants he wanted around him at any given time. Fortunately, it seemed that all the courtiers were downstairs watching his show. The sweeping arc of his windows gave a lordly view of all his lands. As expensive as the square footage in Manny’s downtown office building was, compared to this, it was still a jumped-up version of the basic white-collar shoebox. This was the center of a twenty-first-century fiefdom.
Then there was the circle within the circle, with his personal, private apartment. It would have a view to the north, toward the mountains. The door to that inner sanctum was made of polished wood, thick and heavy. A keypad in a flat rectangle was beside it.
Gwen and I both looked at it, both of us, in different ways and to different degrees, afraid to find out what was behind it.
She looked at me, waiting for me to make the move.
I stepped aside and gestured to Gwen to punch in the code.
60
She was there.
Nicole Chandler, in a blouse and a skirt much like the uniform Angie wears to school. She was holding a Bible in her hands, the big NIV study Bible, 2,936 pages, with twenty thousand study notes, seven pages of full-color timelines from both testaments, sixteen pages of full-color maps, an expanded topical index, and a “Harmony of the Gospel” section.
I turned to glance back at Gwen, as if to say, “See!”
Nicole snapped the Bible shut. I barely saw her out of the corner of my eye as she swung it, two-handed, with all her might, and smashed it on the top of my head. I went down, seeing stars. If the wig hadn’t been there like a pad, I think she would have knocked me out cold. As it was, I went down on my hands and knees, head throbbing, trying to figure out what had just happened. I had dropped the gun and didn’t know where it was. Nicole tried to rush out past me. But Gwen was coming in after me, coming to my aid, yelling, “What are you doing? Get away from him.” They collided, Nicole trying to push past, I think, and Gwen trying to grapple with her, and they got entangled in my legs and fell over, both of them, on top of me. Pushing me flat.
They were fighting like women, clawing and grabbing. Legs, arms, and elbows jabbed into my back. Still dizzy, I put my palms on the floor and pushed upward, trying to get them off me and turn over at the same time. I heaved, and they moved. I turned, and there I was between Nicole’s legs. Her short skirt had flipped up, and her kicking legs were spread apart.
She was screeching, “Let me go.” She pulled Gwen’s hair, and Gwen yowled. I put my eyes back in my head, rolled away, and kicked the door shut before someone heard us. Then I looked around for the gun, figuring I better get to it before either of them did. I saw where it had landed. So did Nicole. She kept yanking at Gwen’s hair with one hand and was reaching for the gun with her other. She got to it before I did. The safety was off, there was one in the chamber, and she’d only have to squeeze, and someone would be dead.
I leapt—I tried to leap; it was more like I staggered and fell—on top of her hand holding the HK. I reached blindly, found the barrel, held it tight, and twisted as hard as I could to rip it from her. It came loose before she could fire it. I shoved it away from us and went after her other hand to make her let go of Gwen.
Nicole started yelling at the top of her lungs, “Help, help!”
All of us were rolling around on the floor. I pried Nicole’s fingers loose from my wife, then twisted her arm up behind her back. That put me behind her and forced her into a sitting position, her legs out in front of her, her back bent forward from the upward twist against her shoulder joint.
She was still shrieking, so I put my free hand over her mouth. She bit down. I yanked my hand away before she could chomp a piece of flesh off, and she started yelling again. I pulled my wig off and put that over her mouth, hairy side first. “Bite on that, damn you. Bite on that.” Which she did and got a mouth full of whatever the fake strands were made of. She started trying to spit the wig out and twist her head away.
Gwen was sitting on the floor. She held her head where Nicole had been tearing at her. There was a big scratch on her face.
“Nicole, come on. Quiet down. I don’t want to hurt you,” I said, though I was doing exactly that as I pressed her arm up to immobilize her.
Her skirt was up around her waist. Gwen looked at her with disgust. Nicole reached down with her free hand and covered herself, but she didn’t really stop struggling.
“We’re here to help you,” I said. She shook her head as violently as she could, trying to get rid of the wig at the same time. “If I let you go, will you be quiet?” Not getting a response, I pushed her arm up even harder and held her tighter.
She made a muffled noise and tried to nod yes.
I took the wig away from her mouth but kept her arm up behind her back. “Why did you attack me?”
She coughed and gasped and spit the black strands from the wig out of her mouth.
“Why?”
“You’re going to kill me,” she said bitterly.
“No, we’re not,” I said, trying to sound reasonable, although my head was throbbing.
“I know who you are,” she said. “You’re Jeremiah’s friends,” as if that were proof enough of the reason we were there.
“I’m not,” I said. “I’m really not. And I’d like to get out of here, with you, before he shows up or Plowright does.�
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She panicked. “I won’t go,” she cried, trying to pull away from me.
I pressed up on her arm again, locking her in place. “Calm down, Nicole. Calm down, and listen. We’re not here to hurt you or kill you. We’re just trying to find out who killed Nathaniel MacLeod.”
“Nate is dead?” she cried out in disbelief and anguish. “Nate is dead?” Her surprise and shock seemed real. All the fight went out of her. I released her. She curled up in a ball and began to weep and moan, crying out, “No, no, please, God, no.”
61
“How could you not know?” I asked her.
Her sobbing stopped for a moment, and she spoke like a bitter, sarcastic child. “All I know is what Pastor”—she was extra snide when she used his title—“tells me.” Then, sniffling, with the tears coming back, pleading, she asked, “What happened?”
“It’s been all over the news.”
“I don’t have a radio, TV, Internet, anything.”
“How long have you been here?”
“There’s a TV right there,” Gwen said, gesturing at a screen across the room.
“How long?” I asked Nicole.
“Since they took me,” she said.
“When?” I asked.
“Thursday night,” she said. “It was a Thursday night, late, Friday morning.”
“Which Friday, last Friday, the one before?”
“Three weeks,” she said, making it the night of MacLeod’s death. It also meant that she’d been right there, behind the wall, while Pastor Paul was trying to convince me to leave the case alone.
“From where?” I asked. “Where were you when they took you?”
“He was alive. He was alive when they took me out.”
“There’s a TV right there,” Gwen said again insistently. She didn’t like Nicole, with her schoolgirl outfit, claiming to be a prisoner in Plowright’s private apartment. Sleek and new, the forty-two-inch HD screen, set up to be easily viewed from the king-size bed, looked like a few thousand dollars’ worth of evidence that Nicole wasn’t being exactly truthful.
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