False Gods

by W. Glenn Duncan Jr.

  “Kimberly and I left home together two months ago, sir. She told me how her parents were always saying bad … maybe not bad, but saying things about me, like how she could do better and such. We had both turned eighteen and finished school, so we decided to go away.” He looked down at his lap. “I know it sounds kind of childish, sir, but we were in love and were thinking about starting a life together.”

  “Why didn’t you tell anyone where you went? Were you running away too?” Mrs Garrison needed more milk; I heard the fridge door open and saw her head pop into my peripheral vision.

  “What?” Brian swung his head towards the kitchen. “Who told you that? Mom knew where we were going and what we were doing.”

  “Okay then, why didn’t you let Kimberly’s parents know once you came back?”

  He sighed, a big long one, and pinched his lip.

  “We’d broken up by then and she’d chosen another path. I didn’t see any reason to tell them about Kimberly.”

  “I can also answer that,” Mrs Garrison said, swooping in from the kitchen with a tray of cups and a plate of cookies. “I was happy enough to let Brian and Kimb … and Kimberly see each other. Who knows where love will take us? Even if things had worked out, though God himself only knows how, our families wouldn’t have been close. During the time that they were dating, I don’t believe I said more than two words to her mother, and that was on the street when it would have been rude to ignore her. There was no real reason to speak to them when Brian returned.”

  She handed out coffee for us and a hot chocolate for Brian. I grabbed a cookie from the plate as she sat down.

  “Help me out here,” I said. “I’ve never had a situation where good people have been so reticent to help. What’s going on? The kids had a thing before the breakup and both families allowed it to continue, so at some point everyone was okay with the kids being a couple. What was going on between the two families?”

  Mrs Garrison, took a small sip of her coffee, pursed her lips and placed the cup on the table and her hands in her lap.

  “Mr Rafferty, you say you’ve been to their house. Surely even someone like you could have seen and heard the foulness spouted inside those walls. The blaspheming and mockery of Our Lord.”

  She crossed herself and continued.

  “Well, I couldn’t stand five minutes in their presence before needing to pray on the impure thoughts I just know I’d be having, so I can’t say that I’m disappointed that Brian won’t be seeing any more of that whore.”

  “That’s the second time you’ve referred to Kimberly like that, Mrs Garrison,” I said. “Based on what I’ve seen, I’ve got a very different impression.”

  I turned to Brian.

  “In less than a cup of coffee, your mother has moved from letting you two run off into the sunset, to referring to your ex-girlfriend as the devil’s spawn.”

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw Mrs Garrison swing her arm up and I almost flinched. She crossed herself twice and muttered under her breath.

  “What happened?” I asked. Brian swallowed a mouthful of hot chocolate and wiped the milk mustache off his upper lip. Before he could draw breath however, his mother had chimed in.

  “She behaved as all fallen women do, Mr Rafferty. Like it says in Proverbs 7, ‘… the forbidden woman, from the…’”

  She ran down under my stare. I turned back.

  “I’d prefer to hear it from you, Brian. What the hell happened with Kimberly?”

  “We left here together, but after we got to Austin, she ran off with another guy.”

  “Now we’re getting somewhere,” I said. “So, you both went to Austin. For the moderate climate and the casual, yet cosmopolitan lifestyle, I bet.”

  “No, not that,” Brian said and his smile never wavered. “We went for Christ Alive! The largest gathering of Christian youth in America. It’s been held twice before but never in Texas.” He flicked the hair off his forehead and continued. “Over eight thousand Christians in one place. A week where we could come together as a community of God’s people to learn more about Jesus Christ, deepen our faith and provide service to the less fortunate.”

  The whole thing sounded like a warped version of Woodstock: less music, less drugs, less free love, and a lot less fun.

  Brian continued on his rapturous way.

  “Where we could profess our love for God without judgement. Kimberly and I had been planning all year to go, ever since we heard it was going to be in Austin. I can’t tell you how excited we were to get there. We figured that after Christ Alive!, we’d spend a couple of days camping, just the two of us, and make decisions about our future before coming home.”

  “She was planning to come home?”

  “Sure she was, sir. She didn’t want to stay away from her family. The letter to her parents was her way of saying that she wanted them to treat her like the adult she was becoming.”

  Nothing had smelled like Kimberly was a runaway, and it turns out she wasn’t. Not at first. But that still didn’t tell me where she was now.

  “Did you go with a group of people, or was it just you and Kimberly?” I asked.

  “It was a group from high school. A lot more wanted to go, but they were under the minimum age of fourteen. It was hard to tell them that they couldn’t go. They were heartbroken to miss out on such a spiritual opportunity.”

  “I’ll bet,” I said, and grabbed another cookie. “Wow, what a bummer.”

  “You get it too, then,” he said, and I felt like an ass.

  Only for a second. I don’t dwell.

  “Was this other guy part of your group? Could Kimberly have been seeing him before this trip to Austin?”

  “No, he wasn’t part of our group, sir.” Brian leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. “And I don’t think Kimberly already knew him. We met at a mixer on the first night and Kimberly introduced herself like she’d never met him before.”

  “Does this guy have a name?”

  “Um, Darius? Darien? Something like that.”

  “Last name?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t hear one.”

  “Where did he come from?”

  “I thought at first he might be one of the event organizers because he was older—like you—and he was always followed by a group of men. Wait a minute, there was one woman with them. She was a bit older too, so that was another reason I thought they were part of the event.” Brian shrugged. “Someone said he was from another church but I never heard anyone say the name of it.”

  “And you’re sure that this is the guy that Kimberly ran off with?” I asked.

  “Yeah, I’m certain of that.”

  He took a deep breath.

  “From the second day, Kimberly kept talking about him. How his flock was growing, the connection he had with our Lord and the amazing work he was doing. I think she’d done community service work with him and they must have talked then. After a couple of days of hearing all this stuff about his church, I asked her to tell me more about him. She said there was no way I would understand.

  “Looking back, I should have thought how that was odd because we’d always been open with each other. We were both busy with a lot of event stuff going on and so I didn’t say anything.” He blew out a breath. “If I’d just said something then maybe it would have turned out different.”

  “She was spending a lot of time with Darius?”

  “Yeah. She would go to prayer sessions with him. I trusted her. I never guessed there was anything wrong. I was happy for the way she was deepening her relationship with God. On the fourth day, when I got back from community work, I went to find her at one of these prayer meetings and the two of them, Kimberly and Darius, were having …” A breath. “… having sex in one of the chapels. She looked straight at me when I opened the door but didn’t say anything … or even stop what they were doing. I walked out.”

  “Ouch,” I said. “That sucks.”

  “I told you. A little whore,” Hel
en said, her pinched tone reflecting her face.

  “Mom,” Brian said. “Let me tell it. We, Kimberly and I, had talked a lot about our future together, and that included sex.” Brian’s face reddened, but he held his nerve and carried on. “We’d agreed to wait until after we were married. It wasn’t like we didn’t want to, we sure did. It would have been the first time for both of us. That’s why I knew straight away that it was over. She had gone back on her purity promise to me with a guy she’d only known a couple of days.”

  He put his head in his hands.

  “I don’t know what happened,” Brian whispered into his lap. “I thought we were meant to be together. I loved her.”

  “And you haven’t seen her since?”

  Brian looked up. His eyes were wet but his voice was firm.

  “Once, on the last day. I was loading up my car and saw her in the window of a bus in the parking area. Our eyes met, but it was like she didn’t recognize me. She didn’t wave, or smile, or anything.”

  “Do you know where it was headed?”

  “No sir. If it helps, the woman I saw with Darius and his group was sitting right next to Kimberly on the bus, talking to her. Then the bus pulled on to the main road and that was the last time I saw her.”

  Brian dropped his head into his hands again.

  “She never even tried to apologize. I wish I could help you more, sir, but that’s all I know.”

  As Mrs Garrison was showing me to the door, she grabbed my arm.

  “You see what this girl is, Mr Rafferty. He did the best he could, and you feel sorry for her like a lost soul. She’s lost alright, and I’ll never forgive her for what she did to my son. I just hope her God is more forgiving than I am.”

  Chapter 5

  I had missed Hilda’s flight by the time I left the Garrisons, so I drove straight to her house in Richardson, trying to keep it under the speed limit and occasionally succeeding. The high cloud was splitting apart, leaving a warm afternoon in its wake, clear and blue.

  As I wheeled the Mustang onto Blue Lake Circle, I saw brake lights wink from between the street trees.

  I slammed down the gas pedal, got the car up to a respectable thirty-five, before throwing out the anchors and sliding to a stop on the wrong side of the road. Hilda looked up, startled, her black leather overnight bag in one hand and the other on the raised trunk lid as I came out of the car with my finger and thumb cocked in a mock pistol.

  “Freeze lady! Drop the bag and put both hands on the car.”

  Her eyes twinkled. Those gorgeous, coal-black eyes with the color flecks that I could never quite pin down. She smiled and hefted her bag. My heart melted.

  “And if I don’t?”

  “I’ll have to charge you with resisting, ma’am.” I walked across the street, hand held low at my hip like a film-noir bad guy.

  “I’d better be compliant then.” She bent over—way, way over—and placed the bag down next to the car. Staying bent, she looked back at me while straightening the seam of one stocking. As I walked up behind her, she reached out to close the trunk lid and placed both hands on the bright red metal.

  “Should I be worried about police brutality?” Hilda pushed away from the car and wiggled her backside into me.

  “Maybe. If we don’t go inside soon, Mrs Kendall will be calling 911. Or Billy Graham.” I looked to my left and waved. The white lace curtains in the house next door fell back into place.

  She stood up, turned around and leaned into me.

  “Rafferty, you scared the shit out of me at first. God, I’ve missed you.”

  We kissed and necked for a few minutes until I could sense the next door curtains stirring again. We broke and I held her at arms length.

  “I’m not convinced. Felt like you were faking it for a minute there.”

  “Get my bag and the purse from the front seat and meet me inside. I’ll ease your mind.”

  She walked over and unlocked the front door, blowing me a kiss as she stepped inside.

  By the time I picked up the bag the door was closed. I grabbed her purse and locked both cars, moving as fluidly as possible with a half boner.

  I pushed the front door open, and my eyes took their time adjusting to the darkness of drawn curtains. A black flower shape on the floor turned out to be Hilda’s skirt. I put her bag down and dropped her purse on the kitchen bench. I picked one stocking off the hallway floor, and held it to my nose, breathing deep. I dropped it again and started to peel off my clothes. By the time I’d walked the length of the hallway, passing the other stocking and her black lace panties lying on the carpet, I was naked.

  I leaned against the doorframe.

  Hilda looked up from bed, nude, her legs stretched out, crossed at the ankles. Her eyes shone and her hair cascaded black ringlets over the pillows. The afternoon sun beat through the shutters, slashing light and shadow across her body.

  Time stopped and I understood the artist’s inescapable compulsion to capture a moment of pure beauty and, at the same time, the crushing anguish of knowing that no matter how hard one tried, a reproduction would never, ever be close to the real thing.

  “Hey, Ugly. Are you gonna keep standing there with a hardon and that blank look on your face?”

  I smiled.

  “Or are you going to come down here and fuck me?”

  Later, much later, the streetlights popped into life and bled yellow into the room. One kept shining through a gap in the shutters into my left eye. It was going to drive me nuts if I didn’t move but that would’ve meant twisting and lifting my head from Hilda’s bare stomach. I decided insanity was worth the risk.

  They don’t call me wild and daring for nothing.

  As we lay there, I kissed Hilda’s stomach—and a little higher than that, too—stroked her thigh, and watched the smoke from her cigarette rise to the ceiling.

  “Okay, I’m prepared to call it,” I said. “No faking involved.”

  The cigarette glowed as she took a drag and winked at me. “You can never know for sure though, can you?”

  “Don’t try that Meg Ryan mind game stuff on me. Billy Crystal? How hard can it be to fool a poor sap like that? I, on the other hand, am a trained investigator, with my detective instincts honed to a keen edge through years of dealing with society’s underbelly. There’s no way you could fake it, babe. Nothing gets past me.”

  “Uh huh.” She crushed out her cigarette and turned to me. “So when your eyes rolled up into the back of your head when I did this …”

  And she reached down and did that again.

  My eyes rolled up into the back of my head.

  I’m not sure how long it was before I came back to my body.

  Seconds? Days? I didn’t care.

  “… keen edge of your instincts now?”

  “Hmmm. Give me some credit, woman. I’m exhausted after performing miracles here tonight. Not Jesus himself, even with his twelve-piece backing band, could have had an infidel screaming ‘Oh God, Oh God,’ that quickly.”

  “Infidel?”

  Raised eyebrow. Mock outrage.

  “Heathen. Unbeliever.”

  “Tell you what, big guy. You can call me anything you like if you feed me soon. I’m starving.”

  We decided on Japanese and made it downtown in time to get squeezed around the last empty table—a tiny, wobbly one near the bathrooms. Everyone else in Dallas had the same idea about trying out the new place.

  I thought about being angry that we hadn’t chosen BBQ instead, but with Hilda sitting across the cheap plastic tablecloth from me, and the lanterned table light throwing her cheekbones into soft relief I couldn’t muster up enough energy to be angry about anything.

  Besides, we had lucked out.

  The early arrivals, all seated on stools at a bench which wrapped around the cooking area, were being made to catch their food as the chef threw it at them, hot from the grill. Fried egg was flying everywhere and while they seemed to be okay with it, I couldn’t see the go
ddamn point.

  If we were meant to still be catching our food, there’d be no reason for Safeway.

  Our drinks arrived. Hilda had forgone the offer of traditional sake for a chablis and I embraced my inner samurai by ordering an Asahi, which was surprisingly good.

  With a table full of salmon sashimi, sushi rolls and chicken teriyaki we dipped, ate, drank. The Asahi went down quickly, as an offensive countermeasure against the wasabi. Hilda and I held hands and talked about our respective weeks.

  She had fended off challenges from the local and interstate antique dealers to secure the estate of the recently departed Henry Morgan, tycoon and founder of Blackrock Oil, the third largest oil drilling enterprise in the continental US. Henry had been single when he died, having survived his wife by fifteen years and though the Houston social pages had linked him to no fewer than eight different women since then—waitresses and aspiring models mostly, with a lone dermatologist standout—none had swayed his heart or loins enough to be included in the will.

  Gardner Antiques was now in charge of the largest estate of the last twenty years in Texas.

  “Proud of you, hon,” I said licking up a rivulet of teriyaki sauce working its way down my hand and threatening my shirtsleeve.

  Hilda chose to ignore my self-grooming.

  “Thanks, I’m proud of me, too.”

  “You should be. Not many women could do what you did. The graceful way you pivoted and twisted to move from kneeling to sitting without letting go of my—”

  “Rafferty!” Her eyes flashed. “Yeah, that was good, wasn’t it?” She poked her tongue out between her perfect teeth. “But before you get me distracted, tell me, are you any closer to finding the girl?”

  “Wow, I almost got whiplash from that segue,” I said. Told her about the morning meeting with the Garrisons and Kimberly running off with this other guy, Darius what-his-face.

  “Do you think he’s telling the truth?” she asked. “Brian, I mean.”

  “I think so. He struck me as being genuinely upset about finding Kimberly cheating on him.”