“Does he really?” She dropped the cheer and matched her colleague’s annoyance. “Parker’s dealing with some personal stuff up here at the moment. I’m sure he’ll make up the call when—”
“We’re all dealing with personal stuff all the time, Paige. And there are no makeups.” His tone reminded Paige of schoolchildren claiming no tag-backs. “Tell Parker we expect to hear from him next week at the usual time.”
Paige opened her mouth to respond, but the call had ended. For the tenth time today, she thought of the e-mail she’d been saving in her in-box—the one from the firm in Indianapolis. It came three weeks ago and she had yet to respond, so the position had likely been filled, but she held on to the possibility like a security blanket. It was twice the money in a bigger market with a team of three working under her. But your Parker Saints didn’t come along every day. She thought about the way he commanded the crowd, how they hung on his every word, how he looked behind this very desk as he painstakingly crafted each line of each sermon. She knew there were many reasons she was staying close to Parker. Some professional, some not so much.
Perhaps she’d better call him. Just to let him know that Mason was on the warpath, which meant that Holton was at the very least perturbed. Her computer told her it was nearly five. Maybe she’d wait another half an hour, just to make sure he was finished at the police station. She had no plans tonight, as Tuesday and Wednesday evenings were generally working dinners for the two of them. Planning and brainstorming—big-picture stuff. Maybe they could still get that in tonight. She missed the synergy.
For the moment, though, she had work to get done. Just as soon as she reread the message from the firm in Indianapolis.
It had been years since Parker’s first—and last—visit to a bar. He’d been to many restaurants and grilles with a bar in the back, but he hated the idea of patronizing an honest-to-goodness tavern. Perhaps it was beneath him. Perhaps it was his introverted nature—something that no one expected of a man in his position. Whatever the case, he hadn’t dared refuse Corrinne.
“It’s a rite of passage,” she’d told him flatly. “We have a round and we shoot the breeze. If you want any chance of fitting in around here, you can’t say no.” Troy and Ketcham had exchanged a look but made no attempt to contradict her, so Parker had agreed to meet them.
The entryway to Marc’s Watering Hole was so thick with smoke that Parker’s eyes began to water. Once within the smoke-free building, though, he recovered quickly. As his vision returned, he skipped his eyes down the bar and then to each table in the place, hoping to spot his new friends quickly. Nothing was less desirable to Parker than waiting in an uncomfortable place with people he didn’t know. He came up empty and was considering whether to just pull the plug when a woman rose up in her bar stool and waved him over.
She wore a knee-length skirt and a spaghetti-strap top and could almost have passed for Corrinne, if not for the eye makeup and intentionally disheveled hair. And the skirt. Parker made his way over and awkwardly mounted the stool next to her.
“You look . . . different tonight,” he said, chiding himself as he spoke. He thought of those romantic movies he’d been forced to endure with his high school girlfriend, in which the ugly duckling friend takes off her glasses and lets down her hair to reveal that a beautiful, graceful young woman has been hiding under the nerd, jock, or grease-monkey persona all along. He hated those movies.
She smirked. “Just because you never shift out of R-E-V, don’t assume we’re all wound up that tight.” She drained her drink and caught the bartender’s eye. “I got him,” she said, tipping her head toward Parker.
He kept his eyes on Corrinne for just a moment too long and said, “I’ll have a Sprite.”
Corrinne reeled and laughed, slapping the bar so hard it shook. “I’ll have a Sprite!” she howled, and laughed some more. When she’d recovered, she leaned onto the bar and clapped her hand over his. “You’re the real deal then, huh?”
“I don’t know about that,” he answered, accepting his drink from the bartender and trying to ignore the colorful paper umbrella.
“He’s just having fun,” Corrinne said, removing the cocktail favor and tossing it down the bar. She smiled at him, wheels obviously turning in her mind.
Parker smiled back. He loved her slight crow’s-feet and the way her hair fell over one eye. She hadn’t changed at all, he realized. He just hadn’t taken any notice of her beyond her role in this particular hoop through which he must jump. He sipped his drink and wondered just how often this happened without his ever recognizing it. He was aware, in ever-increasing waves, of his growing self-centeredness and was continually putting off the chore of addressing it.
A group of men in work clothes entered the room and swarmed the bar, taking every remaining seat.
“Guess we’ll have to get a table,” he said.
“Why?”
“For Troy and Detective Ketcham.”
Corrinne smiled and looked down. “They’re not coming, Parker. Come on now.”
He squinted at her.
“Would you be more comfortable at a table?” she asked, scooping up her drink. “Pick one.”
Parker surveyed their options and came to a realization. He was on a date. With Corrinne. This was happening.
“But be honest,” Corrinne said, gripping Parker’s arm and shaking it a bit too harshly. “You wouldn’t want to be rescued by a woman. That’s all I’m saying.”
“I guess that might hurt my ego a little bit,” he admitted.
They were in an ill-lit corner booth—sitting on the same side of the table, which hadn’t been Parker’s call but suited him just fine. He was on his third Sprite and Corrinne on her third whatever-it-was, and they’d been talking for almost an hour. She’d told him all about growing up in a house full of brothers, how she’d dropped out of cosmetology school to get her bachelor’s in criminal justice, how she’d been valedictorian of the same graduating class as her captain and been passed over for detective twice while less-distinguished men rose in the ranks. Her ire increased as she related all this, but she kept patting Parker’s knee, as if to assure him that she didn’t blame him for the transgressions of his fellow males.
All at once she switched topics. “So, Paul says you changed your name.”
He felt blood pooling in his cheeks. “Um, yeah. About four years ago.”
“Why?” She leaned back in the seat and looked at him expectantly. No one had ever asked him this question, but he’d long ago prepared the perfect answer—one that didn’t sound superficial or showy. One that would not come to mind right now.
“It was just . . .” He grappled. “This guy who mentors me told me that the name Brian lacks gravitas. It doesn’t sound prophetic. It sounds like a guy in a cubicle or something.”
“A mentor?” She put her hand to her mouth, mortified, and glanced at his soft drink before asking, “Are you an alcoholic?”
“No. His name is Joshua Holton. He’s a pastor like me. You’ve probably seen him on TV.”
“I don’t own a TV,” she said, her easy confidence returning. “So, what, this guy tells you to change your name, and you just do it? That’s some kind of power he’s got over you.”
“I didn’t have to do it,” he answered, more defensive than he intended. “I trust him, that’s all.”
“I couldn’t deal with that. I can’t stand people who think they know what’s best for me. That’s why I don’t date cops.”
Parker was surprised at the little jolt of elation this news brought him. “So, you and Ketcham aren’t . . .”
“Don’t finish that sentence,” she said, “or you’re going to find out where I keep my gun when I’m out about town.”
They enjoyed a comfortable silence until it was no longer comfortable. Corrinne drew in a breath and shook her head. “Changing your name is kind of like changing who you are, though, am I right?”
Parker said nothing. He’d asked himself this questi
on a thousand times. A cloud of self-doubt he’d been successfully ducking for months was re-forming over him. Joshua Holton was undoubtedly trying to turn Parker into another version of himself. This he knew, but he told himself that he was still in control. He could chew the meat and spit the fat, so to speak. But was that true? Was he losing himself to gain the world?
“I said, your phone’s ringing,” Corrinne said, putting her elbow in his ribs.
“Oh. Sorry.” He retrieved it and checked the display. Paige. A sudden wave of shame gripped him. Why did he feel like he was somehow cheating on her? They were friends and colleagues, he and Paige, nothing more. Not officially, anyway. Still, he couldn’t bring himself to answer it.
“I have to go,” he announced, and placed the phone back in his pocket.
“Me too,” Corrinne said, pulling herself from the booth and hefting her ample purse onto her shoulder. “Walk a lady to her car?”
They exited the bar together, through the cloud of smoke outside and down to the street.
“Is that yours?” she asked, pointing at Parker’s BMW.
“Yeah, that’s me.”
She strode up to it and peered in through the tinted windows. “Not bad,” she said.
“Where are you parked?”
“Oh, I’ll have a friend pick me up. Got places to go.”
“I get it. You’re my armed escort. You just didn’t want to say it.”
She shrugged. “Like I said, nobody wants to be rescued by a woman.” She took a step toward him, penetrating his personal space by an inch or so.
“Doesn’t sound so bad.”
They stood for a moment, neither sure what to say.
Corrinne broke the silence. “My pastor’s name is Brian,” she said. “Seems fine to me.”
“You go to church?”
“I’m glad that shocks you,” she laughed.
“No, I didn’t mean—”
“It’s okay. I don’t go as much as I should. A few times a year: Christmas, Easter, um . . .” She laughed. “Just Christmas and Easter, I guess. I’m just saying, you seem like a good man, Parker. Whoever this mentor guy is, don’t let him change you, okay?” She pushed two fingers against her lips and then toward his, pulling up at the last second to press them against his nose. “See ya tomorrow, Preacher.”
She stepped quickly back into the bar in her brown skirt and Birkenstocks. Parker watched her disappear and then plopped down behind the wheel and smiled despite himself. He could still smell the generic perfume she’d been wearing, and while he was fairly sure he had lipstick on his nose, he didn’t check.
TWELVE YEARS AGO
Danny had notebooks full of research. After the first few exorcisms he’d made a trip to the university library, expecting to find only a handful of books on demonology and the like. But there were dozens—two full shelves. The more he studied, the more he found that the nightmares no longer bothered him. He still had them; he just didn’t mind.
He’d stay up late while his roommates slept, trolling the Internet for videos of exorcisms, which he would watch over and over. He learned how to act, how to move—what people expected of a demoniac and what would get a rise out of them.
Before long he was an authority on the subject, although he told no one. He knew how to respond to holy water or a crucifix in a charismatic Catholic Church, and which Scriptures should make him squirm in a Baptist congregation. He began attending Pentecostal deliverance services in the city, hanging back, watching the crowd react to the demons supposedly coming out of their friends and co-workers.
An unintended side effect of all this study was Danny’s growing ability to differentiate the fakes from the real thing. And with it, his certain knowledge that he himself was no longer faking it. He was, without a doubt, the genuine article.
Within six months, The Project had taken over Danny’s life. He grew his hair out longer and dyed it dark for the benefit of his audience. He kept two wardrobes—one for church and one for everything else. When he entered a church, the people there did not see a calculating individual who had been planning his attendance for more than a month, a college graduate with a firm control over the direction of his life. They saw what he wanted them to see.
Danny found that he had to travel farther and farther in order to avoid short-circuiting his progress. Now living alone, he kept large charts and maps in his bedroom, plotting where he’d been and where he planned to go. Some weeks he would do advanced scouting. He could pick just the right church based solely on the construction of the building and the slogan on the movable-type sign. Soon he’d exhausted the rural churches in a forty-mile radius of his apartment as well as the inner-city black churches. That’s when he started in on the suburbs.
The suburbs breathed new life into The Project. Soon Danny stopped looking for churches with a developed theology of “spiritual warfare,” realizing that people who had never dealt with the demonic often received him most enthusiastically.
He would occasionally attend a church for two or three weeks before manipulating a prayer of deliverance from the leadership, then come back for another two or three afterward, slowly reforming his appearance each time, just to study the way the event had changed the church’s culture. But it was not long before he needed each Sunday to count. He was beginning to realize that the real change taking place was inside of him.
He could no longer live a bifurcated life. He could no longer appease Them by giving Them attention one day a week. They were rushing back in quicker and stronger each time, demanding more. And he was happy to give it.
EIGHT
PARKER’S NEIGHBORHOOD HAD BEEN GENTRIFIED LONG BEFORE gentrify was a household term. He was comfortable in his home and rarely went out at night. Having no outward vices to speak of, he stayed inside and unwound in two ways: his treadmill and long, in-depth Internet searches. He kept a list throughout the day of items that interested him, things he wanted to know more about. Then, before bed each night, he would look them all up on knowledgeshare-beta.org, an open-source online encyclopedia full of cross-referenced hyperlinks.
These wanderings down the side streets off the information superhighway gave birth to many a sermon illustration for Parker. He would sometimes become so entangled in the Web that he’d forget what he had looked up in the first place and wind up reading about the most obscure people or events, barely able to keep his eyes open. He loved the idea of drifting off to sleep having just fed his brain a heavy meal of new knowledge to digest.
The night before, he’d been so exhausted he had foregone the ritual, so there were several items on his list tonight. Damien Bane, of course, was one of them. But before he even punctured the seal on that one, he typed “Jesuits Militant” into a search box. He scanned the first few pages of hits. Plenty of historical information about the founder of the Jesuits, St. Ignatius de Loyola, who had been a military man in his first career. Interspersed among those were several fundamentalist sites with a decidedly anti-Catholic bent, attempting to expose the ignoble intent of the “ecumenical movement.”
Parker suddenly remembered his first search in the bathroom stall that afternoon. What was the wording? He tried typing in “spade symbol Satanism.” Jackpot! Fifteen occurrences of an article entitled “Calling a Spade a Spade: Satanism, Catholicism, and the Jesuit Oath” by one Reverend David Black. Parker began skimming the article. Halfway through, the grammatical and spelling errors were more than he could take. Still, there was something about the subject that wouldn’t let him go—something providential about his stumbling into this space where the two worlds had intersected.
He opened a new search window and looked up “Jesuit Oath.” This yielded 36,000 matches, most containing the phrase “Jesuit Extreme Oath of Induction” in their titles. The first page of results seemed evenly divided between those attempting to debunk the Oath’s authenticity and those appealing to it as a means of debunking the Jesuits themselves.
But what was the Oath? Parker had never
heard of it. He began clicking and reading. Apparently, the Jesuit Oath had entered the public consciousness in 1843 in a book called Subterranean Rome (although Parker could not find a scanned copy online anywhere, or even a rare hard copy for sale). It was immediately clear why emotions ran so high around the words, which almost seemed like a series of intentionally incriminating and incendiary statements strung together with little to connect them.
Parker copied and pasted a few choice passages into a text document to further digest later. The Oath of induction apparently began with the priest initiate naked on his knees with a dagger to his heart, while a superior said these words:
My son, heretofore you have been taught to act the dissembler: among Roman Catholics to be a Roman Catholic, and to be a spy even among your own brethren; to believe no man, to trust no man. Among the Reformers, to be a Reformer; among the Huguenots, to be a Huguenot; among the Calvinists, to be a Calvinist; among other Protestants, generally to be a Protestant, and obtaining their confidence, to seek even to preach from their pulpits, and to denounce with all the vehemence in your nature our Holy Religion and the Pope; and even to descend so low as to become a Jew among Jews, that you might be enabled to gather together all information for the benefit of your Order as a faithful soldier of the Pope.
Parker thought of Father Michael’s incriminating DVD and Father Ignatius’s comment about burning down the Washington Monument. These Jesuits certainly did not seem to be sneakily obtaining anyone’s confidence.
As the Oath continued, the initiate repeated a series of promises:
I do further declare that I will help, assist, and advise all or any of his Holiness’s agents in any place wherever I shall be, in Switzerland, Germany, Holland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, England, Ireland, or America, or in any other Kingdom or territory I shall come to, and do my uttermost to extirpate the heretical Protestants’ or Liberals’ doctrines and to destroy all their pretended powers, regal or otherwise.
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