The front room had no social amenities at all. Computer monitors and torn-down hard drives were stacked haphazardly. Wires and circuit boards littered a low table in the center. The workbench itself held the skeleton of another computer, its pieces scattered. A half-empty bottle of Mountain Dew stood guard. Other empty bottles littered the floor at his feet.
“Talk,” he said. He moved past me and immediately began piecing together the computer.
I was fascinated at the deftness of his thin fingers.
“Talk,” he repeated. “I multitask.”
“How’d you know who I was?”
“Angel. She’s my friend. When she told me about you, did a little prowling. At the door, I matched your face to the one I’ve seen on your different files. Let me tell you, man, you look third-world on your driver’s license. Even I’d be ashamed of something that bad, and look at me.”
“Prowling.”
“Through the Internet.” His fingers kept moving. His words were as rapid as the movement of his fingers. “Don’t make me repeat myself. Get on with why you’re here. I hate wasting time.”
He wanted direct. I could do direct. “Tell me why for the last few months all of Zora’s social security checks have gone through your account.”
He looked at me, grinning. Swigged on his Mountain Dew. Wiped it away with the back of his hand. “Someone else did some prowling, huh? Old world or new world?”
My face was as blank as I felt.
“Traced the checks backward from the source? Or hacked into the bank records?”
“So you don’t deny it.” I had no idea how Jubil had learned this.
“Not at all. I’m only telling you this because Angel says she likes you. Angel comes in for computer stuff from me. She gives me the checks. I give her the change in cash. And sometimes
I owe her more than the check. She does a little work for me and I pay her fair. Let me tell you, she’s a genius with computers. Hardware and software. Not many are intuitive with both. Her? She was maybe eight years old when Grammie Zora sent her to me for her first computer lesson. From day one, that girl knew what she was doing.”
“Grammie Zora? Knew what she was doing when she made sure Angel was computer literate?”
His nostrils flared. “Angel, fool. Angel knew what she was doing. Nobody calls Grammie Zora a girl. Let me tell you. You don’t want to mess with Grammie. That’s why I cash those checks like Angel asks. And I don’t ask no other questions. Grammie Zora, she—”
He paused, and for the first time, weighed his words carefully enough so that the pace slowed. “Her spell put a man in the ground. That’s what all of us know. And that’s why she’s gone for a spell.
I just want you to know that she could do the same to you.”
“For asking about the social security checks.”
“No, fool. If you do anything to hurt Angel. And if Grammie Zora don’t mess you enough, then I will.”
He swigged his Mountain Dew again. “See, all I need to do is go prowling again. Be the virtual virtuoso that I am. You lose your fine credit rating. Maybe even acquire a criminal record.
Or better yet, I just make sure the government thinks you’re dead. Be years for you to straighten that out. ’Course, I wouldn’t ever do that to a friend of Angel’s. So as long as she’s happy with you, I’m happy with you. That girl, she’s like a little sister to me, and I don’t want to see her hurt.”
“Good,” I said. “Then I’m sure you never smoke when she’s in here working on computers for you.”
“Man . . .”
I’d hit him where it hurt. Like he’d never thought of it until now. “Secondhand smoke,” I said. “Look it up online. It’s a killer.”
**
Elder Mason waved Elder Jeremiah through the gates, and Elder Jeremiah parked in front of the Glory Church of the Lamb of Jesus and turned the radio music down.
“I thought you was taking me to Junior,” Retha said. Until this point, she had not spoken for the half hour it took to drive from Charleston.
Part of the reason for her silence was her sense of total defeat. The other part was the fact that she wouldn’t have been heard anyway. After a few minutes of trying to get Angel to end her insistent requests to turn around, Elder Jeremiah had resorted to drowning out Angel by listening to southern gospel at top volume, which had woken Billy Lee and set him to wailing. But in Elder Jeremiah’s opinion, the music and the wailing had been better than much more of Angel’s persistent arguing.
“I’m bringing Junior to you. Now step out of the car, and
I’ll give you your baby.”
Elder Jeremiah disengaged the child lock and unlocked the back doors with a push of an electric switch. He loved driving Shepherd Isaiah’s new Escalade with all its conveniences. Neither of them had ever owned a car newer than fifteen years old, not until the wealth delivered to them by the growing financial strength of the Glory Church of the Lamb of Jesus.
Angel pushed open the door on her side and stepped out of the air-conditioning into the humid heat of midday, wondering if she should have stayed in the truck and tried jabbing him with her stun gun now that the big man had parked. But Retha had chosen to go out Angel’s door, directly behind Angel, blocking any chance for her to reach back in.
As soon as Retha shut the door, Elder Jeremiah, still behind the steering wheel, hit the electric locks again. He lowered the front window of the passenger side just enough to be heard.
“You ain’t getting Billy Lee,” he said, grinning with the triumph of a man who had thought through every action. “I just told you that to get you out of the car. No, I’ll hang on to him. That way I know you’ll be here for Shepherd Isaiah.”
Billy Lee was crying loudly.
“No,” Retha cried. “He’s hungry. He needs me.”
“Get yourself up into the projector room. You just wait there till tonight when I’ve assembled the flock for a Glory Session of the Holy Rod of Chastisement. Repent and you’ll get your boy back.”
He grinned, his big teeth gleaming from his beard. “By the way, in case you was thinking of trying to climb the fence and walk far enough down the road to find a phone and call the police, you might want to reconsider. Unless you want to explain to them how it was you abandoned a baby at the hospital in the first place, then stole it away without paying the hospital bills.”
He waved at Retha by wiggling his fingertips. Then Elder Jeremiah slid the window up, cutting off Billy Lee’s wails to the outside world.
**
The projector room was in the upper loft of the church, overlooking the pews below. It was barely larger than a bedroom. Here, one of the women used a slide projector so that the words to the hymns could be put on the wall of the church during Sunday services.
Retha, nineteen and still carrying the chubbiness of adolescence, was much bigger than Angel. Yet it was Angel who stretched an arm around Retha’s broad back, trying to comfort her.
“They left me my backpack,” Angel said. She hadn’t seen a good chance yet to use her stun gun hidden inside. “I got a cell phone. I can call for the police.”
“No!” Retha lurched forward. “Then Billy Lee will just vanish. You don’t know these people. He’s getting better now. That’s what matters. All I have to do is face the Holy Rod of Chastisement, and everything will be alright.”
“The Holy Rod of Chaz . . . Chaz . . . ?” Angel asked.
“Chastisement. Shepherd Isaiah says it’s the will of Jesus for sinners to be punished in public. Shepherd Isaiah does it
on behalf of Jesus. Frankie Stafford caught his wife kissing a plumber who came to replace their toilet, and he brought her up in front of the church. And Dollie Mae Robins was seen stepping out of a bar by one of the elders. Stuff like that.”
“How bad is it?”
Retha had her head in her hands. “What happens is that Shepherd Isaiah prays over you and asks if you’re sorry. And the whole church sings hymns. When they’re worked up and you’re
ready to repent, up at the pulpit in front of everybody, Elder Jeremiah whacks you a bunch of times across the backside with
a Holy Rod.”
“Spanked in front of a bunch of people? You told me you were going to find a way to pay the hospital, even if you had to be a waitress for a hundred years. You ain’t done nothing wrong, trying to help Billy Lee.”
“Nothing wrong except for disobeying the will of Jesus.” Retha lifted her head. In the shade the yellowed bruises of her face were invisible. She showed her first moments of life since Elder Jeremiah had stopped her in her wheelchair. “Still, I ain’t sorry.”
“You telling me that Jesus wanted Billy Lee to die?” Angel asked. “That Jesus wanted Junior to whip on you for trying to save Billy Lee?”
“Don’t ask me nothing about Jesus,” Retha answered. “I’m done thinking on him.”
“I’m just getting started,” Angel said. She watched swallows dip and swoop in the open air of the clearing. “Mainly because I’m confused.”
“Ain’t nothing to be confused about,” Retha said mournfully. “All I ever got from church is grief.”
“Nick and me—this guy I know—he took me for a walk the other day so I asked him about this stuff. What Nick told me was that a person shouldn’t get the church and Jesus mixed up,” Angel said. “ ’Cause sometimes they’re two different things.
I asked him about it, before him and me had a falling-out.”
Retha straightened. She turned to face Angel, whose hand slid off her back.
“Nick told me all I got to do is believe that God made this world and all of us. Said some people get hung up on how God made the world when maybe all we got to do is wonder why. Said if I can believe that God made this world, then all I got to believe is that God wants me to come home to him after I die, which is why God sent Jesus, and all I got to do is believe Jesus came from God and follow what Jesus told us when he was here. So I said to Nick ‘what’s that?’ And Nick told me it was to try to love God as best I could and try to show that love to other people. I told Nick there had to be more to it than that, and he said other people keep trying to build rules around it, but no, Jesus spent his time fighting against people who made too many rules, and no, there weren’t much more to it than that. He said love is a special thing, and of all that’s in the world, love’s the one thing that points us to God.”
Angel patted Retha’s knee. “I got to tell you, I felt a lot better after Nick explained it that way. I asked him to pray for me, and that was nice, too.” Her voice lost some of its confidence. “Makes me sad it turned out him and me ain’t gonna be friends.”
“Maybe it’s nice for you to think about Jesus,” Retha said. “But you don’t got to face a Glory Session of the Holy Rod of Chastisement to get your baby back.”
Chapter 23
I heard the ring of my cell phone all too clearly above the clattering of feet over wood planks.
“Don’t answer it,” Amelia said.
She stood beside me at the edge of the pier overlooking the Cooper River. To our left was the entrance to the South Carolina Aquarium. To our right came the clattering, from the steps that led to the ferry that took tourists out to Fort Sumter. Storm clouds were building high over the Atlantic, and the first colder air coming in from the ocean had begun to nip at our faces.
“It could be Jubil,” I said. “He might know something about the missing baby.”
Twenty minutes earlier he’d called, angry. Wanted to know what kind of stunt I was pulling, yanking the baby out of the hospital as his deadline for me had approached. It had taken a lot of talking to convince him I wasn’t the guilty one.
“Just one afternoon. We haven’t had any time just to ourselves.” She put her hand lightly on my arm. “If it’s Jubil, there’s nothing you can do that the police aren’t already doing.”
I had the cell phone in my hand. “And if there’s nothing
I can do, it won’t hurt to answer and hear any news.”
She turned away from me to stare, arms crossed, at the water.
I put the phone to my ear.
“Nick?” Static broke the incoming voice, but I still recognized it as Angel’s. “Can you come get me? I need your help. Bad.”
“Where are you?”
“At the Glory Church of the Lamb of Jesus. The preacher guy has us up in a room.”
“Us?”
“Me and Billy Lee’s mother.”
“I’ll bring police,” I said.
“No! They took Billy Lee somewhere. If the police come, Retha might never see him again. But I got a plan. It don’t need police. Just go to my place and load up all my computer stuff. Remember how you met Camellia once? She’s got a key. She can let you in. Then bring my computer stuff here and drive around the back of the church. I’ll be waiting there. Okay?”
A plan? What kind? To do what?
“Angel . . .” I said.
The connection broke. I doubted it was bad reception. My guess was that Angel had ended it, giving me no chance to argue.
“Amelia.” I took her hands in mine. “You know I want to spend all day with you. But this little girl. It sounds like she needs help.”
“Sure, Nick.” Her smile was hesitant.
“Ride with me?” I asked. I did want as much time with Amelia as possible.
“No.” She gave me a peck on the cheek to soften her rejection of my offer. “There’s a few other things I need to do while I’m in town. Call me on my cell when you get back.”
So I went.
Alone.
**
The gates to the compound were closed. Immediately on the other side, a lean and weathered older man in snakeskin cowboy boots, jeans, a denim shirt, and a John Deere cap, sat smoking a cigarette on the hood of a late-model Ford truck. Minus his graying beard, he could have been the Marlboro Man. His truck was the only vehicle in the church parking lot. Beyond the church were the mobile homes of the compound. I noted again how unusual it was that there were so few trucks or cars parked near them.
Marlboro Man stepped onto the ground.
“Hey!” He moved to the gate, the heels of his cowboy boots crunching on the rocks. He left his cigarette at the side of his mouth, perched lightly on his bottom lip. The set of his face showed permanent mean.
“Hey!” He didn’t like the fact I hadn’t responded.
I left the Jeep’s engine running but moved out into the heat. There was a calmness to the air. The storm was almost upon us.
“Didn’t know churches needed security guards,” I said.
“What’s your business here.” Not a question. A demand.
To get inside the church, I thought. To search for Angel. But I used the only plausible excuse I had. “I want to see Timothy Larrabee.”
“He expecting you?”
“Tell him it’s Nick Barrett.”
He grinned at me. Had he been among those last night?
I told myself nothing would happen here in daylight. I told myself that Timothy Larrabee wanted the painting, and that would be enough leverage to get me out of trouble if it happened here.
Marlboro Man inhaled deeply from his cigarette and flicked it through the wires of the gate at my feet. He pulled out a cell phone, dialed a number. “Got someone here named Nick Barrett.”
He listened. Then snapped his cell phone shut. “Five minutes,” he said. He retreated to the hood of his truck and sat on it again, staring at me like a bird of prey.
A few minutes later, a golf cart rolled out from behind one of the mobile homes, with Shepherd Isaiah at the wheel.
Only then did Marlboro Man unlock the gate.
**
“I trust you’re the one who sent out the cops.” Shepherd Isaiah wasted no time on small talk. He sat at a desk, a bearded giant beside him, the same one who had stood behind him at the end of the church service. Jeremiah Sullivan, of course, the one mentioned in the article. The younger brother he’d protected throughout boyhood. Now it loo
ked like Jeremiah was returning the favor.
“They found a kid dead,” I answered. “A kid who had sent me to you. I told them about that. I didn’t tell them what to do with that information.” I paused. “But I also told them about the crown of thorns. That makes it much more than a coincidence. I’m sure that’s why they decided to visit.”
I watched his face as I continued to speak. “It’s more than coincidence, isn’t it?” My fear remained. But anger was its twin. “Isn’t it?” I repeated. Sharply. “And I know I’m not the only one.”
“The only one what?”
“I know you know what I mean.” The pain of the burn on my lower back was a constant reminder of the actions the night before.
“I fail to understand the purpose of your visit. To look for what the police found? Which was nothing.”
I took a half step toward Isaiah. The bearded giant beside him leaned in my direction. It was enough to stop me from approaching closer. But not enough to stop me from talking. “They’ll put it together soon enough.”
“You came here to tell me that?”
“No, I came here because of a painting. I’d like to speak to Timothy Larrabee about it.”
“He’s not here. You’ve wasted your time.”
I’d come here to help Angel. Not expecting to meet with Shepherd Isaiah. But while waiting in my Jeep at the gates of the compound, a wildly melodramatic and amateurish notion had occurred to me. I would bait Shepherd Isaiah into admitting something incriminating enough to help Jubil’s investigation.
As Isaiah spoke, I would hit the send button on the cell phone hidden in my pants pocket. I’d programmed it to dial Jubil’s cell. If he were there, he would pick up. If not, his voice mail would get our conversation.
I kept my hands in my pockets, where they’d been since I’d stepped into his church office. “How much do you know about Nathan Bedford Forrest?”
Isaiah smiled, an even smile that, along with the darkness
of his heavy beard, easily hid his thoughts. “Enough.”
“He founded an organization,” I said. “For political purposes. Helped him get elected. Then the organization got away on him. It became a white supremacist group called the KKK.”
Crown of Thorns (Nick Barrett Charleston series) Page 24