Gather The Seekers

by Vince Milam

  Jean had retired from the Oakland Police Department after twenty-five years, the last ten as a lead detective. She now lived inured to the rough side of life. Her current job as a private investigator offered enough work to keep boredom to a minimum. She’d been married twenty-three years and her two kids had grown and gone. Her husband, Sylvester “Sly” Murphy, worked large construction projects around the world—a job keeping him away six months of the year. Life, on balance, had been good. She missed her kids—one in LA and the other in Kansas City—but Facebook and phone calls kept their relationship tight and solid. It was the same with Sly, although the morning rituals of coffee and greeting the day without him became hollower, more empty, as the years passed. He expressed similar thoughts, and had started the process with his employer to shift to domestic work. Something closer to home.

  “We just walked away,” Jude said as she scratched Banjo’s chin and stared at the night sheen of wet stone and pavement.

  “It’s best. Trust me.”

  The windshield wiper, on delay, squeaked across the windshield.

  “He sent them after us,” Jude added. “He’s the one we have to stop, Jean.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  A member of Jude’s congregation had contacted her, and Jean, about a missing teen daughter. Jude for comfort and support, Jean to track the kid and bring her home. The ex-cop and the pastor had first met outside a large dilapidated walk-up office building in the Tenderloin District of San Francisco. Jean had information leading her to that location. Jude—small, spiked, and tattooed—stood at the entrance when Jean arrived.

  Drug dealers, addicts, and prostitutes littered the sidewalk. It smelled of human urine and feces. Jean began to enter the dark and dangerous building. “Be careful,” Jude said.

  No kidding, sweetheart, Jean thought as she opened the front door. A pull, a gut feeling, caused her to pause, and she turned to the small woman who had offered the warning. She wore a cleric’s collar with her short-sleeved black blouse. Jean eyeballed the woman from head to toe, a cop thing, admittedly, and asked, “You a priest?”

  “Pastor,” Jude replied.

  “Looking for converts?”

  The pastor leaned back, stared toward the upper floor, and chewed her lower lip. “It’s there. I feel it.”

  “What’s there?”

  “Evil. Active and alive and not human.”

  Jean made a quick decision to reschedule her little visit upstairs and asked the pastor if she’d join her for a cup of coffee. The pastor made one more search of the upper floor—seeking, quizzical—and agreed. They walked four blocks to leave the Tenderloin and sat at a coffee shop.

  Both ordered the house blend, black. The pastor pulled an e-cig vaporizer from a pocket. “Gave up cigs,” the pastor said, “but still have a habit.”

  Man, this isn’t your run-of-the-mill pastor. Jean took in the tats, spiked hair, and piercing. “You sure it’s only nicotine?”

  Jude took a deep hit and ignored the question. “I’m Pastor Jude Gill. You act like a cop.”

  Jean took a sip and stared over the rim of the porcelain cup. “Ex-cop. Oakland. Retired.”

  “I’m glad you didn’t go into the building.”

  Jean focused on this Jude Gill, this weird pastor, whose demeanor—unsure, distant—presented as someone lost. Or newly found. “I’m still going. Just taking a coffee break. With a pastor. What’s your interest with that place?”

  “Doing the cop thing again,” Jude replied.

  Jean smiled. Jude had a point. “Yeah, well. Old habits die hard. I’m a PI now.”

  “A what?”

  “PI. Private Investigator. A concerned mom asked me to track a wayward daughter. The trail led to the building in that shitty neighborhood.”

  “Me, too.”

  They discovered their common pursuit of the same lost teen, and Jean’s inquiries toward Jude’s technique of pinpointing the suspected building made her gut knot.

  “I sensed it. I tuned to a higher power and followed my sense. It’s an attribute, recently gained. I’m uncomfortable with it,” Jude said.

  Before Jean dove into that little revelation, she worked Jude’s background. From the Bay Area, midthirties, divorced, no kids. Enjoyed theater, books, movies, and tried to date men. According to Jude it was a tough go, the dating thing. A pastor spooked most guys. She liked Italian food, tattoos, and changing her hair color. She rode a mountain bike on trails around San Francisco, did yoga every morning, and liked dogs, cats, birds. She disliked bananas, snakes, macramé, guns. Especially guns.

  And quite definitive with regard to God and Jesus. Jude expressed belief in a God who wouldn’t hesitate to stomp your ass, and a Jesus filled with forgiveness for our weakness.

  “God delivered basic rules. Stray and have your butt kicked,” Jude said.

  Jean nodded back. Raised by a God-fearing Fresno family, Jean had received more than a few admonitions regarding God’s displeasure.

  “And we don’t self-improve,” Jude continued. “We don’t keep climbing the spiritual stairs. Nope. We suck pretty much all of the time. But Jesus’s grace is there daily. ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’” Jude took another hit of her e-cig. “Believe it.”

  Yeah, I can live with that. Jean supposed herself as more spiritual than affiliated with a particular religion these days. But she held an absolute conviction that her life had been blessed. And her belief crossed every denominational border.

  They got to know one another, sipped coffee, and worked their way back to the “sense” Jude claimed and her wild-ass statement of “active and alive and not human.” Jean’s detective career on the mean streets of Oakland had evidenced plenty of evil. Sick, perverted, evil people. No shortage there. But this pastor claimed something else, and Jean wasn’t the type to avoid direct questions.

  “So, this nonhuman evil aspect. You want to elaborate? Because up the stairs of the building we left is someone very human, without doubt evil, and equally without doubt engaged in sex slavery involving runaways.”

  Jude took another drag of her e-cig, let the vapor drift from her mouth, inhaled the mist through her nose, and took another sip of coffee. She locked eyes with Jean and explained her belief of two species living among them—humans and fallen angels. “‘Fallen angels’ sounds benign. They sure as hell aren’t. Demons. Walking horror.”

  Then Jude displayed an attribute Jean hadn’t yet identified. An edge, a combative spirit. “We can’t sit around peeing our pants because it’s something we don’t understand or are afraid of. Nope. We’ve gotta stand. Recognize dimensional evil. And kick it in the nuts.”

  “Is that what you were doing when I walked past you?” Jean asked. “Getting ready to go upstairs and kick it in the nuts?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why were you waiting? Hesitating?”

  Jude glanced at the tabletop and puffed her cheeks before she again locked eyes with Jean. “Because I was afraid. Afraid of the human evil there, fully capable of killing me. And yeah, afraid of the nonhuman as well. Haven’t done this demonic thing before. Have doubts. That’s normal and human and don’t give me any crap about it because I’m a pastor.”

  Years as a cop had created a Jean Murphy BS radar second-to-none. This pastor didn’t register on the radar. This Jude Gill was honest and heartfelt and, well, more than a little weird. But honest. And honesty counted in Jean’s book, big time.

  “Maybe we go together. If needed, I’ll let my pistol speak to any of the sex slave pricks. You deal with the other. Whatever the other might be.”

  Pastor Jude Gill smiled back. It wasn’t a smile of relief or appreciation for the support. It was a smile of lock-and-load, let’s go kick it in the nuts.

  They returned to the Tenderloin and the office building where they had met. It proved empty. Two days later, the parking garage shoot-out happened. Two days after that, the sex ring was broken up, the runaway teen returne
d home, and the head of the sex slavery operation disappeared without a trace.

  Chapter 7

  Nick drove the hour and a half from D.C. to Culpeper, Virginia, and bemoaned the government-white Chevy Cruze from the DHS vehicle pool. No style, none. He checked himself in the rearview mirror. At least the Chinese knock-off Ray-Bans looked cool.

  When the D.C. Police and DHS and DEA agents arrived at the pier five minutes after his phone call, he’d already decided the best course of action was to present the situation as a one-man show. The large stranger, Bishop Sikes, never happened. By and large an honest man, Nick presented the tale not to garner more accolades for himself—which it would do—but rather to prevent him from answering why he didn’t make the bishop hang around and answer questions.

  Two days passed since the encounter at the Potomac River dock. Nick’s enhanced reputation at DHS, burnished by the dock fight and his perceived ass-kicking of the gang member, brought pangs of guilt. Didn’t even fire my gun. And I’m sure not the kind of guy to charge an armed gang member.

  Nick used parts of the last two days to research the honorable Bishop Luke Sikes of the Tabernacle of the Divine Spirit. The bishop’s size had served him well as a linebacker for several teams in the NFL. His retirement from professional football led to a master’s degree in theology. Charismatic, he had a powerful preaching voice, and a more powerful belief in the Almighty. In time, he became a bishop at the Tabernacle of the Divine Spirit.

  Luke, married thirty years, had a large family: five kids, four of whom went to college and piloted their way through life successfully. The fifth, one of three sons, was wayward and had been killed in a drug deal gone bad. Bingo, thought Nick when he discovered this. Drugs. Personal vendetta.

  The Tabernacle sat on a Culpeper side street with an expansive lawn. A smattering of folks entered and left the large church building this weekday afternoon. The lawn sign displayed worship times and a message: “The Lord is my strength and my shield.” Well, yeah, and it doesn’t hurt to have the body and demeanor of an NFL linebacker.

  Cool and quiet inside, the church echoed a few church staff voices whose tones spoke with verve and happiness. A more distinct voice carried down the hall, and Nick followed the sound to a door marked The Bishop. A young lady left the bishop’s office as Nick approached, smiled, and asked, “Can I help you?”

  “Bishop Sikes, please,” he said. “Nick. Nick Capellas.”

  “Come in,” echoed a definitive voice from the interior of the office room.

  The young lady gestured “head in” and rolled her eyes good-naturedly. Luke Sikes sat behind a large desk littered with papers. Family and congregational photos, without a trace of football memorabilia, covered the walls. The bishop gave him a curious but friendly look as he stood and extended his hand.

  “I’m Bishop Sikes. Come in. What can I do for you?”

  Nick made a point to close the office door before he returned the handshake and sat in a chair opposite the bishop’s desk. “We’ve met. Agent Nick Capellas. Department of Homeland Security.”

  The bishop displayed a large toothy grin. “Right. Right. Didn’t recognize you since you’re not hiding behind a car. Plus, all you white people look alike in the dark.” A loud and raucous laugh followed.

  “This is serious stuff, Bishop,” Nick said and donned his best DHS official face—stern and in control.

  The bishop’s smile, if anything, widened. “Do tell?”

  “Yes, sir. Very serious.”

  Lilting conversation and footsteps drifted through the closed door as church ladies moved along the hallway. “You want to tell me what you were doing at the dock the other night?” Nick continued. He crossed his legs and adjusted the pleat in his pants.

  The bishop sat back, crossed his legs, and put both hands together. Fingertips provided a resting place for his chin. The smile lessened and the stare intensified. “I was in pursuit of the Enemy.”

  Nick waited for elaboration. None came.

  “It was an incredibly dangerous scenario, Bishop. A major drug bust. You could have been killed.”

  “Hmmm.”

  “And I would add walking away from that type of scene could put you in major hot water with law enforcement. Major hot water.” Nick tried his best to match Luke’s laser stare.

  They sat, silent, for far too long. Nick’s eyes began to water as he maintained the DHS badass countenance.

  Luke leapt up. Nick flinched.

  “Would you like some ice tea, Nick?” Luke asked as he moved to a small refrigerator in the corner. “May I call you Nick? Or do you prefer something more official?”

  “I’m Agent Capellas. But, yeah, Nick works.”

  Luke grabbed a large glass container of dark liquid, unscrewed the cap, and poured them both a drink into plastic glasses. He handed Nick the tea and began to elaborate. “The Enemy was there. There, then fled. A coward. Always a coward.”

  The tea was presweetened. Lots of sugar. “You want to be a little more specific on this enemy thing? I’m feeling a bit of disconnect, here.”

  “Do you attend church, Nick?”

  “Let’s leave spiritual conversation for later, Bishop Sikes, and talk about the other night.”

  Luke sat back down, sipped his tea, and stared through the office window. A couple of sidewalk pedestrians meandered by and gestured as they talked. Large trees displayed new light-green growth with the spring sunshine. “It’s important,” Luke said. “Whether you attend church. It’s important to our discussion.” The bishop delivered the last sentence while turning back to face Nick.

  “Yeah. Greek Orthodox. In D.C.” Nick didn’t hesitate to put his denominational marker on the table. Whatever denomination the Tabernacle of the Divine Spirit, it sure wasn’t Greek Orthodox. And the Greek Church filled an important need for Nick—a need for community and an anchor to the past and his heritage.

  “You folks are big on warding off the Enemy, I understand,” Luke said. “The evil eye and such. Do you believe in the devil? As a real and existing force?”

  This conversation had headed way, way off the rails. He hadn’t come here to discuss his belief system. “What were you doing at the dock, Bishop? Charging a drug gang member and pummeling him unconscious. Walking away when a federal agent told you to stop. That’s what this discussion is about.”

  Luke leaned back. More footfalls and light chatter passed by the closed door. “A secular approach. Understandable,” Luke said. “A young man, firmly ensconced in his chosen career. And handling himself quite well in the face of evil, I might add. Did you clean up the mess? With regard to bureaucratic management?”

  “Yeah. Cleaned up. No mention of you. But I’ve gotta know. Back to the issue. What the hell were you doing there?”

  “No need to curse, Nick.”

  “What were you doing there, Bishop Sikes?”

  Luke stood and pulled a large family photograph from the wall, pointed to a figure—a son—and stated, “My son was killed. Killed by drug dealers. He wasn’t innocent. I would not claim that. But killed nonetheless. And when I went searching for answers, I found something.”

  Nick took a sip of tea and nodded. The conversation showed signs of rational pathways and normal conversation. It came as a relief and Nick maintained silence.

  Luke turned and rehung the photo, stepped back, and then forward to straighten it. “I received a gift. Righteousness and power. Insight and affirmation. I can testify, Nick Capellas. You believe me, I can testify.”

  Right back off the rails. Gimme a break. And now this large and demonstrably violent man stood filled with indignation—or righteousness—neck muscles flared and fire in his eyes. Nick cleared his throat, started to talk, and took another sip of tea. “Alright. Call me a dumbass. I’m not getting it,” Nick said.

  “No need to curse.”

  “Alright, call me ignorant. Either way, I’m still not getting it.”

  “Acknowledgment, Nick.” Luke sat and his cha
ir squeaked a protest at his bulk. “Simple acknowledgment. Evil people. Yes. No doubt. You have encountered them, and will assuredly do so again in your line of work.” Luke paused and the ticking of an old desk clock filled the silence. “But acknowledgment of another force. A dark force. An evil force. A force in direct opposition to Jesus. As the Apostle John said, ‘This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already.’ That’s what I was doing at the dock, young Nick Capellas. Confronting the Enemy.”

  Luke took a deep swallow of his tea and kept an eye on Nick above the rim of the cup.

  “Okay, tell me how you knew to be at those docks when those drugs were offloaded. And I’m getting pretty damn tired of you dancing around simple questions, Bishop Sikes.”

  “No need to curse, Nick.”

  Nick sat silently and returned his stare. I’ll sit here until Christmas if need be.

  “The gift,” Luke said and smiled. “I’ve been blessed.”

  “And tell me a bit about your gift, Bishop. How does it tie in to your appearance at the docks?”

  Luke nodded and became more engaged. “I have an internal signal. It allows me to seek—to identify—the Enemy. A gift from God.”

  “From God.”

  “Yes,” Luke said and again folded his hands and supported his chin with his fingertips.

  “And the Enemy being who, again?”

  “Satan’s minions.”

  Alrighty then. Off the rails and into the ditch. “You identify minions of Satan. A personal radar system.”

  “Your church understands this. The Greek Orthodox Church. It would behoove you to internalize such acquired knowledge instead of dismissing it as ‘old’ or as ‘superstition.’ I understand this is the current trend among you young people.”

  Nick leaned forward and adjusted his seat position. He edged over a coaster—one with a picture of a very dark Jesus—and sat his glass of tea on it. “So you homed in on the dock. At that hour.”

  “Yes.”

  “And hammered the snot out of one of the gang members. Your radar didn’t point out he wasn’t one of the Enemy? Just a plain old drug smuggler? Not a card-carrying member of Satan’s legions?”