by Steph Post
Judah craned his neck to peer up at the underside of the Impala on the lift. He was trying to cut out the catalytic converter but was making a mess of the job. Judah knew his way around a car, but it was taking him two hours to do what he knew Lesser or Benji could have knocked out in fifteen minutes. Even on crutches, Benji was still a magician with anything sporting wheels. But Benji had ignored Ramey’s poundings on his door that morning and had elected instead to spend another day holed up in his stuffy bedroom with his pain pills and PlayStation games, his resentment and his grief. Judah hadn’t laid eyes on his brother since he had explained what had happened to Lesser on the front porch. He was worried, but Ramey had cautioned him to just let it be.
Judah was about to throw the damn Sawzall across the garage, the converter wasn’t coming off for shit, when Alvin’s bright orange Jeep, all jacked up on monster tires just as its owner was on steroids, swerved into the back lot. A dusty cloud swirled around the knobby tires as Alvin climbed down from the driver’s side with a wide smile plastered across his broad, tan face. Alvin, Gary and Judah had been best friends back in high school, which, even almost twenty years later, created an unbreakable bond between them. Gary swaggered around the front of the Jeep with a Four Loko in hand, draining the last of it. He pitched the can into the trash barrel next to the whirring industrial fan and shouted.
“Well, shouldn’t be no problem now, Judah!”
Judah’s eyes darted to the other side of the garage where Ramey was perched on the edge of the desk, cellphone cradled against her shoulder and yellow legal pad in hand. She had her back to him and Judah watched her nod her head as she wrote something down. Ramey had been on the phone most of the day it seemed, trying to sell part orders to mechanics across the county. She had only briefly glanced up when the Jeep pulled in. Judah tugged an oily rag out of his back pocket and jerked his head, indicating for Gary and Alvin to follow him outside and around the corner of the garage.
When they were safely out of sight and earshot, Judah turned to Alvin and Gary.
“All right, so what’s the plan?”
Judah scrubbed as much grease off of his fingers as he could and then stuffed the rag back in his pocket. Gary shook out a cigarette and passed the pack around.
“Everything’s gonna go just like we said before.”
Gary lit his cigarette and exhaled a stream of smoke.
“It shouldn’t be no sweat at all to get Nash.”
Judah looked down at the Parliament in his hand. Who the hell smoked p-funks? Judah almost tossed the cigarette to the ground, but his own Marlboros were on top of a tool cabinet in the garage. He took a drag of the weak cigarette.
“Run the plan by me. I want to know the details before you go through with it.”
Gary shrugged his bony shoulders.
“All right, boss.”
Immediately after he had explained the circumstances of Lesser’s death to Ramey and Benji on the front porch, Judah had called up Gary and told him to drop everything else and find out who the hell Weaver was. Last night, Gary had checked in saying that Weaver was still a question mark, but that he and Alvin had managed to stumble upon the location of Nash.
“So, it’s like this.”
Gary sucked on his cigarette.
“Nash is still holed up somewhere in Palatka, like we said last night, but after I talked to you, this little opportunity fell right into our laps.”
Alvin crossed his bulging arms over his chest and rolled his eyes.
“Or rather, she fell into my lap.”
Gary punched Alvin in the arm.
“That’s true, that’s true, man.”
Judah felt like he was in trapped in a locker room. He raised his eyebrows expectantly.
“The plan, Gary?”
“Oh, right, right. It’s like this.”
Gary flicked his half-smoked cigarette to the dirt.
“See, last night, since we were already over in Palatka, we met up with this cousin of Alvin’s. We were over at his place, just partying a little, you know, and he introduced us to his friend, who introduced us to his sister, Kristy, and her friend, shit, I can’t even remember her name.”
Gary scratched at the back of his neck.
“What was her name, Alvin?”
Alvin shrugged.
“Beats me. All I remember is that it looked like she fell out of the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down.”
Gary covered his face with his hand.
“Oh man, yeah. I’m gonna have nightmares about that one. But now this Kristy girl, I’m telling you, Judah, she was a real piece of work.”
Alvin turned to Gary and shoved him.
“How would you know?”
Gary bounced back and clapped Alvin on the back.
“Well, she didn’t have eyes for me. But she did for our man Alvin over here. Eyes, ears and everything else. Stuck to him like a fly in honey. And then, I guess, they were in the back bedroom and…”
Alvin interrupted him.
“And it turns out she’s the bartender over at Betty’s, this little joint out on the edge of town. And your buddy Nash is a regular there.”
Judah nodded, relieved to finally be getting somewhere.
“Okay.”
Gary grinned.
“So this Kristy girl, she’s so gaga over Alvin that she’s on board with helping us out. I guess Nash’s been laying low and she ain’t seen him in a couple days, but Kristy’s sure that he’ll be in sometime soon. When he shows up, she’s gonna give Alvin a call and we’ll be on our way.”
Judah narrowed his eyes.
“And then?”
Gary smacked his palms together.
“Then we show up. Kristy said Nash always has this big fella with him, ain’t hardly speak, but always seems to have Nash’s back. Sounds like the guy you said was in the car with Nash at the gas station. Got a head like a bowling ball.”
“Yeah.”
“And so Kristy’s gonna send Nash out to the car for some blow and work her charms on the gorilla to keep him in the bar. Grabbing Nash shouldn’t be a problem.”
Judah stuck his hands in his pockets.
“All right.”
He looked past them, out to the salvage yard lot. Last night, before the call, Judah had shared a beer with Ramey, sitting out on the back steps, just watching the heat lightning roll in. They hadn’t said much to each other, half the time they didn’t need to, and for a few moments, with the fireflies floating lazily in the trees and the sky quivering and pulsing overhead, it had felt like that first night. Before the church shootout, before Sister Tulah, before the biker cash, before Sherwood had slid the envelope across the table to him in the back of the Mr. Omelet. When, for a single night, the only thing that had mattered was the challenge in Ramey’s eyes and the heat of her hand over his. The tangle of sheets, the hum of the ceiling fan, the words whispered into the cloud of her hair as it fell over his face.
And then his brother, Levi, had come knocking the next morning with a message from Sherwood and Judah and Ramey’s path had changed direction. The spell had been broken. The pieces had been had scattered.
“When Kristy calls, are we good to go, then?”
He turned back to Gary, bouncing on the balls of his feet from too many energy drinks. Judah thought of Ramey in the garage, probably still on the phone, trying to keep things together. Keep them going. Judah hadn’t told her that they had found Nash and he wasn’t planning to. He set his mouth in a grim line and nodded once.
“Good to go.”
CLIVE BLINKED the sweat out of his eyes and studied the marquee before him.
Last Steps of Deliverance Church of God
Pastor Tulah Atwell
“God Before the World!”
Considering the building it was standing in front of, Clive would have expected the sign to be missing a few letters, but it was pristine, the white background blinding in the afternoon sun, not a weed in sight or even a stray wood
chip out of place at its base. Clive raised his eyes to the church behind the marquee; it wasn’t in nearly such good shape. The frame for the front door was still standing, though it was blackened in parts, and thick sheets of plastic had been draped and stapled to the casing. What was left of the walls on either side of the doorframe had been nailed over with sheets of plywood and hand painted with two large black crosses.
Clive took out his notebook and flipped it open. He glanced at his notes and then turned and surveyed the parking lot next to the church. Aside from his Charger and a dusty, gold Buick, the lot was empty. He walked out into the center of the asphalt and turned slowly around in a circle, trying to match what he was seeing with the fire and police reports he had studied in his motel room the night before. Right about where he was standing, the body of the Scorpions’ president, Jack Austin, had been found. Clive turned to the front of the church; there was definitely a clear sightline from the door. He took a few steps toward the woods that backed up to the parking lot. Sister Tulah’s Lincoln Navigator, peppered with bullet holes, had been found with its back tires in the dirt at the edge of the asphalt. Clive frowned. This wasn’t noted as unusual in the police report, but it didn’t seem to add up. Sister Tulah didn’t seem like the type to leave her vehicle badly parked. And she definitely wasn’t the type to park across the lot just so she could walk a few extra steps and get some exercise.
Clive squinted down at his notes as he traced out what had once been a crime scene. Sherwood’s truck had been haphazardly parked over there, in the middle of the lot. Clive glanced at the diagram he had hastily copied out on the page and moved a few yards over, closer to the road. He stared down at the sunbaked asphalt. Another one of the bikers’ bodies had been found here. Sprawled out, shot in the back. He lifted his head and held the crude sketch out as he scanned the rest of the parking lot. Clusters of shell casings had been marked there, there, there. Blood spatter by the walkway, over there. Clive scratched his forehead with his thumbnail. Unless the Scorpions had turned on themselves, it seemed like an awfully chaotic crime scene for them to have been in a shootout with only Sherwood Cannon, holed up inside the church. Clive crossed the parking lot to the edge of the woods. The diagrams accompanying the police report hadn’t extended past the trees. Clive frowned. That didn’t make any sense either. Not one stray bullet had made it into the woods?
Clive ducked his head under the low branch of a yellow pine and crunched through the brush of brittle needles and scrubby twigs. He walked parallel to the parking lot, scanning the ground as he moved gingerly through the swishing saw palmettos. The serrated edges of a Spanish bayonet snagged against his ankle and Clive tripped and cursed. Did everything in Florida hate him? He bent down to examine the rent cuff of his trousers, but something much more interesting caught his eye. He squatted and picked up the shell casing for a .45 bullet. Clive held it up and watched it glint in the sun. He stuck it in his pocket and then inched along, sifting through the detritus of dead oak leaves, pine needles and sandy soil. Clive found another. Then another, this one smaller, a .9mm shell. And then, of all things, a .308. Clive picked up the rifle casing and rolled it across his palm. He stood up and shoved it in his pocket. What the hell had happened that day? Clive wiped his sweaty face on the arm of his suit jacket and extricated himself from the palmettos. He brushed himself off and headed back to the church. It wasn’t the scene that bothered him so much, but rather the lack of attention given to it in the reports. There had been no mention of casings in the woods. No mention of .308 or .9mm shells found in the parking lot. Only a few .45s and the .223s from the Scorpions’ assault rifles. Something was off. Clive shook his head. No, something was wrong.
Clive parted the sheets of plastic and stepped into the dim church. The sun filtering down through more clear plastic stretched across parts of the roof appeared to be the only source of light. Some sections of the missing roof had been draped with blue and green tarps, strung across the scorched beams with twine, and the faint light coming down through these areas gave the room an eerie, watery ambiance. Instead of pews, rough benches of plywood and two-by-fours, bristling with shiny, new nails, were lined up to face the low stage. A pulpit, charred on one side, stood conspicuously in the center. Clive thought about what it would be like to sit on one of those hard, backless benches for the marathon Pentecostal services he had heard about, but then he figured most of the people in attendance didn’t do much sitting to begin with. Clive had only ever been to a few bland Methodist Easter events as a child, his parents didn’t have much use for religion, but he had heard stories about how rowdy the holy rollers could get.
The air in the empty church was stifling as Clive slowly crept around the perimeter, examining the walls. They were a mottling of plywood and sheets of particle board, tacked over one another to cover the gaps in the burned-out walls. Some of the squares of wood had clusters of small black crosses painted in the corners. Two hand-lettered cardboard signs had been taped to the wall, one proclaiming In My Name Shall They Cast Out Devils and the other simply God is Watching. Underneath this statement, two round eyes with long lashes had been crudely drawn.
Clive turned in a circle, surveying the rest of the room. Portable work lamps stood in the corners and something large, it looked to be a piano, took up part of the far wall and was draped with a heavy canvas sheet. Clive had read in a newspaper clipping that church services had resumed almost immediately after the fire, with the worshipers down on their knees in the still warm rubble praying and giving thanks to God. Apparently, come rain or shine, with or without walls and a roof, the Last Steps Church would not be closed.
He was just about to leave when the door on the back wall next to the stage swung open wide and a man with a push broom in his hands stood gaping at him like a goldfish. Clive turned to the man and smiled, relieved that he was finally having some luck.
“Brother Felton?”
The pasty man with a fringe of brown hair crowning his sweating skull gripped the broom tightly in both doughy hands and nodded slowly. Clive wasn’t sure exactly what he was dealing with. He had watched a few local news interviews with Sister Tulah, and while Felton always seemed to be standing somewhere in the background, Clive had never actually heard him speak. From the terrified look Felton was giving him now, Clive wasn’t sure he even could.
“Brother Felton, my name is Special Agent Clive Grant.”
Felton nodded again, still clutching the broom out in front of him as if it could somehow ward off evil. Clive was beginning to wonder if Tulah’s nephew had a couple of screws loose. He came down the aisle parting through the benches and sat down on a bench in the front row, trying to show Felton that he was harmless. Brother Felton eyed him warily and then leaned the broom carefully against the back wall. He remained standing in the doorway with a frightened expression on his face.
“What do you want?”
Felton’s voice was a little high-pitched and wheezy, but otherwise he sounded normal. Somewhat intelligent. Clive started to reach inside his jacket, but then thought better of it, thinking that the notebook might scare Felton off. He rested his hands on his thighs instead and looked around the church as if seeing it for the first time.
“So, the place is still standing, huh? After the fire, I mean. Looks like you guys are putting some work into fixing it back up.”
Felton narrowed his eyes and folded his arms across his chest. Clive could see the pit stains spreading through the man’s pale yellow polo shirt.
“Yes.”
Clive jerked his thumb over his shoulder.
“Sign out front looks new, though.”
“It is.”
Felton didn’t offer anything else and Clive decided he’d better jump right in while he had the chance.
“Brother Felton, I’m with ATF. I talked with your aunt the other day. Since you’re here, do you mind if I ask you a few questions?”
Felton’s eyes drifted around the church as he seemed to think about this
. Finally, he let his gaze fall warily back on Clive.
“What kinds of questions? I already gave my statement back in May.”
“I know, I know. Don’t worry, I’m not with the police. I’m just investigating the fire. That’s all. So can I ask you a couple of questions?”
Felton came forward out of the doorway and stood awkwardly next to the edge of the stage.
“I suppose.”
Clive still didn’t take out his notebook.
“So, just to kind of go over what you already told the detectives and the fire marshal, you entered the church when the fire was already underway, correct?”
Felton nodded.
“And when you came in, what did you see?”
“I already made my statement.”
Clive put up his hands defensively.
“Okay, don’t worry. We don’t have to go back over it. So let me ask you this, do you think either the Scorpions or Sherwood Cannon had anything against Sister Tulah?”
“Against her? Why would they?”
“Well, I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking.”
He could see Felton working it out in his head, trying to figure out the best way to respond. Clive wouldn’t have been surprised if he was trying to remember what Tulah had told him to say. Felton’s lips were trembling slightly, like a child trying not to cry, and he spoke slowly and haltingly.
“I don’t think, I mean, I don’t know why anyone would have anything against Sister Tulah. She’s a preacher.”
“So then you think Sherwood Cannon liked Sister Tulah?”
Clive almost felt bad for Felton as he squirmed under the questioning.
“Well, I don’t think he liked her exactly, no.”