If You Really Knew Me (Anyone Who Believes Book 1)

by Jeffrey McClain Jones

  By the time Dianna’s southward drive reached Topanga, the sheriff’s police generally pulled to the side and waved her on. But this time they accompanied her into Santa Monica, before waving and turning aside. As far as she knew, the difference was random, unaware of any increased threat to her, even after hearing of the assassination attempt on Beau. For a moment, she had to resist the temptation to turn on the radio, sensing that there was something that she should know. The chances that she would have actually heard any news relating to the rising opposition to Beau were still slim, as long as she avoided Christian radio stations in the area, a few of which had taken up the cause.

  When she finally reached the hospital, her thoughts turned to work. As a nurse practitioner, her day would be a mix of the routine and predictable, along with the urgent and unanticipated. She prayed for patients that she knew she would see, some that she hoped had been released, and for those whose names she didn’t yet know.

  Finding a parking place out in the middle of the employee lot, she turned off the hybrid electric motor and gathered her shoulder bag. She stopped her usual exit routine, however, when she heard a text message reach her phone. She pulled the phone out of her bag and checked. It was from Gretchen, her nine-year-old.

  Dianna unlocked her phone and blindly reached for the door handle, her eyes locked to the screen. She was trying to decipher some misspellings and wrong word substitutions in Gretchen’s message. Her daughter was new to texting, and often just sent a message to say “Hi,” and little more. This message, however, was a request for something that Dianna was having a hard time recognizing.

  That’s why she didn’t see the man with the buckets running toward her. She heard his sneakers flapping on the pavement first, looked up and screamed as he dropped one bucket to the asphalt and seized the bottom of the one in his right hand, making a two-handed dump onto her chest and stomach. Bright red liquid dyed her pale blue scrubs to deep purple, stuck wet against her body. As she stood with her back arched, her hands raised in partial surrender, the man fumbled for the second bucket. Dianna recovered enough of her wits to turn and try to run away, but that only made her back the next target. Her pony tail whipped around her neck, propelled forward by more of the red liquid, which she hoped was not blood. She slipped slightly in the new puddle on the shiny black pavement but kept running.

  Behind her, she heard the man shrieking at her, “Adulteress! You’re going to Hell!”

  She kept running, not looking back. A nurse and an orderly that had been smoking by the employee entrance, ran toward her when they saw the familiar looking woman soaked in what looked to them like blood. They slowed as they heard the man shouting again, this time on his way out of the parking lot. “Adulteress! Red is your real color!”

  Dianna stopped running when she passed the other two employees, the male orderly with a cigarette still clenched between his lips, and the nurse waving her cigarette unconsciously wedged between two fingers. Seeing that it was not a medical emergency, such as they had assumed. they looked at each other in confusion. Even the catastrophic events training they had received failed to cover a situation like this one. They each threw down their cigarette, pausing to stomp them out, and jogged to catch up with Dianna.

  “What was that about?” the orderly said, catching his breath.

  The nurse scowled at him, knowing better than to satisfy the obvious curiosity prompted by the bizarre scene. Instead, she said, “Are you alright?”

  Dianna turned back toward her two would-be rescuers and relaxed her shoulders. She noticed that she was still holding her phone, checking to find that it had avoided most of the dousing. Next she looked down at her clothes, plastered against her. She dropped her spattered tan shoulder bag and pulled her shirt free from her soaked skin. She sniffed the red liquid, which was obviously paint, and not blood. Then she thought of what the man yelled last, about red being the color of an adulteress.

  “I’m just glad it’s not blood,” was all she could think to say to the other two employees.

  “Yeah,” said the nurse, her voice only half-convinced.

  The orderly laughed briefly, before stopping himself.

  Black and White and Red All Over

  Dianna called the house to let them know what had happened, as a warning, in case any of them planned to go out. But she didn’t call the police. The story leaked, however, from the other hospital employees who saw her before she found clothes to change into and managed to wash off most of the paint from her skin. She retained an added pink tone, but completed her entire shift, nonetheless.

  Anna was driving in her car when she heard the news. At first, she slowed and swerved and then she found a place to pull to the shoulder of the busy, winding road. Then she burst into tears, taking the responsibility for the idiocy of others on herself. A few seconds of catharsis ended in a bitter resolve to drive directly to the Dupere home, to throw herself at their feet, begging for mercy.

  Wiping her face with both hands, blowing her nose on her last tissue, and noting what a mess she looked in the rearview mirror, Anna checked for traffic and then pulled a tight U turn back toward Malibu. As she accelerated back up to speed, the little Honda pushing her into this impulsive visit, she asked herself just exactly what she thought she was doing. Was she going to apologize? To make amends? She shook her head in little movements that reminded her of her grandmother with Parkinson’s disease.

  No, she wasn’t going to throw herself on their mercy. She was going to their house to hide, to find refuge with the only sane people she knew. She laughed aloud at this thought. The crazy, tongue-speaking, faith-healing, polygamous billionaire and his tribe of wives and children were the sanest people she knew? She slowed her car from escape speed to contemplation, letting the curves of the road pull her and push her, and weave her into a more reasonable state.

  She couldn’t just show up at the Dupere house. What would she say? Why was she there? Did she want to move in? With the older kids gone, were there enough bedrooms now? Again her head started that unconscious shaking, as if her body disagreed with her spontaneous solution to her shame.

  Anna surrendered her escape plan and turned the car again, this time a right turn that would take her another way toward her apartment. She suddenly felt very tired. Her shoulders sank and she sighed, as she watched the trees and houses through which she and the road dodged. Everything stood out in high contrast with the setting sun behind her. She arrived home just as white objects in sight had taken on the color of cheddar cheese. But neither rest nor food awaited her arrival.

  A small cluster of reporters blossomed into action when she pulled into the parking lot of her apartment building. When her mind locked onto the idea that they were there to interview her, and that it must be about the attack on Dianna, she considered continuing around the asphalt lot and back out onto the street. Perhaps she did need sanctuary with Beau and Justine.

  Anna’s weariness, however, sapped her will even for a getaway. Or, maybe, she just knew that she had to face the questions sometime, from someone. After all, she was a reporter herself. Didn’t she owe it to her fellow journalists to answer for her actions?

  Her car fitted into a diagonal parking space, her emergency break ratcheted into place, she turned off the engine. The reporters stood in a line just next to her left rear fender. One of them had a TV camera. None of them seemed to be carrying buckets of red paint.

  Anna opened the car door and swung her legs out. Her white sandals touched the pavement only briefly before she stood up and met the gauntlet that awaited her. A small injection of adrenalin subdued her weariness for a moment.

  “Miss Conyers, Miss Conyers, Anna, Anna,” several voices greeted her in chorus. But there were really only six people all together, no throng of reporters needing to vie for her attention.

  “One at a time, please,” Anna said, her voice cracking on that last word. “I can answer you, one at a time.” She nodded at Barbara Stiller, a local newspaper reporte
r that Anna had met at press events.

  Barbara said, “Thanks, Anna. Of course, we’re here to ask for your reaction to what happened to Dianna Perry this morning.”

  Anna thought about her initial reaction to the news, which was still fresh in her awareness, as if her body hadn’t yet recovered from the workout she had given it, trying to decide where to go and what to do. Then she answered more guardedly.

  “I’m shocked, of course. I’ve been to their house several times and have seen the angry mob of people gathered there, shouting accusations, as some of you must have. And I can’t say the crazy thing that happened to Ms. Perry is so surprising, when you see how exercised people are. But I really was shocked when I heard the news just a few minutes ago.”

  “So no one from the Dupere house, or from the police, informed you earlier today?” Barbara said, following up.

  Anna tensed her brow and frowned. “No. Of course, not. They don’t have any reason to contact me about an incident like that.”

  The young man with a microphone, accompanying the TV camera, piped in. “But don’t you think that the attack was likely a response to your story published this week?”

  Anna looked into the intense blue eyes of the reporter, whom she didn’t recognize, wondering what she really did think. “I suppose someone could claim that, but there were already protesters and threats before my article, so it might be journalistic hubris to say that I affected things so much with one story.” Or it might be denial to say I didn’t, she thought silently.

  “So you don’t feel like your story could have incited more hatred against the Dupere household?” the young man said.

  Anna tipped her head a bit to one side. “It certainly wasn’t intended that way. I think it just confirmed what people believed already. I don’t expect anybody who thought well of them suddenly decided to go and throw paint on one of them.”

  An older woman with one of the L.A. papers pushed forward. “Do you have a personal relationship with the family now, since you’ve been granted such intimate access to their home life and all?”

  “Well, a personal relationship could be a lot of things. They did grant me access to much of their private life, but I don’t think they count me as a good friend or anything,” Anna said, feeling more vulnerable now, with the emotions raised by that question. It seemed a good time to cut off the interview. “I have to go,” she said, pulling herself away as each of the reporters shouted questions at her. Anna almost laughed at what it felt like to be on the other end of those shouted questions.

  Not Really What I Had in Mind

  He was trying to reattach a loose shudder on his house, when Dixon Claiborne heard about the red paint attack. News radio had come on after the Giants baseball game and he heard the report as he sucked the thumb he had just mashed with a hammer . . . again. He noted the name of the woman, Dianna. Part of him thought it would be important to know who it was that Beau Dupere had swept into his web of spiritual deception. Part of him wondered how the woman was doing, intrigued to hear that she worked in a hospital as a nurse practitioner, when she lived with one of the richest men in California.

  The realization that there were a lot of details about the Dupere disciples that he didn’t know, meant to Dixon only that he was keeping a safe distance from the deception and corruption down there in Malibu. When he had heard about the would-be assassin captured in Seattle, he noticed mention of Dupere’s sixteen-year-old daughter who was accompanying him. They left the girl’s name out of that story, however.

  Unlike Anna Conyers, Dixon assumed that none of this had anything to do with him, no sense of responsibility for stirring up opposition to Beau Dupere, no guilt keeping him awake at night. To him, it was all a matter of natural consequences for other people. There was Beau Dupere, whose lifestyle disgusted most Americans. And there were the crazies, armed with guns or paint. That whole cast would do what they would do, no matter what Dixon did to protect his church, his faith and his God.

  Without any effort at all, Dixon turned to thinking about these things, instead of figuring out how to get the decorative shutter to attach to the house, where it had been ripped free and the whole in the aluminum siding left stripped and gaping. At least it seemed to be gaping compared to the size of the screw that had been used to mount it initially. His focus followed his worry back to the shutter. But the most worrying thing in his life did involve Beau Dupere, in a way.

  He stared at the pale tan siding, textured to look like wood, but saw none of it. His mind had diverted toward his deepest fear. Had he lost his daughter? The weight and scope of that question suddenly made the repair work seem more attractive. He straightened the sagging shutter once again, noting an alternative spot for attaching a screw, as if ignoring the problem momentarily had freed his mind to see the solution. That didn’t seem likely to work regarding the problem of Sara and her decision to follow another form of faith, however.

  He worked at the problem with Sara in similar fashion to the way he had to wrench the nail free after his second attempt to reattach the shutter. He worked it back and forth until the new hole yawned wide enough to find satisfaction. Was Sara’s deviance just a teenage effort at revenge? Or, maybe it was not revenge, but just independence, she sought. Maybe she would find out that it was all fake, and then she would come back to the real faith. Was it fake? Dixon reminded himself that he had adjusted his argument from fakery to . . . what? In his mind, deception was close enough to what he really meant, what he now feared for Sara. Did he fear her deception, even captivity to unholy spirits? Or was it just the fear of losing one of the most precious things, one of the most precious people, in his life?

  “Dad?” Brett said, from just behind Dixon.

  Dixon jumped and dropped the drill he was holding. He had picked up the drill at some point to investigate making a new hole in both the aluminum shutter and the aluminum siding. When Brett startled him, Dixon dropped the drill on his foot after it glanced off of his shin and left a stinging sensation to go with the embarrassment of being caught standing, staring at the side of the house.

  Brett tried not to laugh at his dad’s dance and efforts at not swearing in front of him. He recovered control momentarily. “Dad, are you okay?”

  Dixon couldn’t tell if the question was aimed at the bang on the shin and foot or the brown study Brett had interrupted. But, either way, every dad knows how to answer that question. “Uh, yeah, sure, everything’s fine.” He looked sideways at Brett, wearing his Oakland A’s jersey. “You just startled me.”

  “What were you doin’?” Brett said, never one to allow an awkward moment to pass untortured.

  Dixon took a deep breath. “I was thinking about your sister. Worrying really,” he said, splashing two handfuls of truth into his own face. To Brett, it was an example of a man being real. Or so Dixon hoped.

  “Is she joining a cult or something?” Brett was glad for a chance to ask a direct question, taking advantage of a vulnerable moment for his dad. The pastor seemed to feel that he was always on duty, always under observation, as far as Brett could tell. Maybe he could slip in a question at a time when an answer was looking for a way out, into the bright spring air.

  “I hope not,” Dixon said. He looked at Brett, thinking, maybe more honesty with Brett would prevent him from going elsewhere in search of truth.

  “You think she can speak in tongues and stuff like that?” Brett said, crashing even deeper into this unexplored acreage.

  Dixon stopped rubbing his shin and stood up straight. He looked at Brett, sure his son was asking a real question, knowing he was worried about his sister too, and realizing just then that Brett too would be curious. In that instant, Dixon entertained a crazy idea. Whether it was the bang on the shin, the frustration with the shutter, and life in general, or parental desperation at having a 50% failure rate so far, he proposed that idea aloud.

  “Maybe you and I should go and investigate this guy for ourselves. Let’s go and see for ourselves h
ow creepy or fake he is.”

  Brett grinned shamelessly, something he would learn to repress when he became a teenager. “Wow, could we? Would we see Sara there? When can we go?”

  While Brett’s enthusiasm amused Dixon a bit, it also flipped red flags to a standing position in the peripheral vision on both sides. Was it dangerous? Could he really protect his second child in that context? Was he, himself, safe in such a setting? Right in the heart of the enemy camp?

  Brett could sense his father’s hesitation. “We wouldn’t have to tell anybody we went. And even if someone finds out, you could just tell them you were investigating the guy for yourself. Or that you were just looking for your daughter who got captured by his cult.

  Brett’s childish problem-solving made Dixon smile. “Yeah, I don’t think we have to worry about that kinda thing.” But inside, he worried about all of those things, though not as intensely as he worried about losing both of his children.

  “I’ll go look on the Internet for a meeting,” Brett said, empowered in ways his dad really valued, though in a context that Dixon could not help regretting.

  “Okay,” Dixon said. “No flights to Hawaii,” he said, shouting over Brett’s shoulder as his son headed for the kitchen door.

  Brett raised one thumbs up, affirming that one limitation.

  “Probably find one in Rio, instead,” Dixon said to himself, muttering and then laughing quietly. He picked up the drill and made sure the bit was long enough to go through the tab on the shutter as well as into the aluminum siding. He hoped that would be enough to hold the screw, at least until the next typhoon.