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

by Jeffrey McClain Jones

  He continued. “The guy said that, while he was still waiting for the ambulance with some paramedics, this man jumps through a hedge and says he’s there to heal him. He knew it was Dupere right away, but he was in shock, so he couldn’t say or do anything. He says it was just a minute between when Dupere touched him and when he felt absolutely no pain and looked down at his arms and legs where the burns disappeared before his eyes.” The stranger, stopped to take a deep breath. His eyes were wide, his pupils dilated. He was spilling this story like it was hot metal that he had to release into the air before it melted him from the inside out.

  “You interviewed him?” Anna said.

  “I was on the recorder when the lead agent was interviewing him. He was really upset. He’s not eating. He thinks he has a demon or something now, ‘cause he thinks Beau Dupere is the Devil. The prisoner is on suicide watch, he says he wants to die instead of be controlled by that man’s demons.”

  Anna stared at the oval-faced man whose dark blue eyes darted to his left when the door opened. He quickly covered their conversation with a hastily constructed alternative.

  “Ah, okay, I understand. Well, I guess I’m just not your type,” he said.

  Anna thought it was obvious that he was improvising, but the two agents tapping down the stairs past them just snickered and continued on their way.

  “That’s it. That’s all I can say,” the informant said, in a whisper. Unwilling to risk any more, he turned and followed the other two employees down a flight and opened the door to enter the floor below.

  Anna didn’t want to follow him, so she went down another floor before trying the door, only to find access denied. She had to go down three more floors before she could find an open door and take the elevator the rest of the way down. The whole time, however, she was replaying what the informant had told her. She wondered how much of that story would get out to the press. She could see why the feds had said so little about the prisoner. He presented yet another story for which they had no grid.

  When she reached her car, her hands shook as she tried to fit the key into the ignition. Then she suddenly started to laugh. Apparently, she had found the grid in which that story made perfect sense to her.

  A Little Help?

  Sara monitored the news a lot more than she used to, before she first saw Beau Dupere in person. How ironic, that a man who ignores the press would be her motive to read papers and listen to the radio and TV. She was driving to meet with Claire Marquez, when she heard the story on the public radio station. The man Beau Dupere healed after he tried to burn down Beau’s house, had committed suicide while in federal custody. The Justice Department had promised to investigate how the, still unnamed, prisoner could have acquired the drug overdose he used to end his life.

  For Sara, the more infuriating question was why he would want to end it.

  Arriving at Claire’s house, Sara parked on the street and walked up the steep sidewalk to the front steps. Claire came out of the house, the heavy wooden screen door slamming behind her. She was full of smiles.

  “Sara,” she said, in a voice two octaves higher than normal. “Oh, it’s so good to see you, girl.”

  They hugged at the bottom step and laughed awkwardly, both deciding whether to address directly the reason they hadn’t seen each other. For Sara, this was the purpose of meeting with Claire. Claire could only guess. She had been preoccupied lately with breaking off her engagement and testing other churches.

  “How are you?” Sara said, offering an opening to that other unspoken topic, to allow Claire to vent as much as she needed.

  “I’m fine,” she said, shaking her head slowly. “I’m moving on and have no regrets.” Her slightly tempered smile hinted at a minor shadow of regret, her eyes a little more sunken, the lines in her face a bit more defined.

  Sara waited to allow for amendments to that initial assessment, then, when Claire said no more, she released something she had kept pent up for a while. “I’m glad for you. I didn’t think he was a great fit for you anyway.”

  Claire arched an eyebrow and turned her head a bit to the side. “Now you tell me. Where were you nine months ago?”

  Sara laughed, half-embarrassed and half-relieved. The relief came from the obvious freedom with which Claire could joke about her cancelled wedding.

  “Come on and sit on the porch swing,” Claire said, hooking her arm through Sara’s and leading her up the uneven wooden stairs. “Mom is watching a program inside and it’s such a beautiful day out here.”

  They thumped up the stairs and Sara looked at the front of the house. “How long are you gonna stay here?” she said, in a slightly lowered voice.

  “Oh, I signed a lease for the start of the month,” Claire said, smiling as if she was looking forward to moving out as much as Sara assumed. Claire was, of course, much older, and her living at home was as questionable as was Sara’s exodus from home.

  “Have you decided about college?” Claire said, taking one end of the porch swing, pulling a leg up and facing Sara at the other end.

  Sara still faced forward, revisiting her own hours of struggle and late night prayer sessions over that question. “I know I’m going to get more education. But I just think I need another kind of education right now.” She turned to look at Claire. “I’ve found something so different from everything I knew about God as a kid in church, that I have to stop and take a closer look.” She twisted around now and mirrored Claire, with one leg up on the dark brown painted swing. She dropped her sandal to the floor with a small clap sound.

  “So how are ya gonna do that?”

  “I’m signed up for a year of training up at Jack Williams’s church, their course in Miracles and Kingdom Living. It’s practically a full-time school, and I can work to stay alive while I find out more about what’s out there,” she paused, “or maybe what’s in here.” She tapped one finger to her chest.

  “That sounds cool. I think you made the right choice.” Claire pulled up her other leg and wrapped her arms around her knees. “So, you’re moving up there?”

  “No, I’m gonna make the long commute to the school and keep my apartment with Kim. She’s perfect for debriefing the stuff I’m gonna get up at the church. Also, I can afford to live here with her and I can work at the Parks and Rec Department through most of the year.”

  Claire tossed her head to get her hair to blow back out of her face, hair she had been growing out in anticipation of a wedding. Sara, on the other hand had cut her hair short for the lifeguard job. There, the bleach and the sun had done their work to raise a golden shine to her pixie cut. Claire envied Sara’s perfect little ears exposed by that hairstyle. But she turned her attention to more important topics that she had been saving.

  “What about your parents?” she said, knowing that no road signs were necessary for the change of direction. She had already guessed that this was the reason Sara was sitting on that shady porch with her, late on a Thursday.

  Sara took a deep breath and opened her soul. “I finally realized that I am really concerned about my dad. I had a hard time accepting it, but I have to admit that he seems to be lost. In all his confidence and outspokenness, he really seems lost, like he’s rooting for the bad guys.”

  “Bad guys?” Claire said, her mouth and eyes neutral, but her head tipped a bit.

  “I know that Beau Dupere is not perfect. I have no idea what’s going on with him and his wives, or whatever. But it has to be clear to everyone who has a bit of sense that, even if he’s got problems, it’s not Christian to try to kill him, or burn down his house.” Sara looked directly at Claire for a second and then continued. “And I was there when he was shot. It wasn’t fake. It was real, and his daughter brought him back to life. People just have to deal with that, ‘cause that’s real.”

  Claire nodded, glancing to her left at two white butterflies circling each other over her mom’s rose bushes. “Your dad’s not dealing with that?”

  Sara sighed like a weary old wom
an who had given too much and received too little in return. “He can’t go all the way and really even confront me on things like that, like he doesn’t really fully believe his side, you know, that it was all faked to improve Beau’s reputation.” She shook her head for a second and lowered her voice to a frustrated growl. “And what is my mom, doing? I know she doesn’t buy Dad’s denials and accusations, but she doesn’t say anything, like she’s afraid of what’ll happen if she says the truth.”

  Sara’s words held the atmosphere of the porch for a few more seconds, until Claire responded, though maybe it was not a direct reply to what Sara had said.

  “I’ve been impressed lately with how much people are really motivated by fear in everything they do. It’s like, if you could stop people and get them to tell the truth, without covering up, you could get them to trace each thing they do back to some fear of something.” Claire’s eyes strayed again, this time for more than a few seconds. She rested her chin on her arm, still wrapped around her knees, and looked at those roses again.

  “It took courage to break it off,” Sara said, knowing that Claire had been talking about her own engagement, as much as about Sara’s parents.

  Claire pulled her chin free of its resting place and looked squarely at Sara. “You know, part of what made it clear to me that Kyle wasn’t right for me, was the way he just stayed with your dad’s version of things, without even caring if it was true.” She gathered her composure, after hearing her own words accelerating and her voice expanding. “He’s smart, you know, that’s one of the things that got me at first, smart and really responsible. But how can a smart person not care that the guy he works for is trying to ruin somebody, and in the name of God?”

  Sara smiled a lopsided grin. “I should be insulted that you’re talking that way about my dad,” she said. “But that’s exactly what I’ve been thinking about him and his whole staff, and the pastors of the other churches . . . everyone.” She slowed herself, correcting her blanket indictment. “Well, not everyone. That’s the good news. Darryl left for the same reason as me. I also knew you would see the wrong in what they were doing.”

  Again Claire let Sara’s words hang in place between them, fading slowly in the rising breeze. Then she said, “Now it’s time to move on, to stop worrying about what other people are doing wrong. You have a whole lot of truth to discover, and you need to just focus on that.” Claire’s eyebrows stretched high, as she listened to herself, the wise counselor all of the sudden.

  Sara recognized the source of that surprised look. “I think that might be like a prophetic word for me, or something,” she said. “I gotta learn more about that stuff, but I think that’s what I hear in what you just said. Maybe even God speaking right through you.”

  Claire shook her head and snickered under her breath. “Well, no one ever confused anything I said with God’s voice before, that’s for sure.”

  Sara laughed. Then, suddenly serious, she said, “But, it’s time to move on now, remember?”

  Reality or TV?

  As the summer rolled toward its dry and fiery climax in the California hills, Beau Dupere enjoyed a few weeks of peace. Though he wouldn’t know it directly, no stories about him ran in the local or regional papers, and TV newscasters didn’t say his name for nearly a month.

  In the entertainment business, there is a line graph in the minds of the media gods, where fame has to arch downward to a certain level, but not below that, until it’s just the right time to place a new bet on that famous name and face. Producers want a star that’s hot but not volcanic. Someone judged that Beau had reached that point on his curve out of the limelight.

  Miranda received a call one Monday morning from Bill Hollis, a TV producer with a string of successful “reality” shows. She grimaced at his description of what he wanted, but knew that she had to tell Beau anyway. Later that morning, when Beau returned from a meeting at his local church, he asked Miranda about messages.

  “A TV producer called about featuring you in a reality series called The Healer,” Miranda said, managing to keep an editorial tone out of her voice.

  Beau was looking at a pile of mail. “Oh, yeah. Who was it?”

  “Bill Hollis,” Miranda said, consulting the note she had written.

  Beau stopped his sorting through the mail and looked at Miranda. But she could tell that he wasn’t really looking at her as he tried to think of something, or perhaps remember. “Bill Hollis?”

  “Yes. Is that someone you know?”

  “No,” Beau said. “But I’m supposed to call him back when he calls me.”

  “Supposed to?”

  “I heard that yesterday when I was sitting down on the beach.”

  Miranda knew Beau liked to pray while sitting on the slim belt of sand at the bottom of the cliff, below the house. He often received his instructions for the day while stretched out in a beach chair, his feet inches from the foamy edge of the cool waves.

  “I guess you have to call him, then,” Miranda said, this time leaking a bit of her disapproval.

  Beau laughed, looking at her for real this time. “You’re not a fan of reality TV?” he said, his teasing voice pogoing in mock incredulity from low to high and back again.

  Miranda smiled. “I guess you could tell that, huh?”

  “No surprise,” said Beau. His eyes said he appreciated her reservations, but his lips remained silent on the subject. “Go ahead and get him on the phone for me, please.”

  The next day, Beau and Justine met with Bill Hollis, along with his assistant, Raylynn, and the director for the proposed series, Chuck Maxwell. They sat in their living room, spread out on the couches and oversized chairs, the director scanning the room as if looking for camera angles.

  “This would be your show, all about you,” Hollis said, as if Beau were one of the ego-driven stars of his previous series, featuring prostitutes in one case and horse racing professionals in the other. “You would just do what you normally do. We would coordinate with your scheduler . . . ah . . .”

  “Miranda,” Justine said, providing the name for which Hollis was searching.

  “Exactly!” he said, as if Justine had deftly summed up the most important element of the show.

  Neither Beau nor Justine annoyed easily, so they weathered the shoptalk between the producer and director, as well as the exaggerated strokes to their vanity, and sideways comments about ways to fix up the house. Beau was confident that God had instructed him to cooperate with Bill Hollis until he received further prompting. This set him and Justine in a very cooperative mood, while waiting for some sign that they could cut and run back to their peaceful lives. The visitors picked up none of this nuance and the deal was turned over to the lawyers and agents.

  Beau instructed his lawyer to make sure that he and Justine could shut the thing down as soon as the production stopped serving God’s purpose. He didn’t say anything about money or even how much time it would take, just wanting to make sure he could call it off when he needed to, as if he was certain that such would be the outcome of the venture.

  Justine and he had seen situations like this before. They privately joked about God’s mastery of the bait and switch, bringing people into their lives who thought they were there to make money or something, when the purpose was really for them to meet Jesus and perhaps get healed.

  The first week of filming covered the last week of August, and would be boiled down to one show or two, about forty minutes of running time for each, allowing for commercials. The cooperation between the film crew and Beau’s schedule ran smoothly that first week, and it seemed as if a television program featuring professionally filmed healing miracles was going to join the mid-season lineup of shows. They filmed Beau on the beach during his quiet time with God, they filmed him eating at the kitchen table with Adam, Peter and Justine, and they filmed him driving to meetings with celebrities or local pastors, or both. They followed him through three healing meetings, including one in which a woman with advance MS
was totally healed and hopping up and down laughing hysterically by the end. At this stage, it truly seemed that God had instructed Beau to agree to the show because the show would demonstrate his loving power to heal.

  The second week, starting after Labor Day, was more stressful. Chuck Maxwell wanted to get more film of the family, “more intimate footage,” he said.

  “What do you mean by more intimate?” Miranda said, when Chuck pulled her aside on Wednesday morning.

  “You know, like how do they really live, what are they really like in private, that sorta stuff.”

  Miranda was waiting for Beau to finish a phone call to a friend in England. He had gone upstairs to get a clearer cell signal and she was left watching over the film crew. “You know what they’ve said about their limits for how much you can disrupt the rest of the family,” Miranda said, only edging her words slightly with the defensive metal that she was getting ready.

  When Beau appeared a few minutes later, Chuck tried a direct assault. “Hey, Beau, what do you say we schedule some filming for tonight, say the family settles down for the night, that kinda thing?”

  Beau looked at Miranda and knew what was coming, sensing the ground she had already covered regarding the proposed intrusion. “Now, Bill, you know what we said about keeping the rest of the folks in the house out of most of this. I think you’re looking at stepping over those boundaries.”

  Chuck saw his attempt batted away and changed his angle quicker than a cheetah in pursuit of an impala. “Oh, I just mean some sunset stuff. Maybe a kid kisses you good night and goes up the stairs, just some homey scenes like that. Of course, I wasn’t thinking of filming in any bedrooms or anything.”

  Nodding, Beau recognized the retreat and agreed to the adjusted request, fully aware that this would not be the last time he fought this particular battle. The next week brought on the next round.

  The family had taken a particular liking to Raylynn, who seemed the least calloused to their desires and needs. Though she hadn’t been there for much of the shooting, she appeared one night right at sunset for more of the domestic scenes. Chuck brought her in as his secret weapon, and potential infiltrator. Justine detected the smell of alcohol on Raylynn’s breath and instantly wondered what it was that the lanky thirty-year-old was trying to numb herself against.