Freedom's Child: A Novel

by Jax Miller

  Between finding the letter from Rebekah Paul to Freedom with Mimi at the nursing home and the brief visit with Violet, the disappearance of Rebekah comes front and center, the mysterious link that holds it all together. But Freedom was still in Oregon when that happened the other day. And it didn’t take long to learn the reputation of the Third-Day Adventists. Captain Banks may have taken him off active duty, but Mattley can’t just ignore this whole bizarre situation. Moreover, he can’t not help the woman and forget the fact that there are men after her who burned down her entire apartment complex.

  “Why, I almost forgot.” The twenty-something-year-old waitress squeezes Reddi-wip topping on his pie. “You just passin’ through? Ain’t ever seen yer face around here.”

  “Something like that,” Mattley answers as he fakes the enjoyment of his pie. He can’t pretend she’s not as cute as a button, long brunette hair pulled back, bright blue eyes, and a full set of lips. With no one around except the cooks behind the kitchen window, the waitress sits in the booth opposite Mattley and removes her shoes halfway.

  “It’s as dead as doornails ’round here this past week.”

  “Seems so.” The cop side of Mattley kicks in. “I passed a property this afternoon with these huge black gates with signs on the outside that said HELL AWAITS YOU and all kinds of weird things. I tried to peek through the gates and trees and saw a bunch of little white houses. What’s that all about?”

  The waitress laughs as she applies lipstick in the reflection of the jukebox, a shade too red for her face. “That’s the old Paul farm, the Church of the Third-Day Adventists.” The two of them look up when Sheriff Don Mannix walks in; the jingles of the door ring. “Speak udda debble.”

  “Heya, Shirley,” he says as he removes his Stetson hat and takes a seat at the table right across from Mattley. “Pumpkin pie and coffee, darlin’.” As the waitress leaves, he steals a newspaper from the table behind him. He shakes his head and tsks.

  “The news nowadays can depress any man,” he says, but it doesn’t stop the sheriff from flipping through the pages. There’s just something about this guy that Mattley doesn’t like, but he can’t put his finger on what.

  “So,” Mattley changes the subject. “Shirley was just filling me in about this church I passed on my way through here this afternoon.”

  “I see.” The sheriff raises an eyebrow.

  “Being as I might be here a few days, perhaps I can attend a Mass there.”

  “It ain’t open to the public, I’m afraid,” the sheriff says as he suddenly pretends to be nose-deep interested in the paper.

  “Since when is a church not open to the public?”

  The sheriff slams the newspaper on the table. “What the hell, you some kind of reporter or something?”

  Mattley puts his hands up. The song comes to an end. You can hear cockroaches fucking if you listen hard enough. “Was just curious, is all.”

  “We don’t need no outsiders nosin’ around here with curiosity.” Shirley serves the sheriff his pumpkin pie and cup of joe. “Thank ya, darlin’,” he says as he immerses himself back in the news.

  “Here’s your check.” She taps her finger on the bill in front of Mattley. “Sir.”

  “I guess I can take a hint.” Mattley tosses a ten on the table and leaves the diner.

  By the highway, an eighteen-wheeler labeled REDINDELLY’S PRODUCE with Virginia plates thunders down the road as Mattley returns to his car and reads the check:

  Corrupt sheriff, part of cult. If you’re here about Rebekah, start with Michelle Campbell. Xo Shirley.

  But Mattley waits in his car to see the sheriff’s next move.

  A car pulls up beside him in the dirt lot. Mattley recognizes him from the Internet after playing around with research about the Third-Day Adventists. Virgil nods to Mattley with a smile, and he nods back. A moment later, the sheriff comes out of the diner and gets into Virgil’s car, making sure that Mattley sees his dirty looks before they leave.

  But Mattley will give them a head start. He isn’t stupid enough to trail them on these country roads; he’d be spotted in no time.

  He types “Michelle Campbell” into his phone to see what the Internet will bring up. And for the next half hour, Mattley will dig deeper into the bizarre history of Goshen: the Paul farm, the disappearing girls…

  About forty minutes after leaving the Bluegrass, Mason and Peter enter the Goshen Police Department, a one-room jail that dates back to the 1800s with a pillory and whipping post on the small patch of grass in front of the building, a reminder that Goshen held fast to outdated diligence and iron-fisted penalties to criminals and sinners alike, as far as modern law would allow.

  A dais faces them, a long desk as soon as they walk in, where a uniformed officer sits: face beet red, beads of sweat around his temples. He sits up and rearranges papers on his desk at a feverish rate, pounds his hand on the wood, and calls attention to a second officer unseen behind a partial wall to the right where they might keep the rare criminal in one of the two cells.

  From one of the cells comes the second officer. Mason recognizes him right away: Darian Cooke.

  Back in high school, Darian Cooke was the six-foot-seven football jock who would laugh from his keg of a belly in the back row of biology with invitations for sexual exploration under his breath for every girl in class who dared to raise her hand. God, how Mason hated him. The typical popular jockstrap in a varsity letter jacket who’d torture Mason about being the son of a reverend. Always stabbing the backs of his ears with pencils, spitballs to the back of the neck. And here he is, a cop. Of course he is. As if his head wasn’t big enough seven years ago.

  “Well, well, well. Mason Paul. Holy shit,” Darian calls out as he tucks his light blue shirt into his trousers. “What brings a celebrity lawyer like you back to this neck of the woods?”

  “Hey, Darian, long time no see.” Mason tries to stomach his presence and pretend to like the guy. He goes to shake his hand; Darian wipes his on the side of his pants before taking Mason’s.

  His blond hair is already thinning, his freckles turned to red splotches. “Sorry to hear about your sister. She was a good girl.”

  “You talk about her like she’s dead,” Peter says.

  Darian Cooke gives him what southerners call the stank-eye, an expression to appropriately reflect his arrogance. As he eyeballs the wheelchair, he asks Mason, “So what can I do you for, anyway?”

  “Just doing the best I can to find my kid sister, is all,” Mason says, his smile not genuine. “Was hoping you guys can help me out, anything on the investigation. Preferably the police report.”

  “Psh, you’re better off asking your folks. They’re the ones who gone’n filed it.”

  “I know, I know,” he lies. “I just wanted to have a look for it myself.”

  “What, you insinuatin’ that us small-time folk don’t know how to do our jobs?” Darian suddenly gets defensive.

  “No, I’m not insinuating that at all. Just covering my tracks, you know.”

  “No, I don’t know,” he says, his voice getting louder. “Now I suggest you two be on your way and don’t come back unless you have a warrant, you understand? A big-shot lawyer oughtta know that.”

  “C’mon, Darian,” Mason pleads. “You and me, we go a long way back. Can’t you just throw me a bone, here?”

  “ ’Fraid not. And I know Sheriff Mannix doesn’t have a likin’ for you neither, so don’t let the door hit you in the ass on yer way out.” He joins the second officer behind the desk.

  Mason goes to storm out, a mutter under his breath about cousin-marrying douchebags from Goshen. He curses, resents being here after years of convincing himself that he’d never come back to this hole of a hometown. The faster he can find Rebekah, the faster he can get out of this place. A place where wheat fields as far as the eye can see represent how far away they are from a big, bad world that had Mason’s name written all over it when he was young. A place so backward that
the pursuit of justice became its own version of injustice, as seen in the occasional lynch mob that seeks their own righteousness by back-alley vigilantism like beatings and chasings out of town. A place where God’s grace became a weapon of suppression and acquiescence used by men in authority, big fish in small ponds who have nothing better to do than sit at home, boost their own egos, and jerk off to their own power trips. Darian Cooke is no exception.

  Mason stops at the door when he realizes Peter’s not by his side. He looks back at him, but he refuses to leave. “Peter, what are you doing?” Mason hisses. Peter says nothing until Mason goes to him.

  “I smell pussy,” Peter shouts.

  “What did you just say?” asks Darian with a narrowed brow, marching back from the dais to look into Peter’s eyes.

  Peter jolts his head forward to show Darian he won’t back down. “I said, I. Smell. Motherfucking. Pussy.”

  “He’s right.” Mason jumps to his defense. “Is that why you were sweating when you were coming back from the cell?” He skips to where the cage behind the wall is, only to see a young woman leaning against the wall, shirt unbuttoned and skirt crooked, clearly drunk out of her skull. Peter’s right. It does smell like sex. “Oh, just you wait until I call my friend, the state attorney general. He’s going to have a field day with this.” Mason feels satisfied with this version of revenge.

  “Darian, just give him what he wants,” frets the second officer, whose badge reads DIX.

  “Turn around,” Darian demands of Mason.

  “Or what? You going to shoot me, Darian?” Mason puts his face close to Darian’s, fighting the urge to stand on his toes to better do so. “Go ahead and shoot me if you’re so tough.”

  Darian grabs his upper arm with force and spins Mason around; Peter tries to kick Darian in the shins from his chair, but fails. All four men yell at one another, the scene getting out of control. Peter spits in Dix’s face. Darian slaps handcuffs on Mason’s wrists. Dix manually pushes Peter’s chair out of the building. “Get the fuck out of here.” He rolls him out. “Consider it a favor.”

  “What, no parting gift?” Peter yells back.

  Dix pulls a Taser from his belt. “You want a parting gift?”

  “I’d think twice before Tasering a retarded man in a metal wheelchair,” Peter shouts.

  Dix has to think about this for a moment. Feeling like a bigger idiot for not realizing it first, he spits in Peter’s face. “There’s your fucking parting gift, you gimp.”

  Peter whizzes to the corner of the cobblestone street under an old-fashioned gaslight and calls Freedom.

  “Where are you?” she asks.

  “Stuck in Goshen. Mason just got arrested by some bully cops for sniffing around.”

  “Jesus Chr—” she starts on the other end. “Sniffing around what?”

  “Trying to find Rebekah. It brought us knee-deep into this ATF investigation with skinheads and gunrunning. Looks like the Pauls are involved in some pretty heavy shit.”

  “Like what?”

  “I’ll explain it all when I see you. I need to follow up on something right now. Where are you?”

  “I’m at a motel in Louisville. I’ll think of something to get him out. What about you? Want me to grab you?”

  “No, I’m going to take a cab over to someone who might be able to help. Where you staying?”

  “Some Motel 6 in the Highlands section.”

  Peter hears a motorcycle revving in the background on her end of the conversation. “There’s a club right next door to where I’m staying, called the Phoenix. Meet there at midnight?”

  “I’ll see you then. Just get Mason out of there.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  “Cops here are all fucking insane. Don’t trust them.”

  “I hadn’t planned on it.” They hang up.

  Peter, who shivers in the cold, looks through his phone at the local yellow pages. He calls a cab first. “And where are you going?”

  “I’ll know once you’re here,” he tells the dispatcher. When he hangs up he looks up the phone number and address of Ger Custis, the father of Carol Paul. The clock says 9:30, should be there by 10:00, as long as the taxi dispatcher heeds his many requests for a wheelchair-accessible transport this time. He sends a text to Mason with a hope in hell that he gets it:

  Meet me at the Phoenix at 12. Still fighting the good fight on this end. We’ll find her together.

  —

  Back inside the Goshen police station, Dix helps Darian Cooke drag an already bloodied Mason into the cell with the girl passed out drunk. Darian handcuffs him to the bars of the cage and pulls his head back by his hair.

  “You’re not going to get away with this, Darian. You can bet your ass on that,” says Mason with a grin full of blood.

  The two officers empty his pockets. They mock Mason, with his expensive-looking monogrammed cuff links and his fountain pens, and scatter his business cards on the floor. Darian and Dix take turns hitting Mason. Knuckles are turned raw; adrenal glands detonate. Mason hears a rib or two crack, the occasional sock to the gut that takes his breath away. But he doesn’t beg them to stop. He doesn’t make a noise in pain. He won’t give them the satisfaction of seeing him suffer, they can forget about it. And after a little while of this, what feels like hours of abuse, the officers stop what they’re doing when Sheriff Don Mannix walks into the station. At his side, Virgil Paul.

  “What in the hell is going on here?” Virgil demands.

  Thank God, Mason thinks to himself as he looks up through eyes blurred with tears. He can barely make out his father. “Dad, you can’t let these animals do this to me.” The men un-cuff him and Mason falls to the floor. On his hip, he uses the bars to pull himself forward toward Sheriff Mannix, who squats to become eye level with Mason.

  “These boys wouldn’t have done this ’less you gave ’em a damn good reason to.”

  “Don, you know me.”

  “I don’t know you.” The words linger for a few seconds as Mason tries to catch his breath. The sheriff rises while Darian Cooke and Dix leave the cell. “What are we charging him with, anyway?”

  “Blackmail,” answers Darian. “That’s illegal, ain’t it?”

  “I don’t know, Officer Cooke,” answers the sheriff. “Is it?” But Cooke doesn’t answer. “We can hold him here for the next few days if we have to. Now get back to your paperwork.” Don and the officers disappear.

  Virgil stares down at his son on the floor. “This is God’s doing, for your blatant defiance against the Lord.”

  Even through the walls of tears glassing over his eyes, Mason sees that his father’s wrinkles have paved deeper into his face in the past six years. An inkling of hope sparks in his chest, the hope that after all this time, his father will change his heart, will help Mason, see him as the son that Mason always wanted to be. But it takes all of three seconds to see that this isn’t about to happen. Mason sees it in the twisting of his lips, the growing blackness in his eyes that represents his father’s soul, if there’s even one left: his father is even more adamant in his beliefs, more firm-footed in his corrupted delusions of martyrdom than ever before. His inkling of hope turns into this hardening rage. “I just want to find my sister,” he says, the rage boiling behind his face. “I want to know what kind of bullshit you had her involved in, with the guns. What the hell was she doing?”

  Virgil locks the door to the cell with a sneer. “Boy, where are you getting these wild ideas from?”

  “From the ATF, that’s who.” A wave of concern sweeps across Virgil’s face, and Mason sees him try to subdue it. Mason already regrets telling him.

  “You let God handle this family’s affairs,” says his father. He tosses the keys up in the air and catches them before walking away. “Till then, you can just sit here and mull it over.” He and Don Mannix leave together.

  Mason tries not to imagine Darian Cooke’s semen on the floor he’s sitting on. It hurts him to breathe; every inflation of
his lungs makes it feel like his ribs are stretching and ready to snap inside of him like twigs being stepped on. It takes all that he has to collect his belongings from the ground.

  He stuffs everything back into his coat and feels the phone in his back pocket. Idiots forgot that. He reads Peter’s text to meet him at the Phoenix. Wish I could, buddy. He takes a seat on the bench bolted to the wall, next to the girl, still passed out. He takes his pen and writes on one of the business cards:

  Contact me soon. I will help you.

  He slips the business card in the pocket of her shirt.

  My name is Freedom and I wander through the dark in my son’s home, the son I haven’t seen in twenty years. Thank you, Peter, the one man I can count on to get Mason’s address for me. I learned a time or two in the past, always losing my house keys in a drunken state, that a good pair of earrings can pick almost any lock if you know what you’re doing. The alarm system was easy: white rubber buttons with black numbers, faded from being pressed too many times. The numbers were 1, 6, 9, and 0. Mason’s birthday is June 19, so I tried 0619. But that didn’t work. I entered his birthday backward: 9160. Bingo.

  In the kitchen, I turn on a lamp that hangs over the center island. In the middle is a glass of merlot. His girlfriend Violet, who I’m always seeing on his Facebook page must have been here; there’s lipstick on the rim. The light through the glass of merlot decorates the countertop with red beams, and I wonder if maybe the man who discovered the laser was just a guy with some wine and a lightbulb. I walk into the dark.

  I see the suitcases full of clothes on his bed. Vacation? I see a backpack. I empty it. I figure I might need some clothes if we’re meeting at a club tonight. Sorry, Violet. Mason’s pillows smell like Head & Shoulders shampoo. Back in the fridge, I see he likes hummus and healthy snacks. And Heineken, just like his good-for-nothing father. On the door, a note from Violet that reads