A Coin for Charon

by Dallas Mullican

  Once at the park, the boys played on the monkey bars while Max fought to retain equilibrium. Mercifully, after a time, the feeling passed and the world settled. He felt so tired. His legs, like wet noodles, dared him to stand.

  “Cody, Austin, come over here a second.” Max patted his knee.

  They took their time, but made their way to him. “Boys, I want you to know how much I love you. What’s going on with your mom and me has nothing to do with you.”

  “It’s okay,” said Cody. “We like it at Aunt Laura’s. We get to play with Marcy and Jimmy.”

  “They have a swimming pool. We can swim…well, when it gets warm,” said Austin.

  “Can we live at Aunt Laura’s forever?” asked Cody. “The puppies need me to take care of them.”

  “I like it ’cause I don’t get cold at night like at home,” said Austin, smiling.

  “Yeah, and they get more channels—the movie ones.” Cody looked down and tapped his sneaker in the dirt. “Theirs never gets cut off either.”

  Max’s heart swelled within his chest. Anger, hurt, self-pity, self-loathing all whirled within him. “Let’s head back, okay.”

  He did not need to say it twice. The boys dashed off, laughing as they went. Max watched them go. They did not need him. Maggie did not need him. It hurt to admit, but he felt some relief in the realization as well. They would be fine without him.

  He followed them back and said his goodbyes, receiving a superficial hug from each boy. Austin lingered for a second, as if somehow sensing more finality in his words.

  Max waited for the boys to disappear into the house. “Thanks for letting me see them.”

  Maggie looked at him with complete sincerity. “I promise you, I will never keep your sons from you. And I promise not to make this any harder than it has to be. Us, I mean.”

  “Promise?”

  “Promise,” she replied.

  So many promises broken. He promised to take care of her and to provide for her. They vowed to stay together for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health. The only vow they would keep in the end…until death do us part.

  * * *

  Max drove toward home along County Road 15. He loved this country. He grew up here, would die here—sooner than hoped, but still. Never any desire to travel or live elsewhere tempted him. His ambitions had always revolved around a home and family right here.

  He loved the smell of fresh pine needles in the spring and dry, brittle oak leaves in the fall. Max even liked the unpredictable weather. Warm and raining one day, cold with snow flurries the next, no two days ever the same. He celebrated hunting and Crimson Tide football in the autumn and winter, and fishing, camping and Braves baseball in the spring and summer. What could be better?

  He thought becoming an electrician like his father would ensure a good job, providing enough money to keep his family comfortable. He possessed no desire for great wealth, no dreams of becoming someone important. A decent house and a loving family. Enough for any man.

  When the housing bubble burst, the dream went the way of so many fortunes and retirement plans. No one built and no one bought. No new houses going up meant electricians, carpenters, and plumbers circled the ailing job market in a holding pattern, waiting for the day buyers and investors regained confidence.

  Eighteen months and still waiting. Living off unemployment checks did not cut it. Not enough money to keep the power on even if they ate Ramen noodles every day. Worse, the checks ran out months ago, and the noodles were running low as well.

  Worst of all, however, was the wound to his pride. Max was an excellent electrician and a hard worker. In ten years with the company, he used three total sick days. First in the door, last out, he loved his job.

  Now no one wanted him—not employers, not his wife, not his kids. Everything he had believed about himself, he now questioned. Maybe he was selfish and lazy. Perhaps it took losing his job to reveal the real Max.

  He drove on, lost in torturous thought. The voice on the radio droned on about the Seraphim Killer, which seemed to be all they talked about anymore. The media sure could milk a story. Max stopped listening, his attention fixed on the scenes passing by the window, until up ahead, Unity Baptist Church came into view. A sad smile inched across his face. He and Maggie had married in that church. They took the boys there on Easter and at Christmas. Without realizing it, he pulled into the parking lot.

  Comfort. He needed something, anything to relieve the tension, anxiety, and sense of loss. Max did not consider himself very devout, but in the South, religious indoctrination came by osmosis. He believed in God and Jesus, he guessed, but never saw the need to overdo it. He prayed sometimes, but never got any answers, or maybe he asked the wrong questions. Perhaps God had gone deaf, or simply grown too uninterested to listen.

  He stepped into the church, a small building that could seat a hundred on a Sunday—a rare occurrence these days. Max lurched down the aisle, remembering that walk over ten years ago. A day filled with terror and exhilaration, feeling stiff in his tuxedo, watching Maggie approach, his heart pounding.

  He sat in a pew near the middle of the hall and stared at the picturesque scene painted beyond the choir loft. A waterfall cascaded down into a pool surrounded by a lush meadow. He tried to put himself into the mural. He wanted to feel the cool water on his dangling feet, the sun warm on his face, God looking down.

  “Max?” said a voice from behind. “Max Bannon, well I’ll be. I haven’t seen you in here since Easter.” The man stood with one hand resting on the pew, a welcoming smile on his face. Max could not recall ever seeing Reverend Mayer so casual. It somewhat spoiled the effect. Not dressed in his customary suit and tie, the t-shirt and jeans he wore made him look more Wal-Mart shopper than church pastor.

  “Hi Reverend, I was in the area and felt a need to stop in.”

  The pastor’s brow furled. “Everything all right?”

  No sense in playing coy; he needed counseling, comforting. Maggie wouldn’t, maybe a pastor could. “I have cancer.”

  Concern rose in Reverend Mayer’s eyes. He tugged at the collar of his shirt and sighed. “You know, Max, cancer isn’t the death sentence it used to be. Treatment has come so far. Four months ago, doctors diagnosed Mary Chilton with breast cancer, and now there’s no sign of it.”

  “I’ve got stage four brain cancer. Prognosis is pretty bad.”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry Max. How are Maggie and the kids holding up?”

  Max’s head fell, his stare locked onto the dark, gray carpet. “Maggie took the kids. They’re staying with her sister.” Defeat laced his every word.

  Reverend Mayer moved in, taking a seat beside Max. “Max, look at me. I want you to listen to me now. I know things seem desperate. Life hasn’t turned out like you hoped or planned, but God can’t be surprised. You are exactly where he wants you to be.”

  “Is God so cruel?” said Max with a sardonic laugh.

  “Cruel? No, not at all. I know saying we don’t understand God’s plan and we just have to trust may ring hollow right now, but it’s true.” He eyed Max and shook his head, as if mentally waving away a line of thought. “I’m not going to sit here and preach inspiring verses to you. You are headed to a better place when you die, but that isn’t what you need to know right now.” He leaned back, gazing up at the vaulted ceiling. “You have a great opportunity before you, Max.”

  Max shot the pastor a confused glance.

  “No, really. Throughout the Bible, God sent his angels with messages for those he called for his purposes. He still does. They come to do his work on Earth. They guide us. There’s a spiritual realm existing all around us. As you move closer to the veil separating life from death, your ability to feel and see that realm increases. I’ve sat at too many bedsides, heard too many things the dying hear and see, to discount it. Open your eyes, Max. Open your heart. You can be a great instrument for God’s purpose if you let his will guide you. Your life’s purpose is revealed as you approach dea
th. Isn’t it a wonderful thought?”

  Max listened, trying to commit the words to belief. A hope his life, or his death, might mean something. He wanted it to be true. Perhaps something he said or did in these last days would change things. If he could be remembered well by Maggie, by his boys. If they held a fond memory of him, if they could be proud of him, death would not be so bad.

  “Will you pray with me? I want you to talk to God in your own heart and ask for his hand to touch you. Beg for his angels to come to you and offer you purpose, and with that purpose…peace.”

  Max closed his eyes and prayed as he had never prayed before. In that moment, he thought he understood a tiny fraction of what Jesus felt praying in the Garden of Gethsemane, begging for the cup to pass from him. Max felt the weight of his own cross. When he lifted his head, Reverend Mayer no longer sat beside him.

  Max peered around the hall, but the pastor was nowhere in sight. He stood and noticed Emily, the church’s custodian, vacuuming the carpet at the rear of the building. Funny, he did not hear her before.

  “Hi, Emily, good to see you again,” he said, approaching her.

  “Oh, hi ya Max. Good to see you, too.” A thin brunette, Emily maintained the church’s interior while her husband Vernon tended the grounds. A poor couple with three children, the church had given them jobs and provided a single-wide mobile home to live in.

  “Did you see where Reverend Mayer went? I wanted to say goodbye.”

  Emily looked at him, puzzled. “Sorry Max, the Reverend ain’t here. He’s down near Montgomery preaching a revival.”

  “But…I just…She must be mistaken. He started to object, but Emily’s baffled expression made him hold his tongue.

  Max stepped from the building. Outside, the sun burned through gray clouds, its rays shining almost singularly on one of the stained glass windows. Max gazed on the multitude of shimmering colors. It depicted an angel with wings stretched wide, surrounded in a glow and hovering in the air, a trumpet held to pursed lips.

  CHAPTER

  10

  “Good news, bad news,” said Spence, plopping a stack of papers onto Marlowe’s desk. “Bad news—no luck on the bolt gun, it appears to be an older non-penetrating model. After the mad cow scare, most farms and slaughterhouses switched to non-penetrating guns to avoid brain matter contaminating the meat. Thousands sold, no way to track it down.”

  With hundreds of man-hours spent chasing the bolt gun lead, Marlowe had lost count of how many agencies statewide were looking into it. Since they had nothing to show for it, the lieutenant would verge on blowing a gasket. Even so, tracking all potential evidence remained essential. They never knew when the slightest clue might strike pay dirt.

  “And the good?” asked Marlowe.

  “We got a hit on the MO search. Two, actually. A girl—junkie/prostitute on Westside, and a man—financial investor, both with those weird coins left on the eyes. We found a small cross on the man’s body.”

  “Sounds like our guy. The girl?”

  “No good info on her. Name’s Nikki Baker, no known address. She has a rap sheet— possession and solicitation. A vagrant found the body in an alley and alerted a passing uniform. Vagrant didn’t see anything. Well, he did, but JFK coming out of a UFO shaped like a fire-hydrant probably isn’t helpful.”

  “Not so much. Have some uniforms canvass the area door to door. We’ll come in behind them to check it out. What about the man?”

  “Matthew Young, twenty-nine, some kind of bigwig investor with one of the firms downtown. A road crew found his body near the abandoned warehouse out at the Furnaces. His car was parked at the site with the key still in the ignition.”

  “I assume we have his home and work addresses?”

  Spence nodded.

  “Good. We’ll start with him.”

  * * *

  Matthew Young worked at Spectrum Financial Services on the 22nd floor of the Wells Fargo Building. Spence, not a fan of elevators, airplanes, or anything more than two feet off the ground, normally took the stairs. Yet not even he wanted to walk up twenty-two floors.

  Wells Fargo boasted a glass elevator. Riders could gaze down on the entire building as they rode. No gazing for Spence, he kept his eyes locked onto the chrome doors, humming nervously to himself. Marlowe occasionally kicked his foot against the glass, making Spence jump every time. He spooked him whenever they used an elevator, and it never grew old.

  They exited the elevator and approached the receptionist desk where a pretty, young woman sat talking on the phone. Her hands acted out the dialogue, gesturing and waving.

  “No way, he didn’t,” she said, obviously not a business call. “What did she do?”

  Marlowe reached across the counter and pressed the lever on the cradle, ending the call.

  “Hey, what the…she said.

  Spence held up his badge.

  “Oh, sorry.” She tried to mask her embarrassment. “Welcome to—”

  “Save it, Sweetie, we know where we are. Point us to the person in charge,” said Marlowe.

  “Uh…sure. One second.” She punched numbers on the keypad. “Mr. Bolton? Two police officers are here to see you. Yes sir.” She hung up. “Mr. Bolton will be right out, if you would follow me.”

  She led them to a conference room situated in a corner of the building, three walls enclosed in glass windows and overlooking downtown. Spacious, even elegant. For a second, Marlowe considered that he chose the wrong line of work. Only for a second; he hated being cooped up inside all day. No amount of money seemed worth it.

  Portraits of the three senior partners adorned the conference room wall, wearing smug expressions only the ridiculously wealthy could muster. A 52-inch flat screen inset into the opposite wall played an infomercial advertising services the firm provided. Spence stayed as far from the windows as possible.

  “Can I get you officers anything?” asked the receptionist.

  “Detectives. No thanks, we’re good,” said Marlowe.

  Spence watched the girl’s backside as she sashayed from the room, a short plaid skirt, pink and green, swishing back and forth.

  “You’re a real cretin, you know? She can’t be more than twenty.” Marlowe shook his head in disbelief.

  “How old they have to be?”

  Marlowe huffed. “Nice place. I wonder how Mr. Young went from penthouse to coins on the eyes.

  “Yeah, we still have no idea how Seraphim is choosing his victims. A low-rent prostitute, an out of work accountant, and this guy. I don’t see an obvious connection.”

  “We have squat on the killer, so the victims are the best bet. Seraphim is too precise to grab people at random. No, he has a plan, a grand mission. We have to determine what it is.”

  Spence leaned to the side, keeping the receptionist in view two seconds longer. “And how do we do that?”

  “The more victims, the more clues, a pattern will form. We just have to spot it.”

  “Connect the dots, huh? With dead bodies? Let me know when you’re going to tell McCann your method. I don’t want to be anywhere around.”

  “Yep. Unfortunate, but to figure out what Seraphim is all about, we need to know who he is and what he wants. He isn’t going to invite us over for polite conversation, so the only way to get to know him is through his work.”

  “Detectives,” said a man entering the room. Tall, handsome, sixtyish, sporting a well-tailored Italian suit, charcoal-gray, he struck a commanding presence. “I’m Clyde Bolton, Managing Partner here at Spectrum. I assume you’re here about Matthew.”

  “Yes, what can you tell us about him?” asked Marlowe.

  “Terrible tragedy. Matthew was one of our best investors…or so we thought.”

  Marlowe cocked an eyebrow. “Meaning?”

  “Let’s say some of his dealings proved not to be completely kosher. We only discovered the problems after he…well, left the firm. Matthew owed a large sum of money for gambling debts and attempted to cover them with some ris
ky, quick-turnaround investments using his clients’ funds.”

  “Uh oh, not good,” said Spence.

  “To put it mildly. When those investments fell through, he lost a great deal of his clients’ money, as well as all of his own. His situation became dire, as you can imagine. He still owed on the gambling debts, and now he would be let go from the firm, without any money of his own, and most probably facing jail time.” Mr. Bolton gazed out the window and smoothed the lapels on his coat.”

  “I’m guessing he bolted before you could confront him,” said Marlowe.

  “He did. His secretary, Sandra, said he seemed near to tears. She heard him slam about in his office before lumbering out and rushing past her. He didn’t say a word, just left. That was the last we saw of him. We informed the investors, the SEC, and the ASC. A few days later, we learned of his murder. Very sad, he once had a promising career.”

  “We’d like to look around his office,” said Marlowe.

  Mr. Bolton gestured to the door. “I’ll have Sandra show you the way. Technicians performed a thorough search of his computer and discovered his shady practices. They also found multiple transfers to an offshore account, suggesting sizeable payments to his bookies.”

  “We can trace those if need be, but it will take some time. Not an immediate necessity.”

  Spence and Marlowe went through Young’s office, rifling through drawers and cabinets, but turned up nothing useful. Maybe they would have better luck at his home.

  As they drove I-65 South toward Young’s home address, repaving crews slowed their progress.

  “No wonder it takes years to complete these projects. Look at ’em, standing around smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee.” Spence pointed with righteous indignation. “This is how my hard-earned money is spent? I’m tempted to write my congressman.”

  “Spoken like a true disenchanted tax payer.”