“I agree. And we will. We both love her more than anything. We will do that. I will do it. I promise.”
“But this past weekend you just showed up and changed everything and took her back early and—”
“I’m sorry about that. That was a . . . It was a bad time . . . I won’t do that again.”
“We need a legally binding custody or shared-time agreement—as I think they call it now—filed with and approved by the court.”
She nods. “I know. I know you have every right to not trust me. So . . . here’s what I was thinking.”
She removes a file folder from the booth beside her and hands it to me.
“Here’s a signed and notarized affidavit saying you are her father and me agreeing to everything I’ve just said. You can have Anna draw up the actual custody agreement and file it, but this will serve as some insurance for you in the meantime. And to show even more good faith, if we’re going to do a week at a time, yours can start tonight. I’ve packed her up and brought all her things with us so she can go back with you now. I’ll leave for Atlanta tonight. I’ll go up, get settled in, and be ready for her by the end of the week.”
She looks at Johanna. “You’re excited about going home with Daddy tonight, aren’t you?”
Johanna nods but continues to concentrate on her coloring.
“Why?” I ask. “Why the change? Why are you doing all this?”
“Because,” she says, “if anything ever happens to me, I don’t want my parents getting her.”
Chapter Thirty-three
When Johanna and I get home, I find Tommy and Michelle and Anna on our back porch looking at the moon reflecting on Julia and drinking wine.
Johanna is asleep, her head on my shoulder, as I carry her in.
I haven’t been able to call Anna because my phone died. Her eyes widen. “Wow. Either it went wildly better than I ever could’ve imagined or you finally snapped, killed Susan, and took Johanna.”
“Thankfully the former.”
“Oh, John,” she says. “That makes me so happy. I just hope it will last.”
“It will. I’ll explain later.
“We’re so happy for you, John,” Tommy says.
“Hope you don’t mind that we’re here,” Michelle says. “It’s the only way I could get him to leave for a little while.”
“Of course not. I’m glad y’all are. Let me put her down. I’ll be right back.”
A short while later, when I return to the back porch from putting Johanna down and checking on Taylor, Tommy is crying.
“When Mom and Dad died, I swore to myself and God I would always protect and take care of Shane,” he says. “I’ve always been so protective over him.”
“Overprotective,” Michelle says.
He smiles through his tears. “Yes. Overprotective. It’s funny . . . I really didn’t want him going into the army. Especially the Rangers, but . . . well, Dad had been in the army. Always wanted us to go in. Shane told him he was going to do it before Dad died. That’s the only reason I agreed to it, the only reason I supported it. And he was so good at it. So strong and fast and tough. An ideal soldier. Still, I worried about him every single day. Prayed for him every single night. I thought if anything ever happened to him, at least it would be while he was doing what he wanted to do, what he had promised Dad he would. But this? A stupid swimming accident. I . . . I can’t . . . I’m not . . . This isn’t how it’s supposed to be. What a waste. What a senseless, tragic waste. I just . . . can’t . . .”
Michelle stands and steps over to him, sitting on the arm of the old wooden chair, leaning over to hold him.
As she does, he breaks down and begins to sob.
In another moment, we are all weeping together.
“It’s . . . so—” he says between sobs and snorts “—senseless, it—I haven’t told anyone this . . . not even Michelle—it . . . has me . . . questioning God.”
Anna and I move over to where they are. I put a hand on Tommy’s shoulder while she puts her arm around Michelle.
“That’s . . . the . . . real reason . . . I’m spending so much . . . time at the river. I don’t know what . . . else to do. I’m . . . certainly in no shape to . . . minister to someone else.”
We are all silent. It’s a poignant moment, the tension of which is broken when the old wooden chair breaks and they fall to the ground.
Neither of them are hurt and both begin to laugh, their faces a disconnect of tearful eyes and smiling mouths.
“You ever question God?” Anna asks.
We have just finished making love and are in our dark room lying on our bed, her head on my chest.
“Not in moments like these,” I say.
“I’m serious.”
“My whole life. My faith or practice or whatever it is . . . is just a series of questions.”
“Have you ever lost faith?”
“Not like you mean,” I say. “Not like Tommy meant, but only because I don’t have that kind of faith.”
“What kind is that?”
“I don’t know . . . It’s complicated. But basically it comes down to belief. I think people who think they lose their faith actually just lose their belief in certain things. Or they begin to question certain things they used to believe. In some cases, the belief is all they had, so once it’s gone, there’s nothing else. In other cases, getting the belief out of the way introduces them to what runs far deeper. But . . . I could be wrong—about all of it. I’m still drunk on you, your love, your body, our lovemaking.”
“I feel so bad for him,” she says.
“Me too. And not just him. Michelle is trying to be strong for him, but she’s struggling too. I’ll tell you who else is . . . Megan. She’s in a very bad way.”
“Harder to feel bad for the person who may have killed him.”
“I understand, but . . .”
“I know. I know. Compassion isn’t just for those who deserve it.”
“Compassion is just putting yourself in her place. If she did it, she may not have meant to. Or maybe she did. Maybe she’s an insecure, overwrought, overemotional teenage girl who got rejected and acted rashly and did something she wishes she could now take back.”
“But she can’t.”
“No,” I say. “She can’t. Whether she did it or had anything to do with it or not. But I don’t think she did anything purposefully. And maybe nothing at all. Still most likely an accidental drowning.”
“So very much suffering in the world,” she says.
“Most of it self-inflicted,” I say. “But not all. Not nearly all.”
Taylor makes a sleeping snorting sound over the monitor on Anna’s bedside table.
“Wickedness and suffering and pain and monsters who rape and kill and crucify young girls and throw them in the river,” Anna says. “And we’ve brought two tiny, sweet, precious girls into that world.”
“And we’ll do all we can to protect them,” I say.
“But there’s a limit to what we can do,” she says.
“There is. And I hate it. But I suspect both Johanna and Taylor are going to introduce us to all sorts of limits we have—most of them we aren’t even aware of yet.”
Chapter Thirty-four
Some eighty miles away, in a bed and bedroom of their own, Samantha Michaels and Daniel Davis also lie naked—Sam on her back, Daniel on his side next to her, rubbing the scars where her breasts used to be.
Sam’s already small body looks even more slight in the absence of breasts, which when added to her too-pale skin, blond hair, and light blue eyes gives her the appearance of fading away.
Too plain to be pretty, too small and straight to be womanly, too boyish to be sexy—is what most men and some women might say about her, but to Daniel Davis she is absolute perfection, the woman of his dreams, the only woman in the world so far as he’s concerned.
“So tell me, Doc,” she says. “What’s the deal with this particular sicko?”
“No great
mystery in one sense,” he says. “Greatest mystery of all in another.”
“Let’s hear it.”
“I’d rather just trace the outline of your scars and kiss your neck.”
“You can do both. You’ve done it before.”
She’s so in love with him, so enjoys the gentle caress of his fingertips on her skin. Hard to fathom now how she could have suspected him of being a serial killer when she first met him.
In her defense, serial killers are often quiet, shy, bookish, religious types, but God, she couldn’t’ve been more wrong.
“Somewhere during his development, probably pretty early on, his concepts and constructs of sexuality and religion and suffering became intertwined in the darkest and most sadistic ways. Perhaps his particular form of neglect and abandonment and abuse was particularly sexual and religious. Perhaps it wasn’t. Perhaps he arrived with an inability to form bonds with other humans. Perhaps his attempts at bonding were met with torture—emotional, psycho-sexual-religious torture. Maybe it included none of that and those components are only in the dark horrors inside his head, stored with the fantasies fueling his triggers, signatures, and trophies.”
“I’m assuming that’s the no great mystery part,” she says, her voice thick and hoarse.
“Are you getting turned on again?” he asks.
“You know I love it when you talk like that to me,” she says.
“About sexual sadism?” he asks, laughing.
“I love the way your mind works. Love your knowledge and wisdom. Love how tenderly you touch me when you’re talking about such brutal things.”
“Does that mean round two is about to commence?” he asks.
“Just as soon as you tell me about the greatest mystery of all.”
“That of human evil,” he says. “No matter what happened to him as a child, no matter what sick, disgusting, horrific shit was done to him, there are thousands of people on the planet who have gone through far worse who have never intentionally harmed another human being in any way. Why does he? Why does he go to such lengths to do it? It’s not unlike why is it that every child molester was molested but not everyone who was molested becomes a child molester?”
Her necklace still smells of her.
Of her soap and perfume, of her skin, of her fear. Of her blood.
He holds the tiny cord up above his upturned face so that the teardrop-shaped rose quartz hovers just above his flared nostrils.
The smell makes the bulge in his pants grow, stiffen, tighten.
He needs release. Needs to be one with her again.
Unzipping his jeans, he begins to rub roughly his erection. Pawing awkwardly at it.
Offer your bodies as living sacrifices. This is true worship.
With my body I thee worship.
Making this connection with her, this reconnection, is the only thing with the slightest chance of calming him right now—now after the desecration, after they had profaned his sacred sacrifice.
It wasn’t just a desecration. It was an abomination of desolation. A sacrilege.
But when ye shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing where it ought not, then let them that be in Judaea flee to the mountains.
His offerings were between him and God. Private. Holy. Hidden. The truest, most sincere sacrifice is the one that nobody sees. Only God.
Take heed that ye do not your righteous acts before men, to be seen of them, otherwise ye have no reward of your Father which is in heaven. When thou doest your righteous acts, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth, That thine acts may be in secret, and thy Father which seeth in secret himself shall reward thee openly.
Is that what this is? Is this the beginning of him being rewarded openly? No. God wouldn’t use such base and ignorant men to reward him. This is the work of the enemy, trying to destroy and humiliate him before he can finish his race and win his reward.
No one had ever before found one of his offerings. No one had known of his existence until now. Now they know. Now they’ll be looking. Searching. Hunting. Hunting for him.
So Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many.
They didn’t understand. How could they?
His third foster mom had warned him. Hide who you are. Keep secret what you do.
He was good at keeping secrets. He had never told what was done to him, what he was made to do—with and to his sister.
He can still see her pale, undeveloped, nude little body face down on foster dad number two’s huge crucifix. Handing him the smaller crucifix, telling him what to do with it. The man’s stubbled, sandpaper-rough face rubbing his as he whispered in his ear with whiskey-foul breath.
My son, do not reject the discipline of the Lord or loathe his reproof, for whom the Lord loves he reproves, even as a father corrects the son in whom he delights. The body is many members. Children obey your parents. Make of your bodies a living sacrifice.
The beatings. The rapes. The torture. The humiliations. The orders. The way he eventually obeyed everyone. He remembers and relives them all.
For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth.
His sister has long since been free. How long before he will be, before his offerings will be found acceptable in the sight of God and he can join her in the true freedom of forgiveness and fellowship.
Well done, thou good and perfect servant, enter into the joy prepared for you before the foundation of the world was ever laid.
Lowering the necklace, he takes the teardrop rose quartz in his mouth, tears of his own filling his eyes as sucks on it until he achieves release.
Tension gone, temporarily satiated, he is overcome with sadness. Now when he tries to smell the necklace it will only smell like his saliva.
Need another. Another sacrifice. Another sacrament to take with him to relive his work once it is done.
Chapter Thirty-five
The next morning, bone-weary and rawboned, Tommy and I drive up through Dothan and Eufaula to Columbus to meet with Shane’s friends and fellow Rangers.
They are not what I expect.
Diverse. Friendly. Funny. Kind. Caring.
All but one are far smaller and more immature than I imagined they would be, their as-yet-to-fill-out bodies swallowed up by their too-big uniforms. In many, many ways they are what they look like—children dressed up as soldiers.
Of the six boys who meet us at what was Shane’s favorite place to eat, two are Hispanic, two are black, and two are white. Of the white boys, one is gay and one is muscular and macho and monosyllabic.
We meet them at a Southern soul food joint on Victory Drive just a couple of miles from base.
The place, Sweet Willy’s Soul Food Station, is inside an old converted service station, the big bay doors and certain tires and tools still here. Its slogan is Fuel for the Soul.
All around the building and across the street are pawn shops, title brokers, and check-cashing and payday loan places.
The area, like much of Columbus, is run-down to the point of being nearly in ruins and in need of revitalization.
The eight of us sit at a table for ten—two places set for fallen and missing comrades, Shane and a boy from Texas named Carl who died in an Airborne accident.
A self-conscious young African-American woman takes our drink order, and Tommy begins to get the stories of the boys he doesn’t know. He’d met the others at the infantry graduation and the turning blue ceremony, but not the two white guys.
“Well, I’m Jayson and I’m the gay one,” one of them says.
His voice is deep and resonant and has a professional broadcasting quality to it.
“You ever done any radio work?” I say.
“A little. But I want to be the artist whose song is being played, not the DJ playing the song,” he says.
“He gonna be the first openly gay country music star,” Kahleel, one of the black guys, says.
“Thi
nk Luke Bryan beat him to it,” Rashard, the other black guy, adds.
“I said openly gay.”
Tommy turns to the other white guy. “I don’t think we’ve met.”
“Joshua Darden, sir,” he says.
“He the buttoned-up badass one,” Kahleel says.
“Nice to meet you both. Thank you all for coming. This really means a lot to me.”
Our waitress returns with our drinks, which includes beer for all the boys—including Shane and Carl, and shots to toast them with.
Sweet Willy’s, like a lot of joints around the base, serves alcohol to boys in uniform regardless of their age, asserting if you’re old enough to serve your country, you’re old enough to drink.
“To Shane and Carl,” Joshua Darden says.
Everyone raises a glass—including the waitress who has brought one for herself—and toasts Shane and Carl.
“To Shane and Carl,” everyone says in unison.
Tommy and I toast with sweet tea—me because I’m a recovering alcoholic, him because he’s a teetotaling youth pastor—but all the boys and the waitress do a shot and a beer chaser.
As they do, I see a look pass between the waitress and Jayson that I can’t quite figure out.
“Both were in the process of making fine soldiers,” Joshua says, “but Shane was the best.”
“You mean next to you,” Orlando, one of the Hispanic boys, says.
Joshua smiles.
“Shane was the only one who could keep up with Josh,” Honor, the other Hispanic boy, says. “Only one who gave him any competition at all.”
Joshua nods and lifts his glass in the direction of the empty chair reserved for Shane.
“Still can’t believe he’s gone, man,” Kahleel says. “Fuckin’ . . . hell . . . Now my ass cryin’ like a little bitch.”
Tommy nods and puts his arm around the young man as tears begin to stream down his cheeks.
Blood Oath: a John Jordan Mystery Book 11 (John Jordan Mysteries) Page 13