The List

by Robert Whitlow

  “That’s not surprising.”

  “I made a copy of the sheet and arranged for the original to reach LaRochette. Then, all I wanted to do was leave the inn. I went out the window, down the fire escape, and drove most of the night back to Charlotte. When I woke up, I talked with your mother, found out what had happened, and flew up as soon as I could.”

  “What would the others think if they knew LaRochette took the money from the two accounts?”

  “Frankly, I don’t know that they would care.”

  Jo closed her eyes for a few seconds. “Oh yes. You didn’t tell me what happened at LaRochette’s house the other night. Was it Friday night? It seems a lot longer ago.”

  “OK. He has a huge place on a large tract of land near Debordeau. Roget was also there. We talked about offshore banking, and LaRochette lectured me about the importance of unity and devotion to the cause. After my neck was in the noose at the meeting, he told me it had been an attempt to warn me, but it would have taken a bigger sign to get my attention. Let’s see….” He paused. “There was one other thing that happened.” Suddenly, Renny’s hands grew clammy, and he felt sick to his stomach.

  Jo, who had been listening through half-closed eyelids, pushed herself up in the bed and opened her eyes all the way. “What’s wrong? You look as pale as I do.”

  Renny continued slowly, “LaRochette keeps the List in his library. After we discussed bank issues, he talked to me about becoming custodian like my father and told me the book itself can be a source of power to help people.”

  “That’s not right, Renny.”

  “I’m afraid that’s not all. At his suggestion, I put my hand on the place where I signed and released the power of the List toward someone special to me. You came to mind.”

  “When was this?” Jo asked sharply.

  “About eleven, I guess.”

  “What happened when you did this?”

  “I saw your face in a frame, and it disappeared in a flash of light. I didn’t tell LaRochette who I’d thought about, but he said they had been touched by the power of the List.”

  Jo closed her eyes. “Renny, that’s when I first felt sick.”

  Renny clenched his fists. “But how, but what—I didn’t want you to get sick. That wasn’t in my mind.”

  Jo looked at the ceiling. “You didn’t know what was going on, but there could be a connection, a curse.”

  Renny stood. “If I thought I’d done something to hurt you, if I did something to cause this”—he waved his hand toward the stark room— “I’d ask God to let it fall on me!”

  “No,” Jo said quickly. “That’s not the answer. Slow down a second.” She closed her eyes again for a moment. “OK. Please come here.”

  “I am here,” Renny said, his eyes downcast.

  “No, come right beside the bed.”

  “But—”

  “Just come here and take my hand.”

  Renny cradled her left hand gently in his right one. Her pale hand was almost as white as the sterile glove that covered his.

  With eyes closed, Jo said, “Father, I ask you to release Renny and me from every evil thing connected with the List. I forgive Renny for anything he did without understanding the consequences.”

  Renny leaned over and buried his face in the sheets.

  Jo continued, “Please heal me and do not let evil triumph over me or Renny. In Jesus’ name, amen.”

  Renny was able to choke out an amen.

  Jo withdrew her hand from his and stroked his head. “I love you, Renny. No matter what’s happened or will happen, I love you.”

  There was a knock at the door. Renny jumped up and took a step back, wiping his eyes with his sleeve.

  Jo said, “Come in.”

  It was Anne. “Sorry to interrupt, but you need a rest.”

  Jo nodded. Renny gave her a long look and left the room.

  At the sight of Renny’s face, Carol asked, “Are you OK?”

  “Better than I deserve,” he said grimly.

  Anne opened the door to the isolation unit. “Carol, we need to let Jo rest for a couple of hours. Come back later. I’ll promise you a longer visit then.”

  “I’m sorry,” Renny said as they went down in the elevator, “I took almost all the time.”

  “Don’t apologize. I think your presence will help get her well as much as anything else.”

  Renny looked away. If she only knew.

  He was silent on the trip back to the house. As they pulled into the driveway, he said, “I’ll stay here when you go back to the hospital. I want you to have as much time with Jo as you can, and I’d rather be here than in the waiting area.”

  “OK. Make yourself at home.”

  Inside, she showed him a guest bedroom on the second floor. It was directly over Jo’s room.

  “You can stay here. If you need anything, let me know.”

  “Thanks.” Renny shut the door and put his suitcase on the bed. Taking off his shoes to avoid making noise, he started pacing back and forth across the room. He quoted Psalm 23, but it didn’t have the power of the previous night. He worried, fretted, analyzed. Nothing happened. He felt he was under a huge brass bowl and nothing could go up or come down. He stared at the ceiling, longing to break through the plaster into the heavens, but his prayers and thoughts didn’t go any higher than the top of his head.

  Opening the door, he heard Carol leaving for the hospital. He went downstairs to Jo’s room. Leaning against the doorframe, he said, “God, please let her come back here.” A Bible sat on her nightstand. He picked it up and went into the living room. Sitting on the sofa, he prayed, “What do I need to do to make this right?”

  Then, in time-honored—if theologically questionable—fashion, he let the Bible fall open on his lap and read the first words his eyes brought into focus. It was a passage about Paul’s ministry in Ephesus:

  Many of those who believed now came and openly confessed their evil deeds. A number who had practiced sorcery brought their scrolls together and burned them publicly. When they calculated the value of the scrolls, the total came to fifty thousand drachmas.

  He closed the book. Good theology or not, he had his answer. Like the evil scrolls of Ephesus, the List must be destroyed. Then and only then would Jo be set free from the curse and healed.

  Finding a sheet of paper in the kitchen, he wrote:

  Dear Jo and Carol,

  There is some unfinished business of repentance for me in Georgetown. I would rather be here with you, but I must obey what God has told me to do.

  Please pray for me, and I will be praying for you.

  Love,

  Renny

  He put the note on the kitchen table. Calling USAirways, he booked a flight to Detroit that left in two hours. There was no connecting flight to Charlotte until late the next afternoon.

  “What about Charleston?” he asked the ticketing agent.

  “South Carolina?”

  Renny had forgotten there was any other. “Yes.”

  “There is a late-night flight into Charleston that arrives at midnight.”

  “I’ll take it.”

  28

  The devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him

  all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. ‘All this I will

  give you,’ he said, ‘if you will bow down and worship me.’

  MATTHEW 4:8–9, NIV

  Renny knew what he had to do, but he wasn’t sure how to do it. He couldn’t exactly give Desmond LaRochette a call. “Desmond, old boy. It’s Renny. No hard feelings about the other night. Listen, I need to borrow the List so I can burn it. When would be a convenient time to pick it up?”

  He was in the air from Detroit to Charleston when he hit on a plan. Desperate problems required desperate solutions, and though desperate, at least his plan was simple.

  Upon landing in Charleston, he checked into a hotel. Exhausted from emotional strain, he fell asleep and didn’t wake up until almost nine.
He quickly called his office. Mr. Heywood was unavailable, so he left a message that the medical emergency requiring his attention had not yet been resolved. His work calendar was unraveling, and he told his secretary to schedule everything she could for the following week. Two matters could not be postponed, and he dictated a memo over the phone requesting help from one of the other associates in the banking law section of the firm.

  That taken care of, he tried to call Mama A. She didn’t answer, so he copied her number onto a slip of paper and put it in his pocket. He would try to reach her later. He also dialed Carol’s number, but again there was no answer. Finally, he phoned Mrs. Stokes. “Good morning. It’s Renny.”

  “Good morning. How’s Jo?”

  “They’re giving her transfusions, and she seems a little better.”

  “I know she’s in a fight for her life.”

  “I’m going to help take care of that,” Renny said.

  “I know you’re praying, too.”

  “Not just that. There is something practical I can do to help.”

  “Are you giving blood?”

  Renny regretted the call. Mrs. Stokes could be frustratingly persistent in a gracious sort of way. He decided to get to the point. “Mrs. Stokes, are curses real? You know, where someone does something and it causes problems for someone else.”

  Mrs. Stokes didn’t answer immediately. “Yes, that sort of thing can happen, but not so much here as in other parts of the world. I’ve seen the effects myself.”

  “And you’re sure it can be a real thing?”

  “Yes. Do you think this is a part of what is happening with Jo?”

  “It could be. I’ve got to go. Bye.”

  Renny hung up. He’d gotten the information he needed. Mrs. Stokes was not one to exaggerate or fabricate. If she believed in curses, it was enough to validate what he had decided himself.

  On her end, the old lady hung up the receiver and gave Brandy a pat on the head.

  “Your master may be into something he knows nothing about, girl. I think it’s time I took a break from food. These kinds of battles require fasting as well as prayer.”

  After checking out of the hotel, Renny caught a taxi back to the airport and rented a four-wheel-drive Jeep. With all the plane tickets, hotel rooms, and other expenses, he was getting close to the maximum limit on his credit card.

  It was noon when he reached Georgetown. He loved the Low Country, but driving down Front Street, he decided Georgetown would not be on his itinerary for a long time. Going north on Highway 17, he passed the entrance to LaRochette’s estate and slowed down, looking for any unpaved roads that appeared to head in the direction of the beach. Spotting one, Renny put the vehicle in four-wheel drive and turned off the highway. After three or four hundred yards, the road reached a dead end at the edge of a marsh. He drove back to the highway and resumed his search. Several hundred yards farther along the highway he saw another turnoff. This road skirted the edge of the marsh and after many twists and turns through scrubby pines ended at the base of a huge sand dune.

  Renny scrambled up the dune. On the other side was the Atlantic. It was high tide, and the waves were running up to a spot about one hundred feet from the base of the sandy hill. From his vantage point, he looked up and down the deserted beach for a place where he could drive onto the sand, but the row of high, steep dunes stretched unbroken on each side.

  He walked south on the hard sand near the water’s edge for ten minutes before the top of LaRochette’s house came into view. Leaving the open beach, he crept slowly through the dune grass, and as he drew closer to the house, he could hear a lawn mower over the sound of the surf. An older man was cutting a small fringe of grass that encircled the house. Crouching down, he inched forward until he could see the corner of the house and the room where he had spent the night. There was a sturdy-looking trellis covered with purple morning glories extending from the sand up the side of the house.

  The silver Mercedes was parked in front, but LaRochette was not in sight. Renny made a mental picture of the location of every bush and tree, then backed slowly away until only the roofline was visible.

  Returning to town, he went to a hardware store and bought everything he might need: small flashlight, screwdriver, hammer, razor-blade cutter, and thin, strong rope. Stopping at a medical supply store, he purchased some surgical gloves like the ones he’d worn in Michigan. At a gas station, he added a cheap cigarette lighter with a Confederate flag printed on its side to his equipment—an appropriate implement to burn a Civil War document. Now there was nothing to do but wait until dark.

  He tried to reach Carol, but there was still no answer. To pass the time, he went to the small public library near the center of town and found a secluded corner. There was a section on local history, and he found a book about early settlers to the area. Both of his great-great-grandfathers were briefly mentioned. Although he lived in Charleston, J. F. Jacobson had bought a plantation south of Georgetown, and Amos Candler owned a huge tract of land ten miles to the north. He wondered if they had ever met.

  He read until the library closed at 5:00. After eating a fast-food supper, he made his first surveillance drive past the Inlet Waterway Restaurant. There was no sign of the silver Mercedes. Good. He hoped LaRochette would not arrive before dark. He checked at 7:00, 7:30, and 8:00. Still no sign of his quarry. At 9:00 he was coming out of the dead-end street when the silver car turned in and flashed past him. In the interior he saw two figures.

  It was a go.

  Turning off the main highway onto the sandy road, he was sweating in spite of the best efforts of the Jeep’s air conditioner. By the time he parked at the base of the sand dune, packed all his gear in a plastic bag, and climbed up the hill, it was completely dark. The moon cast a narrow sliver of light. Walking up the beach, he realized how everything had fallen into place. He knew where the List was kept in the house, the location of the key for the secretary, the skylight in the bedroom, the route from the bedroom to the library, the trelliswork up the side of the house.

  Moving from bush to bush, he slowly approached the house. Near the edge of the yard he heard a twig snap and froze. Straining every nerve he peered into the darkness. Another snap was followed by the sound of someone or something passing through the grass. Renny turned, preparing to run toward the beach when a medium-sized doe looked cautiously around a live oak tree to his right. There were hundreds of deer along the coast, and one of their trails apparently skirted LaRochette’s property.

  Renny watched the deer walk casually across the yard and vanish into the darkness. There was no other sign of activity in or around the darkened house. Renny was not going to need his flashlight; there was an outside light shining brightly at the corner above the trellis. Another blessing.

  He moved along the edge of the yard just outside the range of the light until he was perpendicular to the corner of the house, then ran to the trellis. The crisscrossed woodwork was well built, which didn’t surprise Renny; nothing but the best for Desmond LaRochette. Putting on the gloves, he slipped his belt through the drawstring of the plastic bag and put his weight on the trellis. It held, and he climbed carefully up.

  At close range the glare from the outside light was almost blinding. There was a gap between the top of the trellis and the edge of the roof. Renny grabbed the roof and inched his feet up to the top of the woodwork. He would have to swing his leg up and hope his body followed. Holding his breath, he pushed off. As his foot came up toward the roof, it hit the side of the light, which gave a loud pop and went out.

  Hoisting himself onto the eaves, Renny lay still, panting, and counted to ten. Nothing. Taking his flashlight from the bag, he shined it in the direction of the skylight. It was ten feet up and to his left. He carefully slid across the shingles until he could hold on to the casing that surrounded it. He had hoped to unscrew the cover, but it was fastened to its frame with metal rivets. He knew LaRochette would have an alarm system but hoped the bedroom skylight, as a
permanent fixture, was not wired. Shining his light around the edge, he saw no sign of a wire or cable connecting to an alarm system.

  Rolling over onto his back, he took the cutter, a razor blade set in a metal handle, and set it to cut a half-inch deep. Pressing down he began a cut at the top right corner of the Plexiglas skylight. It took more force than he anticipated, but after several attempts, the blade penetrated the hard plastic, and he laboriously opened a two-foot-long seam down the side of the window.

  Sweat was pouring down his face and, after completing one side of the window, he paused for a moment’s rest. He was wiping his forehead when suddenly he was caught in the glare of two blinding lights. He covered his eyes with his forearm.

  “Don’t move!” a deep voice yelled. “I am pointing a gun at your head, and if you make a sudden move I will shoot.”

  Renny froze. “I don’t have a gun. I’m unarmed.”

  “I don’t know that. The bag by your side. Push it away from your body.”

  Renny pushed the bag away. When he did, a screwdriver rolled out and fell off the edge of the roof.

  “Watch it! Another move like that could get you killed!”

  A second voice said, “Move slowly down the roof until you reach the edge. Stay on your back.”

  Renny did as he was told.

  “Now roll over slowly and come down the trellis. I assume that’s how you climbed up, so you should know what to do.”

  Renny’s foot almost slipped off the top of the wooden structure, but he caught himself and in less than a minute was on the ground facing two very large men who continued to shine their flashlights directly in his face.

  “Put your hands on your head, step back, and turn and face the wall.”

  One of the men expertly frisked him. “He’s clean.”

  “Lie down in the sand.”

  Renny lay on his back, but one of the men nudged him with his foot. “No, on your face. You need some true grit between your teeth.”