by J. S. Bailey
“Maybe she was a drifter.”
Phil crossed his arms. “Someone finds the body of a young white female on their back porch; the cops are going to pull security footage from every building in a block’s radius to see who the geniuses were who dropped her off.” He blew out a sigh between pursed lips. “Randy, I know this isn’t any of my business, but did you know her personally?”
“No, and she only ever told me her first name: Trish.”
“Was she carrying any ID?”
Randy’s face lit up. “I didn’t think about that. She brought a purse and a little suitcase with her. I think she stuffed them under the bed.”
Both men turned and stared at the unmade bed in the corner, but neither seemed to have the desire to rummage around in the personal belongings of a dead woman. In the shadows beneath the bed, Bobby could make out the rectangular shape of the suitcase and a smaller item that was probably her purse.
He might as well put himself to good use since neither Randy nor Phil seemed to be jumping up to get anything done. “I’ll get them,” he said, and crossed the room in eight long strides. He got down on his hands and knees on the soft carpet and reached under the bed.
“But what if you leave finger—”
His hand closed around the handle of the purse. “Prints? Too late now.”
Bobby carried it and the suitcase back to the coffee table and plopped the latter down at the end furthest away from Trish’s body.
Randy and Phil watched in silence as Bobby turned the purse upside down and dumped its contents onto the table. Keys, leather wallet, lip balm, loose pennies, a tiny stapler emblazoned with the logo of the college Caleb Young attended. This woman had traveled light.
He unzipped the wallet.
“Are you sure you want to do that?” Phil asked.
He shrugged. “It beats standing around doing nothing while you two continue your little debate.”
Bobby felt his heart break when he saw Trish’s bright-eyed expression in her driver’s license photo. Nobody of such cheer should have been capable of spouting the hate-filled words he’d heard upon entering the house. “Her name is Patricia Louise Gunson,” he said.
Neither Randy nor Phil showed any hint of recognition in their eyes.
“She’s nineteen.”
Phil said a word that Bobby didn’t think should be spoken by someone who had just been praying, and he turned away from them.
“Where does she live?” Randy asked.
“Her address says Portland.” The city lay nearly two hundred miles north of Autumn Ridge, so Bobby guessed she’d recently been living elsewhere. He held up the stapler. “Maybe she’s a student at Autumn Ridge Community College. I could ask my roommate if he knows her.”
“Don’t do that. It would look suspicious.”
That was true enough. Once it was made known to the public that Miss Gunson had died, Caleb might phone a tip to the police if he remembered that Bobby asked about her before anyone knew she’d passed.
If Caleb didn’t crush him to a pulp first.
Bobby set the contents of the purse aside and moved on to the suitcase. He unzipped it with care, revealing a few rumpled outfits crammed inside without regard to order. He lifted them out, tried not to blush when he saw an assortment of flowery undergarments, and deciding he’d rather not put his hands on every single thing Patricia Louise Gunson had packed for her stay in Randy’s basement, dumped the remaining contents out just as he’d done with the purse.
The only item of note was a day planner with a black cover. He flipped through the pages. Most of them were blank.
He tossed the planner back into the suitcase.
“Well?” Phil asked.
“I still don’t know what you’re going to do with her.” Bobby had hoped that something in Trish’s effects would help him think of something, but he remained at a loss. “All I can say is call the police and tell them what happened. Maybe some of them will believe she was here for an exorcism.”
Randy and Phil exchanged solemn glances. “Some things aren’t meant to be shared with law enforcement,” Randy said.
Bobby couldn’t believe his stubbornness. “A girl is dead! I think that overrides anything about keeping secrets from the cops. Besides, priests don’t keep secrets about that stuff, do they?”
“I’m not a priest.”
“Okay. So what?” Bobby crossed his arms. Not doing something about Trish went against everything he’d ever stood for. “Are you just going to bury her somewhere and hope nobody ever notices she’s gone? Is that what you want to do?” His voice verged on the edge of hysteria, and he realized his eyes had filled with more tears he didn’t remember shedding. “She’ll end up being one of those cold cases they talk about on TV.” The Patricia Gunson Story, they’d call it. Young college girl following her dreams vanishes without a trace.
Randy rubbed his chin. “I should call Father Preston. Maybe he’ll—”
A shrill ringtone cut him off. Phil glanced dumbly at the pocket in his pajama pants for a moment before withdrawing an old flip phone. He glanced at the screen, furrowed his brow, and answered it. “Hello?”
Bobby could hear snatches of a frantic female voice on the other end of the line. Phil’s face paled and a crease appeared in his forehead. “Uh-huh.” A pause. “I don’t know; his phone must be dead. Believe it or not, I’m at his house right now. Here he is.” He held out the phone to Randy.
Randy took the phone from him but did not immediately hold it to his ear. “Phil, what is it?”
The blond man’s face was troubled. “It’s Lupe,” he said. “She says she just tried to kill herself.”
RANDY WISHED he’d had the time to deal with Trish before Lupe called. It pained him to leave her body alone and unattended in his basement, but right now the troubles of the living far outweighed those of the dead.
Bobby Roland, God bless him, drove Randy to Lupe’s apartment so Phil could go home and be with his sick daughter. Right now the kid was sitting out in his car so Randy and Lupe would be able to talk in private.
Lupe sat sideways on the couch with her knees drawn to her chest. Her eyelids were swollen and she kept dabbing at them with the sleeve of her violet pajama shirt. She had been abnormally reticent since he’d come in the door, and nothing he’d said so far had gotten her to open up.
“Lupe, you need to tell me what’s going on.”
She shook her head, her hair still damp from her bath. On the phone, she told him she’d sucked in bath water with every intention of drowning herself, but it had burned her lungs so badly she’d risen out of the tub like a flailing fish and spewed it all back up onto the bathroom rug.
She had neglected to tell him why she’d attempted such a thing.
He took her left hand in his palm and covered it with his other. Her skin gave off a slight warmth that fought off some of the iciness in his fingers. “Lupe.”
She lifted her head and met his gaze. The brown eyes that could light up with joy on a sunny day were twin pools of sorrow. “What?”
“It isn’t fair of me to spend so much time away from you. I knew when we started going to our Sunday lunches that I wouldn’t be able to be with you as often as I liked. I should have waited.”
Lupe frowned. “What do you mean, waited?”
“I should have had a replacement lined up before I asked you to lunch that first day.”
A faint smile. “You couldn’t have known that would have led to this.”
Randy forced down a knot that had formed in his throat. His mind filled with memories: Lupe walking hand in hand with him along the wooded trails behind the home in which he’d once lived; the two of them snuggled next to each other in the grass staring up at the night sky to find constellations and wondering if light years away a couple on another world was doing the same and staring straight back at them; a young woman with a troubled face sitting beside him in the church pew, looking as though she didn’t have a friend in the world.
The mo
ment he’d first laid eyes upon her, he’d had the sense that she, like him, had once been a victim of mankind’s penchant for selfishness, though he couldn’t quite put his finger on why he’d thought this. Perhaps it had been the haunted look in her eyes as she stared at the crucifix hanging above the altar, or maybe even the way she’d clasped her hands tightly together in front of her as if desperately trying to hold herself together.
Randy knew all too well the feeling of having no one in which to confide. He’d asked Lupe to lunch that day in the hope that his company would help cheer her up—and maybe, in time, he would open himself up to her and tell her it was possible to overcome that which had hurt her. He’d wanted her to know he would be her friend, if only she was willing to befriend him.
He’d had no idea that such a friendship would blossom into something far greater.
Randy squeezed her hand and pulled her closer to him. She leaned her head against his shoulder and sniffled.
He could feel her shaking.
“Does this have to do with the way things used to be?” he asked, remembering how she’d sobbed in his arms as she told him about the men she’d had no other choice but to lie with as a young teen.
She immediately jerked away from him, her eyes full of fear. “No. No. I can’t.”
“Lupe, I love you. If it’s about that, tell me. You know I’m not going to judge you.”
She cast her gaze downward. “I know, Randy. But I—I betrayed you. It was supposed to look like an accident. I didn’t want you to think . . .”
Betrayed? Randy knew that Lupe had not truly intended to kill herself this evening. If so, she would have chosen some other means of ending her life. Something must have made her depressed, and she’d inhaled the water in the peak of despair.
Betrayed . . .
Randy felt cold inside as he regarded her. “What did you do?”
“Your car. I didn’t want to. I really didn’t.” Tears streamed down her tan cheeks.
“You mean you cut the brake line on my car?”
She gave a frantic nod. “He said he’d kill me if I didn’t. He even had a gun, and he showed me the bullets inside so I’d know it was loaded.” She hugged her arms to her chest. “And he—he said he would kill me if I told you anything. So now I’m going to die anyway.”
Randy’s mind went numb. How could the sweet girl to whom he’d given his heart have become involved in such a thing? “I could have died.”
“You didn’t, though. God answered my prayers.”
Randy did his best to suppress a wave of anger even though every cell in his body yearned to jump up and find the monster who’d given Lupe such orders. “You mean to tell me someone forced you to vandalize my car?”
“Yes! But he told me to cut all of the brake lines, and I only cut one because I thought it wouldn’t be as bad that way. But that boy you talked about on the phone, he must have seen me do it and that’s why he warned you not to drive away.”
Randy had briefed her on what happened at the church when he’d called her earlier in the evening, leaving out the part about Bobby’s supposed premonition because he still wasn’t sure what to make of that. “Who told you to do it?” he asked, even though there was only one logical answer to that question.
“Who do you think?”
Randy immediately pictured a stooped old man pointing a gun at his chest, and his hand immediately went to his shoulder to rub the place where the bullets had entered him. “Why didn’t Graham do it himself?” Or, for that matter, why didn’t the old creep try to kill him face to face again? Forcing Lupe to carry out his bidding was the epitome of cowardice.
“I don’t know. Maybe he was afraid of being caught in the act. Better me than him, right? But he comes here sometimes. Other times he makes me go there.”
Randy’s anger started to rise again. Just how long had Lupe been in contact with Graham? “Where does he make you go?”
“I don’t know where it is. I meet him at the park or here, and he has someone blindfold me so I don’t get to see where we go.”
Randy felt his stomach turn. Graham had placed his own twist on the Servant safe house system that had been used for centuries. Once a victim was sufficiently rid of an afflicting spirit, he or she would be sent to a safe house to receive counseling and to be nursed back to health. In order to protect the location of the safe house, the victim would be willingly blindfolded during transportation, though more recently Phil would drive them to the safe house in a work van that lacked rear windows.
After Graham attempted to kill him last year, Randy instructed Phil Mason to find a new safe house and not tell any other former Servant its location just in case another traitor dwelled in their midst.
“Can you describe the place?” he asked. Maybe if she could provide enough details, he would be able to figure out where Graham had taken her so he could confront the man there himself.
She shrugged. “It’s a house. It has two floors and a basement, I think.”
“What about the outside?”
“I’ve never seen it. When they—he—takes the blindfold off, we’re usually in the kitchen or living room.”
“You said someone else puts the blindfold on.”
“Yes, but he isn’t there when Graham takes me into the house. I think he stays in the car.”
“Do you know who it is?”
“How should I know? I’ve never seen him, either.” She paused to wipe her eyes. “Most of the times I’ve been there, the drapes have been closed. But one day I peeked through them when Graham wasn’t looking. I saw the mountains. Lots of trees. I’m not sure how far away from here it is.”
Her description of the outdoor scenery could have fit any number of locations in the area. “How long does it take you to get there?”
“Sometimes thirty minutes, sometimes an hour. I think maybe they take different routes so I can’t guess where they’re taking me. But it’s always the same place. The walls in the living room are dark purple so it sucks all the light out of the room. The furniture is plain. There’s a TV and some books on a shelf. There’s even a crucifix on the wall.” She shivered.
The latter touch sounded just like the Graham he’d thought he’d known—not the one who had shot him. “And what is it you do when you’re there?”
Her expression darkened. “Mostly we talk. He asks me about my childhood and tells me about his like he’s trying to be my friend. Did you know that when he was a boy, his dog was running around the yard with his shoe in his mouth like it was a toy? He said it ran right out into the street and got hit by a car, and it died still hanging onto the shoe. He said he went and burned the pair because he couldn’t bring himself to put them on again.”
Randy shook his head. He had never heard that tale, and he wondered why Graham would have bothered to share it with her.
“What else?” he asked.
“Sometimes he talks about his wife and daughters. He’ll mention that drug store he used to run. He’ll talk about people he knew years ago who died before I was born and some friend named Nate he met at a nursing home. Normal things, you know? Only I know he isn’t doing it to be my friend. There’s something else he isn’t telling me, like there’s this huge gap in the middle of everything else where he hid all the ugliness inside him.”
Her words chilled him. Graham couldn’t have hidden the blackness for that long. He had been a Servant, too. God never would have chosen him to do his will if he had harbored evil in his soul.
Judas, a voice whispered inside his head.
Well, there was that. But if Graham, like Judas, had fallen away from God after previously being devoted to him, when had it happened? And why?
Randy had wondered those things for the past year, and he suspected he would never learn the answer to either of those questions.
“Has he ever laid a hand on you?” he asked, praying to God Graham hadn’t.
She shook her head. “No, but he will now that I’ve told you this. And then
he’ll kill you.”
Randy stood up, feeling the urge to take action but not knowing which action to take. Graham had mentally violated the woman he loved. Who knew what else they had talked about in the house with the purple walls? He could be slowly poisoning her soul, causing her to sink back into the depths of despair from which Randy had fought so hard to rescue her.
And he knew very well why Graham had chosen to do so: he knew it would hurt Randy more than a physical wound ever could.
Every vein in his body burned with a righteous rage. Feeling somewhat hypocritical, he said, “I’m going to call the police. Maybe they can arrest Graham the next time he comes to pick you up.”
Lupe’s face turned gray. “He said he would kill both of us if I did that.”
“You said he’ll kill us anyway. And if you want to live so badly, why did you inhale all that water in the bathtub?”
“I—I don’t want Graham to kill me.”
His voice broke. “But you can kill yourself?”
Her expression tightened. She made no reply.
Randy understood now. Lupe feared dying perhaps more than anything else, but if it was going to happen she would prefer to do it herself rather than suffer at the hands of another who might torture her first. “Promise me you’ll never do that again. Okay?”
“Okay,” she whispered.
“We’re going to get through this together. I don’t know how, but we will.” He paused. “And how is Graham going to know the police have been called?”
She shrugged and drew her knees closer to her chest. “I don’t know. I’m afraid. I’m just afraid.”
Randy couldn’t blame her because fear had settled into his heart, too.
DESPITE THE fact that Bobby had long ago grown accustomed to nocturnal hours, the stressful events of the evening were taking their toll on him. At first he leaned his head back and closed his eyes to pass the time while Randy consoled his girlfriend, but before he knew it, he was slouched over the center cup holders onto the passenger seat using his hands as a pillow and the darkness as a blanket.
Tired as he was, his mind wouldn’t shut off. He kept thinking about things. Bad things. Like the girl named Trish. And the woman named Lupe who’d tried to kill herself.