Sooner Fled

by David L Thornburg

  Sooner Fled

  Oak Valley Secrets Book 1

  David L. Thornburg

  Copyright © 2019 David L. Thornburg

  All rights reserved.

  DEDICATION

  To my mom and dad, who pastored churches as I grew up. Few people enjoy love and respect both inside and outside their families, but they do.

  Cover by Rebecacovers

  Additional branding and advertising material by Goatrain

  (goatcommish@gmail.com)

  All the Thornburgs, who each contributed in special ways: Jonathan, Tara, Stephen, Emelia, Nathaniel, and Riley.

  And Kelly. None of this would be possible without you.

  Contents

  Blessed are the Hidden

  Blessed are the Seekers

  Blessed are the Pretenders

  Blessed are the Sleepers

  Blessed are the Returned

  Thank you

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Also available

  Bonus Chapter

  Chapter 1

  Blessed are the Hidden

  It’s hard to conduct a funeral service for someone you don’t know, especially on the first day in town. I looked around at the small group of unenthusiastic old people gathered at the grave. They didn’t look like they were expecting much.

  I glanced down at the Bible in my hand. The worn black leather still gave off a whiff of Detroit air pollution, but it disappeared quickly in the clear Oklahoma air.

  “My Father’s house has many mansions. If it were not so, I would have told you.” The youngest person in the group by thirty years was not a mourner, but the secretary for the Oak Valley Community Church. Stephanie was the one who met me at the church door this morning with my marching orders. It had been a short night. In fact, it was about one in the morning when the unmarked FBI car parked in front of the parsonage, and the agent unlocked the door to let me in.

  Stephanie said the funeral would start in half an hour, and she hopped in the passenger seat of the car. “You’ll never find it on your own. It’s outside of town.”

  “God comforts us, so that we may comfort those who need it.”

  The widow cleared her throat. She didn’t seem very upset. More like impatient. She kept exchanging surreptitious looks with a septuagenarian in a fine, classically tailored suit. The same breeze that caused her veil to flutter lifted the silk tie from his chest.

  “Frank Clemson wasn’t what you’d call a faithful attender,” Stephanie said on the way to the cemetery. “More like a grumpy old man who kept to himself. He seemed to have money, but I don’t know what he did. His wife will be there. She’s a good twenty years younger than he was. Whoever else is there will probably be what I call the founding fathers, old folks who have run the town forever.”

  “So they know where the bodies are buried,” I said.

  She did not respond. She was cute enough in a wholesome, corn-fed way, but she apparently didn’t have a sense of humor. We continued out of Oak Valley, where I had not seen any oak trees and the flat plain was unbroken by anything resembling a valley.

  “The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.” I looked past the grievers who were not really grieving to the wheat fields and the enormous azure sky. A far cry from the concrete jungle and skyscraper canyons I was used to. “Let’s say the Lord’s Prayer together.” Since we were in the buckle of the Bible belt, everyone knew the words.

  In the car, Stephanie had said, “There must be some money somewhere. Clara, my friend at the hospital, said right after he died out of towners came out of the woodwork. All of them wanted to talk to the widow and Vassel, the big shot lawyer. Clara said it would go from whispers to shouting and back to whispers. It must have been pretty upsetting, considering how awful the death was to begin with.”

  That got my interest. “What do you mean?”

  “A hit and run. The only time the old man would leave the house was to walk to the post office every day. He could have had front porch delivery for mail even though they lived a ways out of town, but he had everything delivered to a P. O. box. Very close to the vest. Anyway, he was almost home last Thursday when a car ran all the way over him. Then, it backed up until it ran over him again. At least that’s what the sheriff said it looked like.”

  Clouds and cows slipped by the car windows for a while.

  “I guess he was messed up pretty bad. The wife had to identify him when she got back to town.”

  “Where was she?”

  “She goes to Dallas all the time. Shopping, I guess. She’s lived here longer than I’ve been alive, but she doesn’t fit in. Likes nice things. Seems to think she’s a little too good for us Okies.”

  “They weren’t from here originally?”

  “Nope. Dad says he remembered when they came to town, probably from somewhere back east.”

  “Very mysterious,” I said.

  “And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. Amen.” We all finished in unison. I closed my Bible and the casket was lowered into the ground. The widow tossed a flower in, without so much as a sniffle. The sharp dressed man, who I assumed was the lawyer, tossed in a handful of dirt. A couple of the grey ghosts followed his example, but most turned and shambled to the line of parked cars.

  The lawyer brushed the dirt off his hands and approached me. “I’m Clete Vassal.”

  “Peter Andrews,” I said, and we shook on it.

  “This is Vera Clemson.”

  “Thank you for your kind words, Reverend,” she said.

  “I’m sorry for your loss.” The next line of the ritual.

  Vassal said, “And thank you for performing the service on such short notice. You just got into town this morning?”

  “Last night. Late.”

  “I’m not involved in the church as much as I once was, but I was surprised they found a replacement for Pastor Bradley so fast. Considering he left so unexpectedly.”

  He was fishing for information I didn’t have. “I’m just happy to be here, Mr. Vassal, and I hope to see you in church one Sunday soon.”

  “You just might. In any case, we’re looking forward to having you in our community.”

  He offered his arm to the widow Clemson and they made their way to the funeral parlor limo.

  Stephanie and I were alone at the graveside. “No reason to stay,” she said, “unless you want to watch the bulldozer shove the dirt back in.”

  I had seen that plenty of times already. “No, let’s go.”

  We were almost to the car when the gentle rural breeze carried the argument to us.

  “I am looking!” Vera was standing at the open door of the limo.

  Vassal’s words were indistinguishable, but they seemed to inflame her even more.

  “I know what he wants. I want it too. Give me more time!” She got into the car, and the lawyer shut the door forcefully.

  “I wonder what that was about,” I said.

  “Very mysterious, indeed,” said Stephanie.

  I spent the rest of the afternoon at the church office, feeling caged and avoiding my secretary’s questions. As a police chaplain in Detroit, I didn’t log much office time. Instead, I counseled officers, went on death notifications, coordinated community programs for at-risk kids, and was usually on site during big operations and SWAT actions. Five years as an officer on the street before getting my ordination gave me some cred with the department. They let me on the front lines where most chaplains did not get to go.

  Which led directly to being in the Witness Protection Program in a rural community’s church. Not a good place for an adrenaline junkie. Stephanie was not satisfied with the cover story provided to me, so she kept coming in to the office and digging for details.
By the end of the day she was completely dissatisfied with my vague answers.

  Dinner at the local diner was not much better. The local pastor in a small town is a figure of much interest, I learned.

  I was eating with the leader of the church’s board of deacons, John Gray, who had recently taken over the Ford dealership from his deceased father, which automatically made him a mover and shaker in the town. At 30, he was a couple of years younger than me, married to his high school girlfriend, and starting a family. Deeper roots than I was likely to have for a long time.

  He knew everybody, and introduced me to whoever walked by. The constant barrage of questions made it a challenge to keep my story straight.

  When we finished the catfish special, John paid with a Gray Auto Sales credit card. “Cynthia and I want have you to the house for dinner after you get settled. I need to give her a couple of days’ notice. The morning sickness is lasting longer than just the morning, you know.”

  I smiled. “That would be great.”

  “Maybe Stephanie could join us. She graduated with Cynthia and me.”

  That plan had its plusses and minuses. “Sure.”

  I drove home in the Kia Sportage that had been parked in the garage when I arrived last night. Just the kind of car a city slicker might drive into the land of Chevys, GMs, and of course Fords from Gray Auto Sales.

  The house was a three-bedroom clapboard, perfect for a small family, though I understood the previous pastor, Rev. Bradley, had been a widower with grown children. The inside was decorated tastefully, if it was 1980. The TV was a huge box that probably took two men to lift. I dropped my tie and suit jacket onto the chair in the bedroom. I had worn them to the funeral, but had dispensed with them soon after. The agent last night had told me, “If you wear a tie too much, the locals will think you’re DEA.”

  The second bedroom had minimal furniture, good for a guest room. The third room was more interesting. Bradley had used it as his home office. A huge antique desk dominated the center of the room, and two walls were covered floor to ceiling with bookcases. The Ladies Auxiliary chairperson had introduced herself at the office earlier, and said her volunteers would pack up this room when they got a forwarding address, but I had been looking forward to looking at it more closely all day.

  Many of the books were theology, but there were also scores of biographies and a large selection of novels. Curiosity, an occupational hazard for cops, led me to open the desk drawers. The right bottom drawer had sermon files, and on the opposite side personal files, tax returns, insurance information, etc.

  I pulled on the thin lap drawer, but it only opened half way. I reached my hand in and felt the spine of a hardback book. I took a wooden ruler and wedged it between the book and the bottom of the desk. I could push the book down enough to slide the drawer open.

  I pulled the book out. The Fires of Summer by K. C. Waters. Maybe the only book I was forced to read in high school that I enjoyed, it was the story of a teenaged boy coming of age in a small town in the South, whose fire chief father insisted on responding to fires in the black community that had been set by an arsonist.

  I opened to the back inside flap, but there was no author photo. It simply said, “K. C. Waters lives in New York City. He is working on his second novel.”

  But there had been no second novel. I remembered the gigantic success of Fires had driven the sensitive Waters into seclusion, the subject of mysterious sightings and intense speculation for many years.

  Why was this book in the drawer? I closed it and found its place in the bookshelves. The books were compulsively divided by type then sorted into alphabetical order. I had to get on my knees to get to the Ws in the fiction section. Before I slid the book into place, I noticed an envelope in its intended location. I placed the book and sat in the chair to open the sealed envelope, addressed to Rev. Bob Bradley.

  The letterhead was from the Princeton English department. It read:

  Bob,

  Need you to put the pressure on. Kenneth not cooperating. Too much at stake.

  E. J.

  There was no date, but the crispness of the stationary told me it was recent. I wondered if Bradley’s leaving so suddenly was tied to the letter. Maybe he had to leave town to take care of something.

  I probably should quit worrying about the old pastor, I told myself, and start worrying about the new one. Me.

  Hours later, restless and unable to sleep, I decided to go for a walk. The first thing I noticed as I stepped off my porch was how dark it was. It was never completely dark in Detroit; streetlights, adjacent buildings, and car lights drenched the city in a stark, grainy light. In Oak Valley, the illumination was further apart, leaving space for glimpses of the onyx sky with more stars than I knew existed.

  I walked out of the neighborhood and into downtown. The parking spaces along the street were empty, and no buildings showed any sign of life, until I turned the corner and saw a glow inside the church. It moved from one window to another, like a carried flashlight.

  I couldn’t help myself. I moved closer, pulling my keys out of my pocket. Before I unlocked the front door, it occurred to me I could call the police, but I didn’t even know if Oak Valley had a police force. I felt sure they didn’t have 911. I knew I should lay low, but this was my church, after all.

  I slid the key in and turned it slowly. I opened the door quietly to reveal the large, shadowy sanctuary. I heard muffled voices from down the hall. I made my way toward them, my blood pressure rising with every squeak of the floor.

  They were in my office. “I don’t see it. It could be anywhere.”

  “Keep looking.”

  Perhaps they were after any cash that might be there, but surely they knew that any random convenience store would be more lucrative than a small church. There was some sound equipment, but it was on the platform in the sanctuary, and so ancient it couldn’t be of interest to anyone except possibly Three Dog Night circa 1972.

  It didn’t matter. They were up to no good. I almost stepped into the office, but the walls shimmered and faded into a Detroit alleyway.

  I had been on the force for less than a year, still very much a rookie. My partner and I had responded to a Domestic Disturbance call. When we knocked on the door, the woman said she was scared that her old man would hurt her and her year-old baby when he returned. As we interviewed her, we realized she was shacked up with a dealer we had been tracking for weeks.

  We told her we would stay close and arrest him when he showed up. She begged us to get her out of there, but we were sure we could protect her and the kid and get the bad guy. We staked out the alley behind the apartment building, but we were too far away when he came home. We heard the screams and the yells, but by the time we got to the apartment it was too late. The consolation prize was we could charge him with double homicide instead of just possession with intent to distribute.

  “What are you punks doing in here?” Our custodian’s voice snapped me back to the present. I had met Roger earlier that afternoon. He was too old for such a physical job, but he had been a fixture for decades. I didn’t know what he was doing there so late.

  I peeked around the corner. The intruders were older than I first thought, maybe late 20s. They were both wearing dark hoodies with plain ball caps pulled low over their faces.

  “You need to get out of here, old man,” said one of them, advancing toward Roger.

  “You’re the ones that need to leave,” he said, his voice shaking, “before I call the sheriff.”

  “That would be a bad mistake,” said the first one. I noticed the other had moved behind Roger. He had an aluminum softball bat in his hand, and he raised it to strike.

  “Stop! Police!” I yelled, from force of habit. I ran into the office. The intruders were so surprised the second guy lowered the bat.

  “You don’t look like the police,” said the first one. “You look like another loose end to me.” He slipped a knife out of his belt. The other one pulled the bat
back over his shoulder, as if he were ready for a pitch.

  From the hallway, I heard a woman’s voice. “Roger? Is that you?”

  “It’s getting too crowded. Let’s get out of here.” The two ran out the door, almost knocking Stephanie down as she entered.

  “Hey! What’s going on in here?” She watched the two run out the back door, and turned to us. “Roger? Are you all right?”

  Roger looked a little unsteady. Glaring at me, she helped him into a seat.

  “How could you let Roger face those thugs? Just look at him!”

  “It’s OK, Stephanie,” Roger began. “The pastor…”

  I caught his eye and shook my head. He got the hint and stopped talking.

  Stephanie didn’t stop talking, though. “And you just let those guys get away! Did they take anything?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “It’s a good thing I was driving by and saw the lights. There’s no telling what they would have done to poor Roger.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, “I just froze.”

  I watched her tend the custodian. The lying had begun.

  The next morning did not find me any more inclined to stay in the office. I had a sermon to prepare for Sunday and a couple of meetings scheduled for the afternoon, the Building Committee and the Board of Deacons, but I decided it would be a pastorly thing to do to walk downtown.

  Stephanie looked at me disapprovingly as I left the building. She knew how much I had to do.

  The Post Office was across the street. It looked like a two-person operation inside, and I could see both of them. A lady with her grey hair tied up in a bun was behind the counter, and a man in his mid-forties sat at a desk with a Postmaster sign on it.

  The lady looked up. Her “Can I help you?” combined mild interest with the dread that she might have to do some work.

  “I’m Reverend Andrews,” I said, holding out my hand.