Blood of Angels (7 page)

She pulls the books out of my hand. “I had a feeling I'd see you, but not today. You really are Johnny-on-the-spot, aren't you?”

“Sorry I startled you.”

“It's all right. I'm still moving in, really. I've only been here…God, it's been eight months. I'll have to come up with another excuse.” We pick up books together, stacking them into precarious piles. The whole place looks like the overcrowded study of an Oxford don who hasn't had the room cleaned in years. It smells of dust and memories. At one end is a series of wooden carvings of African figures. We finish stacking and stand up. I stick out my hand. She stares at it a second, still not taking it. “I don't have to talk to you,” she says.

“Correct.”

“So tell me why I should.”

“It might help.”

“Who? You or Moses?”

“The options aren't necessarily mutually exclusive. I have nothing against the kid, personally.”

“Except for thinking he's a murderer and a rapist. You're wrong about that, by the way.” She pushes an errant strand of hair out of her face and tucks it behind her ear.

“All evidence to the contrary.” She gets a tired look, as though things like evidence and testimony are somehow beside the point. “That was a bold move in court today,” I say. “It wasn't very smart, but it was bold.”

She raises an eyebrow. “Not smart?”

“You embarrassed the judge sitting on Bol's case. For somebody who wants to help the kid, it might not have been the smartest idea.”

Her expression clouds briefly. “It's not as bad as leaving him in jail,” she says. “The important thing is to get him away from you.”

I laugh. “You mean, from me personally?”

“From the government. The people who want to kill him.”

“Look…what should I call you? Pastor? Reverend?”

“Towns will do.”

“Well, Towns, nobody in my office enjoys it when somebody dies. Personally, I hate the thought of it.”

“Until you hate it enough to actually stop doing it, I don't see that it makes much difference.”

I smile, in spite of myself.
She would have made a good lawyer.
“Place is a little empty,” I say. “Not much staff around.”

“There isn't any staff,” she answers. “There were two, but they quit in protest when I took the job.” She looks hurt, which surprises me; I had pictured her a Joan of Arc, impervious and warlike. “There's only me now. I stay busy, so maybe you should just come to the point.”

“It doesn't look very good for Mr. Bol,” I say. “The evidence against him is substantial.”

“You mean the semen and blood evidence.”

“If you're comfortable discussing that kind of detail, yes.”

“Comfortable?” She gazes at me. “You don't know anything at all about my work here, do you, Mr. Dennehy?”

“I'm here to listen.”

“Each one of these boys has seen more death than the most hardened criminal in this state. When they watched their families being slaughtered before their eyes, they were all less than twelve years old. A bloody handprint is of no more consequence to them than opening a window. And now death has followed them here.”

“What do you mean?”

“The first was Peter Gurang, shot at the Sahara Club. Then Chege and Iniko Basel, two brothers who managed to survive five years of starvation, disease, and civil war, only to get killed in a gang battle in east Nashville.” She pauses. “These boys come from a gracious and beautiful culture, Mr. Dennehy. They have no context for life here. They're drowning in our consumerism, defenseless against the crudeness of our society. One of them actually showed up the other day with a new car. Some unscrupulous salesman at a dealership got him qualified for a loan. The boy doesn't even have a driver's license.”

“There are bad people around, Towns. That's what we have the justice system for.”

“You're missing the point, Mr. Dennehy. In Sudan, these boys had a context for living. They did noble work. Here, they sweep floors. They don't belong here, and they can't go home. It's no wonder some of them get lost all over again.” She turns away, retreating behind her desk, and looks out the window onto the street. “I'm not going to lose Moses, Mr. Dennehy. Not him.”

“I have the victim's blood in Bol's car,” I say quietly. “I have a phone call from her apartment to his less than two hours before the murder. I have witnesses who claim Hartlett and Bol argued vehemently on at least two occasions, and evidence indicates they fought brutally with each other that night. Against which, he presents no credible alibi.”

With one sentence, Towns turns the case upside down. “
I
am his alibi, Mr. Dennehy.”

“Say again?”

“I was with Moses that night. We were here, five miles away from the crime. So it's impossible for him to have committed the murder. You have the wrong man.”

I shake my head, not wanting to hear.
Don't do this,
I think.
Don't make me take you down with him.
“Someone with your education is obviously aware of the penalties for perjury,” I say quietly. “This wouldn't be an overnight stay in the county lockup with your solidarity sisters. This is three to five in the state penitentiary. If the DA decided to go for obstruction of justice—and knowing Rayburn, he would—that's ten more.”

“My statement stands.”

“In that case, you might want to practice answering a few questions that are likely to come up,” I say. “Like why you didn't mention this information at Bol's arraignment.”

“I didn't know he had been arraigned until after it happened. I was out of town, in Washington, D.C.” She gives me a caustic look. “Protesting.”

“And at the grand jury?”

“Moses's lawyer seems to be under the impression that my testimony might be considered…unreliable.” She pauses. “Rita West holds you in very high regard. She's convinced you would tear me to pieces on the witness stand because of my political activism.”

“I have the feeling it might come up, yeah.”

“Rita says my arrest record at previous executions would be…I believe the phrase was ‘like bait to a hungry shark.'” She pauses. “Apparently, you are the shark, Mr. Dennehy.”

I smile. “I accept the compliment.”

“Rita is looking for corroboration before she brings me out, but she's not going to find any. Moses and I were alone, and no one saw us together.”

“Then she's going to have to put you on the stand and let you sink or swim.”

“That's right, Mr. Dennehy. She's going to have to let you at me.”

“If you get on the stand and lie, you're going to leave me no choice. I can't have the system of justice compromised.”

She gives me an unpleasantly knowing look. “It's a little late for that, isn't it?”

I step back. “So you're working with Buchanan.” She says nothing, her face scrupulously neutral.
OK.
“You have to admit, though, it's a hell of an irony,” I say.

“What's that?”

“The fact that you've tried to save the lives of all those criminals is the very reason why nobody is going to believe you now, when you try to save Bol's.”

She stares at me, her face reddening. She brushes past me toward the door. “You should go,” she says. “I have twenty homeless people showing up in an hour, and they're going to be hungry.”

“Alone?”

“I have Robert.”

“The addict?” She gives me a surprised look. “We met in the sanctuary. He didn't give me his name.”

“Robert is cautious with strangers. He's had hard times, but he's found safety here.”

“All the same, I'd be careful. Some of the homeless in this city aren't above taking advantage of a woman.”

“I can take care of myself.”

“Is Jimmy Roland in your group? Short guy, he'd be about fifty by now.”

She thinks a moment, then nods. “Mr. Roland, that's right.”

“He was my first case. He used a rock to beat in the head of another guy for stealing his coat. It was cold outside, but over at the DA's office we still look down on that kind of thing.”

She watches me quietly for a moment, then shakes her head. “You're trying to rattle me, Mr. Dennehy. It won't work.”

“I'm trying to warn you. But you're a grown-up. What you do with your time is your business.”

“That's right. And my time with you is up.” She opens the door, inviting me out.

I step through. “The twenty dinners. Who's paying for that?”

“We're selling the church's art, Mr. Dennehy. I can either welcome the hungry to my door, or I can turn them away and look at pretty pictures. Not a very complicated decision.” The door closes, and I'm left in the hallway alone.

Outside, I decide to cut through the church's employee parking lot to Fifth Street, saving two long city blocks on my walk back to 222 Second Avenue. The tiny lot is behind the church, twelve narrow spaces crammed between the back of the church offices and a service alley that feeds the towering, thirty-story bank behind it. The only car is parked in a space marked
Pastor;
it's a white, midnineties Volvo sedan that has definitely seen better days.
Perfect,
I think.
The classic neohippie car.
As I walk past, I see a face looking down from high above, in the church. The face is only visible for a moment; then it's gone. But I recognize the figure. It's Robert, the addict.

 

BACK IN THE OFFICE
, I go by Gladys Morrisette's office. Gladys, a career bureaucrat who must have been the perfect hall monitor in high school, is the only query-certified member of our staff, which means she has access to MAGIC, the national criminal database. Gladys has made it a life-and-death principle that there will never be an unapproved search while she lives and breathes. So I fill out the paperwork, declaring Towns an official witness on the Bol trial, meticulously dealing with the minutiae of the form. She scrutinizes it awhile, then nods. She then directs me to turn around—she's that paranoid about anybody sneaking a look at the codes—and punches “Fiona Towns” into the database. After a minute or so, I hear her whistle.

I turn around. “What?”

“Girlfriend's been busy,” Gladys says. “Four states and the District.” She points to the laser printer, which is spitting out pages. After a few minutes, I hold Towns's FBI file, together with state arrest records of Washington, Florida, New York, Texas, and the District of Columbia. I thank Gladys and head to Rayburn's office, reading as I walk.

Dolores, Rayburn's secretary, nods me through. “He's waiting for you,” she says. “Carl's with him.”

I push open Rayburn's office door and see Carl and the DA standing beside Rayburn's coffee table. Rayburn gives me an expectant look. “So? What's up with the crazy woman?”

I shrug. “She's working with him.”

“I knew it!” Rayburn explodes. “It's a friggin' delusiac conspiracy.”

“She just told you?” Carl said. “Just like that?”

“Not exactly. It sort of came to light while she was telling me the other big news of the day.” I pause. “Towns is going to testify that she was with Bol at the church at the time of the crime. She's going to be his alibi.”

There is a moment of silence, which Rayburn shreds by saying, “Jesus Holy Christ! They're supposed to be fucking Presbyterians over there.”

“There's more.”

Rayburn looks up warily. “What?”

I spread the files across David's coffee table, and the three of us gather around. “Disturbing the peace, disorderly conduct, unlawful protest, and, most glamorously, incitement to riot.”

Carl picks up the FBI report. “Arrested in Seattle, at a meeting of the IMF; again in Washington, making noise just outside Bush's second inauguration; and New York, at the World Economic Forum.”

“Take a look at Texas,” I say.

Carl pulls out the Texas file. “Arrested three times. Each one, outside a prison where an execution was scheduled.”

I nod. “You know those nice people who just light candles and pray for the soon-to-be-departed? She's not one of them.”

Rayburn reaches out and snatches the papers. He scans a few moments, then looks up. “She set fire to a police car outside a prison in Tarrant County. That's destruction of government property.”

“It delayed the execution twenty-four hours,” I say. “The police were afraid a full-scale riot would start if they went forward, so they had to clear the area and do the whole thing over again the next day.”

Carl leans back in his chair with a thoughtful smile. “Moral chaos,” he says, quietly.

I look up. “What do you mean?”

“A state of mind where the ends justify the means. Within the confines of the worldview, acts that would otherwise be repugnant make perfect sense. Think Greenpeace. Think Posse Comitatus. Hell, for that matter, think Al Qaeda.”

“You're not seriously comparing a Presbyterian minister with Al Qaeda.”

Carl shrugs. “Both may be equally committed to their cause.”

“For God's sake, Carl, she spends her afternoons feeding the hungry.”

“So does Hamas.”

We sit in silence for a second, while a set of fairly extreme possibilities runs through our minds.

“Hang on, gentlemen,” I say. “We're losing perspective here. Maybe this woman's a little hyped-up, but be serious. She's not a terrorist. It would go against her entire system of belief.”

“I'm not accusing her of being a terrorist,” Carl says, resolute. “I'm saying that given sufficient commitment to a higher calling, it's not the people
without
principles who do the damnedest things. It's the people
with
them.”