Racing the Devil (17 page)

“Reverend, she loves her job.”

“More than she loves the Lord?” His green eyes glinted behind his glasses. “More than she loves you? We live in a sinful world, Mr. Abernathy. Don’t let her draw you into it. Take your lesson from Adam and bring your wife under control.”

“What do you suggest? A hickory switch?”

His splayed hands slapped the table. “You say it with derision, sir, but I say, you must do what you must do to regain your place as head of your household. I do not condone battery, Mr. Abernathy, but neither am I opposed to corporal punishment. If your wife behaves like a spoiled child, you must treat her like one.”

“Is that what happened to that lady who died?” I asked. “Her husband used a little corporal punishment?”

His mouth tightened. “Calvin Hartwell had nothing to do with his wife’s death. If anything, she died because he failed to do what was required.”

“Meaning?”

“A woman who is properly submissive to the Lord and to her husband will not stray. Amy Hartwell strayed. Calvin lacked the strength, or perhaps the courage, to put an end to it.”

Maybe, I thought. And maybe he just found a way to stop it permanently. Capital, not corporal, punishment.

I said, “What if it’s the husband who strays?”

The reverend gave me an oily smile. “A man who strays does so for one of two reasons: his wife has failed to meet his needs, or a harlot has ensnared him. Remember, it was Eve who tempted Adam in the garden, and it is woman who continues to tempt man today.”

I turned this over in my mind, and Herman Abernathy, my lumberjack persona, gave his head a slow nod. “So if I cheat on my wife, it’s her fault?”

Avery leaned back in his chair with a smug smile and laced his hands across his stomach. “Oh, not entirely, of course. You do bear some responsibility. But the fault lies largely with her, and with her failure to support your marriage as she should.”

I could see why Calvin Hartwell found the Church of the Reclamation appealing. Christian man seeks validation for unChristian behavior. Film at eleven.

“Do you have to discipline your wife?”

His smile made crescents of his eyes and round mounds of his cheeks. It was a familiar-looking smile.

“My wife, sir,” he was saying, “is a model of Christian womanhood. A good wife is more valuable than gold. I have never needed to discipline Margaret.”

Lucky Margaret.

“I’m not sure I want to be married to a Stepford Wife,” I said.

“Son.” His voice was kindly, dripping with false concern, and suddenly I knew where I’d heard it, or one much like it. It reminded me of a voice I’d last heard in a courtroom thirteen years ago. The only problem was, it belonged to a dead man.

He was getting into the sermon now, his eyes shining and his ruddy face flushing ruddier. “You’ve fallen victim to a modern misconception—that a woman must be like a man to be fulfilled. But nothing could be farther from the truth. Believe me, Margaret is neither enslaved nor oppressed. She submits to me as the church submits to Christ, and I cherish her as Christ cherishes the church. There is no better recipe for marriage.”

I couldn’t say much, considering the fate of my own marriage, but somehow I didn’t think the reverend’s philosophy would have made our relationship better. If anything, it would have ended sooner and a hell of a lot more acrimoniously.

“I’ll have to think it over,” I said. That, and why he reminded me so much of a man who was supposed to have been killed ten months ago. “Do you think I could have a copy of the church directory? I’d like to talk to some of the members of your congregation.”

“Of course you can, son. As soon as you’re a member of the church. Meanwhile, come join us for services. Sunday School at ten, sermon at eleven, Sunday and Wednesday nights at seven.”

I could tell from his forced jocularity that he wasn’t going to give up the directory. I couldn’t really blame him. Even if I were nothing more sinister than an insurance salesman, his congregation would hardly appreciate his giving out their names and addresses to strangers.

I said, “I hear you have a Sunday morning radio show.”

“That’s right. It airs on WPRZ at ten and two.”

“You record it in the church?”

He nodded. “We record both shows on Saturday, and then the man who does it takes it back to his recording studio and edits it.”

“Really. Which studio does he use?”

“Why do you want to know?”

“I play a little music myself. I was thinking maybe I might make a demo tape, see if anybody might want to buy some of my stuff.”

“I don’t remember the name,” he said. “It’s in one of our pamphlets.” He rinsed out my glass and set it in the sink, gave me a stack of brochures, and ushered me politely out the front door, saying he had an afternoon appointment to anoint a man with cancer.

“I’m sorry about the lady who died,” I said, just as the door was closing.

The reverend paused. “That woman cheated on her husband and left two young girls at home to fend for themselves. I don’t condone murder, but if Amy repented before she died, then the man who killed her did the work of God.”

THE DEAD MAN WITH THE
velvet voice was a pedophile named Walter Christy. I’d first seen him in front of the child care center he and his wife owned back when I was a patrol cop, driving from one end of my sector to the other, taking calls when they came in and looking for trouble the rest of the time. I don’t know what it was that made me notice him. He was a plain-looking, stocky man already beginning to bald. One hand clutched a Raggedy Ann. The other held the hand of a little girl in a yellow dress.

As they disappeared around the corner of the child care center, something in his body language set off an alarm. The stroke of a hand on the little girl’s hair. A moment of unguarded eagerness on his face. I honestly don’t recall.

What I do recall is parking the car and radioing for assistance, following him around to a shed at the back of the building, and finding him with the girl’s dress up above her waist and his hands stuffed down her white cotton panties.

I remember that my voice was calm as I sent the child back to the house and told Walter he was under arrest.

And the next thing I remember is Barry Sheldon, who had taken the backup call, hauling me off Walter Christy’s sobbing, shuddering body. My hands were bruised, and I was covered with blood, and most of it was Walter’s.

He almost walked.

His lawyer screamed police brutality, and the D.A. screamed resisting arrest. The D.A. screamed louder. Or maybe it was just that no one wanted Walter back out on the street.

There was plenty of evidence. Walter had been molesting little girls for fourteen years, and he had hundreds of photographs of his victims. The stream of young witnesses took days. His wife and younger daughter were among them, and after the trial, Walter found himself with divorce papers in his hand and a sixteen-year prison sentence. His wife gave up her child care

license, and a few years later, I heard she had packed up both girls and moved away.

Remarried. Put the past behind her.

And that was the last I’d heard of Walter Christy, until ten months ago, when, after an elaborate escape attempt, he’d squealed off in a prison trustee’s SUV and crashed into a gasoline truck.

The explosion was spectacular.

I was sorry for the driver of the truck, not sorry at all that the world was rid of Walter.

I knew my distaste for the honorable Reverend Avery was probably related to his resemblance to Walter. Maybe I was biased, but I pulled over and made a quick call to Frank anyway.

“Walter Christy,” I said.

“What about him?”

“How sure are you he’s dead?”

“Nobody could have survived that crash.”

“Could he have switched places with someone else before the wreck?”

“No time.”

“ ‘Cause this guy, Avery, he reminds me an awful lot of Walter.”

“Jared.” Frank’s voice had that patient tone a person might use with a retarded child. “I’m telling you, Christy’s dead.”

Frustrated, I thanked him and said goodbye.

All right, so Samuel Avery wasn’t Walter Christy.

Still, I could imagine his broad, plump hands around Amy’s neck, his fleshy lips twisted with anger and flecked with spittle as his thumbs dug deep into her windpipe. “Repent, harlot,” he might have said. “The wages of sin is death.”

And I could easily imagine him luring Katrina Hartwell into his office and enticing her to pose for the photos Frank had found in my truck.

Driving back down I-40 to my office, tugging at the beard and mustache to relieve the itching, I wondered if the reverend had an alibi for the night of Amy’s murder.

O
N SUNDAY, AFTER I
’
D TURNED OUT
Crockett and taken Tex for his morning walk, I called Ben Carrington. Since I’d already used the Ian Callahan persona with Felicity at the travel agency, I gave Ben the same story, that I was researching a book on Amy’s murder and that his name had been mentioned by several witnesses.

There was silence on the other end of the line. Then he sighed. “You’ve heard the rumors about me and Amy.”

“From several sources.”

“It wasn’t what you think.”

“Why don’t you meet me this afternoon and tell me what it was?”

“Did you see the memorial service on Channel 3?”

“I saw it.”

“It was a lousy excuse for a memorial. It didn’t do justice to Amy.”

I squeezed my eyes shut and said, “That’s what I want, Mr. Carrington. Justice for Amy.”

And for me
.

There was another silence. Then he said, “All right. Why don’t you come to my place? Six o’clock. After dinner.”

I killed the time by studying the pamphlets Reverend Avery had given me.

According to the literature, the Church of the Reclamation had been founded seven years ago in Louisiana. The founder, Samuel Zebedee Avery, was a Tennessee transplant convicted by God to combat the decadence and debauchery of Bourbon Street. During his ministry, God had led him to a new understanding of original sin and how Eve’s legacy still ensnared even godly men. In time, he’d been led to establish other churches. He left his original ministry in the hands of his most trusted deacon and returned to his home state to pass on the word.

There was no web site listed, but I pulled out my laptop anyway, plugged it into the network, and typed “ ‘Samuel Avery’ AND ‘Church of the Reclamation’ ” into the search engine.

A hundred-and-fifty-two hits. They’d come late to the information age, because the oldest one was dated seven months ago. I read every one. Then I logged into a couple of data providers I subscribed to and began the tedious process of collecting background and financial information on Avery and his church.

One thing was certain. There were big bucks in the redemption business. Cheating on your wife? It’s okay, it’s not your fault. But just to be safe, send a check to Reclamation Ministries and your conscience can be clear.

Reverend Avery’s message appealed to a narrow audience, but collectively, they had deep pockets.

I ran a quick check on Avery’s wife, found a homely woman with a generous inheritance. Avery had covered all the angles.

Scowling, I exited the program. If the bio on the web was right, Walter had been in prison while Avery was building his church.
If
it was right and not some manufactured biography. Either way, it ticked me off. People like Avery weren’t real Christians, but they gave Christians a bad name.

After dinner, I showered and transformed myself into Ian. Dark hair, mustache, tailored suit, Colt tucked into the shoulder holster beneath the jacket.

At six o’clock sharp, I pulled into Carrington’s driveway. There was a sandbox out front, and a dark-haired girl of about six was sitting on one of the seats, making designs in the sand with her bare toes. When she saw me, she pushed herself up and padded over to me, brushing her long bangs away from her forehead with grubby hands. The gesture left streaks of grime on her face.

“Are you the man who’s writing the book?” she asked.

“That’s me.” I held out a hand, which she shook solemnly. Her palms were hot and damp. When she withdrew her hand, I surreptitiously wiped my own on the underside of my jacket. “You must be Corey.”

“That’s right. Daddy’s inside. He said I could come in and get a Popsicle when you got here, but I can’t stay and listen, because you’re talking about grown-up things.” She grimaced.

“I have a little boy about your age,” I said. “I don’t let him listen to grown-up talk, either.”

“Is he six?” she asked, cocking her head to one side. “Why didn’t you bring him?”

“He’s eight, but he’s small. And I didn’t bring him because he’s staying with his mom.”

“I don’t have a mommy,” she said, matter-of-factly. “Next time, bring your little boy.”

She escorted me into the house, where her father was watching from the window, ensuring, I assume, that I had no evil intentions toward his daughter. Good for him.

“Mr. Callahan?” he said. “Can I get you something to drink? I have Coke, Orange Slice, and apple juice.” He scooped his daughter up and planted a kiss on her cheek. They looked alike, same fair skin, same dark eyes, same unruly brown-black hair. “And who is this little ragamuffin? What have you done with my daughter, you little pigpen?”