The Breaking Point: A Body Farm Novel (27 page)

A DOZEN YEARS HAD PASSED SINCE I’D LAST SAT IN
this particular chair, in this particular role: in the role of troubled parishioner, seeking counsel from the senior minister at Second Presbyterian. At the time of that visit, I’d been working a series of sadistic sexual murders—murders committed by my nemesis Satterfield. What had brought me here, back in 1992, was a question that had been raised, crudely but powerfully, by a young woman infuriated by the cruelty Satterfield had inflicted on his victims. “Why,” she had raged, “are men such shits to women?”

The minister on that prior occasion was the same as the minister on this occasion: the Right Reverend Michael Michaelson, D. Div., more often (and more simply) referred to by most of his flock as Rev. Mike. I still remembered Rev. Mike’s answer to the memorably crude question about men, women, and the problem of evil. On that occasion, he had responded with a disquisition that was long, learned, and fascinating, one that viewed the issues through a half-dozen different lenses: theology, of course, but also evolutionary
biology, sociology, and abnormal psychology. In the end, though, Rev. Mike’s learned comments had proven to be far less illuminating than Kathleen’s brutally efficient explanation: “Why? Because they
can
be.”

In the years since that counseling visit, I’d worked a hundred homicides, give or take a dozen—none as brutal as Satterfield’s misogynistic butcherings—and that particular “why?” had drifted into one of the distant, dusty corners of my mind, displaced by other questions that were less rhetorical and more immediate, as well as more
answerable
: “Doc, what made that checkerboard crosshatching on that punched-in circle of skull?” (Answer: The milled head of a framing hammer.) “Doc, how come them maggots to look burnt?” (Answer: Because the killer left the body in the woods for a week, then came back and torched it.) “Doc, did that dude get blowed up by a bellyful of dynamite?” (Answer: No, the abdomen burst from the buildup of decomposition gases in the gut.)

This time, sitting in the pastor’s study, I asked a question not on behalf of countless suffering women, but on behalf of just one woman. How could an omniscient, omnipotent, and benevolent God, I asked—the kind of God we heard about again and again in the stained-glass sanctuary of this majestic church—allow health-conscious, humanity-helping Kathleen Brockton to be stricken down, in the prime of life, with an aggressive, untreatable cancer?

The right reverend sat silent, his eyes on me—not looking
at
me so much as looking
toward
me, somehow, his gaze seeming to send compassion in my direction. Kathleen and I had known him, and had liked him, ever since he’d arrived at Second Presbyterian fresh from seminary, as an energetic young assistant pastor. After a long while, he gave a sorrowful
shake of his head. “I won’t pretend I have a good answer for you,” he said. “This is one of the toughest questions of all. Why do bad things happen to good people? Why does God allow suffering—undeserved suffering, in particular? Why do some people—even terrible people—lead charmed lives, while others—including wonderful people like Kathleen—get dealt brutally bad cards? That’s the central question, as you probably know, of the Book of Job.”

I made a face. “I don’t buy it. Job.”

“How do you mean?”

I told him how I’d sought solace in the story of Job, and how unsatisfying and infuriating I had found it. I also confessed my two sacrilegious dreams about Job: Good-Boy Job and Game-Show-Winner Job.

Instead of looking shocked, he actually smiled slightly. “That’s an interesting spin on it,” he said. “I don’t believe I’ve come across that in any of my Old Testament textbooks. I might just use that in a sermon someday, if I really want to rile people up.”

“Be my guest,” I said. “While you’re at it, tell folks how offensive it is to say things like ‘Everything happens for a reason’ or ‘His will be done.’ Kathleen’s secretary actually said that to me when I went in to clean out her office. I had to walk away to keep from hitting her.”

He winced. “My secret name for that is the ‘God’s Perverse Plan’ doctrine. If you take it to its logical extreme, you end up arguing that God planned the pain of every battered woman, every molested child, every black man strung up by a lynch mob, every Jew sent to the gas chambers of Auschwitz.” He clasped his hands, his fingers interlaced and his index fingers extended, and I couldn’t help thinking of the nursery rhyme
Here is the church, and here is the steeple . . .
“A poet I like a
lot once put it this way: ‘If God is God, he is not good; if God is good, he is not God.’ Strong words, but they do get at the heart of the problem.”

“I’m not sure I follow. I never was good with poetry.”

“He’s saying that if God’s omnipotent, he must be a jerk, to allow so much innocent suffering. And if God’s
not
a jerk, then he must not be all-powerful, because if he were, he’d protect people.”

Amen, brother,
I caught myself thinking.

DOES SUICIDE RUN IN FAMILIES?
THAT WAS THE
question I found myself pondering after I had left Rev. Mike’s study and returned to my empty, echoing house.

The answer, I well knew, was
of course it does
. Over the years, I’d read scores of books and articles about suicide; its dark causes, and the long shadow it could cast on the lives of the loved ones left to clean up the mess, literally and figuratively. I also, though, knew the answer in a deeper, darker way: I had felt its tug on occasion, during my adolescence; had heard its sinister siren song, calling me toward the rocks of doom. But adulthood—the twin rudders of a career and a family—had steered me into safer waters.

Until now.

In the blink of an eye—the catch in a throat—my mind traveled back almost half a century. I was four years old. I was trundling up the stairs to my father’s law office, a few steps ahead of my mother, who climbed slowly so that I could be the one to burst through the door crowing, “Daddy, Daddy, we came to s’prise you!” Only we were the ones, she and I,
who were surprised: surprised by the figure slumped sideways in his swivel chair, the eyes vacant and clouding; surprised by the dark splotches and smears fanning across the wall behind him; surprised by the odors of brimstone and blood and bleakness in the air.

We never spoke of it, my mother and I—not once in the next forty years; not once before her own death. And so, because it was never spoken of, it was never really laid to rest.

And now, here it was again—suicide, my unseen, lifelong shadow—sitting beside me on my bed. On
our
bed: the bed I’d shared for thirty years with Kathleen. Young, willowy Kathleen. Pregnant, rotund Kathleen. Dough-bellied, big-breasted, nursing-mom Kathleen. Weary working-mother Kathleen. Midlife, tennis-toned Kathleen. Swiftly cancer-stricken Kathleen.

I reached for the drawer of the nightstand and slid it open, then wormed my hand once more beneath the phone directory. Closing my fingers around the pebble-textured grip, I pulled upward and outward, removing the pistol Decker had loaned me a lifetime ago, back when I had mistakenly believed that what I needed to fear was a malevolent man, not a microscopic murderer called cancer.

I turned the weapon over slowly in my hands, inspecting its angles and contours, its meticulously milled surfaces. Pulling back the slide, I noticed the smoothness of the action, the precision and solidity of the metallic click as the weapon cocked. I turned the barrel toward me and studied the small round opening, a darkness as black and deep as my despair.

The siren song grew louder, accompanied by the sound of blood roaring in my head, roaring like the sea. Then I heard something else: I heard voices.
Children’s
voices. “Grandpa Bill! Grandpa Bill! Where
are
you, Grandpa Bill?” I heard two
pairs of small feet running down the hall, running toward my bedroom. I hid the gun, tucking it behind my back, sliding it surreptitiously beneath my pillow.

Tyler was the first to reach the bed. Without breaking stride, he launched himself like a missile, soaring upward in a graceful, gleeful arc, then belly-flopping onto the mattress with enough force to rattle the headboard against the wall. Walker, smaller and slower, tried to emulate him, but barely cleared the edge of the mattress, landing like a spent fish—but giggling as exuberantly as his aerobatic brother. When I reached out and gathered them in my arms, holding them hard, Tyler squirmed halfway free and looked up at me. “Are you crying, Grandpa Bill?”

“No, honey,” I lied. “I just have something in my eyes.”

Walker snuggled against me. “I didn’t see Grandmommy in the kitchen,” he said. “Where is she?”

“Grandmommy’s gone, buddy,” I said hoarsely.

“Where did she go?”

“To heaven,
stupid,
” said Tyler.

“But when will she come
back
?” There was a new note of urgency in his voice.

“She’s not coming back, buddy,” I whispered. “She can’t.”

I could not have said who felt the worst: the yearning three-year-old, the heartsick fifty-year-old, or the tough-guy five-year-old, who was perhaps just big enough to reach the bitter fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, and to grasp that something precious to him was lost beyond all finding, broken beyond all mending.

WE ATE THE TAKE-OUT PIZZA JEFF AND JENNY HAD
brought as a surprise, or a gesture of kindness, or an act of pity. Sitting around the kitchen table, we made awkward small
talk, all the adults careful not to look at Kathleen’s chair, which loomed monumental in its emptiness. I took a bite, but the crust felt and tasted like cardboard in my mouth, and I laid the wedge on my plate. The boys, on the other hand—their tears dried, their upset trumped by their hunger and the pizza’s aroma—wolfed down two slices apiece, then bolted from the table and ran squealing down the hall.

Jeff nodded at my virtually untouched food. “No dessert unless you clean your plate,” he said with a wink, echoing a line he’d heard from me a thousand times growing up.

I shook my head. “It’s good—and y’all were sweet to bring it. But I’ve got no appetite tonight.”

Jenny reached across the table and laid a hand on my arm. “I’m worried about you,” she said. “You’re skin and bones—like one of your skeletons.” She looked me up and down. “I’ve seen coat hangers fill out a shirt better than you do these days.” It was a good line, and I did my best to give her a smile, but it felt more like a grimace.

Down the hall, the rhythmic creak of bedsprings ceased, and the boys’ chatter changed tone, shifting from giggling to squabbling. Jenny noticed it first, of course. “I founded it,” protested Walker. “Give it back. Give it
back
!”

“You’re too little,” scoffed Tyler. “You’re just a baby.”

“Boys,” Jenny called toward them. “Cut it out!”

“Give it back!” wailed Walker. “Give it
back
!”

Suddenly a terrible realization hit me. “Oh dear God,” I gasped, leaping up so suddenly my chair toppled backward. “Please no.” I ran from the kitchen, my feet scrabbling on the tile as I made the turn into the dining room and dashed down the hall.

“Let go. Let
go
!” yelled Walker. I heard a growl like that of some wild, angry animal, and then a howl of pain.

My feet seemed mired in mud or concrete, moving in excruciating, exhausting slow motion. “
Boys,
” I called out desperately. “Stop! Don’t move!”

“Dad? What’s going on?
Dad?
” Behind me, as I ran toward the bedroom, I could hear panic in Jeff’s voice.

“Jeff,
go,
” I heard Jenny saying, her voice panicky. “Hurry! Something’s wrong!”

“Boys, don’t move!” I shouted again. I reached the bedroom doorway and froze in horror. My grandsons, on my bed, were wrestling over a nine-millimeter handgun, the weapon seesawing back and forth in their hands as they fought for possession. “Boys!
Stop
it! Put it down!”

But they were too caught up in the struggle to hear or to heed. I hesitated, afraid to grab for the gun but terrified
not
to. Jeff and Jenny lurched against my back, then craned to see what was happening in the bedroom. Then came a jolt and a scream as Jenny hurtled past me. An instant later a gunshot cracked, and voices around me and within me began to shriek.