Trial by Fire (9 page)

J
ennifer bolted into the house, all fury and rage, and slammed the door with an authority that silenced the dozen kids there. “They arrested him. Took him to jail without probable cause.”

“Who?” Jake asked.

“Cruz, that's who!” she shouted like he was a fool. “Took him in handcuffs like a criminal, when he didn't do nothing wrong. We were just driving through town minding our own business…”

Jake decided it wouldn't be a good time to point out that Cruz
had
done something wrong. There was that little matter of murder, but everyone seemed to have forgotten it.

“I got my granddaddy to call his lawyer in Slidell, but the idiot is out of town and won't be back until morning. So Cruz has to sit there all night, in a jail cell, and he ain't done nothing wrong!” She waved her arm at the group as a thought came to her. “You know what this is about. It's about who we are. The grandchildren of the grand wizard of the KKK. But you know what? This is a free country, and you don't get to arrest somebody just because they're related to somebody you don't like.”

“Did they say anything about the fire and the shooting?” Benton dared to ask.

Jake was proud of his friend's courage. He wished he'd managed to get that question out.

“Oh, yeah, that came up,” Jennifer said. Her cheeks looked as if they'd been slapped hard, and she paced back and forth, back and forth, in front of them, like a caged tiger trying to find an escape. “We've got to intervene, that's all there is to it. We have to do something to divert suspicion.”

“We should pray for him.” The guy who came up with that was what Jake would have called a fanatic. Roy Decareaux had dropped out of high school in the ninth grade and worked at the Burger King for minimum wage. His dream had been to be an evangelist, until Cruz gave him a greater purpose.

“Okay,” Jennifer said, almost as if humoring him. “Let's pray.”

“On our knees,” Roy said.

“Right. On our knees,” Jennifer said, then flashed her eyes to the others. “Get down, everybody. Now!”

Jake looked around, feeling awkward, and realized that everyone else did too. Some of them stood on their knees, with hands clasped in front of them like toddlers beside their beds. Others sat back on their heels, balancing themselves with a hand on the floor on either side of them. Only Jennifer failed to kneel, but she stood at the front of the room with her hands raised high, and began to yell her prayers, as if God was hard of hearing.

Jake wondered if a real God would like to be talked to like that. Would he really want some raving girl, pretty as she was, spouting out confusing things like “confound the enemy” and “curse those who persecute us”? Or was that just what God wanted from them? Did you have to know his language to approach him? What if some ordinary Joe like him ever wanted to pray, and didn't know those phrases? Would God still hear? Would he hear now?

Jake looked up at Jennifer from his crouch on the floor, and saw the tears streaming down her face. His heart softened, and he realized her prayers were genuine. It broke his heart. He didn't like seeing her cry. He fought the urge to get up and put his arms around her and let her cry on his shoulder. It probably wasn't a good idea.

So he kept pretending to pray, wondering if there really was a God up there who was listening to their pleas to hide the murder they'd committed, and helping them get away with burning one of his churches. Was it true that God really favored white people? Wasn't Jesus from the Middle East? Wouldn't his skin have been dark?

But Jennifer seemed to think God was listening. Who was Jake to question it? After all, he knew nothing of God. She'd been raised from birth to believe. She knew tons of Scripture by heart, and Cruz, the most spiritual person he had ever known, had memorized the entire New Testament. If anyone knew God, he supposed they did.

He thought about the first time he'd seen Jennifer Cruz, a couple of years ago when he was fourteen and she was sixteen. She and Cruz had been at the ballpark after a game one night, when kids congregated on the dark field to smoke cigarettes and drink wine coolers. They had walked onto the field like some kind of rock star and super model, and had gotten everybody's attention. Especially Jake's.

He'd had a crush on Jennifer ever since, and unless he was mistaken, the feeling was mutual.

After all, she'd recommended him as drummer for their band, hadn't she?

Plus, Cruz was the most likeable guy he'd ever met, and had accepted Jake right into his group. What a relief to be taken for who you were after being labeled an outcast in high school, since he wasn't a jock or a junior politician. Jake felt like he was part of something important. The Twelve Disciples, Cruz called them, leaving himself and Jennifer out of the count. Jake and Benton had nothing but respect and admiration for all of the “brothers and sisters” of the group, from the illustrious “inner circle,” consisting of Cruz, Jennifer, Redmon, and Graham, to Grayson and LaSalle who constantly lobbied to be among the favored few. And he respected the couples—Decareaux and his girlfriend Blair, Butch and Meg, and Drew and Kaye. They were all unified in purpose, and accepted without question.

When Jake and Benton had told Cruz about Benton's dead grandmother's house, they had suddenly become heroes. They needed a place to gather until they could start converting Cruz's grandfather's old deer camp into a compound in which they could all live. Cruz told them that God had sent them, because he knew they needed a place to hold their meetings and their band practices. Since this house was vacant and Benton's family had no plans to sell it for a while, it was perfect.

Suddenly, life got interesting. Though Jake still drifted home for a couple hours of sleep each night, he had bought his way into Cruz's following by donating anything he owned that they could sell. It seemed to be for a good cause. Cruz and Jennifer had goals, and he was part of them. He didn't think he'd ever had a goal before.

But now he wondered if it was getting out of hand.

Jennifer finished praying, then wiped her face and took the stool that her brother usually occupied. “It came to me during prayer,” she said. “God revealed to me that we have to do something to divert attention from Cruz. If they think he was involved in the church burning and the killing, and that the others of us were…me and Redmon and Graham…then we have to give ourselves an airtight alibi tonight, and do it all again.”

“Do what again?” Jake asked.

“Another church burning, and another black killing.”

The crowd of kids roared out its disapproval, but she raised her hands and quieted them. “Just listen. This is a holy war.
Rahowa.
Say it with me.”

All twelve followers muttered the word that had become a chant, symbolizing the racial holy war that Cruz said they were engaged in.

“Again!” she cried.

“Rahowa!”

“Like you mean it!”

“Rahowa!”

“We've had one taken captive,” she went on. “If we're really what we say we are, then we can't stop now. We have to prove that Cruz ain't the one responsible for the killing. Something has to happen while he's in police custody, and while we're busy somewhere else. We have to throw them off. I need volunteers to do this for us. For Cruz…for me.” She waited, and no one came forward.

An alarm blared in Jake's chest. She was asking him to be involved this time, to kidnap some kid and beat him to death or shoot him, to throw him into a fire and let him burn to death. She was asking him to get his own hands dirty, not to just stand back on the perimeter while somebody else did the dirty work.

He began to sweat as the silence in the room lingered. What if she chose him, as Cruz had chosen the ones who'd helped him with Ben Ford?

“Cruz ain't made disciples of cowards, has he?” she asked. “No, he's chosen only the best. The loyal ones. And when he comes into his kingdom, those of you he's counted on will reign with him.”

Jake hadn't been with the group long enough to understand all of the things they believed about Cruz. This “coming into his kingdom” stuff still baffled him, but he knew there was something different about this genius who could memorize the Bible and build a compound and plan the security to protect it. He wasn't an ordinary man. Whether he was some kind of higher being, Jake wasn't sure, but he supposed he had more belief in Cruz than he had in God. He just wasn't ready to gamble his life on him.

When his best friend, Pete Benton, got to his feet, Jake froze.

“I'll do it,” Benton said with a half-grin. Jake knew he didn't fully understand what he was volunteering for. His bulb had always been a tad dim. Jake thought he just had bad genes, since his father was an unemployed construction worker who only got a job when he ran out of drinking money. His mother supported them fixing hair twelve hours a day.

Jennifer's face blossomed into that charismatic Cruz smile, and she gave Benton a my-hero look and slid her arms around his neck. As she raised up to press a kiss on his lips, Jake felt a stab of jealousy that almost made him volunteer. But even the thought of Jennifer's attention wasn't enough to make him volunteer for murder.

But it was enough for Roy Decareaux, who was next to volunteer. Jennifer laughed with delight, as if he'd just asked her to the prom. Then Jack LaSalle, rumored to have a coveted relationship with Jennifer already, offered himself.

Jake was flooded with relief.

Jennifer turned all three around to face the group. “I always knew these three were chosen, that one day I'd need them, and that I could count on them. Now, here's the plan. The band plays at the Viper Pit tonight. I'll talk to Butch and set it up. We're all there, making a lot of noise. Meanwhile, our three heroes find another victim, take care of him, start another church fire, then rush back to the Pit, where we'll swear you've been all along.”

She pulled her hair back from her face, and let it slip back down. “Of course, the cops will come looking for us first thing, but we'll have all been there. They won't have no choice but to start looking for some other group. With Cruz in jail and us at the Pit, how could we have done what they say? And then they got no choice but to move on and look for somebody else.”

Everyone cheered, and Jake wondered if these poor idiots could really pull off such a thing. Chances were, they'd wind up in jail. Would they talk then? Name names? How would she keep them from it?

As the band members began loading up their equipment to take to the Viper Pit, Jake tried to shake the swirling doubts in his head at what they were all getting into. Another kid was going to die, and what was it all about? To purify the culture, by getting rid of those who were ethnically inferior?

Things were getting hazy, and now it didn't seem about any cause at all. The first death had been about getting even with some preacher guy who'd insulted Cruz. This second one was about diverting the police.

It was hard to get behind a cause that wasn't really a cause.

As they dispersed and headed for their cars to the Viper Pit, he moved slowly, thinking of speaking up, questioning what they were about to do. Jennifer approached him near his car. “Hey, Jake,” she said in that sweet way that made him feel favored above all the others.

“Yeah?”

“I was thinking about your aunt. How safe do you think Cruz is with her out there?”

“I don't know what you mean.”

“I mean, she was snooping around here last night. She saw things. Her apartment was hit. What if she goes to the police and tells them about the carpet in the bonfire? What if she identifies my brother?”

“Identifies him as what? She doesn't know anything.”

“She could cause trouble, is all I'm saying.”

“But she won't. If she did, she'd get me in trouble, and Issie won't do that.”

“But she's mad about her apartment—the cat and everything. Maybe she's scared and won't feel safe till she exposes us.”

He wanted to ask her why they didn't think of that before they'd terrorized her, but he managed to keep his mouth shut. “You don't have to worry about Issie. I talked to her last night, okay? She's cool. She doesn't want me to get tied up as a murder suspect, so she won't say anything.”

“I was just thinking that…maybe we need to make sure.”

Anger tingled in his face. “So what are you suggesting? Kill her too?”

“Jake!” She smiled and took his hands, pulled him close, and clasped his hands behind her back. He hadn't been this close to her before, and he smelled the strawberry scent of her hair. His heart was on overload, hammering out a maddening beat. He hoped the others saw this. “Of course I don't mean kill her. What kind of person do you think I am?”

He thought of saying that she was the kind of person who would order a murder just to throw people off of her brother, but the words seemed broken, incomplete in his mind. He couldn't think clearly when she was this close.

“I'm saying that maybe she needs to be watched. Maybe she needs to be a little more afraid than she is.”

“She's plenty scared. She slept at my house last night because she was afraid to stay home.”

“Excellent,” Jennifer said. “Really, that's excellent. Then you talked to her?”

“I told her to stay out of it.”

“Do you think she will?”

“Like I told you, Issie's kept my secrets before. The last thing she wants is to see me thrown in jail. Really, Jennifer, you can trust me and my family.”

“I thought I could,” she said, gazing down into his eyes. He saw adoration there, infatuation so deep that it almost mirrored his. She liked him too, he thought. It wasn't just his imagination. He wasn't one of those geeks that she was manipulating into committing crimes. This wasn't like that.