Azrael (25 page)

Jimmy’s voice was harsh.
“For all I know he’s killed my sister, too!”

“What do you mean, Jim? What happened to your sister?”

“I don’t know. She’s disappeared. They both have.”

“It could be something as innocent as an elopement.”

“God forbid! And I’m not blaspheming when I say that.”

“Of course not.”

“I don’t think anything he
does
is innocent. I saw him looking at Hannah that night at dinner. He got her to sneak off the grounds, and he killed her.”

“And left the body on his own front stairs? Besides, your sister says she was with him the whole time.”

“Then he
had
her killed.”

“Why, Jim?” Mr. Nelson asked softly. “And by whom?”

“I don’t
know
why! It’s driving me crazy. I think this Trotter, or whoever he represents, is doing things to drive my mother insane. You wouldn’t believe what’s happened to her.”

Will picked his words carefully. “She has seemed to become distracted over the last few months.”

Jimmy looked ruefully at him. “Well, in the past few days, she’s seemed to become insane. Ever since Charles killed himself. She won’t come home from the office. She hardly eats at all.” He made a noise in his chest, something between a cough and a bark of bitter laughter. “Maybe,” he said, “that’s what’s happened to Regina. She couldn’t take it anymore, and she ran off. If she could only see what a wreck she’s made of Mother ...”

“Should I see your mother?”

“I don’t think she’d let you in.”

“You could take me in.”

“To the grounds, yes. I doubt she’d see you. I’m not even sure she’d see
me.
I mean, I’ve tried, but not too hard. All I’d be able to talk about is that murderous
Trotter!”

Will Nelson sighed. “As I said before, no magic wand. I can’t open you and take the anger and hate out, or the fear or confusion, either, if it comes to that. I suppose it does no good at all to point out that the police have investigated, ruled it an accidental death, and cleared Mr. Trotter.”

“Not a bit of good. If he had an alibi, he also had an accomplice.”

“Any candidates?”

“How should I know? Maybe it’s that junk man everybody is making so much fuss over. The black man. Albright. He was trying to find Trotter the other night.”

Will sighed again. There was nothing more he could say, except the classic, all-purpose clerical advice: Be strong and pray. It always sounded so trite, a fact Will found all the more maddening in the face of its proven efficacy. He himself was a living testament to the power of strength and prayer. When he had been troubled, he had striven to endure, and had asked the Lord for help. And he had endured, and he had found his way to this ministry. When he had been confused, the Lord had made things clear. Be strong and pray. Advice that could change a life, and so often it provoked only scorn, or anger.

“Be strong and pray,” Will said.

This time neither scorn nor anger but despair.

“Don’t you think I
try
to be strong?” Jimmy Hudson cried. “I can’t sleep for fighting. I fight the urge to get up and find Trotter and kill him with my bare hands, and I fight the cowardice that says the only reason I don’t is that I know he could tear me apart without breaking a sweat. I fight the despair over my mother. I fight the voice that tells me Hannah might not ... be ... might be in ...”

“In hell?” Mr. Nelson asked softly.

Now James Hudson, Jr., did seem like a little kid. He put his face in his hands and sobbed. “Not for anything to do with
her!
That’s the worst of it. Just—just on a
technicality!
She was an angel on earth, Mr. Nelson, but because of that man—”

“Shh. Jimmy. Quiet. You don’t have to worry about it.”

Jimmy looked up at him. Tear tracks glistened in the fluorescent light, but there was a wild, skeptical hope in his face.

And that, Will thought, is the advantage of making tough decisions in advance. This was what he’d foreseen; if he’d put off his decision, he’d have to hesitate and make it now, and his words wouldn’t carry the authority and comfort the boy needed.

“You wouldn’t have had to worry in any case, you know. The Lord gives us our parents; He doesn’t punish us because of whom He’s given us.”

“But Hannah had been coming to me for instruction.”

“What?”

“She wanted it to be a surprise. She used to drive in from campus. I thought the whole business was a little frivolous, but she explained that it was a gift to you. The surprise, that is. The conversion was for herself. I baptized her.”

“You did?”

“It doesn’t become a man in my position to lie, Jim.”

“But her parents ... you let her be buried.”

“Her parents had to deal with losing her. Why burden them with something like this at the same time? The One Who counted already knew.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Frankly, because it never occurred to me you’d have any doubts that a young woman who, as you put it, was an angel on earth would have any trouble being one in heaven.”

“Thank you, Mr. Nelson.”

“I should have told you.”

“And I shouldn’t have doubted.”

“You’re a little young yet to be perfect.” He clapped the boy on the shoulder. “Are you going to be all right?”

“I guess. But nowhere near perfect.”

“It takes time. Drink your chocolate. It ought to be cooler by now.”

Jimmy drank his chocolate. Will made him promise to call again, as often as he liked, to phone any time of the day or night, if Jimmy needed him. He showed him out.

When he came back through the house, Will saw that the TV set had turned itself on to The Weather Channel, a high-numbered channel on the tuner of the local cable system.

Neither Will nor his wife watched The Weather Channel, but sometimes it just popped on. Donna thought it was funny, one of those electronic mistakes that no one can explain and that would be too much bother to have fixed. Will thanked God for the millionth time that he had found Donna.

He turned off the set. He was glad it hadn’t happened with Jimmy there. There were explanations, but not to have to explain was best.

Will got a fleece-lined car coat from the closet and went back over to the church. He climbed the steps to the tower room. In a closet up there, behind some spare choir robes (which reminded him: Sunday, he’d have to urge the congregation to take a greater interest in the choir) he found the transmitter. He took it out, placed it on a small table by a window, and switched it on. It was already tuned to the proper frequency.

He waited for his leader to bounce and scramble between satellites and earth stations, through wires and waves.

This must be important, he thought. Again. They weren’t supposed to beam the summons to that special device in the television set at this time of day, except in the direst of emergencies. And two of the direst emergencies in one week was quite a lot.

A few seconds was enough. He put the headset on, pushed a button, and said, “Azrael. Responding to Control.”

They insisted on being called “Control,” but he used them as much as they used him. More. They helped him with his purpose; he was thwarting theirs.

“Azrael.” The Reverend Mr. Will Nelson was impressed. Borzov was making this transmission in person.

H
IS NAME HAD BEEN
Roger Brude. Of course, it still was, but not to the World. Not even to Donna. It was vanity to seek recognition, or even appreciation, and pride was a Deadly Sin. Even in a time as sinful as this, a man who tried to live a good life, to follow the Word, to help others, could not avoid being noticed. Temptations to pride would be all around.

That was why Roger lived his public ministry under the name of another, the man or (as Roger was convinced) the angel, who had shown him the end of his confusion. It was the closest Roger could come to the kind of tribute his late friend deserved—a whole life lived in his name.

Roger had been born in West Virginia, but he had lived all over as a child—as far north as St. Paul, as far south as San Antonio. His father was a bookkeeper with a knack for finding employment at firms that were about to go out of business or be swallowed up in mergers, with his father’s job being ground up in the belly of some already overstaffed corporate accounting department. Dad would get a severance check and a reference, and the family would move on.

When he was younger, Roger would cry at night over these dislocations. He was always the New Kid, and the New Kid was always the enemy. And they would try to make him fight.

It was sinful to fight. Roger knew that. His mother mentioned it repeatedly, read it from the Book. It was a sin to fight, except when you fought for the Lord. It was discussed at length around the family table, the one that had covered more distance, it seemed, than a space shot, and there was really no way he could construe making the other kids stop tormenting him as fighting for the Lord.

“The Lord was spat upon,” his father would say around a mouthful of meat loaf. “And reviled. He took it. He forgave, and even blessed, His tormentors.”

“Don’t talk with your mouth full, dear,” Mom would tell Dad, then turn to Roger. “But your father is absolutely right. The whole thing is, we have to try to be like the Lord.”

“But He was
God.
He was
perfect.”

“We still have to try. Do you think your father likes it that none of his jobs seems to last more than a year? That worse bookkeepers keep getting the promotions, men ten years younger—even some
women
now—are making more money than your father does, just because they’ve been lucky enough to stay in place and build up seniority? Do you think he likes not being able to buy us a house because he has to keep moving around the country like a fugitive because of bad luck and bad timing? Do you think he likes that?”

Roger had thought the question rhetorical, but his mother pressed on. “Do you?”

He turned to his father. “Do you, Dad?”

Dad’s mouth moved a lot before any voice came out. When it did, it sounded strange. “No, son,” he said. “I don’t like it, especially.”

“Of course he doesn’t,” Mom said triumphantly. “Only a worm could
like
that kind of treatment. But your father is a God-fearing man. He doesn’t go around beating up the boss every time he gets laid off. He doesn’t grab him by the collar and scream about how unfair it is, even though it is, of course. He goes on, doing the best he can. You know why that is, don’t you, Roger?”

“Because our reward is in Heaven.”

“Because our reward is in Heaven. Worldly things don’t matter. God is the only Judge that counts, and Heaven and Hell is where the real justice is done.”

So the family kept moving, and he was still the New Kid, and they still tried to get him to fight. And he would run away, so they marked him yellow and continued to torment him, or ignored him completely. Or he would give in to sinful human nature and fight them. And most of the time, he would win.

That was both the glory and the pain of it. Because he was actually quite good at this fighting stuff. He was a big kid, and strong and healthy. Mom said he reminded her of his father. Dad had never looked especially big before, but Roger took another look, and guessed that Dad would be pretty good-sized if he would pull his shoulders back a little and stop letting his head slump forward the way it did.

Roger had good posture. Teachers always told him. They seemed more impressed with his posture than with the good marks he got in school. A’s in everything except math. Roger didn’t want to be good in math. If you were good in math, they might try to make a bookkeeper out of you. Roger honored his father, but he’d had enough of that life already.

But he had a good body, and a good brain, and fast reflexes, and things that hurt other kids, caused them physical pain, had to hit Roger a lot harder before they hurt him.

And when they taunted him enough to make him forget his parents and the Lord and fight anyway, he just
didn’t care
anymore. He already
knew
he was sinning. He knew every bruise he got would bring a scolding (“He that spareth the rod hateth his son”) so he would do whatever it took, and he would win.

That’s when the real pain started. Because even when he won, he never won anything. Sure, the other kids would accept him, would want to “be his friend,” but what was that? What good was a friend who cost you part of your chance at Heaven? Who wanted the respect of a fool who would only respect someone who was willing to hurt him?

Roger grew up alone, except for Mom and Dad, of course. Then the accident happened, and he lost them, too.

It was Roger’s junior year of high school. They were living in Pennsylvania at the time. They’d been there over two years, longer than Roger could remember every staying in one place. They’d been there because Dad had run out of places to go. The factory closed down, and there wasn’t another job to be found. Dad collected unemployment; they scrimped, and they got by. But the unemployment was almost up, and the prospect of Welfare faced them. As Mom said, unemployment was bad enough, but Welfare would be a disgrace. Roger worked at a hamburger joint after school, but he couldn’t help much.

One hot night, while Roger was at work, Dad and Mom went out for a ride, probably to get some air. They’d sold their air conditioner to avoid temptation, with electricity so high. A ride in the car was about the only way to cool off, and with gas the way it was, even that had to be restricted.

A policeman came and pulled him out from behind the grill. Roger had never been so embarrassed. He hadn’t done anything wrong, at least not what the police thought of as wrong.

But it wasn’t that. The policeman told him Mom and Dad were dead, crashed into the abutment of an overpass on Interstate 70. It was kind of a mysterious accident, since witnesses said they didn’t swerve to avoid a hazard or anything, just swerved from the lane into the concrete piling.

Roger was sure he knew what it was. Something had broken in the car, the brakes or the steering. He told the cops, and asked them to find out what it was, to save other people from crashing.