Cult (14 page)

“How it
is
,” she corrected.

“Better than dead,” Barney said.

“It's the only way,” Roy said, rising on big, muscled haunches. He slowly pushed aside the planks that held Amos' door and went in. O'Hara quickly replaced the planks.

“What's he going to do in there?”

“Just sit. Keep him from sleeping.” He shook his head. “Look, Naomi, we've got to get them to put down their guard. To exhaust them. Same methods used by the Glories. Trust me. I've done it for both sides many times.”

“Trust you?” Naomi sneered. “How can I?”

Two wrongs don't make a right
, she told herself. Charlotte's dead face floated in her mind.

She couldn't eat but she did have a cup of coffee. Barney, bitter and mourning, sat at the other end of the table, writing in his notebook. She couldn't blame him. Not really. Nor could she summon pity for him.

She became aware of O'Hara offering instructions in a flat, authoritative tone, a monologue that outlined the housekeeping conditions of their stay. There was one extra bedroom, with twin beds. They would take two hours' sleep and two hours' duty, which meant sitting with the “subjects.” So they had become less than human in their identification as well. Roy would keep sandwiches and coffee handy around the clock, including providing the subjects with oatmeal mush three times a day.

“There is a shower out back,” O'Hara pointed out with an attempt at humor, “if you begin to smell skunk on your body.” No one laughed.

In the brief silence that followed, they could still hear Mary's voice. It had become diminished to a harsh, brittle whisper.

“When that stops,” O'Hara said to Naomi, “you go in there and sit with her. Make sure she doesn't get any sleep. You, Harrigan. Be sure to get those planks back.” He looked at his watch. “I'm gonna get some sack time. I'll be going around the clock.” Stretching, he lumbered across the room to the bedroom, stopping before he opened the door.

“When Roy goes out,” he said to Barney, “you go in.”

“What should I do?”

“Doesn't matter. Just don't let him sleep. Think of them both as a roast cooking. I'll be coming in and basting them from time to time.”

“Let her stew for awhile, then go in. Watch her. Let her scream.”

He went into the bedroom, leaving Barney and Naomi alone together.

For a long time, she did not face him, although she found herself listening to his breathing, imagining she could hear his heartbeat.

“This is all my fault, Nay,” he said. It rang hollow in her mind.

“No one is to blame but them,” she murmured. Still she did not face him. Thankfully, he did not wait for a response. “All I want is the truth of what happened to Charlotte. Those two know. Jeremiah ordered it. It's a no-brainer. We need their testimony. I owe Charlotte that.”

Odd
, she thought in a burst of clarity,
how the mind comes up with motives
. He had found another part of his revenge plot.

“And then?”

“Then?” Without seeing his expression, she was certain he looked at her pointedly, perhaps with bitterness.

“We'll have grounds for a murder conviction. It's a start. We have to expose them, dismantle them. Bastards. The truth is… I'd rather kill them.”

She shuddered. She knew he was being honest. That part of him had not changed. Vengeance was powerful, escalating, feeding on itself. She had seen it too often in her work. “Fire with fire,” the spokesman of authority always said, responding to protests. The beleaguered always replied in kind, forever escalating violence, until death became as commonplace as weeds. It insulted man's capacity for forgiveness.

She felt a spiraling self-righteousness, the old feeling of moral outrage. For her, it had always been the only reality.

“How do you fight evil?” she whispered, as if her mind had generated the words without her will.

“Like this,” he said. She turned to face him.

“You can't fight evil with evil.” And yet, she was in it with them. In the silence that followed, she could clearly hear the woman in the barren room.

“I guess it's my turn then,” Naomi said nonchalantly.

Getting up, she put her ear to the door, and then removing the planks, she grasped the doorknob.

“Lock it after me,” she said. Barney rose immediately as she opened the door and entered the room.

Mary was squatting on the mattress, her head resting against the wall. The light from the single bulb washed out her pale face, fleshed and pimpled from a bad diet. Her hair was still matted, her forehead shiny with perspiration, her eyes vague, her lips pressed tight together yet slightly puffed.

Naomi leaned against the opposite wall, then let her body slide to a sitting position as she watched the woman, unsure of whether or not Mary was aware of Naomi's presence. As time passed Naomi wondered if Mary had succeeded in inducing a trancelike state: she didn't move and even her fingers lay as immovable as icicles, palms up on her thighs. Her eyes were open, their gaze fixed.

Naomi decided there was no need for talk, whether or not Mary was in a trance. Suddenly, the woman coughed, a rasping sound wracking her chest, forcing her body to react. Her eyes drifted toward Naomi. Mary's vagueness softened, although the look was now forlorn, helpless. Pity rose in Naomi.

“Would you like a drink?” she asked.

The vagueness faded now as Mary's body stiffened. She sat upright in the bed, nodding, offering a thin wan smile. Naomi rose and went into the bathroom. The chipped sink was stained brown, with only a single faucet. Opening the tap, she dipped her fingers into a slow trickle of cold water.

“No glass,” she said.

“Never mind,” Mary croaked. Her chanting had wasted her voice. Naomi paced the room, feeling the woman's gaze fixed on her, like some searing beam of light.

“Resist the devil and he will flee from you,” Mary said, oddly calm.

“I'm not the devil,” Naomi shot back, harsher than she intended.

“What then?” Mary asked pleasantly.

“Just a woman. Like you,” Naomi said, sliding back into a sitting position against the wall.

“Father Glory will protect me,” Mary said hoarsely. “I have nothing to fear. Satan never wins. Father Glory wins, always.”

“He didn't win with your sister,” Naomi said.

“She is in the spirit world.”

“You should have left her alone,” Naomi said, forcing a rebuking tone.

“We saved her. She was in the grasp of Satan.”

“She was perfectly happy with Barney.”

“Never. She was only happy with Father Glory.”

“She had a place, a husband, a child.”

“He lied to you.” A veil seemed to lift from the woman's eyes. “He was Satan. He was cruel to her.”

“And the child?”

“Satan's child.”

Naomi shivered.

“All they want is the truth. About the way Charlotte died.”

“I told them that. It was an accident.”

“They don't think so.”

“I swear on my life.”

“On Father Glory's life?”

Mary hesitated and smiled benignly, moving closer to the edge of the mattress. “Yes,” she said. “On Father Glory's life.”

Mary held out her hand, reached over and touched Naomi's knee. Naomi let it rest there, looking deeply into the woman's eyes. They seemed bottomless, serene, despite the condition of her face.

“Don't you believe in the concept of love? Love is the most important emotion in the universe. Without love, there is nothing. Love transcends all. Jesus was the personification of love. He is God's love child. He did not succeed because his mother defiled love with Zachariah. Only Father Glory can save mankind from the hell that awaits us all.”

Her words poured out, honeyed, smooth and gentle.

“These men do Satan's work. They have no right to defile me. No right to do this. You'll see. They'll….” She hesitated. “They'll force me. That's the way they do it. You'll see.”

“All they want is the truth,” Naomi said lamely.

“Do you think I lied?”

“They don't believe you.”

“Do you?”

Naomi wanted to believe her. She hesitated, digging her teeth into her lower lip. Mary got off the bed, crawled across the floor and toward her, without taking her gaze from Naomi, clasped both her hands in hers.

“You must save me from them,” she whispered. “We are women. We understand.”

“Father Glory is a man,” Naomi said, unresisting, feeling the strength of Mary's grip.

“Father Glory is God's true messiah,” she said with overpowering certainty. “Look around you.” Inadvertently, Naomi tore her eyes away from Mary's gaze and searched the room, then returned her gaze. “Out there is only defilement. Loss of purpose. Chaos. Destruction. Someone must save us. We are suffering because we have turned away from God. Only Father Glory can save our souls.”

“How?” The word seemed compulsory.

Father Glory is a fraud
, her mind told her.

“With love. Love.” Mary pressed, unclasping her fingers, holding Naomi's shoulders, bringing her face close to hers, until Naomi's eyes unfocused.

“Help me,” Mary whispered. “Resist the devil.”

“But how?”

Mary paused, her eyes boring into Naomi's.

“Sneak away from here. Tell my brothers and sisters. Tell Jeremiah. They will come and get us. Please. They have no right to do this to another human being.”

The words were like a match to the dry tinder of her soul. She felt the conflagration rise.
Suppose they had told the truth
, Naomi couldn't help but think.

“I'm human,” Mary said. “Like you.”

Yes.
She felt the pull of the woman's humanity, the plea from her depths.

“I told them what they planned to do to your sister,” Naomi said slowly, as if the words had been pulled out of her.

“Of course you did,” Mary said without a pause. “Because you knew it was evil, Satan's work.”

“But if I hadn't….” She felt a sudden constriction of her tongue.

“God told you what you must do. To save her.”

“But she died.”

“With Father Glory in her heart and soul. It was your gift to her.”

My gift?
With the idea came a sense of release. Of freedom. Naomi felt it cascade down the ruts in her mind, washing away her guilt.

“Save me,” Mary said. “Save us from Satan. Both of us.”

Mary held her now in a warm embrace. Naomi felt her hug, innocent and good. The woman continued to hold her. Then suddenly, she heard the planks begin to be removed outside the door. In a flash, Mary was back on the bed in the same position in which Naomi had found her.

O'Hara stood in the doorway, his eyes squinting into the brightness. He carried a leather-bound Bible and a briefcase.

“Get some sleep,” he ordered, watching Mary and at the same time ignoring her. Naomi rose slowly. She felt drained, yet exhilarated. With a glance at Mary, whose eyes faced the planks where the window had been, she moved toward the door, blocked by the pervasive figure of O'Hara.

“Time for the cavalry,” he said, making room for her to pass.

“SERVICES FOR CHARLOTTE HARRIGAN” a tiny headline in the local paper read, followed by a single paragraph: “Services were held today for Charlotte Harrigan, twenty-five, at the Glorification Church. Mrs. Harrigan, a native of New York City, had been a recent convert to the Church. She died over the weekend of accidental drowning.”

Shaking his head in disgust and frustration, Sheriff Moore balled the page in his fists and flipped it into the trashcan where it lay amid the Styrofoam cups and ashtray leavings. He had not expected nor wished for more accurate coverage. They had cremated her. Everybody in the county played the game and there was no question in his mind that the Glories were set to buy up the local paper from the Kildare family, who had owned it for three generations. The Glories take over, one step at a time.

Soon they would own the whole county, just as they owned him. No sense wallowing in remorse. It was too late for that now. The Glories had tarnished them all, and those they could not control they bought. It chilled him to think of it. Town by town, county by county, they could take over the whole fucking country. He'd seen it happen here, the outraged citizenry fighting the Glories and their high-priced carpetbagging lawyers making them dot the i's and cross the t's. The best he could hope for was a stalemate. Hopefully, a checkmate. And if O'Hara and Roy let him down, he was finished.

As the day progressed, so did his second thoughts. He was a fool to stick his neck out. Too big a risk. And O'Hara had a rap sheet as long as his arm, mostly after he had started deprogramming for a living. If they connected O'Hara to him, it was all over.

He remembered O'Hara as a Glory, “Zachariah,” the man with ferret eyes, shifty and clear. It was hard to tell if he was part of the scam or a believer. Who knew? Now he was bedded down with the bastard, risking a career, hating himself for his sudden surge of do-gooder baloney. He'd given them forty-eight hours. Not much time, he knew. O'Hara had pleaded for more time, but he feared that more time would be dangerous. The Glories weren't dumb. They might catch on to who was behind it. He looked at his watch. Nearly twelve hours gone.

“They're here, Sheriff,” his deputy Perry said, bursting in on his bleak thoughts.

“All right.”

He tidied up his desk, stepped on the trash can to crunch the paper further into the rubbish, then straightened his tie and assumed a position of authority, hands clasped on his desk, chin jutting out, the very model of assertive virtue. He had ducked the Glories all day, communicating briefly on the phone, assuring them that he was on the job and in pursuit.

Jeremiah and Holmes came in and took seats opposite the Sheriff. Holmes crossed his legs self-importantly, always the patrician, with his charcoal gray pants pressed razor sharp, his shoes shined, his long socks creaseless. Jeremiah in his khakis looked, as always, officious and superior. They waited until Perry had left; he brought them steaming mugs of coffee, which he had perched on cork coasters on the edge of the Sheriff's desk, and then ducked out.

Behind the Sheriff, more for show than actual use, was a county map with an overlay and marks in red and green, indicating potential hideaways. He had scrupulously left out where he knew Amos and Mary were being held. By the way Jeremiah and Holmes looked at him, he had no doubt that his veracity was in question.

“It was a clumsy attempt,” Jeremiah said. “I could smell O'Hara through the ski mask. Playing his games. As if we didn't know.” He raised his eyes and looked at the Sheriff.

“Smell's not evidence,” the Sheriff said.

“I was there; you weren't,” Jeremiah snapped.

“You should have been there,” Holmes echoed.

They were like a comedy team, each playing to the other's timing, as they had done on many other occasions and confrontations. “You were there to protect us, and you didn't,” Holmes pressed, embellishing the point.

The Sheriff had expected the accusation, thankful that it had come up so soon. He needed to get it out of the way, clear the air. “You were in front,” Holmes said. “Suddenly speeding away at almost the exact moment when the tires of our car were shot out.”

“There was no need to keep
that
close to you,” the Sheriff said. “We were going in the same direction. You knew the way. You were coming in for paperwork. I wasn't taking you in.” He gathered his resources, pulling together his energy for the blast of indignation that he had planned.

“And then to suggest it might not be them even though it's so obvious,” Jeremiah accused. “Just whose side are you on?”

Now
, he thought.
Now is the right moment.

“The law.” He spat out the words, feeling the flickering flame of righteous anger charge out of his mouth as if he were a dragon. When the point was made, he deliberately calmed.

“I'm not saying it wasn't them.” He lowered his voice. “They may be the logical suspects, but you can't prove anything, and I can't go on conjecture.”

Futile smoke-blowing, he knew. He was deliberately dropping red herrings. How they hated to not be able to control people and situations. Taking comfort in that, he pressed on.

“Anyway, all the roads out of the county are covered. No sign of the van.”

“And Forman, Harrigan?”

“Checked out of the motel I put them in.”

“Yes. We know,” Holmes said. Had the Sheriff expected them to roll over dead? It was expected, but it still troubled him to know that they were taking countermeasures, doing their own detective work.

“Maybe they've gone back east,” the Sheriff said. “He made arrangements to ship his wife's body back to New York.”

“Yes. We know that, too.”

The Sheriff was no longer able to disguise his irritation.

“Busy little beavers,” he said with an edge.

“He's around here and you know it,” Jeremiah sneered. It was a carefully calculated surprise accusation, complete with pointed finger. Jeremiah's frustration was fully revealed now.

Play it easy, the Sheriff told himself, feeling a sour backwash begin in his throat. To buy time, he picked up his coffee mug and sipped the liquid. He had not laced it with booze. He needed every ounce of alertness.

“I could also put out an all points to other jurisdictions,” he said, infusing his speech with a slow West Virginia drawl. It was time for slow talk now. Out here, it had always been a worthy and effective shield. For vote gathering he had carefully masked his roots, avoiding any hillbilly caricature that might damage his chances.

Holmes uncrossed his legs and Jeremiah's head pivoted as his eyes searched the nooks and crannies of his office.

“You know that won't do,” Holmes said.

Resisting the use of a pointed finger, Jeremiah said with lowered voice: “No big-city publicity.”

So they are scared, too
, the Sheriff decided, swallowing away the sourness. He knew they hadn't yet checked with higher authority. The thought triggered an inner chuckle. An image emerged of Father Glory himself golfing with toadying disciples on the private course on his North Carolina estate. He wondered how deeply the machinery of this religious scam could be shaken by the kidnapping. Deprogram and get those two deadheads to confess. A long shot, he admitted, but worth the effort. For the first time in years, he felt the power of his office, the sweet authority of the badge.

“I'll find them. Don't worry,” he said, with what he hoped would be indisputable conviction. Not once, he noted, had they mentioned the real issue.

“You'd better,” Jeremiah said.

“Why so concerned?” he asked innocently.

Holmes and Jeremiah exchanged glances, suggesting the Sheriff's dubious credibility. He knew that they could only do more if they identified the perpetrators.

“We have nothing to hide,” Jeremiah said, dismissing the unvoiced issue. Holmes made a steeple with his fingers, a ruse of contemplation, nodding as a signal for Jeremiah to continue.

The Sheriff smiled. So they were already drawing up a defense.

Yet, even if the deprogramming opened up a different explanation for Charlotte's drowning, it didn't mean prosecution. The Sheriff might cook up a perjury case. Or it could be murder. What he wanted, more than anything, was truth. Truth! The idea of it fired him up. The man had his dignity to protect.

Even a successful deprogramming did not assure a permanent breakthrough. Without sympathetic backup, like parents, spouses, siblings or friends who cared, Amos and Mary could drift back, unable to cope with the reality of mental rebirth. He hadn't quite thought that one through. What, if anything, would be done with Amos and Mary once they had reemerged and told the truth? The excitement of his original idea, complete with the reprise of heroic music in his mind, did have its flaws.

“Just find them as fast as possible,” Jeremiah continued. “Before….” He paused, letting the threat hang in the air. His fanged words and the foreboding possibility bit deeper this time, sitting in the back of the Sheriff's mind. Something said or left out. An ominous silence. He searched for it in the chaos of his thoughts.

“We want no trouble out of this,” Holmes said from behind his steeple.

“I told you, I'll find them.” The Sheriff hesitated, wetting dry lips with his tongue. He'd have to go get them in thirty-six hours. Any longer than that and there was no holding back the Glories and their various snoops. They would find them sooner or later. A burst of fear squeezed his heart, forcing it to pound like a bass drum.

“You realize that they want to make something out of the accident,” Holmes said, referring, at last, to the elephant in the room without actually using the word “drowning.”

The articulation of the obvious took the Sheriff by surprise. Perhaps they wished to deliberately show him their legal hand, as if they were prepared to shoot down any suspicions of a deviation from the drowning being an accident. He ignored their straightforwardness. No sense getting ahead of events.

“Sometimes,” he said, to deflect the path the conversation was taking, “you should let some of these people go, if they're more trouble than they're worth.” Instantly, he knew it was a mistake. A flush rose along the sides of Jeremiah's neck.

“How many times do I have to say it?” He looked at Holmes who folded his steeple and shook his head.

“They are not under any duress,” the lawyer said. “They joined out of their own free will.”

“No lectures,” the Sheriff shot back vehemently. “Not now.” It was not only the irritation of their pressure that moved his anger, it was their perpetual denial of their brainwashing scam.

“With that attitude, how can he be objective?” Jeremiah asked, throwing the line to Holmes.

“I don't know,” Holmes said.

“Maybe we should read him the Constitution. In particular, the First Amendment.”

“He doesn't want lectures.”

The Sheriff waited for the little byplay to simmer down. They were toying with him now, playing intimidation games. He did not react, wanting them to think they were roasting him.

“We won't settle for anything short of returning our people to us,” Jeremiah said sharply. He stood up. “Intact.”

“I'm no miracle maker,” the Sheriff protested.

“Then become one,” Jeremiah said, his dammed-up anger showing signs of spilling over. Holding himself back made him rigid, and he had the look of cold marble.

I have them scared
, the Sheriff thought. He supposed there was little victory in that. And he had successfully resisted their intimidation… for the moment.

Again the idea floated in his mind.
What had they avoided saying?

“I can't guarantee anything.”

“Neither can we,” Jeremiah said, with an ominous emphasis on the “we.”

Like a dark cloud pregnant with storm, he watched them recede from his office. He dipped his hand into a bottom drawer and drew out a half-full bottle of Jack Daniels, pouring a stiff drink into his now cool coffee, swallowing it in large gulps. He swiveled back to face the window, observing the lawyer and Jeremiah striding purposefully to their car in the dusky fading light. Partners in evil. The killer and his mouthpiece. The image disturbed him and he turned away.

Maybe he'd better call the whole thing off. Still, what nagged at him could not be netted by his conscious mind.