Fostering Death (15 page)

“So how’d that result in a death?”

“I guess one of them shot him. I wasn’t inside to see, so I don’t know for sure. But he got shot. And died.”

Isaac cupped his own mug and inhaled the coffee-scented steam. “I wouldn’t have thought they’d have charged you as an adult with murder. If you weren’t even there.”

“Yeah, well…” I took a sip of my coffee. “We’d agreed I’d be the mule, take the heat if anybody had to. They were both adults with pretty impressive rap sheets already. They ran out of the building and shoved a few bags at me. I didn’t know anybody’d been killed, and I didn’t know the gun was in one of the bags. So when the cops stopped me, I just kept my mouth shut. I look a lot like my brothers. They thought I’d been the triggerman. And I had the gun. Murder charges were a no brainer.”

It was a long speech. I was surprised how good it felt to have someone actually listen to my side of the story.

Isaac took a big gulp of his coffee and coughed.

“Hey,” I said. “I owe you for helping me out here. I’m lucky you happened by.”

He set the mug down on the table. “I was looking for our goddess. She’s missing. They said she left when I was supposed to be sitting watch with her.” Tears pooled in his eyes. “I was on the schedule. But Xavier told me he would stay with her.”

My thoughts were pretty foggy right now, but even so, that sounded strange. “Your goddess?”

“Yeah. At first Father Peter thought she’d gone on a retreat or something, but it’s been days, and she hasn’t come back. I was sure she’d be back for the services in her honor this morning, but she hasn’t shown up.”

What kind of goddess could they have? A woman? That they all had sex with or something? Of course she’d leave. First chance she got. And definitely not come back for “services in her honor.”

But I didn’t know anything about their goddess—I was just speculating. My mind was certainly in the gutter. And Isaac looked genuinely distressed.

“Jesus was gone for forty days in the desert,” I pointed out. “He came back.” I wondered if the Tabernacle had any connections to Christianity as I knew it. Probably not, if they had a goddess. The Christian god was notoriously jealous of other deities and barely tolerated women as worshipers, much less in an exalted goddess status.

Isaac brightened. “That’s true,” he said. “And his disciples weren’t sorry they waited for him. Maybe our goddess had something she had to attend to.”

“What does your goddess look like?” I asked. “I could keep an eye out for her and tell you if I saw anyone who looked like her.” Although I knew I would offer the so-called goddess any help I could to escape if she wanted to before I said anything to Isaac or any other of the nutsos up there in the Tabernacle.

“Would you? I’d really appreciate that. But I suspect she can change her appearance anytime she wants to.”

“If that’s true, how do you know she didn’t come to the morning worship service looking like someone else?”

Isaac’s eyes blinked rapidly behind his wire-rimmed glasses. “I never thought of that,” he said.

Maybe they weren’t supposed to use any drugs most of the time, but I wondered if they had any ceremonies that included peyote or something like that.

“I’d appreciate it if you could keep an eye out anyhow,” Isaac said. “Her box on the altar is so empty. And she hasn’t eaten any of the sacrifices.”

Eating sacrifices was strange enough, but the idea of a box on the altar kind of freaked me out. “You keep her in a box on the altar?”

“Well, keep isn’t really the right word. It’s her bed. So she spends a lot of time in it. Or did before she left.”

A bed in a box on the altar? The images I was coming up with weren’t good. They sounded sick. Did they keep her chained up? “Could she just leave any time she wanted to?” I asked cautiously.

“Of course she could. We would never have kept her in the Tabernacle against her will. All she’d have to do was get someone to open the door for her.”

“The door to the box?”

“Oh, no. You couldn’t lock her in the box. It doesn’t have a top. She can climb out of it. She does all the time. I mean the door to the outside.”

It did make sense to keep the exterior doors locked in this neighborhood. Although why wouldn’t she have access to a key herself?

“What was she wearing when you last saw her?” I asked.

“Sparkly stuff. Lots of jewels.” Isaac closed his eyes. “A collar. Father Peter got it for her. He said it was a sign of her status, kind of like crown jewels. And he says it helps concentrate her powers.”

“Was she wearing anything else but sparkly jewels and a collar?” I asked. Between the bed on the altar and the collar, my imagination was running wild.

“I don’t think so.”

“Didn’t she get cold?”

Isaac blinked rapidly again. “I don’t think so. Fur’s pretty warm.”

“She had a fur coat?”

“Well, yes.”

Either Isaac wasn’t making much sense or slamming my head against the bricks had rattled my thinking more than I realized. “She was wearing sparkly jewels, a collar, and a fur coat?”

“Well, I guess you could say that.”

I swallowed my exasperation. Without Isaac’s intervention, I might have fallen asleep outside on the pavement and stayed there all night. Maybe even have never woken up. The least I could do was be patient with him. “How would you say it?”

“Well, the last time the goddess lived among humans was back in ancient Egypt. So she’s taken the form of a cat again. A cat with fur in all different colors.”

Now I had a pretty good idea where their goddess had gotten to.

Leaning back in the rickety chair, I stared at Isaac.

The cat was with her kittens in the laundry basket under the bed. I could hear the low sound of her contented purr. If Isaac heard anything, he didn’t mention it.

“Take a peek under the bed,” I told him.

“What?”

“Just look under the bed. In the laundry basket. But move it gently. You don’t want to scare her.”

Isaac gave me a look of disbelief, then dropped to his knees, pulling the laundry basket out and peering at the little family. “My lady!” he breathed.

A look of reverence came over his face. “The goddess has given birth,” he said. “The kittens must be young gods themselves. And they don’t have a father. The Immaculate Conception.”

“I wouldn’t know about that,” I said. Was it supposed to be “The Tabernacle of Immaculate Conception,” not “The Tabernacle of Inaccurate Conception?” Made a certain amount of distorted sense, either way. How well could Father Peter and the rest of the cult members read, anyhow?

And from what I knew about cats, there would have been nothing “immaculate” about conceiving the kittens.

He turned agonized eyes on me. “She’s chosen to stay with you. Did you witness the birth?”

“Nah. I found her in the stairwell in the sleet one night last week. I couldn’t just leave her outside. She had the kittens while I was at work.”

He looked around. “If she wants to stay here to raise the young gods, she must have a reason. I’ll have to talk to Father Peter, but maybe we ought to leave her here. Would you mind if we sent an apostle down to worship her and meditate? Only one at a time. We usually switch off every six hours.”

One of those crazies in my apartment 24/7? Over my dead body. I looked into Isaac’s sincere eyes. I did owe him. “Look,” I said. “I think she probably just wanted some privacy for the birth process. It is kind of messy and all, probably even for a goddess. And you’re all male, aren’t you?”

Isaac nodded solemnly.

“So she wanted to be alone for the birth. But now she probably wouldn’t mind moving back to her altar.”

Isaac brightened. “You think?” he said. “I could bring her and the little gods upstairs. Everyone will be so surprised when they show up for the worship service tonight!”

“And you’ll be the savior,” I said. My entire body ached, but I felt a lot stronger and I wasn’t so dizzy any more. I wanted him gone. Even if he took the cats with him. “I’ll help you carry them upstairs.”

The mother cat jumped out as soon as Isaac lifted the laundry basket, so I picked her up and tucked her under my jacket. She snuggled up against my chest and purred.

Silly, but I would miss her.

We went up to the sidewalk outside my apartment, around to the front stairs and up into the Tabernacle. Glittering jeweled sunlight streamed through the colorful windows. I looked at them in awe. Stained glass was expensive. If they could afford that, what were they doing renting an old storefront in this section of town? Unless it was because people around here were pretty tolerant of other people’s peculiarities and minded their own business.

“Are those real stained glass?” I asked Isaac, staring at a side window of an Egyptian scene, with pyramids and camels.

“What? The windows? No, man.” Isaac put the laundry basket down on the altar and looked in awe at the tiny kittens, which were beginning to squirm. “We made them with colored tissue paper, glued on. Pretty good, huh?”

“Very good.”

One of the kittens mewed.

The cat stopped purring and stuck her head out from under my jacket.

I unzipped the jacket and took her out. When I put her down on the surface of the altar, she climbed into the basket and started licking the kittens. The altar looked more like a worn kitchen table on which some demented child had scribbled abstract designs than any altar I’d ever seen. Of course, my experience in such matters was limited.

“Do you think we should put them in her bed?” Isaac asked.

I poked the luxurious cushion in the fancy bed-box on the altar. My finger sank deep into its soft, plush top. “I think it’s probably too deep and soft for the kittens,” I said. “They’d probably roll into the crevices and couldn’t get out. Maybe have trouble breathing. And the sides aren’t very high. She seems to like higher sides. Makes her feel more comfortable.”

Isaac looked uncertain. “Someone will be with her all the time,” he said. “They’d help if the kittens got stuck.”

I thought about that. “And someone was with her when she left?” I asked.

“Yeah. Like I said, I was on the schedule. But Xavier said he’d stay with her and I should go. He said he had to meet someone and I’d just be in the way, so he told me to go.”

“What did Xavier say had happened to her?”

“That she just kind of faded away. There one minute, gone the next. She
is
primarily a spirit creature, you know.”

She seemed pretty substantial and generally cat-like to me, but what do I know? She certainly didn’t ever fade away on me.

In the end, the cat made the decision on where to keep the kittens by lying down in the laundry basket with them. The kittens snuggled up next to her and began nursing. When Isaac reached in, she swatted his hand and growled. He jerked his hand back. “Yes, your holiness,” he said. “Whatever you want.”

By now my teeth were chattering, and my head was throbbing in time to it. They could have the laundry basket. Leaving Isaac staring in awe at the feline family, I made my way back to my apartment, took a shower ,and collapsed into my bed. It had been an interesting day, to say the least. I had a lot I would have to try to sort out. But now, I needed to get warm and get some sleep.

Chapter 11

M
Y
H
EAD
A
CHED
and I was stiff, but at least I wasn’t dizzy any more. I wasn’t about to skip a night’s work if I could possibly make it. It wouldn’t look good on my parole record, and I needed all the money I could get. So I got up and got ready for work.

I went to put out cat food before I remembered that the “goddess” was back on her altar with her kittens. It seemed kind of lonely without her, but I had to admit that me having a pet didn’t make much sense. I was having enough trouble taking care of myself.

When I got to work and punched in, John and the second shift foreman were huddled over their clipboards, frowning.

“Jesse,” John called. “Come over here.”

Adjusting my hardhat, I went over. “Yeah?”

He stopped short. “What happened to your face?”

I almost fell back on the standard prison inmate’s explanation that I’d walked into a cell door but stopped myself in time. “Slipped on some ice.”

“You must have landed face first.”

“Kind of. I landed against a wall. Slammed my face into it.”

“Are you okay to work?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s good. We got our work cut out for us,” he said, tapping the stub of a pencil he was using on his paperwork. “Most of the shipments for tonight haven’t been assembled yet.”

The second shift foreman straightened up and ran his hand over his beard. “It’s that damn new system. It didn’t print out the stuff until after eight tonight. So dayshift didn’t get any of it done, and my guys only had a little over three hours to work on it.”

Ignoring him, John flipped through the paperwork.