Marcie's Murder (32 page)

“Of course.”

“I mean, not related to the Askew case. Something else.”

“Sure.”

“You believe in life after death, right? Being a Christian monk, and all?”

“
Actually
we’re not Christian. But yes, I believe in an afterlife.”

“Oh. I thought you were Christian. Monastery of
God
, and all.”

“
We
believe that Jesus
probably actually lived, and probably was an important prophet in his time
.
After that it gets pretty
complicated.”

“Oh. Okay.” Karen chewed her lip. “Do you believe in reincarnation?”

“You mean as in the Hindu belief that the soul repeatedly dies and is reborn
into another body?”

“Yeah
. Do you believe in that?”

“No.”

“
Oh. Too bad.”

“Why?”

She gave him a look. “It’s complicated.”

They walked for a while in silence.
Brother Charles turned to her.
“Did you
want to talk about something?”

“I don’t want to take up any more of your time.”

Brother Charles took out his PDA and worked it with his thumbs. “My scheduler’s synchronized with the monastery network,” he explained. “Apparently I’m free for the next hour. We can talk, if you like.”

“You guys are networked?”

“For crying out loud, Detective, we’re not Luddites. We use the best tools we can get our hands on to manage our time
, since
our time is one of the most important commodities we give to other people.
T
hat’s not egotism or excessive pride, just
unadorned fact
.”

“Okay, okay. Sorry I asked.”

“Come this way.” Brother Charles led her down an adjoining sidewalk that took them around a large, square brick building. “This is our residence.” They walked around the back of the building into a garden
, the centerpiece of which was a large gazebo
.
The gazebo contained enough patio furniture to seat eight people comfortably. He led her up the stairs and through the screen door.

A brass plaque above the door told her she was entering the Abbot Ahrenson Pavilion.
She
dropped into
a very comfortable patio chair
. H
e settled down across from her.

“Who’s Abbot Ahrenson?”

“He was our original abbot
.
”
Brother Charles
fold
ed
his hands together. “He passed away
quite a few
years ago.”

“And you replaced him?”

He nodded.
“I was
appointed
.”

“How long has this place been here?”

“The
monastery
? Since 1972.”

“So it was like a hippie commune, was it?”

He smiled. “Something like that. No drugs or promiscuity, but lots of music, so I understand.”

“When did you come here?”

He thought for a moment. “Sixteen years ago, I guess. Time
flies
.”

“You said you were elected.”

“That’s right. You were talking earlier about cults.
One of the supposed characteristics of a cult is that it has a single, charismatic leader to whom the group is completely loyal. Fanatically loyal, I
guess
. Well, the abbot is our leader. When the monastery was first founded there was no
actual
leader. Everyone had a vote
,
and majority ruled. Once it became clear, though, how they wanted to operate the commune, that they were going to have small farming enterprises to pay for expenses, they created a council to help keep things organized, with a chair person. It took almost ten years for the religious
side
of the commune to solidify
,
after which
the chair person became
an
abbot.
It’s an administrative position,
but
the abbot is also the spokes
person
for the monastery on matters of
philosophy
.
Just the same,
decisions remained collective, including decisions about belief.
The
founding members
wrote up a set of guiding principles, a code of conduct, policies on how the monastery would be run
, and a set of basic religious tenets on which their beliefs
are
based
.”

“
That was before your time?
”

He cocked his head sideways. “
Yes, t
his was all done by the original founders
. I was six years old when they came here
, Detective
. I was
in Grade One at Millhurst Elementary School in
Sebring
, Ohio
and didn’t have a clue
. They really were hippies
. It was kind of
cool
, actually
. It was the sweetest sort of idealism that came out of that era,
a
back-to-the-land movement coupled with a surprisingly pure spiritualism. One of the originals was a
Zen
Buddhist
,
and
the others were Christians whose beliefs were heavily cut with Taoism, various flavors of
Zen
, and a whole lot of other stuff. If they had a cult leader back then, I suppose you could say it was Alan Watts.”

She looked blankly at him.

“The writer and philosopher
?
Alan Watts
?
He wrote a number of books
?
The Watercourse Way
,
This Is It
,
The Way of Zen
,
The Wisdom of Insecurity
? No?”

Karen shook her head.

“That’s all right, it’s not important. Apparently he spoke here
once
. It was a very big thing at the time.” He smiled. “This is longwinded, I know, but I
am
trying to answer your question. You see, when I came here I was part of the second wave, people who
’
d heard about the monastery or met some of the originals, sort of like the Next Generation. David and I came here together. We were close friends, roommates at college, devout Christians at the time but not satisfied with
the
Church. We were both training to become Anglican priests; it was a
shared
decision to walk out and look for something better. David was friends with someone who
’
d come here so we
drove
down for a visit. We spent a week and asked to join. The rest is history. But I have strong administrative skills, you see,
that
eventually
led
me to this position
. T
he council needed to replace the late Abbot Ahrenson
,
and I was the best choice.”

“
Y
ou said you guys are not Christian. So what are you
?”

He chuckled. “Ah, the human urge to categorize. We’re all taxonomists at the end of the day. We have to fit everything into its appropriate box in order to understand it.”

Karen gave him one of her unamused cop looks.

“Sorry. I wasn’t making fun of you. We normally just tell people we’re a non-denominational benevolent religious order and they let it go at that.” He folded his hands together. “We’re not atheists, for starters. Or humanists. We don’t believe, as Feuerbach did, that humanity’s love was misdirected to God and should rightly
be
directed to humanity itself. We don’t believe that the human species, through science and technology, can continually improve itself to the point that it might actually achieve divine status itself.

“We believe in God. A single, omnipotent, omniscient creator. We believe that science is our way of understanding the tools and materials God used to create existence and that mathematics is our attempt to construct a language that might describe this creation in terms that are understandable to us. Jesus, Mohammed, the
Buddha
, Isaiah, Abraham, all these people made very important efforts to steer us in the right direction as a species
. W
hat they taught has value that we need to appreciate and apply in our own lives, but we’re so far away from them now in terms of time and culture and technology, and there have been so many layers of interpretation, extrapolation
,
and sheer fabrication laid on top of their efforts that it’s a lifetime commitment to excavat
e
the truth out from under all the
bullshit.

“
However, there’s a definite movement in this direction,
Karen
. More and more scholars are examining holy scriptures in the context of figurative and allegorical teachings, rather than literal descriptions of historical events
, and understanding how these prophets have contributed to a universal set of religious beliefs that probably extend all the way back to our beginnings as a species
.”

“So you haven’t taken Jesus into your heart, son, as your personal
savior
?” Karen asked in her best Texan twang.

Brother Charles smiled. “Well, actually I did as a young man and I have to say truthfully he’s still there. I suppose I could say I’ve come to terms with the improbability of what I was taught about Jesus and have kept him in my heart as a personal symbol instead of a
deus ex machina
who’ll bail me out of this mortality thing at the last second.” He let the smile fade. “But you’re asking me about my beliefs primarily because you’re trying to decide whether I have the answers you’re looking for,
aren’t you
?”

Karen shrugged. “I suppose.”

“So what about yourself? Did you have a proper Christian upbringing?”

She shook her head. “No. Daddy wasn’t a churchgoer. We weren’t that kind of family.”

Brother Charles said nothing.

“Not that we were atheists, either,” she went on after a while. “Daddy taught us to believe in God and Jesus and the Ten Commandments and all that stuff. He made sure
I
had a proper upbringing
,
and he’d whup
my
ass if
I
did anything wrong. He was a cop. A Texas
s
tate
t
rooper. He believed in the law and in right and wrong
, and he made sure I was the same
.
I became a cop because of him and so did Darryl, my oldest brother.
”

“What about your mother?”

Karen
took a while
before answering. “She’s spent most of her life in a mental institution.
I haven’t a clue if they’ve got church there or not. Wouldn’t matter worth a damn, anyway.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. It’s not that big a deal to me. She’s been there since I was what, ten years old? Daddy paid a cousin of his, Auntie Myrtle, to come over three times a week to do housework and all that female stuff, because I
sure
was no good at any of it. But to make a long story short, no, I didn’t have what you’d call a Christian upbringing but that don’t mean I’m not God-fearing in my own way.”

Brother Charles crossed his legs and folded his hands on his knee. “Sounds like a difficult childhood.”

Karen glanced at him sideways. “I wouldn’t say that.
Daddy was a real good father to us. I was the only girl, the middle child, with two older brothers and two younger brothers, but Daddy didn’t treat me any different. I had to do chores just like them, I got my ass whipped when I broke the rules just like them, I played sports at school just like them
,
and I got decent grades or else explained why just like them. He taught me to shoot when I was big enough to handle a gun just like them, only I turned out to be a helluva
lot
better shot. Darryl can drive a car better than any of us, Delbert can fix cars better than any of us, Bradley can build a house better than any of us
,
and I can shoot better than any of them.”

“What about your fourth brother?”

“He can break the law better than any of us.
Let’s just leave it at that.
” Karen’s youngest brother, Jimmy Bob, was currently s
erving time for armed robbery.