Scream (22 page)

Justice had to be satisfied.

He sat a moment longer, thinking on that, turning it over
and over in his head, like his grandmother used to churn butter.
After a few minutes he reached up and turned the key, killing
the engine.

Ginny looked up. "What? What is it? The engine stopped."

Amber returned to the crack in the door and pressed her
face against it. "He's getting out." The car door shut, and judge's
footsteps drew closer to the barn. The cinder block tumbled
away, the lock disengaged, the door opened. Judge stepped one
foot through the door and stopped. His Stetson sat even lower
on his brow, and his face remained turned toward the floor. His
shoulders were slumped, arms relaxed at his side. Anything but
killer-like.

"What do you need?" he asked.

Amber looked at Ginny, whose face was expressionless, a
blank slate, then back at Judge. "Some clean clothes would be
nice, underwear. Maybe some new socks." She looked again at
Ginny, seeking a suggestion, but she still looked dumbfounded
by judge's request.

Judge dipped his chin in a shallow nod, still facing the floor.
"Anything else?"

Amber waited a few seconds, trying to decipher the motive
behind judge's sudden interest in their well-being. Maybe he
was softening some. Maybe there was some hope after all.
Finally, she swallowed and said, "Something other than apples.
Maybe some"-she looked at Ginny for help but got nothing
but the same blank stare-"cereal or Pop-tarts or granola bars.
And some tissues."

Judge nodded again, backed out, and shut the door. Minutes
later, the engine fired up and the sedan rolled away.

When the engine's whine had faded, Ginny fell back in the
straw, covered her face with her hands, and let the tears come,
like a levy being breached. "He's toying with us," she sobbed,
choking out the words. "He's gonna kill us."

ARK LEANED AGAINST HIS '73 MUSTANG, COLLECTING
his thoughts. Dad's funeral yesterday had left him shaken.
Depressing wouldn't even begin to describe it. The thin,
balding preacher went on and on about what a pillar in the
church Dad was, what a godly man.

A devout family man and model for all of us to emulate.
He ran down the list of ministries Dad had been involved
in over his fifty-odd years of church participation, then waxed
eloquent about the eternal glory Dad was experiencing.

In the presence of Jesus. Experiencing perfect peace. Glory.
Amen.

But the look on Dad's face the moment before he crossed that
line from life to death was anything but peaceful. It was one of
terror and confusion. Panic. And it would stick with Mark for
the rest of his life.

Then the testimonies came. And came and came and came.
For over an hour people from the church-Grace Independent
Baptist Church-stood behind the little wooden podium, wrung
their hands, wiped their tears, and spoke about the virtues of
the man they called Brother Ed.

If they had only known the real man, Mark thought. If they
had only been there in the last fleeting moments, when reality finally set in, and Dad removed the mask and faced himself for
who he really was: Edgar M. Stone, hypocrite for life.

The preacher said Dad's passing was a cause for celebration,
a time of joy, but Mark knew better. In those last minutes when
Dad was confessing like a man ready to be fried in the electric chair, when he had torn his heart wide open and let all
the gunk show, no one was celebrating. There was no joy in
that room. And Mark knew-he didn't know how, but he just
knew-that Dad was not experiencing everlasting joy right now.
The screams still echoed through his head, and if he listened
close enough, he could almost make out Dad's baritone voice
among them. It put a nauseating knot in his gut. Dad was there.
Weeping and gnashing of teeth. A lifetime full of good works
and playing the game of church as well as anyone had gotten
him nowhere.

And that's what made it so depressing. So much more than
depressing.

After the funeral, Mark had headed home and pulled out the
phone book. He had had five hours on the road to think, and
he had decided to talk to someone else about the screams. As
he ran his finger down the long list of churches, one caught
his eye-Mount Savage Community Church. It wasn't the
name that interested him as much as the motto beneath it: Real
Church for Real People in the Real World. The pastor's name
was Tim Shoemaker.

So this morning Mark had gotten ready and headed over to
the small town of Mount Savage. He didn't have an appointment, didn't call ahead. He was just going on a whim. He had
nothing else to do.

The church was a quaint brick building with a steep-pitched
slate roof; short, chunky steeple; flaking white paint around
the windows and door; and one stained-glass window over the front door bearing the image of Jesus holding a lamb. A few
scrubby shrubs nestled close to the building, and a handful of
overgrown oaks stood behind the church. Other than that, any
kind of landscaping was sparse. The church sat in the middle of
a gravel parking lot, in the middle of nowhere. It was actually
a few miles outside of Mount Savage, down a twisting country
road littered with potholes. A faded gray trailer propped up on
cinder blocks was parked beside the church with a sign that
read Church Office on the door. Beside the trailer sat an earlymodel, steel blue Ford Taurus station wagon with a hood full of
chipped paint and a cock-eyed rear bumper.

Mark pushed away from his car and walked over to the
trailer, hands in the pockets of his jeans, gravel crunching
beneath his sneakers. He climbed the three wooden steps to
the trailer's door, knocked, and waited. It was a chilly morning,
and the smell of burning wood hung in the air. Mark hadn't
seen any other houses along this road, but someone obviously
lived nearby. Maybe the parsonage was on the other side of the
oak grove.

A few seconds later he heard heavy footsteps inside the trailer
and the door swung open. A man stood there, no more than
fifty but older than forty, trim and well built, dressed in khakis
and a red short-sleeve polo shirt, untucked. He had a hard face
full of sharp angles and hollow cheeks pocked with acne scars.
His short-cropped brown hair was sprinkled with gray. Intense
blue eyes, set narrow, peered from deep sockets.

"Can I help you?" the man asked, holding the door open
with one hand, a pen in the other.

Mark shifted his weight. "Yes, uh, my name's Mark Stone.
Are you the pastor?"

The man smiled. A nice smile, warm and inviting. His eyes sparkled in the early morning light. "Sure am." He stuck out a
hand and shook Mark's. "Tim Shoemaker."

"Nice to meet you, Pastor Shoemaker-"

Shoemaker held up a hand. "Tim will do."

Mark smiled. He liked this guy already. "OK. Um, I don't
have an appointment or anything, but I was wondering if I
could talk to you about something."

Tim's smile broadened. "Well, if that just doesn't beat it all."

"Excuse me?"

"Oh, I'm sorry. See, I usually don't come in to the office this
early unless I have an appointment. I do most of my studying at
home. But this morning I just had this urge, you know, a feeling
right in here"-he tapped his sternum with his fist-"that I
needed to come in this morning. Now I know why. So come in,
come in. Looks like you had an appointment after all."

Mark stepped through the doorway into a small waiting area.
Two upholstered chairs sat against one wall, and a dark wooden
table sat across from them against the other wall. On the table
were an assortment of magazines, a potted plant, and a lamp.
An oval woven rug lay in the middle of the room.

"Follow me," Tim said. "My office is back here."

As Tim turned to lead the way, Mark noticed a spider web
tattoo circling the preacher's left elbow and a circle of small
skulls around his right elbow.

The office was a small room with a metal desk and wooden
chair in one corner, a beige bookcase in another, and a potted
tree in the other. Across from the desk sat two more upholstered
chairs just like the ones in the waiting room. Nice. Quaint. And
nothing like Reverend Mahoney's over at St. Agnes's.

Tim slipped in behind his desk and sat in the wooden chair.
"Have a seat," he said, motioning to one of the upholstered
chairs.

Mark sat and crossed his right leg over his left.

Tim leaned both his elbows on the desk and laced his fingers,
and Mark now noticed a tattoo of a black widow crawling up
his right forearm. Tim patted the spider. "I see you noticed my
tattoos."

Mark blinked and looked away from spider. "Uh, yeah."
Should he say more? What was there to say? A preacher with
spider and skull tattoos? Maybe he came to the wrong church.

"Reminders of where I came from," Tim said, his smile
forming deep crevices in his pocked face. "I lived a pretty rough
life in my younger years. Got in with the wrong crowd and,
you know, sorta went off the deep end. Thought I was really
bad. Then one day I woke up in jail with dudes that were really
bad and, you know, reevaluated my life. A couple weeks later
I found Christ, and He changed my life." He patted the spider
again. "But some things about your past don't go away so easily.
That's why I call them reminders. Every time I look at my tats,
I remember where I was and where I was headin', and where I
am now and where I'm headin' now."

OK. Mark was intrigued. A preacher who had taken a walk
on the dark side. At least he knew what it was like over there.
"So how did you become a preacher?"

Tim chuckled and leaned his head forward until his fingers
touched his chin. "College is free in prison, you know. So I made
good use of my time in the slammer and went to Bible college.
Graduated in three years too. Thank you, Joe Taxpayer."

Mark was starting to like this preacher. He was like no other
he'd ever met. He wasn't pretentious or pious or high-andmighty Reverend Father Almighty. He was just Tim, a man who
had taken a stroll in the land of the forbidden, did time, and
had a criminal record and tattoos to show for it. He was who
he was, and he was comfortable with that. It had been a long time since Mark had seen a man, especially a preacher, who was
comfortable in his own skin, no matter how inked up it was. He
just might be able to get some answers from this guy.