Southern Cross (11 page)

“Two
summers ago,” Mae said. Her voice was raw with emotion. “He was acting up:
partying, drinking.” She looked at me, eyes pleading. “I know what that night
with Reverend Barnel was for you—Wyatt told me what the reverend did. How bad
it got. It was different for Wy, though: It put him on the right path. Set him
straight. We figured maybe it was just what Danny needed.”

I
walked away, afraid I’d explode if I didn’t.

I
thought of that night more than twenty-five years ago: The feel of leather
straps cutting into my wrists and ankles, strapped in before a crowd that just
sat there, watching me writhe. Strangers’ hands on me. Bright lights. Sweat
dripping from Barnel’s face onto my naked chest.
Repent, Daniel. Beg the
Lord’s forgiveness for spilling your brother’s blood. Turn your back on the
devil. It’s the only way to get back to the light.

Solomon
pulled me back to the present, her hand once more on my arm. Mae was nowhere in
sight.

“You’re
freaking out,” she said. You can’t get anything past Solomon.

“You
don’t think I have reason to?”

“Are
you kidding? I think anyone who tries to straighten out their kid by sending
him to a guy like Barnel is batshit crazy. Haven’t any of these people heard of
Outward Bound? Jesus. But the horse is kind of out of the gate now… It’s done.
And maybe you’ve forgotten this, but someone was out taking potshots at the
reverend last night.”

“Danny
didn’t have anything to do with that,” I said.

She
didn’t look convinced. “Why don’t we just focus on finding him first, then we
can get the rest figured out.”

“I
still say he’s probably just off somewhere, blowing off some steam.”

“Could
be,” she agreed.

“But
you don’t think so.”

She
looked at me. “Do you? Really?”

I
shook my head slowly. “I hope so. But I wouldn’t bet the farm on it.”

Since
it was a school day, it was easier than it might have been otherwise to do a
blanket survey of Danny’s friends to see if anyone knew where he could be. Mae
went over to the school and met with a couple of teachers, who in turn spoke
with the students. The last time anyone had seen Danny was at the local Dairy
Queen the night before. No one had heard anything from him since then. Or, if
they had, they weren’t volunteering that information.

The
pall already over the Durham house was getting darker by the second; I wasn’t
sure how much more Mae could take. I didn’t even want to think about what would
happen to her—to all of them—if Danny met the same fate his father had.

At
just past noon that day, Einstein and I went up to my room only to find Diggs
sitting on the bed with the
Justice Daily News
and his laptop. My neck
was stiff and my back ached and my ass hurt. Once you pass thirty, apparently
sleeping in a car has the same effect on the body as being run over by one.
Diggs eyeballed me as I sat down at the edge of the bed.

“You
okay?” he asked.

“No,
as a matter of fact. I think my spine’s dislocated, thanks to you.”

“I
didn’t make you sleep in the car. You could’ve come in anytime.”

“That
kind of would have killed my point, don’t you think? Anyway, I thought we
weren’t supposed to be sharing a room. What happened to bunking with the boys?”

“It
smells like a locker room in there. And Rick’s depressing the hell out of me.
All that kid does is read the Bible and stare out the window. It’s creepy.” He
scooted over to one side of the bed, nodding to the other. “Just sleep—I’ll be
quiet. And I promise not to grope you unnecessarily while you’re out, if that’s
what you’re worried about.”

I
didn’t have the energy to argue. Instead, I lay down on the bed beside him,
kicked off my shoes, and stared at the ceiling. “What are you doing?” I asked.

“I
pulled up some files I had. I started researching Barnel a few years ago.
Looking into his revival.”

My
eyes drifted shut. “And?”

“I’ve
got two thousand, three hundred and eighty-six names. Boys he branded during
his sideshow.”

I sat
up. “Are you kidding?”

“He’d
been doing this since the ‘60s, an average of maybe one a week—more during the
summer camp sessions, less in the winters. You do the math.”

“I
don’t understand,” I said. “How the hell did this guy get away with this for so
long? I mean, it’s not like he was just dunking people in the lake or laying
hands… he
branded
them. That’s assault. That’s…” I looked at Diggs
helplessly, completely baffled. “I’m not nuts here. Why didn’t anyone shut him
down?”

“This
is a different world,” he said, like it was perfectly obvious. “His victims
were all underage. All brought in by their parents. Around here, God’s number
one. Parents are second in line. You don’t question either of them. Or at least
you didn’t when I was a kid.”

“So,
not once did someone try to press charges? Report him to the Feds? We were at
his tent meeting last night—anyone could have come in. If the cops saw him…”

He
shook his head. “Did you see anything last night that he could have been
arrested for? The snake handling and the exorcisms and anything else remotely
hinky were always done behind closed doors. Anyone in attendance was vetted
first. In 1982, a kid named Wally Majors went to the police and the FBI
investigated. Everyone clammed up. No one would testify. Six months later, the
kid killed himself.”

None
of this was totally outside my sphere of experience, of course. I thought again
of what I’d flashed back to during Barnel’s revival the night before. Was
whatever the Paysons had done on Payson Isle really so different from Barnel
strapping kids down and branding them?

“What
about you?” I asked. “You never went to the cops?”

He
laughed with the same kind of cool distance he always assumed when I asked him
something personal. “It was more a matter of pride at the time. No one wanted
to be the pussy who couldn’t take Barnel’s treatment. Later, of course, the
only evidence I actually had of what happened…” he faded out, though I knew
where he was leading: The cross, ultimately transformed into the messy burn
that he’d always refused to talk about just below his collarbone.

“How
did you get rid of it?” I asked. “Barnel’s cross, I mean.” 

“Divine
intervention,” he said with an awkward, cloaked smile. And that was the end of
that conversation.

Rather
than press him, I looked over Diggs’ shoulder at Barnel’s endless list of
victims. The names were color coded in red, blue, green, and orange, and listed
alphabetically. “What do the colors mean?”

“Effects
after the fact,” Diggs said. “Blue is no discernible effect. Green is mental
illness. Orange is a criminal record.”

I
spied Wyatt’s name in red. Guess I didn’t need to ask what that one meant. I
scanned the list. Maybe half the names were blue, the bulk of the rest evenly
divided between green and orange, with a lot fewer red scattered in among them.
“How long have you been working on this?”

“A
few years,” he said. “I started while I was living here. I kept it quiet,
though.”

“Ashley
wouldn’t have approved?”

“Ashley
didn’t approve of much.”

That
stopped me, if only momentarily. “Why marry her, then?”

“Oh,
you know…” he said with a vague wave of his hand. 

“Actually,
I don’t, or I wouldn’t have asked.” My temper was rising again. It has a
tendency to do that around Diggs. “We dance around this shit all the time. I’m
tired of it. What did George mean the other day when he said you married Ashley
because of me?”

His
eyes darkened. “Sol—” he began, about to put me off again.

I
shook my head. “You know, Juarez may not remember the first thirteen years of
his life, but I still know more about his past than I do about yours, and
you’ve been my best friend for seventeen years. Everything’s this deep dark
mystery with you: the women you married, the scars you carry… hell, you won’t
even tell me why you’re a vegetarian. I mean, Jesus, Diggs. Were you a cow in a
past life?”

He
frowned. It felt like there was a war waging in his head: what to say, what to
hold back. “You know more about me than anyone,” he said quietly. “You know
that.”

“I
know the things I was there to see firsthand. No more, no less.”

“Since
when have you been all about sharing your deepest darkest, anyway? I mean,
Jesus, Solomon. Have you joined a knitting circle, too? If you were looking for
someone to help you get in touch with your feminine side, you’ve obviously
picked the right guy.”

“At
least Juarez treats me like something other than his faithful sidekick,” I bit
out. My cheeks burned. I looked away, wishing I’d never brought it up. I
focused on Einstein, my head ducked down, fingers moving through his fur.
Somehow, it felt like I was the one who’d revealed something—which is the
reason I don’t usually do this emotional crap in the first place. Diggs was
right: clearly Juarez was getting to me. 

“I
don’t think of you as a sidekick,” Diggs finally said. His voice was even.
Serious. I met his eye. Okay, maybe he didn’t think of me as a sidekick. It
would have been a very different movie if Butch Cassidy looked at Sundance the
way Diggs was looking at me just then.

I
rolled my eyes, aware that my cheeks were now officially burning just a shade
cooler than the sun. “I just think you should open up once in a while,” I
mumbled. Before he could respond, I took the laptop from him and focused every
ounce of my energy on the screen.

“All
right… you wanna share, huh?” he asked. He lay back on the bed, arms behind his
head, and started reading the paper. His voice had lightened considerably. “I
could tell you about my first time. Now there’s sixty seconds worth
remembering.” I shot him a glare. He grinned. “Of course, I remember
your
first time a lot better.”

“I
hate you.”

“I
know,” he said amiably. “Who can blame you? Now, let’s see… I was thirteen. She
was seventeen. Jessica Montgomery...”

He
stopped. When he didn’t continue, I looked at him curiously. He was totally
transfixed by a page one story on Wyatt.

“What’s
up?”

“‘Local
veterinarian Dr. Wyatt Durham disappeared from Jackson Burkett’s farm early in
March,’” Diggs read.

“So?”

He
sat up and took the laptop from me. “They’ve been calling him Roger this whole
time—that’s why I didn’t recognize the name.” He scanned through the list and
came up triumphant, jabbing his finger at the screen. I read the name he’d
indicated.

Burkett,
Jackson R.

“You
think that’s Roger Burkett?” I asked. “It could just be coincidence.”

“I
doubt it.” He got up and grabbed his jacket.

“Wait,”
I said. “Where are you going now?”

“The
Burkett farm. It’s not like Sheriff Jennings is gonna keep us in the loop, and
I’m sure the state cops haven’t put this together.”

I sat
up and retrieved my shoes.

“You
don’t have to come with me. I’m fine,” he said.

“You
want me to send you out there alone? No offense, but your track record since we
got to Justice isn’t that great.”

“I
know you’re trying to turn over a new leaf,” he said with a smirk. I hate that
smirk. “If this is too much action for you…”

I
slugged him in the arm. “Don’t push it, Diggins.”

He
pulled his jacket on, smirk still in place. “Yes, ma’am. And I can tell you all
about Jessie Montgomery on the way.”

“I
can’t wait.”

<><><> 

There
was actually a part of me—primarily in the lower intestine region—that was a
little hesitant about heading to the Burkett farm with Diggs. I tried to
appease my intestines by giving Mae the details of where we were headed and
when we should be back, thus ideally minimizing the chances that we’d be
butchered along the way. Or, if we were, at least we’d be found quickly.

I
started rethinking my perspective about the time we left the outskirts of town
for what appeared to be Deliverance territory, following a dirt road cut
through a wall of trees in full bloom. I’d always lumped Kentucky in with the
South, but the birches, maples, and oaks along the road were closer to the Maine woods than anything you’d find down on the bayou. It was still gray outside, a
miserable drizzling rain falling. With the forest closing in, Diggs and my
banter gave way to silence. Einstein stuck his head out the window, breathing
in the fresh air. At least one of us was having a good time. 

“You
okay?” Diggs asked when we’d been on the Burkett road for a good ten minutes.
There were no cars in either direction—which could be a very good thing or a
very bad thing, depending on your perspective.

“Yeah,”
I said. I kept an eye on the road behind us, searching for some sign that the
hooded man—aka Cameron—might be back there. I checked my cell phone.
Miraculously, there was still a strong signal. “I’m fine.”

“You
don’t look fine. You look tense.”

I
eyeballed him for a second, noting the way his hands gripped the steering
wheel. His nose was swollen and his eye was purple. “You don’t look that hot
yourself. Considering what happened the last time we were alone in the woods
together, I think ‘fine’ would be asking a little much, don’t you? How about we
just celebrate the fact that I’m not fetal in the backseat, and run with that.”

“Fair
enough.”

Eventually,
we reached the end of the road. I was hoping that would prove to be literal
rather than metaphoric. About fifty yards back from the driveway, obscured by
an overgrown field, was a ramshackle white house that may have been nice at one
point… a long, long time ago. Now, the paint was chipped, a couple of shutters
were hanging loose, and one of the upstairs windows had been broken out.
Plastic was taped over it, but I couldn’t imagine it did much to keep out the draft.
Or the beasties.

“Well,
this isn’t creepy at all,” I said.

“Buddy
said they found some tire tracks in the driveway,” Diggs said. “And Wyatt’s
medical bag was still on the ground where he’d left it.”

He
stopped the car and turned off the engine. Between the gray day, the creepy
house, the overgrown fields, Barnel’s grim prophecy and subsequent murder, and
now Danny missing, I wasn’t loving the way this whole thing was unfolding.

 “So,
we check the house first,” Diggs said.

“Sounds
reasonable.”

“You
want me to go alone?”

“Give
me a break. Let’s do this.”

“Suit
yourself.” He reached across me to the glove box, opened it, and rooted around
for a minute before he came out with a gun. A big gun, too—much closer to a
cannon than a pea-shooter.