The Visitation (48 page)

The humming stopped.

Oh. The wall switch. He clicked it on again.

There was that hum. He bent close to the switch and listened.

Well . . . it wasn’t just in the switch.

He straightened slowly, his ear close to the wall. Then he moved a foot or two down the hall, still listening. Then he backed up again. He raised as high as his tiptoes, then squatted. He shook his head in amazement.

He could hear the wire in the wall—or more exactly, the electric current flowing through it. He could hear where the wire was, which way it went up the wall, where it turned. Incredible!

He chuckled with delight. Like his other new abilities, this could be useful. Imagine being able to find wires in walls, maybe cables underground, maybe hear bad connections or short circuits!

He clicked off the light—the humming stopped—and headed for the bedroom, grinning to himself in the dark. This was going to be great.

Back in bed, he listened again for the hum of the wires. Not too many things were turned on right now. The house was dark and quiet. Good enough.

But what would it sound like during the waking hours, when things got turned on and power was flowing through the wires? Well, he’d worry about that in the morning. He rolled over and closed his eyes.

What was that? It sounded like an ant doing a tap dance on his night stand.
Tick, ticka tick tick tick, ticka tick tick tick.

He rolled over and looked. Too dark. He clicked on his bedside lamp. The wires in the wall hummed.

Angela woke up and groaned, “What’re you doing?”

“Checking out a noise.” He reached for his digital watch. The moment he touched it, the little tap dance came through loud and clear,
TICK, TICKA TICK TICK TICK, TICKA TICK TICK TICK.

He put the watch down.

“What noise?” Angela asked.

“Oh, it was just my watch.”

“Your
watch?”

He clicked off the lamp. The humming stopped.

Angela went back to sleep. Don lay there, eyes open, wondering whether he should be worried as the sound of his watch kept tap dancing in his ears,
tick, ticka tick tick tick. . . .

FLORENCE LYNCH
lay in her bed, troubled and tossing, dreaming of a deranged and bug-eyed Penny Adams reaching out and grabbing things. Penny was ghostly, transparent around the edges, drifting and floating through Florence’s house with long, sticky fingers clutching after everything in sight, and Florence kept chasing her, never keeping up, trying to stop her, screaming at her. Penny just laughed a witchy laugh and kept grabbing, grabbing, grabbing, taking dishes out of the cupboard, knickknacks off the shelf, a scarf from around Florence’s neck.
Stop that, put that back, put it back, that’s not yours!
More witchy laughing, green, fuzzy teeth, the touch of long, cold fingers—

Florence awoke with a jerk, her heart pounding, her face slick with sweat, the darkness like a mask over her eyes.

Terrified. A nightmare. She tried to calm down. She couldn’t.

It was a nightmare!
she told herself.
It’s over now
.

It wasn’t over. Her terror would not subside. With a death grip around fistfuls of down comforter, she covered her face up to her eyes and searched the deep, endless darkness of the bedroom.

A man was standing in the corner.

The terror felt like a hammer blow to her heart. Her throat constricted, her hands trembled.

His gaze emerged from the blackness like dim, yellow headlights emerging through thick smoke. There was something vaguely recognizable in their expression, a glint she’d known for years and hadn’t seen in ten.

“Louis!” she gasped. “Louis?”

The form of her dead husband inched toward her, the darkness receding like tidewater from the old gray shirt and jeans, the pale, veined skin of the face. Except for the unbroken glare of those eyes, he looked the same as the moment he died. The pale, blue lips were moving but there was no sound.

She managed to breathe again, in short, shallow gasps. “Louis. What is it?”

He raised his finger and shook it at her, his eyes angry and scolding, his lips forming the word
no. No, no, no!

She no more than
felt
the question forming in her mind before she had the answer. She knew what he was trying to tell her.

PENNY ADAMS
was not asleep, but she was comfortable, lying on a cot under clean, warm blankets. Compared to some of the other jails she’d occupied, this cell wasn’t bad.

Even so, she felt disappointed. Her new hand was supposed to be something magical, something shielded from hassles. She’d been in and out of Anderson’s and Kiley’s with all kinds of great stuff and they never noticed. Florence Lynch never noticed either—until today. That’s what Penny couldn’t figure out. Where did she slip up? What killed the magic?

People could be so weird, getting all shook up over a few dresses, a few blouses, a few watches and CDs. She liked them, she wanted them, Don Anderson and Matt Kiley and Florence Lynch never even missed them, so what was the big deal? They had plenty of stuff and she didn’t, and that wasn’t fair. What good was having a new hand if you couldn’t use it?

She heard the front door open and footsteps moving across the front office floor. She sat up in time to see Brett Henchle come through the cellblock door, the keys to the cells in his hand. He was wearing civilian clothes and hadn’t combed his hair. He must have gotten out of bed to come down here.

“Well,” he said, “you’re still awake.”

She shrugged and flipped a lock of hair out of her eyes.

He paused outside her door. “You don’t know how lucky you are. I just got a call from Florence Lynch. She says to let you go, to forget about the whole thing.”

Way cool
, she thought, but said nothing.

“So I’m going to let you out of here, but I want you to do us all a favor. You listening?”

She looked up at him. “Sure.”

“You got a new hand, maybe from God, and I know he wouldn’t do that just so you can go on stealing. So try to do something else with it. This town doesn’t need the trouble, and neither do I, and neither do you. You got it?”

She knew how to answer. “Okay.”

He unlocked the cell door. “Get your coat. I’ll take you home.”

She followed him out of the station and to the squad car, feeling relieved and giddy. Maybe the magic
was
still there. Officer Henchle was in a good mood, going easy on her.

She also noticed he wasn’t limping like before.

WHEN MY TELEPHONE RANG
Friday morning, it could have been Kyle Sherman calling for an update, or maybe Jim Baylor calling to talk about Dee. Bob Fisher still called once in a while just to call; Bruce Hiddle or Joe Kelmer called occasionally to make sure I was still breathing. My sister, Rene, called whenever there was family news; it could have been Morgan Elliott following up on last night’s dinner meeting (I would have liked that). I was
half
expecting a call from the Cathedral, probably from Miles Newberry or some other well-screened and thoroughly instructed Cathedral associate, but I still considered that too much to hope for.

There was no way in the world I could have expected
this
caller.

“Travis Jordan?”

“Speaking.”

“Mr. Jordan, my name is Elise Brenner. My maiden name is Harris. Dale Harris is my father.”

I sank onto the couch, more than a little intrigued. “
The
Dale Harris? Pastor of The Cathedral of Life?

“One and the same. Have I caught you at a bad time?”

“No, no, no, I’m free, I’m okay.”

“I understand you visited my dad’s church a little while ago.”

“That’s right.”

“Did you talk with my father?”

I broke into a grin and hoped she didn’t hear me chuckle. “No. He was unavailable.”

“But you did talk to Miles Newberry.”

“Uh, yeah, that’s, that’s right. I, uh, talked to Miles—uh, Pastor Newberry.”

“About a mutual acquaintance? Justin Cantwell?”

I leaned forward, pressing the receiver to my ear. “That’s right. He, uh, he was going to get back to me.”

“He won’t. None of them will. Mr. Jordan, it’s only by a fluke that I heard about your meeting with Miles. They weren’t about to tell me. They don’t like this sort of thing getting out.”

“Why are
you
calling me?”

“Because I know Justin Cantwell and I can tell you about him, which means I
have
to tell you about him. It would be wrong not to. The others—my father included—don’t want anyone to know about him because it would be too embarrassing.”

I grabbed a notepad I kept by the phone and flipped to a clean page. “So . . . you understand who I am and what my needs are?” “Mrs. Fontinelli told me. You remember her, my dad’s secretary?” “Oh yes, Mrs. Fontinelli. She seemed like a nice lady.”

“One of the nicest. She’s like a second mom. She told me about your visit and how the staff handled it. She’s a professional and she does her job, but she’s a friend too. She wasn’t going to tell me unless I asked her, but I asked her, so she told me.”

“Okay.”

“This conversation is going to be confidential, all right?”

“All right.”

She took an audible breath. “I’m married to one of the associate pastors at the Cathedral, Tom Brenner. I used to be the head of the music department at the church. I directed the choir, ran the worship team, organized the Christmas and Easter pageants, all that sort of thing. Three years ago, Justin Cantwell auditioned for the choir and we put him in the tenor section. That’s how I got to know him. To make a long story short, we ended up having an affair.”

I tried to keep my voice from betraying my wide-eyed facial expression. “I see.”

“Now, you have to consider who my father was. He had a monstrous church with three services on Sunday morning, a book deal with a major publisher, a television ministry, a tape ministry. He was a district presbyter for our denomination and serving on the board of Horizon Bible College. He had a professional, big time booking agency to line up his outside speaking engagements and another company managing annual vacations to the Holy Land with his name in the logo. He had a well-trained professional pastoral staff and we had ourselves an efficient, smooth-running church with a multimillion dollar annual budget. Mr. Jordan, I guess I’ve made it clear, my dad was successful in . . . well, the popular word is, the
ministry
.”

“Oh yes. Anybody can see that.”

“So, next thing you know, his daughter, married, with three kids, has an affair with a stranger from the teeming masses of that congregation. The, uh, powers-that-be—the board, the pastors, and my father—feared it would mar the image of the church and the pastor. They thought it could snarl the ministry’s momentum— let the church roll on, as the song goes. I was ashamed and felt foolish. My husband’s ministry was going to be in jeopardy as well. So we got together, prayed about it, and then, to put it simply, we covered it up. The church kept me on staff through Christmas— hey, it was the big Christmas pageant, they couldn’t let anything jeopardize that—and then they let me take an indefinite leave of absence in January. My husband went right on serving as an associate pastor, doing all he could to act normal, to keep the College and Career department rolling while we worked things out. The official word was that I’d worked very hard and needed a rest and time to be with my family—which was true. It just wasn’t the whole truth.”

“What happened to Justin Cantwell?”

“He vanished like he was never there. I’ve read a few things in the paper about Jesus showing up in Antioch, but I didn’t have a clue it was him, not until you came down here asking questions.”

“So how are you and your husband doing?”

“We’re still working it out. It hasn’t been easy.”

“Does he . . . does he know you’re talking to me about all this?”

“I told him I was going to call you today.”

“And what was his response?”

“He had to leave. The College and Career department has a meeting this morning. But that’s . . .”

“Yes?”

“I don’t know if you’ll be able to understand this, but it’s part of the story so I’ll tell you. I almost couldn’t help being drawn to Justin Cantwell. He was the first man in my life I could really talk to. He understood me, he understood my pain, he took the time to talk with me and, you know, just share his feelings about things.” She took a breath to clear her mind. “I did not know my father. I can’t say that I know him now. We never really talked, never spent time together— unless it was in church. Hey, as long as I played the piano or led the choir or worked in the church office, we had a relationship. It was mostly professional, but at least we had
something
.”

I could feel my insides twisting a little. “I, uh, I think I do understand.”

“That’s what people don’t realize: On the surface, it’s a wonderful church and we have a happy, Christ-filled family. Dad likes to brag about his kids in public, but my sister, Judy, is divorced and bulimic and my brother, Sam, is an alcoholic. My oldest brother, Dale Jr., turned out pretty well, but that’s because he’s just like Dad. He’s in the ministry, pastoring a church in Oklahoma. As for me and my husband, Tom . . .” She dropped off in midsentence.

“Did Tom go to Horizon Bible College?”

“Yes.” She sounded surprised.

“And he talks and thinks like your dad.”

Now her voice carried her amazement. “Have you met him?”

“No. But he’s on the pastoral staff, isn’t he?”

She laughed. “So you’ve been to our church.”

“I’ve seen how it works.”

“Dad handpicks every associate. I love Tom. But he’s Dad’s kind of man. All church. They fuel each other. It’s all they talk about. I should have seen it coming. It’s as if you can’t love and serve the Lord by being with your family, you have to be doing church stuff.”

Ah yes, the
stuff
. “I’m sorry.” I really was.

“Again, I don’t expect you to understand, but in our home, you had to be involved in the church to feel like part of the family. Dale and I could play the game, Sam and Judy couldn’t.” She gave a bitter chuckle. “I was always at the church, so Dad used to talk to Sam and Judy through me. He’d say things like, ‘Tell Sam I like that paint job on the house,’ or ‘Tell Judy she should sell that car and get an automatic.’ Sam used to brag about being a pagan just to send a message. Dad never picked up on it. Maybe the affair was my way of sending a message to Tom. Sometimes I think he may have received it, but sometimes not.”