A Sounding Brass (11 page)

“Malcolm,” his partner answered crisply after one ring.

“Hey. What’s up?”

“Not a thing. I’m sitting in an alley behind a fish market, waiting for an informant to show. What are you doing?”

“I need a favor of the undercover kind.”

“Shoot.”

Ray gave him the station’s call-in number and told him what he needed.

“That’s it? That’s all you want?”

“Yep. And can we do it on a three-way? That way you don’t need to relay it all back to me.”

“As long as you don’t have any background noise. Wouldn’t want your target identifying you.”

“Nope, I’m in my motel room and not expecting company.” Unfortunately. “And if he asks you if you have a prayer request, say
no, okay?”

Ross laughed. “Expect a call in about ten minutes.”

Accordingly, about ten minutes later, Ray’s cell phone rang and, once he had his partner on the line, Ross called the station.

“KGHM, this is Luke Fisher, rockin’ for Jesus!”

“Cool!” Ross said in a voice at least ten years younger than his natural one. Ray, who had known him for nearly five years,
could have sworn the guy was leaning on a surfboard, brushing blond hair out of his face. “Great show, man. Totally dig the
prayer requests.”

“Thanks! Can I do one for you?”

“Thanks, man, but I’ve got a different gig going here. I’m going to be going to L.A. for, like, the very first time and I
want to hook up with my brothers and sisters in the Lord when I’m there. Can you tell me what church you were with?”

“My friend, you can go to any church in L.A. and they’ll welcome a brother.”

“But dude, if I go to your old church I can tell them you’re doing great and their prayers are, like, totally working. You
know, and carry any messages you have.”

Luke laughed. “How, like, totally considerate of you. Well, you’d have your choice. I was with Lakefield Central in Downey,
Good Shepherd in Newport Beach, Holy Spirit in L.A. proper, and Second Congregational in Hollywood Hills.”

“Man,” Ross’s voice was confused, “can you say that a little slower? And let me get a pen?”

“Sorry, dude, ministry calls. But hey, let me play a song for you. How about ‘Safe Journey Home’?”

“Yeah, that’d be great, but . . . did you say Congregational Hollywood Strip?”

“Bye, man. Safe trip!”

Luke disconnected and a few seconds later, on Ray’s radio in the motel room, some guy began singing about his life’s long
journey being like walking in the dark until he met Jesus.

Ray thought that was pretty lame. People made their own way in life. He didn’t need anyone to pray for him, thanks.

“Sorry about that,” Ross’s voice said in his ear. “The guy talks like a machine gun. Did you get any of that?”

“Totally, dude.” Ray grinned. “That’s why I wanted to listen. It’s on a tape in my head. Lakefield Central in Downey, Good
Shepherd in Newport Beach, Holy Spirit in L.A., and Second Congregational in Hollywood Hills.”

“How do you do that?”

“It’s a gift. In college, I had to hire girls to read the textbooks to me. If I read them, I couldn’t retain a thing.”

“Cheap way to get dates, Harper.”

“At least I don’t have to arrest them.”

“I never arrested Julia. She came willingly.”

“Thanks for the help, bud. Give her my love.”

“I’ll do that. Looks like my guy isn’t gonna show and this place stinks of fish guts. I’m heading home.”

Ray hung up and wrote the names of the churches in his notebook, then fired up the laptop and began to research each one.

Lakefield Central in Downey. No record of either Luke or Brandon being on the staff, and their archives went back as far as
1998.

Good Shepherd in Newport Beach. Didn’t exist, at least on the Web. He pulled the phone book out of the nightstand and called
Information, only to find out there was no church of any kind in Newport bearing the name of Good Shepherd.

Okay.

Holy Spirit in L.A., when typed into his search engine, brought up half a dozen churches with that phrase in it, along with
a number of New-Age places. Ray searched each one, and when he found no record of Luke or Brandon, he called Information for
that area code. That yielded three more. But he wouldn’t call them tonight—he’d just get answering machines. No, he’d start
again in the morning.

He was beginning to see a pattern, even with limited research, and he had a feeling the calls would net him exactly what he
was getting now—a big bunch of nothing.

The next morning, after jogging downtown for a latte and a bagel, he found that Second Congregational in Hollywood Hills not
only existed, it was open at eight
A.M
., even on Saturdays.

“Second Congregational,” a woman’s voice said. “How can I help you?”

“My name is Ray Harper, ma’am, and I’m an investigator with the Organized Crime Task Force in Seattle, Washington.”

“Yes?”

“Let me give you a phone number where you can call and verify my identity.” He was taking a breath to dictate the number at
the office when the woman interrupted him.

“That won’t be necessary,” she said. “Do people tend to not believe you?”

“No, it’s just procedure. Who am I speaking with?”

“My name is Margaret Paulson. I run a women’s group here Saturday mornings and I happened to be walking past the office when
the phone rang. How can I help you, Mr. Harper?” she asked again.

“I’m interested in knowing whether a man named Brandon Boanerges or Luke Fisher ever served as assistant pastor at Second
Congregational.”

“No.”

She sounded so positive that Ray found himself letting out a breath, as though he’d been punctured. “Ah. You know the congregation
pretty well? Enough to be positive of that?”

“I’ve been with this congregation for forty years, Mr. Harper. I know everyone in it.”

“And neither of those names is familiar.” He might have known Fisher’s whole history was a puff of smoke. There were still
the other numbers to try, but he’d put money on them not panning—

“I didn’t say that. Boanerges, of course, is—”

“‘The sons of thunder,’” he finished. “Yes, I know.”

“Well, yes, but it’s also the name one of our volunteers took for an Internet ministry. You know, what they call a screen
name. I’m not sure of the details, but it ended badly and he left the church after that.”

“How long ago was this?”

“Oh, three years at least.”

His boy Brandon had been playing mind games with defenseless women for two years before Ray had tripped over his trail. Could
he have gotten started with an Internet ministry and met them there? Was that the connection that had tied these unrelated
women together—the one piece of the puzzle that had eluded him all this time?

“What was this volunteer’s name, Mrs. Paulson? Do you remember?”

“Oh, yes. His mother, Mary Lou, is part of our congregation. Ricky Myers.”

“Ricky?” Disappointment spiraled into his gut. “Sounds like a teenager. The man I’m looking for is in his late thirties.”

“Oh, that would be about right. Everyone called him Ricky, though, like a nickname. He was such a charmer, you see. Even still,
there are those among us who can’t quite believe such a nice, good-looking boy could have been so wicked.”

“
P
REACHER CONVICTED
of Rape,” the headline of the
Inish County Courier
said in heavy black type on Monday morning. Claire dropped a quarter in the newsstand and pulled a copy of the paper out.
She could hardly blame the
Courier
for getting excited about the news; the most exciting things it usually had to report were escaped cattle and the occasional
robbery or vandalism. A rape case—particularly when it involved a man like Phinehas, who was supposed to be celibate, holy,
and good—was major news.

She tucked the paper under her arm and went into the station, waving at Luke, whose shift started at eight
A.M
., the same as hers. When she’d asked him why he liked eight to noon and eight to midnight, he’d said he liked to be on the
air when people began their day and when they ended it. “I want to help them set a praiseful tone for their day, or a thankful
tone for their evening,” he said with that endearing grin. “Hey, it’s not much, but it’s something good to think about.”

Those four-hour stretches were also the highest traffic times now as far as calls and listeners went, but who could blame
him for wanting to catch the most people when he could? And Toby didn’t seem to mind being bumped out of the prime slots.
He was just happy the station’s business was turning around.

A brightly colored box of software sat on her desk, still in its shrink-wrap. FileMaker Pro. “Thank you, Toby,” she said aloud.
She stashed her purse and the paper in the bottom drawer of her desk and opened the box. This was better than a birthday.

With a computer as slow and obsolete as hers was, it took half an hour before the application was up and running. The rest
of the morning was spent entering the numbers from Toby’s spreadsheet and the receivables she already had. The mail had brought
another landslide of checks, cash, and money orders, not to mention a number of fan letters for Luke. She set those aside.
If there was anything in there she needed to know about, he’d tell her. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know what else the owners
of the feminine handwriting had to say.

By two in the afternoon, Luke had gone home and she had a semblance of an accounting system in place. Just for fun, she asked
it to produce a profit-and-loss report. The computer crunched happily for a couple of seconds and the line items popped up
on her screen, laid out just the way she liked them.

“Wow!” Claire goggled at the bottom line. Did that really say ten grand? Just to be sure, she ran the report again, and it
produced exactly the same number. Eight thousand dollars in this morning’s mail alone? She sat back in her chair, feeling
a little winded. It was a lucky thing Toby had bought the package when he had. Any longer and she wouldn’t have been able
to stay on top of this burgeoning river of receivables.

At least they weren’t going to have any trouble meeting payroll for the three of them, or in giving to the ministries Luke
had talked about.

Claire made a to-do list and pinned it to the bulletin board on the wall next to the desk. Then she gathered up all the deposits,
slid them into an envelope, and generated an itemized deposit slip. Her first deposit for the station, she thought as she
walked down to the next block, where the bank was. What would Margot say to this?

When she walked in, the first thing she saw was that they hadn’t filled her position yet. A forlorn little “closed” sign sat
on her desk, and the tellers looked just as harassed as they had last week when she’d left. She’d just moved into line with
her big, fat envelope when Margot looked up and waved at her through the glass that formed one wall of her office.

“Come in,” she mouthed, motioning toward the door.

As the branch manager, Margot could take a deposit as well as anyone else, or approve a loan, or any of a dozen jobs. Claire
tried not to feel triumphant, because vengeance belonged to the Lord, but her back was a lot straighter going in this morning
than it had been coming out last week.

“Claire, it’s good to see you,” Margot said. “Have a seat. What brings you here today?”

“Business deposit.” She indicated her envelope. “I’m at KGHM now. Accounting manager.”

Margot looked impressed. “That was quick.”

“It was . . . meant to be, I think.” She still wasn’t convinced that God had a hand in getting people jobs, but it certainly
had been a nice set of coincidences, hadn’t it?

“I’m glad for you, but on the other hand, I’m disappointed.” Margot paused and took a deep breath. “I’m afraid good front-office
people are hard to find at the moment. When I saw you I thought you might . . . well, that’s beside the point. Never mind.”

“Might what?” Claire asked.

“Be coming back.”

Why would I beg for a job when you fired me because of how I look?
“No,” she said. “I’m here strictly for business. Can you take my deposit?”

“Sure.” Margot reached for the envelope. “What’s the account number?”

By the time they’d reached the end of the lengthy transaction, Luke’s prophecy was on a fair course to coming true. Margot
was all smiles and sunshine, seeing Claire to the door as if she were some corporate bigwig, and there was no more mention
of anybody coming back begging for a job.

How about that.

She wondered how many other things Luke was right about. And what effect that was going to have on the Elect’s way of life.
Or, for that matter, on hers.

* * *

RAY HELPED HIMSELF
to an unused workstation at the Hamilton Falls P.D., grateful for the joint-forces agreements that the OCTF had in place with
every law enforcement agency in the state of Washington. With a few keystrokes, he could tap into the most comprehensive criminal
databases in the world—and he had every intention of doing just that. He’d run a warrants check on Brandon Boanerges months
ago, but now—if Mrs. Margaret Paulson was correct—he had the guy’s real name.

Richard Brandon Myers.
Oh, you are so nailed, my friend.

NCIS, AFIS, and California’s CJIC system provided him with a string of charges for Richard Brandon Myers, date of birth April
13, 1974, from West Hollywood, California. A number of misdemeanors, including vandalism, some traffic stuff, all taken care
of—presumably by his mother—by paying a fine. Petty theft. Fraud. Fencing stolen property. All drummed down to the lowest
penalty or dropped altogether.

Bottom line, either Myers/Boanerges/Fisher had been in the wrong place at the wrong time and proven innocent, or he was a
master at flashing that smile at a judge and earnestly promising that he’d learned his lesson and would never do it again.

Under that name, at least.

Luke Fisher, date of birth July 20, 1973, was as clean as a whistle. He owned a car—the almost new Camry parked behind the
station eight hours out of twenty-four—but other than that, he’d never even had a parking ticket.