Blood of Angels (17 page)

“I don't even drink blood before midnight, Towns. Get in.” I step into my father's truck and reach across, opening her door. She steps inside, and I turn the key, letting the V-8 rumble away in the night air. I open the garage door, and we pull out into a dull rain.

Nobody speaks for a good five minutes, until she breaks the silence. “How did your father die?” she asks.

“You don't beat around the bush, do you, Towns?”

“Not usually.”

I stare ahead at the road. “An accident at work. He was an aircraft mechanic. Civilian contractor with the air force.”

Towns watches the last well-made houses and manicured lawns pass by as we reach the commercial district. “My father died working, too.”

I look over at her. “No kidding.”

“Heart attack. Too much stress, too many martinis, too many mistresses.” She frowns. “He wore himself down to nothing for the big house and a Mercedes.”

“So you went the other way.”

The smile flickers again. “Very good, Dennehy.”

“Is your mother still alive?”

“Now there's a fascinating topic.” She pushes back in the bucket seat. “My mother's God is Oprah. Not that she reads the books, of course. But she cries like clockwork when the celebrities come out and talk about their addictions.”

“So the two of you are close.”

She smiles and pushes a strand of hair behind her ears. “You know why I studied theology, Dennehy?”

“No idea.”

“Because there had to be something more than my father working himself to death, and more than my mother numbing herself with pop psychology.”

I stare out at the dark, wet highway. “And is there?”

The truck rumbles down the street for a good thirty seconds before she answers. “Took me a while to find out. A lot of unproductive roads. Boyfriends. Chemicals. I got lost for a while.”

“So, what? You found yourself in church?”

“Not in most of them, I can tell you that.” She smiles. “You know what my church is, Dennehy? It's the church of the losers, of the painfully uncool. It's the church of the dropouts and failures. Fools and sinners. It's the church of the second chance.” She looks out the window. “Home, in other words.”

“Don't be so self-deprecating. Not after what you did in court the other day, anyway. You took Judge Ginder to school.”

“Yes, and you've already told me I may regret that. But I'm willing to take some risks at this point in my life.” She lowers her voice. “Especially for Moses.”

“What's the deal with him anyway? Carl says he's a
Benywal,
whatever that is.”

“You'll see,” she says. She falls silent, not speaking until we reach the church.

Fifteen miles down I-65, I take the ramp off the freeway to Church Street. We roll into downtown, the empty office buildings lining both sides of the street. I take the narrow alley behind the DPC and pull into the tiny empty lot behind the building. The rain is still coming down when we get out, and Towns and I jog up the grungy, concrete steps to the back door of the church. The alleyway and parking lot are both deserted; even through the rain, the smell of urine and homelessness pervades. Towns unlocks the large, metal door, and we step inside and out of the shower. She hits a switch and a set of fluorescent lights flickers on, but only half work. The light makes crazy patterns on the reflective floor. “Follow me.”

We walk down the long hallway to the rear entrance to the sanctuary. She pushes open one of the ten-foot-tall wooden doors, and we step into the dim, cavernous room. The large stained-glass windows glow palely from the exterior streetlights. The Egyptian reliefs painted above us are shadowed, and the great sandstone pillars rise from the floor only to vanish into the dark heights forty feet above us. Towns walks to the first row of pews. “You know the history of this place, Dennehy?”

“No.”

“You're standing in one of the most powerful pro-slavery symbols in the South. Before the civil war, this church preached against freedom so virulently that the Union army actually came for the preacher's head. He fled with his family to Mississippi, and he was never allowed back in the city. The government recognized that he had become a symbol himself, and kept him out in the interest of peace.” She turns toward me. “When the city fell, the Union army turned this room into a military hospital. The pews were ripped out and cots were brought in. Even Negro soldiers were operated on here. It found its calling again, and became a place of healing.”

I nod, looking around. “Why the Egyptian design?”

“That came later, after a fire gutted the original structure. The church rose out of its ashes, like the South itself. The building was once again the center of the city's wealth and power, and this extravagance is an expression of that. The symbols changed again.”

“Somewhere along the way this place must have got lost. You're almost closed down.”

She smiles. “On the contrary, Dennehy. It's finally found itself at last. We're a home for the wounded again, just as we should be. And nobody showed me that more than Moses Bol.”

She leads me several rows down the center aisle, turning left into one of the pews toward the west wall. About twenty feet away from the wall, she stops. “You want me to tell you what
Benywal
means.”

“That's right.”

“It's impossible to translate. Something close would be ‘One who draws strength from the ancestors.' But that doesn't do it justice.” She leans on the pew behind her. “Once one of the boys wrote his name for me. It was ten lines long. He did this because his name is more than just
his
name. It's his father and father's father, back ten generations. He knew them all and could recite stories about each of them. They were real to him, Dennehy, as real as if he'd sat on their knees and touched their faces. Most Americans can't even name their own great-grandfathers.” She looks out at the church's towering pillars. “The
Benywal
is the living connection with everything that comes before. Not merely the names, but the essence, the stories, the history itself. He heals their sickness. He finds their way forward in the darkness.” She looks up at me. “He's priceless, in other words.”

“Tell me you don't actually believe in all that. I'd prefer not to think of you as nuts.”

She shakes her head. “If you're asking me if it meets a scientific standard of inquiry, I'd have to say no. But their stories are extraordinary.”

“Meaning?”

“You know the boys marched hundreds of miles across Sudan to Ethiopia, and hundreds more to Kenya.”

“Yes.”

“Moses routinely went for days without sleep on those marches. He did this to drive away animals that would come in the night and drag away the sick or weak. The boys say he didn't eat or drink for days at a time. Two eyewitnesses claim to have seen him walk through walls.”

I laugh darkly. “I'll be sure and let the guards in Riverbend know. ‘Watch the African, gentlemen. He walks through walls.'”

“This isn't a joke, Dennehy. Moses and two friends were captured and put in an Arab jail. Their legs were shackled. The two friends claim he simply walked out, got the key, and released them.”

“For God's sake, Towns, you went to Harvard.”

She stands up off the pew. “I know how legends grow, Dennehy. I studied theology. Every generation embellishes the stories of the last, until they're deified.”

“Exactly. Daniel Boone will probably be a religion someday.” I pause. “So tell me you didn't drag me down here to convince me to believe in Moses Bol.”

She shakes her head. “I brought you here to show you of the power of a symbol. Look around, Dennehy. The hieroglyphics. The cross at the front. A preacher, banished and never allowed to return. Wars are fought over symbols like that. A war was fought in this very city over them. They're immensely powerful.”

“What does this have to do with Bol?”

“Moses is a symbol, too. He's the symbol of everything that makes these boys who they are. They love him, and if he dies, there's going to be a catastrophe.”

“Which means?”

“These boys have been hunted since they were little children. They showed up here thinking America was heaven. They found a culture awash in commercialism and advertising. They're doing their best to understand, but already they're growing disillusioned. I hold them together now by a thread. But I swear to you, Dennehy, if our system takes their
Benywal,
they will fall into despair.” She closes her eyes, her breathing deep. “I love them. I love that they aren't full of our sickness. I love that they are still angels somehow.”

“Angels.”

“Somehow, they're still innocent, even after all the horror they've seen. They were children through all that, and miraculously, some of that survived. But they're falling away, one by one. We offer them nothing but endless work for possessions they don't understand or want. Some are drifting into gangs, simply because they don't know what else to do. It's bad enough losing them one at a time. If Moses dies, I'll lose them all.”

The storm outside is still growing; the wind and rain are lashing against the building. “Tell me the truth,” I say quietly. “Not as witness and prosecutor. Between you and me, right here, right now. No bullshit.”

She stares right at me. “He didn't do it, Dennehy. Moses Bol was here that night with me.”

The rain pelts against the roof and windows. “I don't like anything about this,” I say. “I don't like the fact that there's a raped and murdered woman in my city. I don't like being hauled into a church in the middle of the night and told ghost stories about people walking through walls.” I pause. “And I don't like the idea of sending you to jail.”

“Then don't.”

“I won't have any choice.”

“Drop the death penalty, Thomas. Do what you must. But don't take his life.”

She moves closer, and I can hear her breathing. A siren, distant but angry, cuts through the storm. We're less than a foot apart, and there's a moment when I know I should move back. We both know it, in fact, but she steps on a footing of one of the pews and balances herself against me, her fingers pressing into my chest. I realize I want to kiss her, which is wrong on a million levels. I know I'm not going to go for it, but I allow myself a moment to imagine it, to pull her into my arms in my mind, kissing her as hard as I can. Her mouth opens against my own, and her legs wrap around me, pressing her hips against me. I'm thinking about how soft her mouth looks, how her lips are slightly parted, and how the fact that I can see she wants the same thing I do is making me feel a little drunk. I'm thinking this right up until the moment one of the huge stained-glass windows above us explodes into a hundred thousand brilliantly colored shards of razor-sharp glass.

 

THE EXPLOSION RICOCHETS ACROSS
the cavernous hall, brittle and angry. The glass showers down from the darkness like diamonds, beautiful as rain, dangerous as daggers, covering us like a wicked snow. I pull Fiona underneath me, covering her with my body. There's the ting of falling glass on the wooden floor and pews for what seems like minutes. I can feel the glass hitting us and see it gathering on the floor all around us. “Stay down! Stay down!”

We crouch between pews, waiting for the chaos to stop. Finally, there's an uneasy truce, as the sound of falling glass is replaced by cold wind and rain blowing through the hole where the window had been. “Be still,” I say, my hand on her back. “We're covered in it.” I stand up inch by inch, letting the glass fall to the pew and floor. “Stay there.” Carefully, I pick glass out of Fiona's hair and from her back. I look up and see the gaping hole; remnants of glass cling to the window frame, ready to fall with a gust of wind. “We've got to get out of here.” We make our way through the debris to the front of the sanctuary, glass crunching under our shoes. The force of the explosion has blown fragments in every direction. When we reach a safe place, I get a chance to look at Fiona. “You all right?”

She stares back at the sanctuary, eyes wide. “Uh huh.”

A siren appears, distant but rapidly growing closer. “The police are coming,” I say. “We'll be all right.” I put my arm around her and help her through the big double doors into the dimly lit hall. “Where are the main lights in here?”

She gives me a blank look.
She's leaving me.
I lean her against the wall and go in search of the main light switch. I find it, and the hard, fluorescent lights flicker on. The siren is close now, and another is coming behind. I pull out my phone and call 911. “This is Thomas Dennehy, assistant district attorney,” I say to the dispatch operator. “I'm inside the Downtown Presbyterian Church. I'm here with the pastor, Fiona Towns. You need to send the EMTs. I think the pastor is in shock.”

“They're on their way.”

“Listen, try to reach the officer before he arrives. We don't want to get shot by accident.”

“Roger that.”

I turn back to Fiona, who's slowly sliding down the wall. I get underneath her arms and lower her into a sitting position. She looks up, her eyes glassy. I try to get a pulse, can't find it, and try again, on her neck. It's slow, maybe twenty beats a minute, a sure sign her parasympathetic system is shutting down. I hear the police car pulling into the parking lot, its siren blaring. I sit down next to Fiona, my arm around her. A minute later, there's the sound of the back door opening. “In here!” I shout. The officer's wet shoes suck against the tile floor as he approaches, slowing as he reaches the entrance to the hallway.

“I'm inside,” the officer says. “Yeah.” A pause. “Roger that.” The officer creeps warily around the corner, his weapon drawn.